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Except me, I almost, but don’t, say. “Are you hiding from someone?”
He blinks, his features hard and cold. This guy really knows how to play it cool. “Perhaps I just like the stars.”
The gravel crunches softly beneath my feet as I shift from boot to boot. “There are no stars, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Pity,” he says without glancing up.
Why am I so close to him? I’ve been inching across the roof toward the very thing I despise, caught in some weird magical Fae orbit.
What is wrong with me? I despise the cold almost as much as I despise the Fae. Yet here I am, in the cold, creeping closer to a Fae like some lunatic.
Am I smiling? Yeah—I’m totally grinning. This Fae must have some powerful magic, something that makes me feel comfortable with him. Is that even a thing? It must be.
I clamp my cold fingers into fists, wincing at the pain. I really should go inside. Instead I say, “Are you a student here?”
He nods, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“I’m a shadow,” I add.
“I’m aware.”
My heart flutters at his voice, and it takes a second to understand he’s turning my words back on me. It also takes a moment to notice that he’s staring at me differently now. And there’s a stillness to him that makes me uneasy. An intensity to his focus that wasn’t there before.
I feel something snap between us. A sharp prickle of electricity. He must feel it too because his eyes widen. Only slightly, but enough to know.
I swallow, the air frosting in front of my lips as I struggle to breathe.
He takes a step closer.
A memory surfaces. Before everything really turned to crap, there was this exotic animal park an hour’s drive from my house. Aunt Zinnia took me when I was thirteen because she knew how much I loved anything with fur. Looking back now I realize how sad it was, but back then, I remember the thrill when the man working there sat me next to this full grown lion.
The lion basically ignored me as I posed for pictures. But there was a moment near the end where the lion looked at me and something passed between us. An understanding. That with minimal effort, he could kill me.
That’s exactly what I’m feeling now as I stare into this Fae’s eyes. Not that he wants to kill me, exactly—but the shared knowledge that he could.
And there’s something else. A familiarity I can’t place.
A spark of remembrance flickers inside my heart. The shock like seeing a loved one you think is dead. I clutch my chest as an invisible tether snaps taut between us. The reaction to his presence visceral and raw. What is happening?
I know you. I know you. I know—
My skin goes clammy. “I . . . I should go.”
His gaze chills my back as I hurry across the rooftop, and it doesn’t stop burning until the door to my room slams shut.
12
Morning comes too soon. Clad in everything I own, I wheeze and lunge my way down a dark, endless stairwell to another door of marble that leads to an outdoor courtyard. Someone knocked this morning to inform me that I was needed for . . . something. I’m still not sure what.
I must have been tired because I slept way past noon. I think. There are no clocks in my room, and the sun is imprisoned behind a layer of dirty winter clouds so deep I’m not even sure it’s there.
As soon as the door opens to the courtyard, cold air slaps me in the face, knocking every bit of sleep from my body along with my soul.
Lord, I hate the cold.
I inhale sharply. The space is big enough to fit two football fields. English primroses and winter jasmine decorate the grounds, crystal waters from countless fountains sparkle, frozen mid-spurt, and hedge mazes crisscross the paver stones, dusted white. Snow drizzles the many statues and forms mounds in the corners.
I barely have time to take in the place before a noise catches my attention.
