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He was afraid.

Then he stood so quickly that the bench scraped loudly across the floor. He released the broken piece of wood, turned away from the table, and walked out without saying a word. The doors struck the walls as he passed through them and slammed shut behind him.

Conversation returned in uneven bursts.

The Fenhall students stared at the damaged table. Delphine watched the closed doors for several seconds before turning her head toward me. Around her, other people began to do the same, following the direction Kaelen had been staring before he left.

I glanced over my shoulder because there had to be someone else behind me.

Maybe someone important. Someone who made more sense. Someone Kaelen Vance might actually have been looking at with that kind of intensity.

There was only the wall.

I faced forward again.

The vibration was still running through my body, and the ache between my thighs had not faded. My hand shook enough that the water jug knocked softly against the table.

Beside me, Tamsin sat perfectly still with her fork halfway to her mouth. The humor had disappeared from her face.

“Wren,” she whispered. “What just happened?”

3

Chapter 3

Wren

They put the newcomers in a long room above the kitchens that first night, with twenty narrow beds arranged in two rows beneath the sloping roof. I lay awake in mine, staring at the rafters, and barely slept.

Again.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his. Gold, bright, and fixed on me from across the hall with such intensity that I still felt unsettled thinking about it. Worse, my body seemed to remember him even when I tried not to. A faint, traitorous throb stirred between my legs whenever I pictured his face, and I hated how little control I seemed to have over the reaction.

Apparently, people could turn into animals now. Magic was real. A secret Council had somehow found me because of my blood, and Marion had known about this world for years without telling me any of it. Everything I understood about my life had changed in the space of a few hours, and somehow my brain had decided that the most urgent thing to dwell on was one man's eyes.

I rolled onto my side, then onto my back again, pulling the blanket higher. I told myself it was nerves. Confusion. Anger. Any one of those things could make a person's body behave strangely.

At some point, Tamsin whispered across the space between our beds.

"Wren. Are you awake?"

"Maybe."

"Me also maybe." She was quiet for a moment before adding, "Whatever happens tomorrow, you're sitting with me at breakfast. Deal?"

I smiled in the dark. "Deal."

They woke us before dawn with a bell that sounded unnecessarily violent and marched us downstairs to the Great Hall while the windows were still gray with early morning light.

The tables had been pushed back against the walls, leaving the center of the hall open. A fire burned in the hearth, but the room was still cold enough for our breath to show. The students from the previous night had gathered along the gallery that circled the upper level, leaning over the rail with tin mugs of coffee in their hands. They watched us with open curiosity, clearly hoping something interesting would happen.

On the dais where Headmistress Oda had spoken the night before stood something they called the Beastglass.

It was taller than a man and narrower than a door, made from a single slab of polished black stone. Calling it a mirror did not feel quite right. Its surface was so dark and smooth that it seemed to absorb the firelight rather than reflect it. The frame was made of gray wood and carved from top to bottom with animals: wolves, bears, birds, great cats, scaled creatures, all winding around one another. The carvings were so old that years of handling had worn their edges smooth.

A man I had not seen before sat beside it at a small table. He was thin and bald, dressed in a gray suit much like the one my driver had worn, with a ledger open in front of him beside a pen and an iron stamp. Nothing about him suggested teacher. He had the efficient, mildly bored air of someone whose job involved forms, categories, and making sure everybody ended up in the correct box.

"Council registrar," Tamsin murmured beside me. "The intake packet says they send one every year. Makes everything official."