Chapter 67
Room 313: Do Not Open the Mirror
Li shoved the dorm room door open with her hip and announced, "Welcome to chaos, population: us."
The room was bigger than my entire old apartment. Two four-poster beds draped in black silk, a fireplace that already crackled with blue witchfire, and a window overlooking the courtyard where students were currently trying to set each other on fire (practice, apparently).
Then I saw the mirror.
Full-length, framed in blackened bone, hanging on the wall between our beds. The glass rippled like liquid mercury.
"Do not touch that," Li said instantly. "It's the Mirror of Unsaid Truths. Previous occupant used it to spy on her ex. She's still screaming in there."
I believed her.
Li threw herself onto the left bed. "I call this one. Better light for reading grimoires. Also, fewer scorch marks."
My side of the room already had scorch marks. Someone had painted a dragon silhouette on the ceiling in what looked suspiciously like dried blood.
"Home sweet hell," I muttered.
A knock (three sharp raps).
Thorne stood in the doorway, filling it like darkness given muscle. He had a duffel bag slung over one shoulder (my duffel bag, the one I'd kept in the trunk of my car).
"Personal effects," he said, dropping it at my feet. "Searched for weapons. Kept the good knife."
I opened the bag. My clothes, my mom's old lighter, and the hunter's journal were all there. My favorite silver stake was missing.
"Thief," I accused.
"Safety precaution," he countered.
Li sat up, eyes gleaming. "Ooooh, tension. I give it two weeks before you two either kill each other or—"
"Finish that sentence and I hex your tongue to your eyelid," I warned.
She mimed zipping her lips, still grinning.
Thorne's gaze flicked to the mirror. His reflection didn't appear. Instead, the glass showed him standing behind me, hands on my shoulders, mouth at my throat.
My scales flared so hard the room's temperature jumped ten degrees.
The image vanished.
Thorne's jaw clenched. "That thing's banned for a reason."
"Yet it's still here," Li chirped. "Headmistress has a sense of humor."
Another knock, softer this time.
Jax leaned in, shirt half-unbuttoned, golden skin still steaming from whatever fire spell he'd been practicing. He took in the scene (me glowing, Thorne glowering, Li eating metaphorical popcorn) and whistled low.
"Damn, dragon girl. You collect brooding immortals the way I collect detentions."
Thorne stepped forward, shadows licking at his boots. "Harlan. Out."
Jax ignored him, eyes on me. "Combat starts in twenty. Thought you might want a tour of the training yard before Grimshaw tries to break you in half."
Translation: before Thorne claims every second of my schedule.
I grabbed my jacket (what was left of it). "Lead the way, wolf boy."
Thorne moved to follow.
Jax held up a hand. "Private lesson, prince. Academy rules. No vampires in the shifter yard during daylight hours."
Thorne's smile could have frozen hell. "I make the rules."
"Not today," Li said sweetly, standing and looping an arm through Thorne's. "You and I have a date with the library. Blood Ethics syllabus. You're teaching it, remember?"
Thorne looked like he was calculating how many laws he could break before anyone noticed.
I didn't wait. I slipped past both of them and followed Jax into the hall.
The second the door shut, I exhaled.
Jax glanced sideways. "You okay, Kane?"
"Define okay."
"Breathing. Not on fire. Not currently biting anyone's head off."
"Then no."
He laughed (warm, easy, human). "Come on. Let's get you some air that doesn't smell like vampire prince."
We stepped out into sunlight that felt like forgiveness.
For the first time since waking up in chains, my scales settled.
I didn't look back.
But I felt Thorne watching from the window anyway, shadows pressed against the glass like he wanted to break through it and drag me back into the dark with him.
Combat class started in fifteen minutes.
I had a feeling it was going to hurt.
And for some stupid reason, I was smiling.
Bleeding in the Sunlight
The training yard was a scarred half-moon of packed red clay ringed by live oaks dripping Spanish moss.
Sunlight poured straight down like liquid gold, and every drop that touched my skin made the scales underneath itch and burn.
Jax noticed. Of course he did.
"Dragon thing?" he asked, rolling his shoulders. Shirt already off (because werewolves have zero chill), golden skin gleaming with sweat that hadn't happened yet.
"Feels like I swallowed a sunburn," I admitted.
He grinned. "Good. Means you're alive. Now let's see if you can stay that way."
He tossed me a wooden practice sword carved from rowan (anti-magic, anti-healing, hurts like hell).
"First rule of shifter combat," he said, circling me. "Don't get hit."
Then he hit me.
Fast. Too fast. The flat of his blade cracked across my ribs and sent me sprawling into the dirt.
The yard erupted in whoops and whistles. Two dozen shifters (wolves, big cats, a girl whose shadow had feathers) formed a loose ring, betting cigarettes and blood drops on how long the dragon girl would last.
I spat dust and came up swinging.
Second rule, apparently: Jax didn't hold back.
We danced (if you can call attempted murder a dance). He was strength and speed and joy in violence. I was fire trying to remember how to be a girl. Every time our blades met, sparks flew (literal sparks). My scales kept trying to armor me; the sunlight kept trying to cook me from the inside.
Five minutes in, I was bleeding from a split lip and loving it.
Ten minutes in, Jax had a claw mark across his chest that healed almost as fast as I gave it to him.
Fifteen minutes in, the yard went dead quiet.
Because Thorne Blackwood was standing at the edge of the sunlight like it personally offended him.
Shadows boiled around his feet, eating the light in a perfect circle. His eyes were fixed on the blood on my mouth.
Jax noticed too. His grin turned wolfish.
"Class is over, prince. Sunlight hours, remember?"
Thorne stepped forward.
The sunlight hit him and hissed (actual steam rising off his skin). He didn't stop.
"Lesson's over when I say it is," he said, voice winter-cold.
Jax moved to block him. "You want her, you wait till nightfall like the rest of the bloodsuckers."
Thorne's shadows lashed out, wrapping Jax's ankles, yanking him off balance. Jax hit the ground hard, snarling.
I stepped between them, heart hammering.
"Back off, both of you."
Thorne's gaze flicked to me. The steam stopped. His shadows retreated like scolded dogs.
"This isn't your fight, wolf," he said quietly.
Jax rose, eyes glowing amber. "She's in my yard. Makes it my fight."
A low growl rolled through the watching shifters.
I felt the scales along my spine ripple, ready to burst free.
Then Professor Grimshaw's voice cracked across the yard like a whip.
"Harlan. Blackwood. Detention. Kane—infirmary. Now."
Grimshaw was seven feet of scar tissue and bad attitude, half ogre, half don't-ask. Nobody argued with him.
Jax shot me an apologetic look. Thorne didn't look sorry at all.
I turned to leave—and the world tilted.
Sunlight + blood loss + dragon metabolism waking up = bad combo.
I made it three steps before my knees buckled.
Thorne caught me before I hit the ground.
Of course he did.
The second his cold hands touched my bare arms, my fire met ice.
My scales flared white-hot; his shadows surged to drink it in. For one heartbeat the bond (whatever the hell it was) snapped wide open.
I felt his hunger like a physical thing: razor-edged, ancient, focused on the pulse in my throat with laser precision.
He felt my fire trying to crawl into his veins and make a home there.
We both jerked apart at the same time.
But not before every shifter in the yard smelled what just happened.
Jax's eyes went full wolf. "Get away from her, leech."
Thorne ignored him, staring at me like I'd grown a second head.
"You're burning up," he said, low.
"No shit."
Grimshaw stomped over, took one look at us, and sighed the sigh of a man who'd seen too many disasters.
"Infirmary," he repeated. "Blackwood, you're carrying her. Try not to drain her on the way here."
Thorne scooped me up without asking. My scales flared again; his arms tightened like iron bands.
Jax started forward.
I lifted a shaky hand. "Stand down, puppy. I've got this."
He stopped, fists clenched, but didn't follow.
As Thorne carried me across the yard, I caught a glimpse of Li watching from a balcony, eyes wide, hand over her mouth.
And high above, in the mansion's tallest window, Elowen Drakari stood motionless, wings of shadow unfurling behind her like she'd been waiting for this exact moment for seventeen years.
Thorne's mouth brushed my ear, accidental or not.
"Hold still," he whispered. "Your blood's singing. If you keep struggling, I won't be able to stop myself."
I turned my face into his neck, scales scorching his skin, and smiled through the pain.
"Then don't stop," I breathed.
His step faltered.
Just once.
But it was enough to tell me everything I needed to know:
This leash went both ways.
And it was already on fire.