Chapter 4
Chapter Four
EMILIA
The first night, I couldn’t sleep. Not because I was afraid. Not even because of them.
It was the silence. Thick. Suspended. The kind that presses against your skin like static.
They didn’t speak.
Didn’t scroll.
Didn’t rustle their sheets or whisper under their breath like normal boys.
They just… listened .
I was sure of it.
Certain they were lying in their beds—black sheets, twin shadows—facing the ceiling, their breathing quiet, their bodies still, while they counted the rhythm of mine.
Every inhale felt louder.
Every turn of the blanket too sharp.
Every part of me suddenly aware that I wasn’t alone.
I kept my back to them.
Face toward the window.
Spine straight, hands tucked beneath my pillow.
Let them listen .
Let them hear how calm I was.
Even if my heart was trying to tear itself free from my ribs.
The second morning, I left before they woke.
Or maybe they were already gone.
I didn’t check.
Didn’t look at their beds.
Didn’t breathe in that silence again.
The Crow dorm wasn’t a place for conversation or comfort.
It wasn’t a place where people lived .
It was a place for containment.
For sleep. For strategy. For vanishing.
The third night, Bastion was standing at the foot of my bed.
Arms crossed, weight on one leg, eyes locked on the blush-pink throw blanket at the end of my mattress like it personally offended him.
“You bring that into this house on purpose?”
His voice was sharp. Controlled.
I replied, “I didn’t realize warmth was a crime.”
He scoffed—just once—and turned away without another word.
Luca came in early the night after that.
Before midnight.
Before silence they like to strangle me with while I sleep.
He paused in the doorway, gaze landing on my dresser.
More specifically, the makeup case resting at the edge—gold-trimmed, monogrammed, exactly lined.
His jaw flexed once.
“That shit smells like chemicals.”
The comment wasn’t for me.
Just like Bastion’s voice, from the corner, wasn’t either.
“Pretty sure her perfume gave me a migraine.”
I didn’t respond .
Just walked past them in my robe, brushed my hair at the mirror, and shut the case with quiet precision.
Not because I didn’t hear them.
But because I did .
And they wanted me to care.
I’d grown up in a house where men wore thousand-dollar suits with blood on their shoes and still knelt to kiss my mother’s hand at dinner.
I’d been raised between war maps and champagne.
My family’s silence could bury people.
This?
This was child’s play.
So far, they hadn’t spent much time here.
They came and went like ghosts—leaving nothing behind but cologne and static.
Which is why the fourth night felt different.
When I opened the door, they were already there.
Not late. Not last. Not slipping in after lights out like they always did.
Early. Present. Waiting.
Bastion stood near the balcony window, phone to his ear, voice low and clipped—like every word was a calculation sharpened in real time.
His hoodie hung off one shoulder.
The black ink of a crow wing tattoo disappeared into the curve of his neck.
His hair was messy, longer than Luca’s, and somehow still looked perfect — like it had been styled.
A silver chain glinted at his collar.
There was a ring on his finger. Simple. Brutal.
Luca was sprawled on the couch.
One leg thrown over the side, a book open on his lap but untouched .
His head tilted back against the cushions. Watching the ceiling like it might fall.
His hair, shorter on the sides — cleaner, sharper.
A chain around his neck. A matching bracelet.
Black ink curled up his throat, disappearing behind his jaw.
His ring tapped lightly against the leather armrest, in rhythm with the thoughts he wasn’t saying.
They didn’t look at me.
Not at first.
But I felt the shift.
The pull .
The air tilted when I stepped inside, like gravity had taken sides.
I didn’t say anything.
Just stood in the doorway, door still open behind me, bag still hanging off my shoulder, pulse skipping because this wasn’t normal .
This wasn’t quiet tension.
This was a change .
They were here.
On purpose.
Together.
I hadn’t figured out if that meant I was being studied.
Or surrounded
And for the first time since moving into the Crow dorm…
I didn’t know which would be worse.