1
YELENA
“Fuck,there is no reason this should be so hot.”
I snort and roll my eyes at Galina. And yet my gaze, like hers, stays riveted to her phone screen.
On it, a shirtless man, all gym muscles and biker tattoos, waves the glinting blade of a hunting knife into the camera. A tactical military mask covers his whole face, even his eyes, but you canfeelhis gaze stabbing into you as he starts to roll his hips slowly. He mimes grabbing a ponytail with his other hand and the words “your hair x my fist” flash across the screen as he yanks it back and starts to thrust harder, like he’s screwing a ghost.
Galina's right: there’s no reason this should be so fucking hot.
It’s ridiculous to the point of being comical. And yet, there’s nothing funny about the way the shadows ripple dramatically across the masked man’s grooved abs, the flat planes of his chest, and his tattooed biceps as he keeps thrusting his hips and brandishing his knife at the camera.
I blame Galina for my newfound addiction to the masked, tattooed men of BookTok – aka MaskTok – who I swear spend all day posting thirst traps on TikTok and Instagram. Sometimes, they’re cosplaying fan favorite “book boyfriends” from hit dark romance novels. Others, they’re just totally leaning into the “morally gray antihero” vibe.
I know it’s more than a little over the top, the way these guys rip off their shirts, or lick the edges of their knives, or dry-hump the camera.
But goddammit, it'ssohot.
“No reason,” Galina sighs again as the man on the screen takes the hunting knife jutting out from his crotch and starts to stroke it, like he’s jerking off. “No reason at. Fucking. All.”
“You’re right, there isn’t. Because it’s…not?”
I grin, tucking my dark hair back as I pull my eyes reluctantly away from Galina’s screen and turn to Wren, my suite-mate and best friend.
“Aww, c’mon,” I tease.
“Yeah, don’t lie,” Galina snorts, closing the app then tossing her phone onto my bed. “No shame in admitting the MaskTok hotness. You’re in good company. Right, Ari?”
She looks expectantly at Arianna, who’s sitting at my vanity in her usual hoodie-and-jeans uniform, honey-blonde hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, carefully painting her nails black.
“Nope,” she grins without looking up. “I want zero part of your weird romance book horniness, Gal.”
“Oh, right, I forgot.” Galina rolls her eyes. “Ari doesn’tgethorny.”
Arianna glances up sharply, glaring at Galina. “What, because I’m not drooling over weirdos who look like they’re not allowed within a thousand feet of a school?”
Wren bursts out laughing. Galina feigns a dramatic faint across my bed, her ginger hair spread over the duvet, just as there’s a knock at the door and my cousin Lucia walks in.
Okay, she’s notactuallymy cousin. But her dad and mine have been best friends since before they were students here themselves at Knightsblood, and we were basically raised like cousins. It’s the same with Galina and Wren. Then there’s Arianna, who actuallyisLucia’s cousin.
“Sorry I’m late,” Lucia sighs, waving tattooed fingers at us in greeting. Her black-brown hair hangs loose around her face. “My roommate was having another crash-out over being away from home.”
Lucia’s a freshman, so even though it’s pretty obvious she’ll be pledging The Order in the Initiation Trials later in the year…I mean, her cousin Damiano is the president of the club…she’s living in the regular dorms for now.
There are four clubs on the Knightsblood campus, all of which exist in this weird zone where the college both fully acknowledges them and yet also takes a totally hands-off, blind-eye approach to them. It isn’t mandatory to join any of them, of course, but it's heavily implied if unspoken that being a member of one of the four clubs is pretty muchthereason you come to Knightsblood, the shadowy “mafia ivy league school” that sitson the rocky southern Connecticut cliffs above the Long Island Sound, in the first place.
There’s The Order, which Lucia will almost certainly be pledging and of which Wren and I are both members. The club tends to attract the planners and the calculators; the potential future spymasters and assassins of the mafia world. Since we pledged The Order at the Initiation Trials in our freshman year, now that we’re sophomores we’ve moved into Morvaine Manor, the official club housing on campus.
Galina and Arianna—who are best friends, despite how it might look to the outsider, given the way they needle and tease each other—are in The Ouroboros Society. Their club tends to attract the aspiring hackers, information brokers, and behind-the-scenes masterminds. The two of them also room together at The Atheneum, the Gothic former campus library which now houses The Ouroboros Society.
Members of The Reckless—aka the daredevils and fighters—live like the true lunatics they are in The Spire—a crumbling old garrison lookout tower perched on a rock a little ways out from the main cliffs.
And then there’s Para Bellum for the kings and queens, aka the future heads of criminal families and organizations. Fittingly, Para Bellum inhabits Kingsward Hall, a gorgeous, sprawling Gothic and Romanesque mansion high up on a hill. It's where we’re all going to party tonight, to celebrate being one month into the school year.
At least, that’s the reason my friends are going.
I’m going for revenge.
