3. Hale
Hale
The new one smells wrong, and I can’t leave it alone.
It’s been hours since she clashed with Tobin on the stairs, but the scent of her still sits at the back of my throat.
I’ve tried telling my dick it’s nothing, but hellhounds catch a thousand scents a day, blood, fear, whatever the kitchens are serving up to ravenous students.
We let almost all of it go. You have to.
Hold onto everything you catch in a place like SilverGate, and you’d lose your fucking mind before lunch.
I’m not letting this one go. That’s what’s bothering me.
“You’re doing it again,” Tobin says, without looking up from his book.
Our table is in the corner of the dining hall, the one nobody else uses because the last student who tried it left on a stretcher, and the rest took the lesson to heart.
Tobin has three texts open and is reading all of them at once, because showing off is the only vice he’ll admit to.
Leith sits across from me, not eating, turning a coin over his knuckles and watching the room with those flat blue eyes that send first-years looking for somewhere else to be.
“Doing what?” I ask.
“Sniffing the air like a hound at a locked door.” He turns a page. “It’s undignified. The creatures are starting to think you’ve buried something.”
“They should mind their own business.”
“Creatures at SilverGate have never once done that, and you know it.” He finally looks up, and there’s a glint in his eye. “The low-level witch is bothering you.”
I don’t answer straight away, because the honest answer is that I don’t have one. And I don’t like not having one.
The thing about my nose is it doesn’t deal in maybes.
A scent tells me what something is, clean and certain, the second I catch it.
Predator or prey, sick or whole, lying or telling the truth, I get it off the skin before the mouth opens.
It’s never wrong. It has never once, in my whole life, given me a lie.
She’s a lie.
Witch. Low, weak, the kind that washes out quickly. That’s what the surface says, and it’s loud about it. But under it, way under, there’s something else. I don’t know what, and it’s like an itch I can’t scratch.
“She’s not bothering me,” I say.
“Mm.” Leith speaks for the first time, and the coin goes still on his knuckles. He doesn’t look at me. He’s looking across the hall at the doors. “She doesn’t feel like nothing.”
“You haven’t even met her.”
“I don’t need to meet a thing to feel the stench of death around her.”
That grabs my attention. “Stench of death? That’s not what I’m getting.”
His gaze meets mine as Tobin leans in closer.
“She’s a mouthy little bitch,” Tobin states. “She needs a lesson in manners.”
“Shut up,” I growl, not taking my eyes off Leith. “What do you mean death?”
He shrugs. “It’s marred. Wrong.”
“Wrong,” I say with a nod. “She is very wrong.”
“But so right if that mouth was wrapped around my cock,” Tobin adds.
“Gods,” I say, rolling my eyes. “You’re sounding obsessed.”
Tobin shuts his book with a snap and sits back. “I’m not the one who’s been tracking her through three floors of stone and a fucking rainstorm.”
“I have not been tracking anyone.”
Leith’s mouth curves, cold and brief. “You’ve checked the door twice.”
“So wrong.”
“Try not to embarrass yourself when she gets here,” Tobin says with that smirk I want to punch off his face.
I plant both hands on the table and look between them. “You’re both talking a lot of shit for two arseholes who haven’t done anything useful with what they noticed.”
Tobin lifts one shoulder. “I asked Ryla.”
That pulls me up short. “And?”
“She appeared in the courtyard. She didn’t know how, Blackridge didn’t say. No file. No family crest. No sponsor. Blackridge marked her as an anomaly and placed her in Upper anyway.” His silver eyes sharpen. “He doesn’t do that without reason.”
Leith flicks the coin again. “He also put her on our floor.”
A low, pleased violence stirs under my skin at that.
“Third door on the left,” Leith adds with a slow smile.
“Are you suggesting something?” I ask. My chair is already scraping back, ready to move.
“Of course not. It’s late,” Leith says. “She won’t show her face now until classes tomorrow. And last time I looked, breaking into a student’s room was cause for Blackridge to get testy.”
“Blackridge can get fucked,” I say.
Tobin gives me a long look. “That attitude is why he enjoys punishing you.”
“That attitude is why I’m still interesting.”
Leith catches the coin and closes his fist around it. “Sit down, Hale. She isn’t coming to dinner, and she isn’t leaving her room. And you aren’t going to her to sniff out whatever has got your nose in a tizz.”
“Says who?”
“Me.” He gives me a look that makes me think twice for a second. Then I decide I don’t give a shit.
“Fine,” I say, standing up. “Consider me spanked into behaving. For now.”
Without a look back, I head towards the stairs and take them quickly. Bursting out into the perpetual darkness of this realm, night or day, it barely changes. I cross the courtyard and look up at the second floor of the Upperclassman tower. Our floor.
My mouth turns up as I push through the door and find a staircase that has decided to go up.
It takes me three tries, and that is a good result.
“Fuckers,” I mutter as I finally reach the second floor.
The air goes colder at my insult, but I ignore it and stride down the hallway to the room, third on the left.
I pause outside it and inhale deeply, pressing my hand to the wood.
It hums under my hand.
Not warded to keep people out. Just old. Watchful.
I should leave.
I don’t.
Instead, I rap lightly twice and wait.
Then the lock clicks.
The door opens a crack, and one blue eye appears in the gap, furious and half asleep. “What?” she snaps.
Every clever thing I might’ve said leaves me.
Her hair is a mess around her face. She looks wrecked, pissed off, and even through the slit of the door, I can feel that wrongness pulsing off her hard enough to set my teeth on edge.
I take my time looking at her, getting my fucking wits back in line. “You answer your door dressed like that for everyone, or am I special?”
Her stare turns vicious as she looks down at herself, draped in a black sheet. “You’ve got three seconds to explain why you’re on my threshold before I remove your teeth.”
I grin. “That’s cute.”
“It won’t be when you’re bleeding, and I’ve got a brand new necklace.”
The room behind her is dark except for the fire.
“Ouch.”
“Unless you’ve come to tell me this place is on fire and I’m free to leave, you can fuck off.”
The door starts to shut.
I get my hand to it before it closes, not forcing my way in, just holding it where it is. “That’s not very friendly, sweetheart.”
“Call me that again and lose your tongue.”
That gets a laugh out of me. “Better. I was worried Tobin had exaggerated about you.”
“Tobin? Let me guess, the dick from the stairs?”
“The one and only. You gave it a good shot, admittedly. Unfortunately, you are way out of your depth here… sweetheart.”
She hisses, and her fingers hook into claws. She is attempting to rip my tongue out with sheer force of will by the looks of it, but sadly for her, nothing happens.
I chuckle. “Low-level witch with absolutely nothing to back up the badass words. What the fuck are you doing here?” I lean casually against the door frame, my eyes never leaving her furious and frustrated ones.
They’re violet-blue. The colour of the bluebells that grow under the trees on the north side of the academy grounds.
“If only I knew,” she says. Her tone is bitter, and it piques my interest more than her scent.
Which, now that I’m closer to her, is driving me wild.
It’s feral but pretty, difficult to describe, and it pisses me off that I can’t pin it down.
I study her face for any sign she’s lying, but all I get is temper and exhaustion and that strange pull under my skin that keeps telling me to get closer.
“You don’t know how you got here?” I ask.
“No.” Her grip tightens on the edge of the door. “I don’t know what this place is, why everyone in it is insufferable, or why you’re still standing here.”
A laugh nearly gets out of me. “Are you always this pleasant?”
“I can be worse.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Her eyes narrow. “Was that flirting?”
“Maybe.”
“With that line?”
“It got you talking.”
“It got you tolerated for another ten seconds.”
I glance past her into the room. Firelight, dark bed, books she hasn’t touched properly, her dress abandoned on the floor. “You planning to start tomorrow by pissing off every lecturer in the building, or are you spacing it out over the week?”
“I hadn’t realised I needed a plan. I usually do it naturally.”
That one lands right in my gut. Fuck.
I push the door a fraction wider when she tries to close it again. “You’ve been placed as an anomaly, which isn’t unusual in this place, but rarely do they make it into the students’ tower on their first night.”
“Not my problem.” She tries to shove the door again. “Conversation over.”
I let some of my strength settle into my arm. Not enough to scare her. Enough to make the point. “You want to know where you are, I can tell you.”
She goes still for half a beat. “I want to know how to leave.”
“That’s a bit ambitious for your first night.”
“Is it?” Her voice drops, quiet and sharp. “Because if this is a prison, I’ve broken better.”
The truth of that is interesting.
I lower my head a little and breathe her in again. It’s stronger here, trapped in the heat of her room. Old. Violent. Buried under weak witchcraft that doesn’t belong wrapped around whatever the fuck she really is.
Her eye flicks to my nose, then back to my face. “Are you sniffing me?”
I grin. “You noticed.”
“You are deranged.”
“I’m a hellhound. Get used to it.”
Her gaze drops over me, taking in all six feet two of me. “That was meant to explain the behaviour?”
“It was meant to be generous.”
She stares at me for another second, then opens the door another inch. Not inviting. Assessing. “A hellhound.”
“Mm.”
“That sounds made up.”
“It’s not.” I tilt my head. “You really have no idea, do you?”
She purses her pretty red lips. “I’m not from around here.”
“Clearly. So where did you come from?”
She smiles, slowly. Seductively. It stiffens my dick to the point where if I stand here much longer, I’m going to have to do something about it. “None of your fucking business. Do you know how to break out of here, or not?”
“You haven’t even asked my name yet, and you expect a prison break plan? Rude.”
“Fine,” she sighs like she is suffering my presence, which would normally fuck me off.
With her, it just makes me want her more.
Fragile, delicate, feisty with nothing to back it up.
She is trouble in a tight, blonde little package, and every possessive instinct I have has slammed into place. “What’s your name?”
“Hale, and you are?”
“Asha,” she grits out like she can’t stand it. “So, Hale, how do I break out of here?”
“You can’t,” I state with a smirk. “There are wards all around, and if you manage to break those, which rumour has it, you can’t, then secondary wards lock into place, and you will find yourself in Blackridge’s office trying to explain to the keeper of the wards, why you insulted him by trying to undo his handiwork. ”
“That’s it? That’s your entire explanation? Have you even tried?”
That catches me off guard, and it amuses me more than annoys me. “What? Try to break out? No. Why would I do that? I want to be here.”
Her face turns into an expression of sheer disgust. It breaks a laugh out of me, which seems to disgust her even more.
“You want to be here? Are you fucking insane?” Understanding passes over her features.
“Oh, I get it. This place is an insane asylum, and you like it here with all your insane friends.”
“You have some big opinions. They’re wrong, but big. This is an academy for the magically elite. Also anomalies. Blackridge likes to collect things.”
She swallows visibly, and for the first time, I see past the attitude. “Collect?” she croaks before she clears her throat and the attitude comes back. “I’m not a trinket.”
“Not sure what you are.”
“Yeah, well, you will never know. Conversation over.” She shoves the door with all her strength, but she can’t budge me.
I look down at her hand on the door, then back at her face. “You know, for someone with fuck all magic, you’ve got a lot of faith in your upper body.”
“Move.”
“Ask nicely.”
Her eyes go flat with murder. “I’m going to enjoy watching someone skin you.”
I bark out a laugh. “That’s a very specific fantasy for a first conversation.”
“It’s not a fantasy. It’s a promise.”
The beast under my skin likes the fight and likes a female who doesn’t drop her eyes and start shaking just because I’m bigger. I shove it down and ease my hand off the door.
The wood swings hard, and the door slams in my face.
“You’re an idiot,” Leith’s voice drifts down the hallway.
I turn to see him leaning against his bedroom door, two down from Asha’s. “An idiot who just got one foot in the door.”
“Hardly. She slammed it in your face.”
“Metaphorically, you cunt.”
He smiles at the insult. “She is interesting. Not many students want to break out. We have more trying to break in. Death,” he adds.
“Looked alive to me.”
“Hm,” he murmurs and pushes open his bedroom door. He enters, and it closes a second later.
I go to my room, across the hall from Leith and slip inside, more intrigued than I have a right to be.