Highest Alter

Isadora:

Yesterday was like a fever dream, or a living nightmare, just a blur of shadows and voices that I couldn't sort though. My body was weak, my head was foggy. I was in and out of concoiusness, but I knew the guys had been there, sometimes all of them, sometimes just one. But they never left me alone. Not once all night. I don't know whether to thank them, or be weary.

I finally had enough strength to get out of bed this morning. The air tastes of storm.

Ashwyck’s towers knife the sky, their slate roofs slick with last night’s rain, and the bells toll like a warning no one else seems to hear. I pull my cloak tighter, but the chill isn’t from the weather. It’s the way the shadows lean closer when I walk, the way I feel watched even when the courtyard is empty.

The boys are still near. I can sense them the way I sense my own pulse.

A brush of cold—Silas’s signature—slides along the back of my neck. I catch a smear of movement in the corner of my eye, the silhouette of a man half-made of smoke. He doesn’t show himself, but I know he’s there. Rhett’s steadier heat presses in from somewhere behind, a wild warmth like an ember in the chest. Kai is a restless spark, quicksilver thoughts sparking in the air like static. And Lucian…his presence is a low hum of iron and danger, the kind that makes your heartbeat quicken even when you know better.

I step into Botany and let the heavy door thud shut. The smell of damp earth and crushed leaves fills the glasshouse classroom. Sunlight, weak and watery, scatters through panes streaked with rain.

Loralie is already at our table, her golden hair haloed by the misted light. “You’re alive,” she whispers, sliding a jar of moon-vine closer so the professor can’t overhear. “I was ready to hex Rhett myself if you didn’t show.”

“I’m fine,” I lie. The word tastes thin.

Her eyes narrow. “Nightmares again?”

I shrug. “Just couldn’t sleep.” That part, at least, is true. The dreams have teeth—flames, whispers, a presence that wants me claimed or burned.

Professor begins a lecture on carnivorous flora, his voice a droning buzz that fades behind the hiss of the greenhouse misters. The vines seem to listen, tilting their heads toward me like hungry pets. And then—Isadora.

My name floats through the air as softly as breath.

I freeze. Loralie keeps taking notes, unaware. The whisper comes again, a hiss of leaves sliding against glass. He comes. He waits.

I grip my quill until the nib snaps, ink bleeding across my fingers. When I glance up, the shadows between the hanging ferns have lengthened, thick as oil. One curls into the shape of a hand before melting back into nothing.

I press my lips together and focus on the steady scrape of quills, the smell of soil. Just shadows. Just my imagination.

The bell releases us in a flurry of parchment and chatter. Loralie reaches for me. “Lunch?”

Before I can answer, the air shifts. A familiar heat at my back.

Rhett.

I turn and find him there, tall and dark against the greenhouse door, eyes the color of late-harvest whiskey. “She'll be with us,” he says, not bothering to hide the possessiveness that rumbles through his voice.

Loralie arches a brow at me, but she only smirks. “High Table escort? Look at you, Gravelle.”

Kai appears next, stepping out of a wash of sunlight with a grin too sharp to be harmless. Lucian follows like a stormcloud, hands in his pockets, expression carved from stone. And Silas…he doesn’t walk. He simply is, a slice of night that slips into being beside the others.

The room stills. Conversations stutter and die as every head swivels toward us.

Rhett offers a hand. “Come.”

It’s not a question. My heart thuds once, hard. I should say no. I don’t. My fingers slide into his, calloused warmth swallowing mine.

We walk through the halls like a tide cutting through rock. Students press back, their whispers chasing us: the Royals—and now her. I keep my chin high, though every step rings too loud against the stone.

The Great Hall blooms open, cathedral-vast, chandeliers dripping with candles that never melt. The High Table waits on its raised dais, a place of privilege and politics. I never once though I would find myself at this alter. Today they make it look inevitable.

Lucian pulls a chair for me—courtly, mocking. Kai flashes a wicked smile as he slides the goblet of dark wine toward my place setting. Silas stands a beat too long behind me, a winter draft in his wake, before he takes the seat at my left. Rhett settles on my right, all quiet dominance.

Every gaze in the hall crawls across my skin.

I try to focus on the food—roasted pheasant, spiced roots—but the shadows move differently here. They ripple under the tables like black water. From the corner of my eye, one uncoils up the stone pillar and tilts a head shaped like smoke.

Beware…

The whisper is silk and ice. My knife clatters against the plate.

Kai notices first. “Isadora?” His voice is low enough that only the table hears.

“I’m fine.” Again, the lie. My pulse beats against my throat, frantic.

Silas’s cold hand brushes the back of mine, so slight I almost think I imagine it. “The wards are restless,” he murmurs, a secret meant only for me. “You feel it too.”

Lucian’s gaze cuts sideways, black as a raven’s wing. “Something hunts,” he says. Not a question.

Rhett leans close enough that his breath warms the shell of my ear. “You’re safe.”

Am I?

The hall seems to tilt. Candles gutter though no draft stirs. The shadows stretch long across the floor, their edges sharp as blades. They whisper again—my name, my fate, words I can’t catch but feel in the hollow of my bones.

I lift my goblet with a hand that trembles despite my will. Across the table Kai watches me like a hawk, clever eyes bright with unspoken calculations. Silas’s gaze is lighter, softer, like a moon bleached night tide ready to pull me under. Rhett sits like a shield carved of flesh and heat, and Lucian…Lucian is the storm itself, barely contained.

The whispers rise, overlapping, a choir of warning only I can hear.

The predator waits.

The fire returns.

Choose your fate or be devoured.

My appetite dies. I set the goblet down and force my voice steady. “I think I need air.”

Four pairs of eyes snap to me, each a different shade of obsession.

“We’ll come,” Rhett says.

Of course they will.

I stand, the hall’s murmur swelling around us, and the shadows follow like loyal hounds.