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I wouldn’t accuse Visha of falling in love. No, I wouldn’t go that far. But she’d been … well, she’d been in something. She’d felt something more than she usually did, that had been easy enough to see. She’d been happier, too.

Abruptly, I tried to turn the tables. Imagined it was Pendragon who I’d lost. Hard no. I did not want to go there, not even in my imagination. It wasn’t going to happen. I was not going to lose Pendragon. I couldn’t allow myself to think about it even for a moment. I tried to focus on Visha again.

“So no, I don’t want your debt of vengeance. I want your blade. I want blood. But not from you. And not from Aenia—even if she were still alive to give it. She was just a product, Blake. A product of this fucked-up, shitty world that we’ve been brought up to think of as normal. We’re not gods, and they shouldn’t have to worship us as if we are.” Her eyes blazed purple. I’d never seen her like this before. “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped.

“Like what?”

“With your eyes bulging out of their sockets. Like you think I might explode.”

“Well, isn’t that what you’re suggesting? Look, I agree with you, all right? You know I do. We’re not gods. But thinking that way? We’re the minority. So you need to, you know … tone it down.” I took a deep breath. “We have to play by the rules for now. We need to lie low and blend in. Yes, it’s a powder keg, point taken. But don’t do something stupid and get yourself killed trying to blow things up, all right?”

“Are we lying low?” She looked at me closely—too close for comfort. I thought about the moment she’d sat down beside me. What I’d just been doing. Transforming. “Is that what we’re doing? I mean, I’m clearly not the only one stirring shit up.” She laughed loudly enough that Professor Vane paused his scritch-scratching and turned to glare at her. Visha held up her hands and stayed silent until he turned around again. She lowered her voice. “I mean, look at your fucking face.”

“What about it?”

“Where did you get the wounds, Blake? Who gave them to you?”

“I got in a fight,” I said tersely. “I’ll tell you more when the time is right.”

“Sure.” She rubbed her chin. “Let me ask you something. Has Viktor ever used thrallweave on Pendragon?”

She’d caught me off guard. “Yes, he has. But why does it matter?”

“Did she give way?”

“No,” I replied. “Rodriguez had been teaching her to shield herself. Headmaster Kim had approved her to learn thrallguard. She was able to resist. She’s impressively strong.”

“Right.” Visha folded her arms over her chest, looking smug. “Thought so.”

“What?” I demanded.

“Have you ever heard of such a thing in your life? A blightborn—even if she is a rider—who was able to resist thrallweave when it was wielded by arguably the most powerful vampire alive?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

Visha shook her head. “A few lessons in thrallguard and you think Medra’s, what, a prodigy? Does that make sense to you? She couldn’t even resist Regan, for fuck’s sake.”

“She hadn’t started her lessons back then,” I protested. But now that I thought about it, it didn’t make sense. It had always seemed too good to be true, but I’d simply been grateful Pendragon had been able to keep Viktor out of her fucking head. Now I wondered what Visha was getting at exactly.

Professor Vane was starting his lecture, but Visha seemed intent on continuing her train of thought. “You can worry about me if you want to, Blake. But I’d be more concerned about yourself if I were you, House Leader. And I mean that genuinely.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I hissed. “Is that some kind of a threat?”

She shook her head and turned to her notebook. “Not a threat, a warning. You know exactly what I mean. You need to get a handle on your shit, Blake, before it handles you.”

By some miracle of the Bloodmaiden, I made it through the rest of Vane’s class without incident. It was a near miss, though. The whole time I could feel Visha next to me, alarm bells were going off in my head. She knew. She didn’t even have to say it out loud. The way she’d looked at me was enough. She knew what I was. What I was becoming. Soon someone else would figure it out. Maybe someone I couldn’t afford to lose. Pendragon.

The thought of Pendragon seeing me as a scaled red monster, seeing the beast I was turning into … Iron bands seemed to tighten around my ribs. I wasn’t Nyxaris. I wasn’t some wise old dragon. Pendragon would look at me the way she looked at Viktor, like I was a freak. A monster. Because it was true. That’s what I was.

I shoved my way out into the hall the moment the bell rang, not waiting for Vane to dismiss us. I didn’t stop moving. I kept my head down, dodging and weaving through groups of students, then climbing staircase after staircase until I was almost dizzy. All of the fear, all of the anxiety, I hadn’t kept it in check. Couldn’t control it. And now it was happening again. I could feel the shift in my bones, the itch under my skin. With every step I took, the dragon was trying to claw its way out of me.

I needed space. I needed air.

I stumbled into the classroom, the one I’d walked Pendragon to once for her lesson with Professor Hassan. The room was in a wing of the school few people visited. I’d noticed the room was built right into the cliffside, overlooking the ocean, opening out onto a wide stone landing that must have been used as a dragon perch back in the old days, when Bloodwing had been able to boast about having more than one dragon. Now it was mostly forgotten.

Thank the Bloodmaiden, Hassan wasn’t there and neither was Pendragon.

I slammed the door shut behind me, hoping and praying I could turn the tide. But it was too late. The change ripped through me.