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I thought about how quickly Visha had dived into the water. I’d have done the same for Pendragon in a heartbeat.

Was there anyone to catch Regan if she fell? Did she want there to be?

Chapter 50

REGAN

This job did not pay enough. In fact, now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure I was getting paid at all. Had they been paying Headmaster Kim, or had he been doing it on an honorarium basis? What about Rodriguez? He probably took extra food from the refectory and considered it even.

Most heads of the school had been former professors. Some even kept publishing papers after taking up the post. I’d found a half-scribbled one in the desk after Rodriguez had left—“Renaming the Blightborn: A Study of Epithets, Acronyms, and Their Historical Significance in an Unjust World.”

Holy Bloodmaiden, if I was supposed to publish boring academic papers while running the school, I would … well, I wouldn’t quit because I felt a weird debt toward Medra Pendragon and her ilk. But I would definitely be taking extra snacks from the refectory from now on.

Not for the first time, I wished I could quit. But if I quit now, Quinn Riley would win, and I wasn’t giving that bitch an inch. I thought having Viktor as my archon during my first term as head-mistress had been bad. But Elaria Avari and Quinn Riley were a comparably terrible pair. They’d formed a match made in hell. Silvio Santos had gone chasing dragon-egg glory belowground, but he’d been sure to set Quinn up as his replacement first. She’d stepped into the spotlight perfectly, buddying up to Elaria like a parasite.

My jaw ached. I hadn’t even realized I’d been grinding my teeth.

Elaria wanted the old rules back. All of the ones that Rodriguez, Medra, and the others had torn down—the curfews, restrictions, moldy classrooms, and unfettered feedings. “It will be wonderful to have a highblood back in power who understands the importance of our traditions,” Elaria had told me on the first day she’d come to visit.

Tradition: the word seemed to be used to justify every cruelty ever committed within school walls.

I touched a hand to my throat. Highblood traditions didn’t just harm blightborn. Elaria had taken one look at my throat, cleared her own, and then asked if I’d heard from Viktor lately. Apparently she thought we were still in touch, that he was still my archon. I’d managed not to vomit and then had told her that his letters had been infrequent of late but that he’d asked after her, of course. She didn’t seem to think it was a conflict of interest—my still being Viktor’s consort and her personal pawn in her quest for greater Avari power. Maybe she didn’t think Viktor was ever coming back. Or maybe she thought he’d ultimately join forces with her if he did. Which, to be fair, wasn’t hard to believe.

I looked down at the pile of papers Dani had dropped onto my desk before she’d left for the day. They were all résumés. A number of staff were missing, three professors to be exact. I knew Professor Sankara and Professor Stonefist had gone with Blake and Medra’s little squad. At least they’d had the courtesy to give some advance warning. But Professor Vane hadn’t turned in his notice, just disappeared the same day roughly twenty students from Mortis did. I assumed he’d gone with them. Good riddance, in a way. He’d always made my skin crawl.

But on the other hand, I’d had to teach a class of Drakharrow First Years the basics of blood magic myself the day before. Now, that had been a nightmare. I’d probably never get the chalk marks out of that dress. Substitutes were hard to come by right now. What with all that was happening in Veilmar and the rest of the realm—a second wave of plague had started up, no necromancy involved this time. At least, not yet. So far, Bloodwing was a safe zone. The infection hadn’t hit us on the island yet.

Elaria, pressured by me but also by her formidable grandson no doubt, had been ensuring the school received extra protection. She’d stationed guards on the bridge and also patrols around the cliffs. But I knew that if things in Veilmar deteriorated, Bloodwing would have to fend for itself.

So I’d been planning. Together with Kage and Lysander, I’d prepared a rotation of older, trustworthy students who were capable and willing to fight. I’d been calling our private combat classes leadership training. But I think they all knew what it really was: an emergency militia. We’d practiced escape routes, sealing doors, dragging and carrying the injured to infirmaries. And we’d practiced eliminating infected highbloods without flinching. At first, that last one had been hard for some of the blightborn students, but then they’d gotten more into it.

Of course, it would have been helpful to include volunteers from House Mortis. But I couldn’t trust anyone in that house. Quinn had done everything she could to make that impossible. Her newest demand sat on my desk: She wanted me to implement a ridiculous new rule in which infected highblood students could no longer be executed simply by virtue of exposure. No, she wanted them contained and safeguarded in case a cure was discovered. It sounded so humane on the surface; she wanted House Mortis to take care of the containment. I was pretty sure it was just an excuse to get some new victims for Mortis’s necromancy. Chances were high that any plague-victim students would wind up back in my office trying to kill me if Quinn had her way.

I finished sorting through the stack of résumés and leaned back in my chair with a sigh. My gaze drifted. Inevitably, my eyes landed on the clock on the wall. I shouldn’t have been thinking about bed, not at this hour. It was only six thirty at night.

There was a tap on the outer door of the vestibule, and I jumped. Dani and I had taken to keeping it locked, ever since the incident. Dani had already gone home, so I stood up and headed for the door. “Who is it?”

“Regan? It’s six thirty. How long are you planning on working tonight?”

My pulse sped up.

“Yeah,” Kage called. “We’re tired.”

“That was a joke,” Lysander said when I didn’t immediately reply. “Are you hungry? Can we take you to dinner?”

“Or we can eat in the room,” Kage called. “Good option, too.”

I bit my lip. Nothing had happened between us. Well, not nothing—we were sharing a bed, but we’d moved rooms. Kage had the largest suite in the Avari Tower, being House Leader. It had a sitting room, a huge master bedroom, a guest bedroom, and three bathrooms. Two ensuites and a half. Which was important, I’d realized, when you were sharing space with two men. Honestly, Blake would be pissed if he knew—not that I was sharing, but about how big the Avari suite was. Not that I was going to tell anytime soon. Who knew if I’d ever even see him again.

I wasn’t sure if anyone knew Kage, Lysander, and I were sharing the space. I’d left some of my things in the old room, and I still went back there once in a while, just so students could see me going in and out. But Avari students were a little different than the ones in Drakharrow. Less nosy and less bitchy. Maybe it was because some of them were wolves. Or because they were just better at keeping secrets in general. Either way, I’d started to feel strangely at home there.

Lysander had invited me to visit the Orphos Tower. He’d said the place had similar vibes, but I hadn’t taken him up on that yet. Every morning, he and Kage would walk me to my office. And every night, they’d pick me up again. They’d finally conceded they couldn’t keep standing watch for me every day, but they’d found more trustworthy guards who were on rotation. Some from Avari, some from Orphos. Evie, Kage’s Second, hadn’t seemed exactly thrilled to be placed on headmistress guard duty, but eventually Dani had won her over. That girl baked a lot of treats, and apparently Evie was a sucker for kava and cupcakes.

“Regan?”

Shit. I stood up and grabbed my coat. “I’m coming.” They’d told me sharing a bed was just for my protection. And I’d let myself believe the lie. Because sleeping in between them … well, it was the best sleep I’d ever had in my life. No more nightmares. No more lying awake with horrible memories, not with Kage on one side, Lysander on the other. They didn’t try to touch me—not ever. But sometimes, a shoulder brushed against me when they rolled over. Once Kage’s hand had been draped across my hips when I woke up. I’d pretended to still be asleep. He’d woken up and quickly moved it. Sometimes, Lysander’s breath warmed the back of my neck when he leaned too close. I’d gotten used to it. I kind of liked it.

That was the part that made shame settle in the pit of my stomach sometimes. I wasn’t supposed to want them near me like this. I wasn’t supposed to want anyone. I’d told myself it was about survival, that this wasn’t hurting anything. It was just the natural need to not be alone when the world was a place full of fangs and claws. But something was happening. Something in the air changed when one of them looked at me. And when both of them did at the same time? Well, things got … foggy.