Chapter 7

ELVIRA'S POV

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Dinner arrived just a few minutes after seven. I was curled up watching something on my laptop when Anika knocked and announced food was ready.

The girls have turned the general reading table into an actual dinner table… place settings, napkins, fairy lights strung along the back of the sofa, a film paused on the flatscreen.

"You survived day one in this school!" Anika grins. " We figured that deserved a celebration."

"This is really lovely, girls. Thank you so much."

"Thank you for completing our dorm," Lexa says.

"Try the triple-cooked plantain porridge," Daphne adds, rubbing my back. "That recipe is the best thing in existence besides fresh meat."

I have tried it. She was not wrong. We ate until the plates were empty and the film was forgotten in the background, and for a little while I forgot to be nervous about anything…even about the growling I witnessed on the lawn, nor the mezzanine boy I saw, and even the one year I spent at home before I joined Wolford Academy. We were just four girls on a sofa, happily arguing about which actor in the film is objectively the worst.

Lexa insists on doing my astrology chart with an app on her phone, which declares me "an absolute chaos gremlin, but the good kind," and refuses to elaborate further no matter how many times I ask. Daphne falls asleep while watching the movie before the credits even roll on the screen. Anika throws a cushion at her until she wakes with a snort loud enough to make the rest of us properly howl.

I slept properly that night for the first time in a week.

Tuesday morning, Anika and I split off after Form. Mathematics class was the first thing. I found my seat, got my things out, and started copying the date off the board. I could feel eyes on me before I'd even finished writing on my book.

I looked up. My eyes met the golden blonde boy.

Xavier. One of the three.

He was slouched in his chair, deceptively relaxed, but his eyes were locked on me as if nothing else in the room existed. I couldn’t look away. There was something in my chest that pulled me towards him. It was an actual physical pull, and I had to fight the urge to just get up and sit closer to him.

He seemed to realize he was making me uncomfortable and blinked first, smiling instead. He had straight white teeth; his incisors were just a fraction sharper than a human's ever would be. I wondered how long they extend when he feeds and hunts prey for fresh meat.

I offer a small smile back. He looked away, then I finally remembered how to breathe properly.

Alchemy lass was next, with Eliano. He was already seated, patting the spot beside him.

"I do hope you’re having a good day so far, Elvi?"

"My day just average. What about yours?"

"I skipped first period, so my day is pretty good, actually."

"You skipped?"

"Perks of being a Wolford."

"What about your future…" I started those wors, and immediately wanted to swallow the words back.

His eyes went dark. I feel like the worst friend alive.

"Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say, Eli…"

"It's fine." He waves it off, too quickly. "Just be grateful I bothered showing up to keep you company."

A shadow falls across our table.

"I'm sure Elvira would've found someone to keep her company," a deep, gruff voice drawls. "I do hope it's someone better, probably."

I looked up… way up — to a guy who makes even Eliano look average height. He had Ochre-brown skin with a stubbled jaw. His dark jade eyes, evergreen-dark, and messy chocolate-brown hair made him look exquisite. He was built like he trains for a living.

I didn't need anyone to tell me he's one of The Three. It was radiating all over him… that same low-grade hum of pay attention to me that Rafael and Xavier both carry; he had it in him. Up close, he smells like pine and woodsmoke.

"Elvira, meet Gideon," Eliano says in a boring manner.

Gideon and Eliano trade a look I can't quite read… it was not friendly, but not hostile either.

Gideon's eyes find mine and my heart stutters. I have to consciously remember how my lungs work.

"Hi," I managed to say.

His smile spreads slower this time. "Hello."

"Gideon. Sit down so I can start my lesson," the teacher calls, and he scowls, drops into a seat across the room, but not before I catch him glancing back twice more.

I breathe easier and freely once the distance between us is better. I understand clearly, all of a sudden, exactly why the whole school talks about The Three… there's a gravitational pull attached to them; they just command a room without trying to.

Eliano and I work through the worksheet together, laughing our way through it. Gideon watches us from where he sits. His stare shifts to a glare every time we crack up.

When the bell rang, I found the girls at the Pentagon.

"I met another one of The Three today in class," I openly told them. "Gideon."

"Ooh, him," Daphne said. "He gets into fights a lot of times. He's an Animalius… bonded to wolves. He gets all territorial about it, like his own instincts rub off clearly on him."

"He was glaring a lot. Is he friends with Eliano at all?"

"I don’t really know about that," Anika says. "I have seen them talk a couple of times before."

"I think they should be, since their families all sit on the same governing board."

"Maybe that's exactly why they're not," Lexa muses. "They might be competing with each other instead. They don't really let anyone in besides each other."

I took my free period in the library, alone this time. I settled at a table near the tall stacks and got my notes in order; most of the materials were already familiar to me from summer classes I took at home. The library smells the way libraries always do… it smelled like dust, old paper, and faintly like beeswax from whatever they polish the shelves with. A few other students were scattered around, with their heads down. Most students were ignoring me now that the novelty of the new girl had worn off by a few notches.

I got my head down when I felt it… I felt the sensation of being watched by someone, sharp enough to prickle up my spine. I looked up.

A pair of eyes met mine through the gap in the bookshelves. It was red, deep and wet red.

It wasn’t gold nor jade. Or the cyan I've already catalogued in my previous class.

It was something colder.

I sat frozen for a second too long, with my notebook forgotten under my hand, every instinct I've spent a year trying to bury telling me to move, to get up and to put a wall at my back.

I blinked, and they're gone.

Just a trick of the light, I told myself,  with my heart hammering anyway. I guess, old fear coiling awake somewhere behind my ribs.

I didn't believe it for a second.