Chapter 1 #3
Her mouth closes. I hate how much it hurts her. I hate it more that I can't bear comfort right now. Comfort makes me soft, and if I am soft in this hall, everyone will see how easily I bruise.
So I step back. "I'm going to sit with Seren."
My mother nods once. "Opening address after breakfast."
"I know." I answer.
"And Valentina?" I pause. Her voice lowers. "Whatever happens this term, remember who you are."
Something about the words settles strangely beneath my skin, like a warning I don't understand.
Before I can ask what she means, a ripple moves through the dining hall.
Students turn toward the doors. Aether flames above their tables darken, red bleeding into black at the edges.
The air changes. It becomes heavier. Warmer. Charged.
Seren appears at my side again, suddenly very still. "Oh," she whispers. "Fantastic. The nightmare has arrived."
I follow her gaze and I see him.
Valerius Draven enters the dining hall like he owns every shadow in it.
He is tall enough that the doorway frames him for one suspended second, broad-shouldered beneath a black academy cloak lined in deep red.
Aether colors but not the bright crimson most Aether students wear.
His lining is darker. Almost like wine colored.
Actually it looks like the color of blood.
His olive skin catches the chandelier light.
Short black hair falls in loose waves over his forehead, careless in a way that somehow looks deliberate.
His jaw is sharp, his mouth unsmiling, his presence so strong that conversations die as he passes but it's his eyes that make my breath catch.
Hazel. Not soft. Not warm. Sharp as broken glass catching fire.
He doesn't look around to see who watches him.
He already knows everyone does. Two boys walk behind him, both powerful, both silent.
I recognize one as Eli, a Tempest heir with lightning marks tattooed faintly along his fingers.
The other is a Veil student named Luc, whose family is rumored to preserve bones beneath their estate walls but neither of them matters when Valerius Draven is in the room.
No one matters when Valerius Draven is in the room.
He is final-year royalty. Draven bloodline.
Shadowflame heir. The strongest student Arcana Academy has seen in decades, according to every professor too afraid to sound impressed.
I've never spoken to him. He exists in another world entirely.
One made of power, fear, reputation, and violence disguised as control.
My world is smaller. Quieter. Powerless.
Mostly made of avoiding eyes like his. As if summoned by that thought, his gaze cuts across the hall and lands on me. Everything inside me goes still.
It is not a glance. A glance is careless. Quick. Human. This is assessment.
His hazel eyes move over me the same way my father's did, but somehow worse. My father searches for proof that I am not his. Valerius looks as if he has already found proof of every weakness I own and is bored by the discovery.
His gaze drops to my cloak to the blank black lining. Then returns to my face. No expression. No sneer. Somehow, that's crueler. Then, slowly, one corner of his mouth lifts. Not a smile. A verdict.
My spine stiffens. Seren mutters something under her breath that sounds very much like, "Arrogant shadow prince."
Valerius looks away as if I have ceased to exist.
The air leaves my lungs all at once. I hate him.
I hate him for that look. For not needing to speak to make me feel small.
For standing there with all that power wrapped around him like a birthright, judging me from the safety of being everything this academy worships.
I hate that my hands are shaking. I hide them in the folds of my cloak.
"Don't let him get to you," Seren says quietly.
"He didn't." I lie.
Seren gives me a look.
I turn toward our table, but something strange brushes beneath my skin. A warmth. So faint I almost miss it. It flickers low in my chest, there and gone before I can breathe around it. I stop walking.
For a second, the floating flames above the Aether table bend. Not toward Valerius. Toward me. My pulse jumps. Then the flames straighten. The warmth vanishes. Everything returns to normal.
Students talk. Chairs scrape. Plates fill themselves with breakfast. Magic hums through walls that do not know my name.
I stand frozen in the middle of the dining hall, one hand pressed to my chest.
Seren turns back. "Val?"
I blink.
"What is it?"
I look toward the Aether table. Valerius Draven sits at the center, already surrounded by power and silence. He doesn't look at me again. Why would he? I am nothing to him. I am nothing to this academy except a rumor in a black cloak.
I force my hand down. "Nothing."
The word tastes familiar.
I sit beside Seren beneath a green flame that is not mine, in a hall full of magic I can't touch, and tell myself the same lie I tell every morning.
I am used to this. I am used to being powerless.
I am used to being watched. I am used to wanting something that will never wake inside me but across the dining hall, the Aether flames flicker black at the edges and for reasons I do not understand, something beneath my skin answers.
Only once.
Like a spark too small for anyone else to see. Like a secret trying to breathe.