Chapter 4: Lessons in Almost

By the time Friday crept in, St. Valen’s had already learned her name.

Not properly. Not the way that mattered. But in the way that traveled fastest in places like this: through whispers and warped retelling.

The new girl from Manila.

The Sombra heiress.

The one with the Rottweiler.

The one who told Luca Ashford “no” and smiled while she did it.

Althea heard versions of herself she didn’t recognize drifting behind her in corridors.

Temper, they said.

Wild.

Dangerous.

One girl in the bathroom had whispered, “Her family’s old old money, you know, like pre-colonial land,” as if that explained why her shadow walked on four legs and watched everyone like a second pair of eyes.

She let it roll off. Gossip was just the weather. Let them predict storms.

They had no idea what a real one looked like.

Classes helped—a little. Political theory. Ethics. Economics.

She played the obedient student, taking neat notes, asking precise questions, and resisting the urge to correct professors when they skimmed over colonial “trade routes” that were, in reality, invasions. Every time Southeast Asia was reduced to “regional complications,” she felt the urge to smile and sharpen something.

She listened to accents. Watched who spoke like the world owed them the floor. Watched who flinched when she disagreed. She clocked whose eyes lit up.

She cataloged. Assessed. Filed away.

By late afternoon, the sky outside the tall windows had settled into a flat pewter, and the air tasted like coming rain. Umbra walked at her side down the west corridor, massive head level with her hip, reading the students the way she read the stock market: quick, clinical, unimpressed.

“Staring is rude,” she murmured in Tagalog as another pair of boys jolted, realizing the “dog” had a skull the size of a small boulder.

Umbra huffed, as if to say, “They started it.”

“Miss Sombra.”

The voice cut through the murmur like a blade.

Professor Deveraux stood in the side hall doorway near the wet stairs, arms folded. Salt and pepper hair pulled back into a brutal knot, a dark fencing jacket slung over one shoulder, and grey eyes flat and assessing. The old scars on his hand caught the hallway light: pale lines across knuckles and fingers, like someone had once tried to carve the fight out of him and failed.

“Sir,” she said, pausing.

His gaze flicked to Umbra, lingered for the space of a breath, then came back to her. No remark about the dog. Just a calculation. That, more than anything, made her file him under dangerous.

“You’ve not reported to the salle yet,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

His mouth twitched. It might have been disdain. It might have been amusement. With men like him, the difference was mostly academic.

“Fencing hall. West wing,” he said. “All first-years under legacy sponsorship are required to attend at least two assessment sessions.”

There it was again. Legacy. The school’s polite word for money is old enough to rot.

“Is that a school rule,” she asked mildly, “or a legacy rule?”

“Does it matter?”

“Only when it’s the latter.”

Something in his eyes sharpened. “You’ve had training,” he said. Not a question. His gaze traveled over her posture, the way she held her shoulders and spine, with her weight evenly balanced over the balls of her feet. “Not with a foil. But with something.”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“What kind?”

Her lips curved. “Sharp.”

His jaw tightened, but she caught the ghost of approval in the breath he let out.

“Report to Salle C in twenty minutes. Kit is in the lockers. Laurent will show you the ropes.”

Of course, he will.

“Is this optional?” she asked.

“No.” He stepped aside. “It’s an assessment.”

He didn’t mean her grades. He meant how dangerous she was. He meant whether she was a weapon or a problem.

“Understood,” she said.

She continued down the corridor, Umbra’s bulk warm against her leg.

Outside, the courtyard stones were dark with mist, the old statues glistening as if some long-ago flood had just retreated and left them there to dry and judge.

She crouched and took Umbra’s face between her hands. His eyes softened, the big Rottweiler pushing his muzzle into her palms like he was trying to smell what the school had put in her head.

“I know, baby,” she whispered. “Another room full of rich men with swords.”

His tail flicked in a slow, unimpressed arc.

“Stay in the dorm,” she told him, quiet but firm. “Bawal ka sa mayayabang na party. I’ll be back before you finish judging everyone.”

He rumbled a low protest, then turned when she pointed toward West Hall. He’d been trained to obey battlefield orders, not social ones. But he obeyed anyway, thick neck curving once as he looked back, huffing.

“I’ll be careful,” she said.

That earned her one last, reluctant thump of his tail before he disappeared around the corner.

The air felt thinner without him. Lighter. And more dangerous.

Hinga, apat… Labas, anim…. In two, three, four… Out, two, three, four, five, six.

She flexed her fingers once. The cool weight of her ring pressed against her skin, obsidian and gold catching the light. A reminder sitting on her middle finger: Don’t forget whose shadow you carry. Don’t forget who you are when they try to file you down.

Then she turned toward the west wing.

Salle C looked like a chapel that had given up on God and decided to worship velocity instead. High windows let in a washed-out light that turned dust motes into lazy ghosts. The gleaming floor bore the faint scuffs of a thousand impacts, quiet testimony to years of rhythm and aggression. Racks of foils and epees lined the walls like orderly threats. Old black-and-white photos of champions stared down, all hard eyes and humorless mouths.

Noah stood at the far end of the hall. The white of his fencing jacket and breeches should have diminished him, made him look ridiculous or over-polished, another legacy playing soldier. It didn’t.

The gear clung to long lines of lean muscle, showing rather than hiding the controlled power in his shoulders and thighs. Blond hair slightly mussed like he’d been pushing his hands through it, blue eyes turned darker in the flat light. He looked less like the golden poster boy of St. Valen’s and more like a blade someone had spent years grinding to perfection and then didn’t know where to sheathe.

He turned as she entered.

For a moment, he just stared. His gaze slid from her boots up over the fitted black leggings, the black athletic top with sleeves pushed to her forearms, the ponytail dragging sleek and dark over one shoulder, then up to the sharp lines of her face. Fair skin, lashes smoked in dark liner, mouth soft and unbothered. Intimidating beauty, her sisters called it. Weaponized, her lola had trained it.

This was not a male gaze slow undressing. This was an assessment. He was measuring reach. Balance. Center of gravity. And something else. Something he was trying very hard not to show.

“You came,” he said.

“That sounded suspiciously like doubt, Laurent.”

“I wasn’t sure you were the type to volunteer for… extracurricular discipline,” he replied. “You strike me as someone who prefers to set her own terms.”

The fact that he’d read that from three days and a few conversations felt like a mild violation.

“Maybe,” she said, “I’m just here to hit someone with a sword.”

A sharp edge flickered in his expression. “Then you’re in the right place.”

The Salle door banged open again. Professor Deveraux walked in, lacing the cuff of his glove.

“Laurent. Sombra. Good. No use wasting time.” His gaze landed on Althea with that same dissecting calm. “Jacket and mask are there. Size yourself. We’ll start with en garde, footwork, response timing, and restraint.”

Restraint. The word crawled down her spine like an insult.

She crossed the rack, shrugging into the fencing jacket. It settled heavily on her shoulders, thicker than it looked. The glove swallowed her hand, leather stiff against her fingers. The mask felt strange in her grip. At home, blades had been ritual and history. Kris, bolo, balisong. Edges that smelled like oil and ash, not detergent. Here, steel was sport.

Tradition repackaged as enrichment for people who’d never needed it.

She slid the mask on. The world narrowed to mesh and breath. Her own exhale sounded louder. The hall smelled like steel, polish, and old sweat.

“Laurent, with Sombra,” Deveraux said.

She stepped onto the strip opposite Noah. They saluted, his movements smooth from hundreds of repetitions, hers precise from instinct and stolen observation.

“En garde,” Deveraux called. “Let’s see what the new blood does.”

She settled into stance. Knees soft, weight centered, shoulders down. The foil sat light in her hand, unfamiliar shape, familiar promise.

Distance. Angle. Intent. Exit.

Her body remembered the math of combat from a different continent.

“Ready?” Noah’s voice slipped through the mesh, low and close.

“Try me,” she answered.

“Fence,” Deveraux snapped.

Noah moved first. Of course he did. Textbook lunge. Beautiful, in its way. A blur of white, the neat line of the attack designed to fluster, impress, humiliate anyone who’d only ever seen fencing on television.

She parried.

Not elegant. Efficient. She let his blade slide hard along hers, meeting the lunge with an ugly little screech of metal that made the hair along her arms rise. The impact reverberated in her wrist. His surprise hit the air between them like a pulse.

“Again,” Deveraux said.

She attacked this time. Not reckless. Not theatrical. Just fast. Feint high. Cut under. Use reach, not brute force. The foil became a silver extension of her hand. Noah spun out of range at the last second, shoulder twisting, breath catching in a short, sharp huff. He laughed once. A low, incredulous sound with no real humor. “Where did you learn to move like that?” he grumbled.

“YouTube,” she said.

His breath hitched again, this time closer to amused. “Liar.”

The rhythm shifted.

He pressed harder, dropping the perfect textbook form by degrees, testing her with sharper angles, reclaimed aggression.

She met him step for step, warmth beginning to bloom in her limbs, her muscles singing with the familiar high of controlled threat. This wasn’t like her lola’s training, the hours on woven mats while incense burned and prayers were whispered, knees aching, arms shaking, blade heavy. This was cleaner. Less personal. Question, answer. Attack, response. Underneath, the thing in her chest stirred. It liked this.

“Careful,” Noah said softly, after a vicious exchange left their blades locked near the center of the strip, hand guards almost kissing. Through the mesh, she could see the outline of his lips, his jaw flexing. “You’re enjoying this.”

“Scared?” she asked.

“Not of the fight.”

The air stretched thin. The foil grip bit into her palm. Beneath the glove, her ring pressed cold against the bone.

“Again,” Deveraux barked. Laurent, quit flirting with the target and test her.

Heat flared under her skin. Good thing the mask most of it.

Noah inhaled, exhaled once, sharp. Then he came at her like he meant it. Less school champion. More caged animals are permitted to run.

Their blades cracked, slid, bit. The ring of impact sang in the rafters. He drove her back with a series of calculated attacks, footwork neat, relentless.

She gave new ground. Let him. The wall crept into her periphery, stone waiting, unforgiving. A smarter, calmer version of herself would have pivoted, cut away, reset the distance.

But some traitorous part of her wanted to know what he’d do if he got her there.

He saw it. Of course he did. He lunged.

She should not have been able to stop him. Her body moved before thought could interfere. Pivot, blade beat hard across his line, use his momentum, not hers. She stepped sideways, hand snapping his foil away, using a fraction of pressure at the perfect angle.

He slid past her, barely catching himself, one palm slamming against the wall with a dull thud. For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to the brush of his shoulder against her chest, the sudden heat radiating through many layers of white and padding and pretense.

“Enough,” Deveraux snapped. “Masks off. Laurent, Sombra, with me.”

Her lungs dragged in air like she’d been underwater. She lifted her mask. Sweat clung to the hair at her temples, her skin flushed. Noah wrenched his own mask off in one rough motion. Blond hair mussed, jaw tight, eyes bright in a way that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with not being used to losing control.

They crossed the floor to him.

“Explain,” Deveraux said, looking first to Noah.

Noah’s mouth flattened. “She’s fast,” he said. “She reads intention. Not just form.”

“That much was clear,” Deveraux said dryly. His gaze cut to her, cool and too-knowing. “You don’t move like someone who learned from school sports, Miss Sombra. You move like someone who’s seen a fight end badly and decided never to let it happen again.”

She held his gaze. “Is that a problem?”

“Not in itself.” A pause. “It becomes a problem when the discipline doesn’t match the instinct.”

“I’ve never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it,” she said.

“That is exactly what people say before they do something unforgivable,” he replied, but there was no judgment in it, just experience. “Mondays and Thursdays. Same time. Laurent, continue running drills with her. Sombra - learn the rules. They give you structure to break them on purpose, not by accident.”

He turned away, already done with them.

Noah inclined his head. “Yes, sir.”

“Understood,” Althea said.

“Of course they did,” a familiar voice said from the door. “Put a blade in her hand and expected her to be nice about it.”

Althea turned.

Luca lounged against the jamb in black slacks and a charcoal sweater, still technically within dress code but looking like he’d murdered his tie in a back alley. Dark hair shoved back with his fingers, green eyes bright and sharp as glass in sea-washed light. His gaze slid over the scene in one sweep. Her flushed cheeks. Noah’s damp hair. The scuff on the wall where his hand had caught him.

“I said observation is permitted,” Deveraux said without looking over his shoulder. “Not commentary.”

“Consider it a donation,” Luca replied. “Free feedback from the peanut gallery.”

Deveraux grunted something unimpressed and disappeared into the equipment room, muttering about children with too much money and not enough sense.

Luca pushed off the wall, hands sliding into his pockets. “Knives?” he asked her, eyes glittering. “That’s what he meant, right?” Back home.”

She kept her face smooth. “He meant I don’t flinch.”

“That, too,” Luca said. “You don’t.”

Noah’s jaw ticked. “We’re done here,” he said. “I’ll walk her back to West Hall.”

“Helpful as always,” Luca murmured. “Unfortunately, I’m bored. And when I’m bored, I tend to follow interesting things.”

“I said I’ll walk her,” Noah repeated, voice like ice pulled thin.

“I heard you,” Luca said. “I’m choosing to ignore you.”

They were staring at each other now. Not boys with bruised egos. Men who’d spent their whole lives learning how to wield power without raising their voices.

She was not going to stand here while they played polite warfare over her. Althea pulled off her glove, tucked the mask under one arm, and stepped between them.

“I know where my room is,” she said calmly, “I’ve walked it.”

“Exactly,” Luca said. “She’s not a parcel, Laurent.”

Noah’s eyes softened by a fraction when they met hers. “The west wing stairwell is under repair,” he said. “The floorboards near the courtyard landing haven’t been replaced. It’s safer through the south corridor.” His tone was matter-of-fact. His eyes weren’t.

He wasn’t lying; she could tell. He also would not sleep if she went near those stairs and something happened.

“I’ll risk it,” she said lightly, because she needed him to know she wasn’t breakable.

His fingers curled once at his side. He swallowed whatever argument he wanted to make.

Three different versions of danger. One narrow strip of floor between them.

Then she turned and walked out into the corridor.

They followed.

Of course, they did.

The hall outside Salle C opened onto a long arcade of stained-glass windows. The late afternoon had slipped toward evening, the light fading from washed-out gray to bruised color. Sun slanted through the glass in bands of red, gold, and blue that painted the stone walls and the polished floor in shards of borrowed fire.

Her muscles hummed from the fight, a pleasant ache in her arm where the foil had bitten into her grip. She could still feel the ghost of Noah’s shoulder against her chest. The sharp, ugly sound he’d made when she’d turned him.

Noah walked just ahead at her right, jacket unzipped now, throat exposed, blond hair still slightly damp. Luca drifted to her left, half a pace behind, as if they’d rehearsed this formation. As if she were the point in a triangle they’d been drawing their whole lives.

“So,” Luca said eventually, voice cutting through the colored quiet, “how long have you been hunting sharp things, Sombra?”

“Since I was tall enough to reach where they hid them,” she said.

Noah’s lips twitched despite himself.

Luca’s smile sharpened, not unkind. “Let me guess,” he said. “They called it tradition. Honor. Duty.”

She slid him a look. “Don’t forget control.”

“Ah, control,” he hummed. “The prettiest word for fear.”

“Some people prefer ‘discipline,’” Noah said dryly.

“That’s because some people confuse compliance with virtue,” Luca shot back.

They were talking to each other, but they were both watching her.

She almost laughed. “You two know you sound like opposite sides of the same coin, right?”

Luca’s eyes brightened. “Tell me more,” he said, “about how I’m nothing like Laurent.”

“Don’t encourage him,” Noah rolled his eyes.

They reached the intersection where the corridor split: one way led toward the main quad, and the other bent back toward West Hall and the dormitory stairs.

Luca slowed near the branch. “Duty calls,” he sighed. “I have a meeting with a profoundly boring benefactor and his equally boring son. Apparently, the Ashford trust must be charming.” His mouth quirked. “I’d rather be stabbed slowly with a butter knife, but one must suffer for inheritance.”

Noah’s expression didn’t change. “Try not to start a scandal in my absence.”

“Oh, mon coeur,” Luca said, gaze sliding to Althea, tone softening, “some of us are scandals just by standing still.”

Her skin prickled.

The endearment threaded through her like a silk wire. Mon coeur. In his mouth, it was a tease, but something in the sound evoked the echo of a much younger voice saying the same words in a dark forest, a memory that only came back to her in blurred fragments, along with the smell of wet leaves. She went very still. So did he.

For the briefest second, Luca looked like he’d stepped on a trap he’d laid for himself. The easy charm slipped. What flashed through his eyes was not flirtation. It was recognition. Old and ugly and tender.

“We’re not finished,” he said quietly, mostly to her. “Not by a long shot.”

Then he peeled away, heading toward the quad, footsteps fading under the stained-glass shadows.

She watched him go, unsettled. That word sat in her chest like a stone.

Mon Coeur.

She had heard it before. She knew she had. Not in his voice. Not in this country. Years ago. Somewhere damp and dark and dangerous. A boy’s hand on her wrist, pulling her away from something that smelled like iron and rot.

The memory slid away when she reached for it.

“Is he always like that?” she asked, not looking at Noah.

“Worse,” Noah said. “That was his polite mood.”

“That was polite?”

“For Luca.”

They walked on, shoes whispering against stone, colored light sliding over them like stained water.

The air shifted.

Somewhere between one arch and the next, she realized Noah had steered them slightly off the straight path toward West Hall, angling down a short, side corridor where the windows narrowed and the light thinned. It wasn’t deserted, but it was quieter. Less traffic. Fewer eyes.

She stopped.

“So,” she said. “Is this the scenic route, or is this the part where you warn me that I’m going to set your school on fire by breathing too loudly?”

He turned to face her.

The last of the sun slashed across his hair, turning it almost white at the edges. In the dimmer corridor, his eyes looked darker, more storm than sky. The white of the fencing jacket framed his throat and jaw, making him look less like a student and more like a myth they’d dressed up in institutional fabric and called safe.

“You’re not going to ruin my school,” he said quietly, “St. Valen’s can survive you.”

“Then what’s your problem?” she asked.

“You.”

The word landed more like a confession than an accusation.

Her chin tipped up. “You don’t even know me.”

“That’s the problem,” he said.

He took a step closer. Not a lunge. Not a cornering move. Just a deliberate choice to shorten the distance.

“I’ve spent my whole life knowing exactly what everyone around me is capable of,” he said. “Exactly where they break. Exactly how far they’ll go if someone lets them. That’s my job. That’s how this place stays… contained.”

“Is that what you think you’re doing?” she asked, “Controlling everyone?”

“No,” he said. “But I know which of them are more dangerous than they look. I know which ones will hurt people if I’m not paying attention.”

“And me?”

Her voice was softer than she meant it to be.

His eyes didn’t flinch.

“You walked into my life,” he said, “and my first instinct was to stand between you and everything else. Just in case.”

The honesty of it rocketed something loose in her chest.

“It is.”

He was close enough now that she could feel his body heat in the inch or two of air between them. Close enough that if she drew a clean breath, her chest might brush his.

“You fought me today,” he went on, voice low, almost rough. “On the strip. You shouldn’t have been able to. Not like that. You turned a clean attack into something else. That wasn’t fencing, Althea. That was survival.”

She swallowed. “Maybe I’ve survived things.”

His jaw flexed. “And for a second, when I had you almost against the wall, you let yourself yield.”

“I was tired,” she lied.

“You were curious,” he replied.

His gaze flicked down, briefly, to her lips.

The corridor seemed to shrink around them. The archways, the stone, and the colored glass behind them faded to the background. All she really knew was the call wall at her back and the heat in front of her.

“Curiosity isn’t a sin,” she said.

“It is,” he whispered, “when it gets you killed.”

He moved.

Not suddenly. Not violently. He stepped into her space with the kind of precision that said he’d been holding himself back for days and had finally decided to see what would happen if he stopped.

Her back met stone with a soft scrape. His right hand came up, planting next to her head, palm flat against the cool wall. He didn’t touch her. His arm blocked the exit without actually trapping her. His other hand hovered uselessly for a heartbeat between them, fingers flexing like he didn’t trust what they’d do if he let them choose.

“Noah,” she said softly. “What are you doing?”

His throat worked. “I don’t know.”

It felt like an even more intimate admission than I want you.

“You should probably stop,” she whispered.

“I should,” he agreed. His eyes dropped to her lips again. “Tell me to.”

Her breath caught. She knew he heard it. He catalogued everything; that’s what he did. Her smallest reactions. The flash of a pulse in her neck. The way her fingers twitched at her sides like she wasn’t sure whether to push him away or to pull him closer. Her lola’s warning brushed across her mind like smoke: Some names are magnets. Some faces are curses. Her father’s voice layered over it, cool steel: If a Laurent looks at you too long, look away.

She didn’t turn away.

Instead, she swallowed, and the sound of it felt indecent in the narrow space between them.

“Do you want me to?” she asked.

The question dropped between them like a blade, point first.

His eyes closed, lashes dark against his cheek. When he opened them again, they looked wrecked in a way that made something low in her twist.

“No,” he said. “Not even a little.”

His hand lifted, slow and deliberate, giving her every opportunity to duck, cut, or walk away. But she didn’t move.

Knuckles brushed her jaw in the lightest contact possible, a whisper of skin ever hypersensitive nerve endings.

Electricity raced down her spine.

“Then there’s your answer,” she managed. “If you’re so good at control… use it on yourself.”

He laughed once, low and rough, like something tearing. “That’s the problem, Althea,” he said. “Around you, I don’t have any.”

His fingers drift higher, tucking a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. It was a simple gesture, one that could have been chaste. But he didn’t pull away immediately; his fingertips lingered against the fragile curve of her ear, tracing the delicate shell like he was memorizing it. His thumb slipped to rest at the hinge of her jaw.

Her heart hammered. Her breathing pattern shattered.

Hinga apat… Labas -

It didn’t help. She could feel the school all around them. The weight of history in the stone. The watchful gaze of portraits in other halls. Somewhere far away, a bell started to toll the hour, slow and solemn.

He leaned in, barely. Just enough that his breath brushed her cheek. Clean soap, sweat, faint metallic tang from the salle. If she turned her head an inch, their lips would meet.

The thought terrified her.

The thought thrilled her enough that her fingers curled against the wall.

“Why?” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “You don’t even know me.”

His thumb pressed a fraction harder against her jaw. “I know enough.”

“What exactly do you think you know?” she asked.

“That you don’t scare easily,” he said. “That you’re kinder than you pretend to be. That you’ve been trained your whole life to be someone else’s idea of acceptable, and you’re so tired it’s almost killing you.” His voice roughened. “And if Luca hadn’t backed off in the courtyard, I would have.”

Time stopped.

Then footsteps echoed at the far end of the corridor.

Student voices. Laughter. Someone calling, “Laurent?” followed by a second, sharper, “Noah, you in there?”

He jerked back like he’d touched a live wire. His hand dropped. His spine straightened so quickly that it hurt to look at.

The transformation happened in real time.

The wrecked boy vanished.

The Laurent mask slid into place.

“Your floor is up one level,” he said, voice suddenly crisp, precise. He gestured toward the stairwell just visible around the bend. “Left at the next arch.”

She stared at him.

He’d scrubbed the last thirty seconds out of his posture. Out of his expression. Out of his voice. If someone had walked up now, they’d think he’d been giving her directions, not almost losing his mind up against a wall.

“Do you always run away this fast?” she asked quietly.

His jaw clenched. “I’m not running.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Trying,” he said, voice low, “very hard not to make a mistake I can’t fix.”

The approaching voices grew clearer. Closer. A cluster of legacies turning the corner at any moment. His eyes flicked toward the sound, then back to her.

Something like an apology flickered there.

“Goodnight, Miss Sombra,” he said. The formality tasted like ash between them.

He turned and walked toward the oncoming students. By the time they rounded the curve, his expression was neutral, and his shoulders were easy. Someone clapped him on the back. Another asked about practice. He answered like nothing in him had shifted.

Althea stayed where she was for a long beat, back against cold stone, heart still running ahead of her.

Finally, she pushed off the wall and headed up the stairwell.

Umbra was waiting at the top, somehow having slipped past whatever rule book claimed to govern animals in the dorm. He pressed his massive head into her hip. The second she reached the landing, a low growl rumbling through his chest when he caught the lingering scent of metal and Noah on her.

“Not now,” she whispered, fingers sinking into his fur. “I’m already in trouble.”

Trouble.

The word rang in her like a struck bell.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out. A message from an unsaved number with an international code and a Manila timestamp. Her thumb hovered before she opened it.

One line.

We hear you’ve made an impression already, anak. Remember the name you carry.

Sender ID: R. Sombra

The corridor seemed to tilt.

Between the boy who had nearly pressed his lips to hers in a foreign school and the father who didn’t need to raise his voice to cage her an ocean away, Althea understood something sharp and ugly:

St. Valen’s wasn’t the prison. She was.

And for the first time in her life, she wasn’t sure if she wanted the bars to hold… or break.