The night air of Asgarheim seemed to bite deeper now.
Or maybe that was just me.
Everything felt sharper after being around Sten.
The cold.
The magic.
My own body.
My pulse still hadn’t settled from the way he’d looked at me before disappearing into shadow like some cursed celestial fever dream.
Gods.
I was in trouble.
Real trouble.
The kind no amount of rational thinking was going to save me from.
Because somewhere along the way, this had stopped being an assignment.
Stopped being pretend.
And started becoming something dangerously real inside me.
I exhaled shakily and stepped forward—only to stop dead.
I wasn’t alone anymore.
Professor Kenna Runevald stood at the edge of the stone pathway as though she’d always been there, dark robes shifting softly in the wind beneath the silver-green auroras overhead.
The professor never seemed surprised by anything.
She simply existed in a state of eternal awareness, as though the Institute itself whispered its secrets directly into her ear.
“It’s a little late for an unsupervised stroll, isn’t it, Miss Cordoza?” she asked smoothly.
My stomach dropped.
“Oh. Uh. Sorry,” I mumbled automatically.
Brilliant response, Amrin.
Very mature.
Very graduate student of you.
The professor lifted one perfectly sculpted brow and waited.
That was all she had to do.
No raised voice.
No interrogation.
Just that calm, assessing stare.
