Prologue
Lust & Temperance
Four weeks ago. Before the whispering started. When the smoke still lingered, and nothing had dared to burn yet.
Aurelian Academy smelled like smoke and flowers when I arrived. Not fresh flowers, just decaying ones. Wilted petals crushed beneath expensive leather boots. A mingling of rose and rot. There was something… old about the place. Timeless. Too still, like it had never been touched by modern life. The others wore that stillness like a badge. I wore mine like a chain.
My mother cried when I left. Not because I’d won the scholarship, but because she was convinced Aurelian would change me. “Don’t forget who you are,” she’d whispered, fingers trembling against my sleeve. “They’ll try to carve you into something else. Don’t let them.”
She was wrong, of course. They didn’t need to carve me. I was already cracked.
The gates opened without a sound. No creak, no groan, just an elegant parting of iron and shadow. They rose above me like the ribs of some ancient god, curled with symbols I couldn’t read, but felt all the same. A warning, maybe. Or a welcome.
Stone pathways cut through the grounds in clean lines, bordered by gardens that looked like they were mourning something. Statues watched from behind ivy-draped pillars, eyes hollow, mouths silent. This place wasn’t built to inspire. It was built to observe. And to remember.
My shoes clicked against the stone like a trespass. Heads turned. Some lingered. Most didn’t. They didn’t need to look long to know what I was. My uniform was regulation. Pressed, perfect, and bland. But it clung differently to someone like me. My hair wasn’t blown out smooth, my nails weren’t glossed in nude pinks or soft beiges. I didn’t wear the bloodline. I wore the hunger.
A girl in pearl earrings tilted her head when I passed. A boy in a velvet coat sneered. They didn’t speak, but I heard them anyway. Heard it in the way their bodies turned, half-curious, half-repulsed.
Scholarship.
They wore that word like a slur. I kept walking. Past the fountain, past the cloisters. Past the trio of blondes in matching loafers and the boy with cufflinks shaped like daggers. I didn’t flinch when the chapel bells rang overhead. Didn’t stop when I saw the old painted crest worn thin on the courtyard tiles scrubbed so hard it bled into the stone.
My schedule said the faculty would meet us in the Hall of Wards. What it didn’t say was how every hallway would feel like a throat, narrow and quiet and tight around the ribs.
When I entered, the room was half full.
Long tables stretched beneath iron chandeliers that looked one candle away from collapse. Some professors watched from a raised platform, heads bent in lazy disinterest, like this was beneath them. One sipped tea. One read a worn leather book. And then there was him.
He wasn’t seated like the others. He stood near the far window, arms crossed over his chest, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow. No tie. Just dark slacks, a black shirt, and a gaze that didn’t look at me but through me. Not in greeting. Not in threat. Just a passing read of something that didn’t matter yet. Like I hadn’t been decided on.
Professor Caspian Lux.
I didn’t know his name then. But my bones did. Something in me hummed. Brief and jarring. A spark beneath the sternum. And then it was gone, replaced by the sharp scrape of a chair leg nearby and the murmur of my own name being marked on the roll.
They called us forward by last name, alphabetical. Summers. When they said it, no one reacted. No one clapped. No one smiled. I took my key. My schedule. My map.
And left the hall with the distinct feeling that I’d been weighed and measured already—and found inconvenient.
West Hall was on the far edge of campus, tucked behind a grove of dead elms and a gate that looked like it had rusted shut out of spite. It hadn’t. It creaked open just fine. But it made sure I heard it.
The dorms were older than I expected. Not old in a charming, worn-wood-and-ivy way. Old like something that had been patched over again and again but never healed right. The stone walls were gray and pockmarked, the kind of gray that eats light. Even the lamps flickered like they weren’t convinced they should stay lit.
My room was at the end of the second floor. Number 217. The key turned too easily in the lock, as if the door knew I was coming. Inside, everything was still. Two twin beds, two desks, two wardrobes. One window that faced a spire wrapped in black roses. The furniture looked institutional. Unimpressed with me. The kind of furniture that had outlived better girls.
The air smelled faintly of lavender and something older, leather maybe, or dried ink. Or dust from things no one should’ve disturbed. I walked across the room, each step making the floor groan beneath me. My bed was by the window. Sheets were folded military tight. My name was taped to the frame. My side was untouched. Cold. But the other? Already claimed.
A row of shoes lined up beneath the bed that were polished, expensive, designed for show not comfort. A velvet robe hung from the wardrobe door like it had been placed there for effect. And on the desk: a slim stack of books, color-coded by spine. A jar of fountain pens. One glass perfume bottle, half-empty and glowing amber in the low light. I knew who she was before she walked in.
“Scholarship girl,” she said, voice flat. Not a question.
I turned.
She was tall. Lithe. Blazer unbuttoned, collar crisp. Her dark hair was swept up like she’d just come from an interview or a funeral. She didn’t offer a name, only a glance down and up, like she was deciding whether I’d be useful or just decorative.
“I’m Laura Hayes,” she said eventually. Her eyes didn’t blink when she said it, like the name should mean something to me.
It did. I just wasn’t willing to show it.
“Eva Summers,” I said.
“Figures,” she murmured. Then walked past me and sat on her bed like I wasn’t there. Like I was an afterthought. An inconvenience.
She didn’t speak again that night.
And neither did I.
