Chapter twelve
Jessica
The healer clears me the next morning with a warning to take it easy, and I walk back into academy life with a spectacular headache and the distinct sense that being knocked unconscious on day one was not the strong first impression I was going for.
"On the bright side," Sophia says at lunch, patting my hand with deep sympathy, "everyone definitely knows your name now."
"They knew it at breakfast yesterday," Renzo points out. "She'd already peaked. This was just an encore."
I put my head down on the table, gently, because sudden movements still hurt. "I've been here forty-eight hours and I've done a scandalous thing and gotten a concussion. At this rate I'll be expelled by Friday and legendary by Saturday."
"You say that like it's bad," Renzo says. "I would kill for a reputation."
The staring hasn't stopped. If anything it's worse — every table I pass goes a little quieter, and I've given up pretending I don't notice.
There's something else, too, that I can't quite name: I've felt off since I woke up.
Restless in my own skin, a low unsettled hum I keep blaming on the concussion, a faint ache under my breastbone like I've forgotten something important and can't think what.
The healer said I'd feel strange for a few days. I guess she was right.
"Hey," I say, when the ache nudges at me again and reminds me. "Does anyone actually know how I got to the medical center? I don't remember any of it. One second there's a fist, then nothing, then a very concerned woman shining a light in my eye."
There's a small silence. Torres, across the table, gets very interested in his food.
"Torres."
He sighs. "Somebody carried you."
"I gathered that, unless I levitated. Who?"
He hesitates — actually hesitates, which Torres never does — and then he says, carefully, "Prince Luke."
I blink. "...Oh."
Prince. There's that word again.
One of the three from breakfast, then.
I know Ander, but the other two are still just Green Eyes and the enormous one. Apparently one of them took a look at my unconscious body and decided, Yep, I'll carry her.
Something about knowing it was one of those three makes the odd ache under my ribs give a little pull.
Which is strange enough that I ignore it entirely.
"Well," I say. "I should probably thank him."
Torres nearly chokes on his drink.
I forget about it, mostly, until dinner, when I spot them.
The three princes are at a table near the center of the hall, and even in a room this big they're impossible to miss, because there's a large bubble of space around them.
They're surrounded — plenty of students at nearby tables, plenty of eyes — but nobody's at their table.
Nobody approaches. Nobody leans in to say hi.
There's an invisible perimeter, three feet of empty deference in every direction, and people orbit it without ever crossing it.
I watch for a second, chewing. They must be wildly popular. That's the only thing that makes sense — the kind of popular where everyone wants to be near you and nobody's brave enough to actually do it. I remember that dynamic from high school, vaguely, from the outside of it.
I study the three of them. Ander I know. The other two are still just the huge one and the green-eyed one.
One of them is Luke. Who apparently carried my unconscious ass across the academy.
I owe him a thank-you, and there's only one way to find out which one he is.
I pick up my tray.
"...Where are you going?" Sophia asks, with the wariness of a woman who has learned to fear my sense of what's reasonable.
"To say thank you," I say, matter-of-fact. "One of them carried me. That's a whole thing. I'm not going to just sit here and not acknowledge it."
The entire table goes silent.
Renzo opens his mouth — "Jess, I don't think—"
"Jessica," Torres says.
But I'm already up, already moving, tray in hand, because it's a two-minute errand and everyone's being so weird about it.
The closer I get, the quieter the room gets.
I feel it happening behind me and around me, conversations trailing off table by table, that ripple I've come to recognize as Jessica is about to do something. I keep walking. It's just a thank-you. I don't understand why a thank-you requires a hush.
The green-eyed one sees me coming. I watch his eyes catch on me across the hall, and then he stands.
Just stands. Out of his chair, unfolding to his full height, and there's a flicker of surprise on his own face like he didn't decide to do it. Around him, his two friends go still. The whole table of hangers-on stares.
I stop a polite distance away and smile, because smiling is free.
"Hi," I say.
Up close, the green-eyed one is — okay, they weren't exaggerating, any of them, my own eyeballs at breakfast included.
Rich dark hair, green eyes that are actually paying attention, the kind of face that makes you lose your thread.
That odd ache under my ribs eases the second I'm near him, goes warm and quiet, and it's so unexpected and so nice that I nearly forget why I came over.
Almost.
"Which one of you is Luke?"
Green Eyes blinks. "I am."
"Perfect. Torres told me you carried me to the medical center." I smile at him. "So, thank you. Genuinely. That was really kind, and I appreciate it. I know I wasn't exactly a convenient armful."
"It wasn't a problem," he says.
"Well. I appreciate it anyway." I give him a nod, mission accomplished, and start to turn back toward my table, because that's the whole errand, that's the entire thing I came to do.
"Wait."
I turn back. He looks faintly startled to have said it.
"Yeah?"
For a second he doesn't seem to have a plan for what comes after wait, which I find oddly endearing in someone who otherwise looks like he plans everything. Then he recovers, smooth again. "We haven't actually met. Properly." He extends a hand. "Lucian Draeven. My friends call me Luke."
"Jessica." I shake it.
And it's — normal. It's a perfectly normal handshake, warm and firm, except the moment our hands connect that warm-quiet feeling floods all the way up my arm, steadying, right, and I have to consciously let go a beat later than I mean to.
The whole dining hall seems to inhale. I have no idea why shaking a hand is apparently front-page news, but I've stopped expecting these people to make sense.
Luke gestures to the enormous one beside him — the biggest person I've ever stood next to, black hair, pale eyes like a frozen lake, an expression I couldn't read with a decoder ring. "This is Prince Evren Soren."
"Nice to meet you." I offer my hand automatically, because that's what you do.
Soren looks at my hand.
For a second — I swear — it looks like he's going to take it. His own hand almost lifts. Then he clasps both hands behind his back instead, and inclines his head a precise inch.
"A pleasure," he says.
"...Okay," I say, slowly lowering my abandoned hand. Formal, then. Some people are formal. I decide not to take it personally; not everyone's a hand-shaker, and the man looks like he was raised by a mountain.
Then there's Ander.
I look at him.
He looks at me.
Well. This should be fun.
I offer my hand anyway, because I'm nothing if not consistent. "Hi again."
Ander doesn't take it. He doesn't even look at it. His eyes stay on my face, cool and flat and deeply unimpressed, and he lets my hand hang there in the air between us.
"Are we finished?" he says.
I blink. "...I was just saying thank you. To Luke."
"You've done that." His voice is perfectly calm, perfectly even, which somehow makes it worse. "Now return to your table."
The hall goes so quiet I can hear the candles.
I shrug, and lower my hand, and let it go, because I genuinely have better things to do than fight with someone determined to be unpleasant.
"Okay," I say.
I turn back to Luke. "Thanks again. Really." Then to Soren, because he at least tried, I give a small genuine smile. "And it was nice meeting you. Both of you." I look pointedly at two of the princes. "Two out of three isn't bad."
And I pick up my tray and walk back to my table.
I make it maybe three steps before someone deliberately steps into my path.
I stop so abruptly my tray nearly sloshes.
The girl blocking me is gorgeous. Blonde hair twisted into a flawless knot. Immaculate uniform. Not a wrinkle anywhere. She stands with the kind of perfect posture that says she was probably born standing at attention.
She gives me a slow once-over.
Not the curious kind.
The you tracked mud onto my white carpet kind.
"Who do you think you are?"
I blink.
"...Jessica?"
A couple nearby students snort before immediately pretending they didn't.
She doesn't even crack a smile.
"You don't deserve to speak to them."
I frown.
"I was just thanking—"
"I know exactly what you were doing."
She takes one deliberate step closer.
"You don't deserve to look at them."
The hallway around us has gone eerily quiet.
I glance around.
Seriously?
People have stopped walking.
"Next time," she says quietly, "keep your eyes down."
She leans in just enough that only I—and probably everyone shamelessly eavesdropping within ten feet—can hear the rest.
"Keep your mouth shut."
"And go sit with your little scholarship friends where you belong."
I just stare at her for a second.
"...Wow."
One perfectly sculpted eyebrow lifts.
"Excuse me?"
"That was incredibly rude."
She looks genuinely confused that I'd point it out. I shift my tray to my other hand.
"You know, where I come from, saying thank you is considered good manners."
I give her my brightest smile.
"You should try it sometime."
Then I step around her and continue toward my table. Behind me, I don't hear a single conversation start back up.