CHAPTER ONE
Anya Petrova stepped off the black car like someone who’d practiced vanishing her whole life. She was no longer Anya, heir to the Petrova throne, constantly chased by her grandfather’s enemies and always hiding. She was just Anna Peters, a normal scholarship student with a normal family.
The driver didn’t open the door for her. That was the rule: no special treatment. No one could know who she really was, which family she came from. She had to learn to survive without her family name. As she turned to say goodbye to life as she has known it for seventeen years the driver, paid handsomely to look the other way, peeled off without so much as a rearview glance. A reminder that today, she wasn’t that girl. Today, she was Anna Peters, a scholarship student, proud owner of exactly one suitcase and a future built from “hard work” and “merit.”
The campus loomed ahead like it had swallowed the sky, Veridian Crest Academy, a place so wealthy the grass looked moisturized. Manicured lawns gleamed like emerald silk, and the buildings stood as monuments to old money and older legacies. Students drifted in constellations of effortless wealth, their laughter the chime of inherited privilege.
Students drifted in clusters. Every single one of them looked like they were born in a house with a chandelier. Gold trimmed blazers. Shiny shoes. Names she recognized from newspapers. Legacies. Old money. New money. Dynasties trying to look casual on a Tuesday.
Anya moved among them like a carefully drawn shadow, her thrifted backpack a shield, her lowered gaze a weapon. She adjusted her thrifted backpack and kept walking, head down. Quiet confidence. Not too confident. Enough to avoid pity, not enough to look suspicious.
Her heartbeat thumped calmly, almost bored. The calmness unnerved her sometimes, she’d learned early that fear was useless unless it kept you alive. And right now, staying alive meant becoming invisible.
She crossed the courtyard just as a voice sliced through the air.
“You’re in my light.”
She looked up. Liam Thorne stood there like the sun personally offended him. Tall, annoyingly handsome, blazer thrown over one shoulder like he had his own personal wind machine. A group of students hovered behind him, waiting for whatever cutting remark he’d say next.
Anya blinked. “I didn’t realize the sun was taking attendance.”
A few students snickered. Liam’s jaw twitched, just a flicker. He wasn’t used to being talked back to. Especially not by a girl in a faded hoodie.
“First years stick to the courtyard,” he said, folding his arms. “This wing is for upper levels and… ”
She walked past him. Just straight up walked away.
Liam stood there, eyebrows raised, watching her retreat like she’d violated natural law. The entourage behind him murmured with interest. He hated that. Liam didn’t like being interesting for the wrong reasons.
Anya didn’t look back but she could definitely feel HIS eyes on her as she walked away.
Inside the dorm lobby, the air smelled of cedar and expensive secrets. She handed her documents to the receptionist, who barely glanced at her.
“Scholarship wing, room 27B,” the woman droned. “Elevator’s to your right. Don’t scratch the wood panels, they’re imported. You definitely cannot afford them”
Anya forced a smile. Stay small. Stay harmless. Stay unimportant. She had to constantly remind herself. Except she wasn’t small, harmless, or unimportant. Beneath the persona, she was a girl trained like a pawn and expected to someday become a queen people feared. Her grandfather had made sure of that.
As she reached her room, she found the door already open. Inside was a boy unpacking a stack of neatly labeled notebooks. He looked up, startled, glasses slightly crooked. “Oh! Hi. You must be Anna?” His voice was warm, the kind that didn’t bite. Or judge. Or assume he owned the hallway.
“Yeah, uh, Anna,” she said. “You’re…?”
“Noah. Noah Chen.” He straightened, wiping his hands on his jeans. “I’m your roommate. Well, suite mate. We share the kitchen but not the room. Don’t worry, I’m quiet.” He smiled the way people do when they want to make others comfortable, not when they want something.
Anya felt something she didn’t feel often, her shoulders loosened. She set her suitcase down. “Nice to meet you.”
Noah beamed. “If you need help finding your classes, I can show you around. The campus map is a nightmare, like someone designed it after losing a bet.”
She laughed, softly, but real. “I’d appreciate that.”
While Noah talked about clubs and cafeteria hacks, Anya let herself breathe. Just for a moment. Just long enough to pretend she was a normal girl living a normal life.
But as her phone buzzed she remembered normal never lasted.
A message from a number that didn’t exist.
Prove your worth.
Prove your adaptability.
By the next break, bring me a suitable partner.
Or come home and fulfill your legacy. G.P.
Her grandfather’s signature: cold, cryptic, and threaded with threat. Anya locked her jaw. Freedom was slipping through her fingers before she even finished unpacking.
Noah noticed the change in her face. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, Just… first day nerves.” she said quickly, looking outside the window.
Veridian Crest glittered like a castle made of knives, and Anya knew, knew deep in her bones, that this place wasn’t going to let her stay invisible. Not for long. Especially because standing in the courtyard below, watching her window with a furrowed brow, was Liam. He looked as if she were a glitch in his perfect system, an equation he needed to solve.
As if she’d unsettled him, and he needed to identify the glitch in his perfect system.
He didn’t know it yet, but that girl he’d brushed past, the one he’d dismissed as unimportant, was about to become his biggest problem.
And his biggest distraction.
And eventually, the only person who could destroy everything he thought he stood for.
