Chapter 16
ROWAN
His kisses melt my brain. They strip away every bit of resolve I still have left not to fall for him. His mouth on mine. His tongue brushing past mine. His leg wedged between my thighs, teasing my erection—
It's too much.
Somehow, he's crawled his way inside my head with his dates and promises and his hands around my throat as he chokes, chokes, the breath out of me.
I'm a slave for your attention.
"Fuck off," I mutter into the darkness as I turn onto my other side.
But I can't sleep. I can't focus on anything except the ache in my cock and the fact that Damaris still hasn't come home.
What if something happened to him? What if Lucan isn't who he thinks he is and Damaris is in trouble and all I did was lie here with a hard-on thinking about a mafia prince toying with me?
I jerk upright and grab my multi-slate.
Hey, when are you back?
Do I need to send the guards?
I delete the ridiculous smiley before I can send it, then keep my eyes fixed on the reading status. He reads the messages right away, like he always does, but no reply comes.
That's new.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and reach for the closest piece of clothing I can find. The shirt I wore tonight, which still has Ciaran's scent somehow clinging to it.
My cock throbs.
Damn it.
Next time you ache like this, little mouse, you come ask for it properly.
I snort quietly as I shove my arms through the sleeves. That's not happening.
But he did promise me he would fuck me, didn't he?
I've never been fucked. Never fucked someone, either.
It sounds…terrifying. Like the kind of thing that surely would go wrong if I had to do it.
My hands would tremble too much, or my cock wouldn't harden enough, or my heart would beat out of my chest.
Always that damn heart.
Reaching for the door, I jump when my multi-slate dings.
Are you home safe? I'm leaving the bar soon
Relief washes through me. He's all right. He always is. I should head back to bed and sleep. Tomorrow's a big night with the Legacy Gala and all that.
But I don't dare get back under the sheets, afraid of my own thoughts. Always afraid of my own thoughts.
Sometimes it feels like my whole life has been built from wrong turns and bad timing.
Not even burning the music erased the certainty that something had followed me here. Lately, I started noticing patterns where I used to dismiss things as coincidence.
Caervast was supposed to make me feel safe. Instead, every strange encounter, every impossible appearance, seems to reinforce the same unsettling truth: whatever was watching me back home didn't stay there.
The Black Chapel. The party from my first week at Caervast. The same names appearing whenever I search afterward—old families, private donor circles, academy patrons whose influence seems to reach into everything on Sero if you dig deep enough.
And now Halvern wants me performing at another one tomorrow night, another polished gathering filled with the exact same kind of people.
My stomach twists as I cross the hall.
Because the more research I've done on Sero, the harder it becomes to ignore the possibility that Sola didn't simply pass through these places by accident.
The photo from the Black Chapel keeps circling back in my head, the glimpse of her pendant beneath those gold lights, and every new connection I uncover only makes the question worse.
What the hell does that say about Ciaran Virel constantly pulling me closer to him?
And…here we go again.
Annoyed with myself, I head out of our dorm and into the sleeping halls of Caervast, where the vaulted stone ceilings and narrow stained-glass windows turn the passage into something ancient and watchful at night.
The practice room is dark except for the low amber wall lamps burning along the stone arches, their light catching against the black lacquered body of the Noctis waiting in the center of the floor like it already knew I was coming.
After everything I've been thinking about, my body is already wound too tight.
My vision fractures at the edges, my heartbeat stuttering hard enough to make my chest tighten, that old instinctive feeling creeping up my spine again like it did when I was young, when every shadow outside our apartment felt like something waiting for me.
But the moment I see the Noctis, something inside me loosens.
The polished frame presses against my chest, solid and familiar and real beneath my hands, and for the first time tonight, my thoughts stop clawing at each other long enough for me to breathe properly.
I draw the bow slowly across the strings, the first note unfolding low and deep through the empty room until the sound climbs the vaulted ceiling and comes back changed, softer now, almost human in the way it lingers around me.
This is the only place where my mind ever truly goes quiet. And like always, my hands find the same opening sequence first.
The notes rise familiar beneath my hands, the same melody I always come back to.
I draw the bow slower across the final held note and let the sound stretch through the practice room until the resonance shivers softly against the stone walls and settles deep in my chest like something alive trying to answer back.
I close my eyes as the last note lingers through the dark and think of Sola. Of her hands adjusting mine over a battered cello when we were younger, of the way she used to laugh whenever I got frustrated and tried to rush through the difficult parts instead of listening properly.
The grief hits. Not just because she's gone, but because I still don't understand any of it.
I still remember standing beside her at the market all those years ago, the strange merchant woman pressing the music into my hands while the horns began to blare.
And I remember Sola afterward, making me promise to keep it safe, like she understood something about that day I still don't.
Could she really be on Sero? Does she know I'm here? And if she does, why hasn't she come for me?
I play. I play badly, distracted too often by thoughts that have nothing to do with the music, but by the time the final note fades into the stone walls around me, the pressure in my chest has loosened enough for me to breathe again.
Better. Enough to sleep, at least.
I set the Noctis carefully back into its stand, straighten the sheets beside it, and adjust the bench back into place, leaving the practice room exactly the way Professor Halvern expects to find it in the morning. Then I switch off the lamp and head back toward the dormitories.
The thought lingers under my skin afterward, because Halvern notices everything inside these rooms, from shifted benches to wrong notes hanging too long in the air. Sometimes it feels less like he's teaching the Noctis and more like he's guarding something hidden inside it.
I'm halfway down one of the long stone corridors when I hear footsteps behind me, soft enough to almost disappear beneath the echo of my own but steady enough to make my heartbeat lurch painfully against my ribs.
I glance back, already expecting the corridor to be empty.
It usually is. But I stopped trusting usually a long time ago.
Back home, the hallway stayed empty right up until the night it didn't, and I never saw the difference coming.
That's what fear does to you once it's been right before.
It turns every empty hallway into something threatening, every shadow into a warning.
But the feeling doesn't leave.
Someone is still there behind me. Far enough away not to be obvious. Close enough that my body already knows before my mind does, dragging me back to that night in the library when I could have sworn somebody was watching me between the shelves.
Am I losing my mind? Or is someone actually following me?
I walk faster.
The footsteps behind me speed up too.
"It's nothing," I whisper under my breath, trying to steady my breathing as I push farther down the passageway, my heartbeat already climbing too high, too fast. "It's nothing. You're fine."
But my body doesn't believe me.
My pulse spikes beneath the medical band wrapped around my wrist as panic crawls high into my throat, sharp enough now that I can hear my own breathing echoing off the stone walls around me.
I fumble for my multi-slate as I walk and open Damaris's messages again. I almost call him before stopping myself at the last second and typing instead.
Are you back yet?
The message sends, but when I check again a few seconds later, there's still no reply.
Of course not.
But I can't think clearly anymore, not with the footsteps still echoing somewhere behind me.
I walk faster. Then faster again.
This is ridiculous. I'm panicking over nothing. I'm tired and overwhelmed and letting my imagination get away from me after weeks of stress and too little sleep and Ciaran getting inside my head.
But before I can even finish the thought, my thumb is already pressing his contact.
The call barely rings once before he picks up.
"Oh?" His voice is rough with amusement. "You finally ready to ask properly, little mouse?"
"Ciaran."
He must hear the panic in my voice, because his tone sharpens. "What is it?"
"Someone's following me," I whisper. "I think I'm near the library, but I'm not sure."
"Someone's doing what?"
"I think someone's following me."
"Where the fuck are you? Who is it?"
"I don't know."
Muffled voices erupt through the speaker. A chair scrapes back. Someone swears.
"Move," Ciaran barks at somebody. "Get Rafe. Now."
More movement. Footsteps. A door slams.
Then he's back.
"Rowan." His voice is lower now, controlled, and somehow that scares me more. "Talk to me, baby. What do you see?"
The band around my wrist flashes brighter amber as I swallow hard and start moving again, taking the stairs two at a time before shoving through the first access door I find at the top.