LOGINAudrey's POVI didn't sleep badly. That was the thing I kept turning over at seven AM, staring at the ceiling of my room with the early light doing its thing through the curtains. I'd expected to sleep badly. I'd expected to lie awake running the thirty seconds on a loop — the door opening, Margot's face, Luca's hands on her shoulders already pushing back — but I hadn't. I'd slept fine. Six hours, clean, no loop.Which meant I'd processed it. Which meant I trusted him. Which meant my stomach had finally gotten the memo my brain had been sending for weeks.That should have felt like a complete resolution.It almost did.I got up, pulled on the first hoodie I found — Theo's, obviously, it was always Theo's — and went downstairs.Luca was already in the kitchen. Of course he was. Six forty-five AM and he was at the stove with the timing reference list, the over-engineered eggs, the whole system running like nothing had happened.Except he'd made tea instead of coffee. My tea. The exact t
Luca's POVThe storage room door jammed at six PM, which was the kind of detail that should have made me suspicious immediately, except I was too busy being annoyed about missing dinner to think about it properly.I'd been in the equipment room sorting tactical gear for the next training cycle, alone, because Coach had asked me to do inventory and I'm bad at saying no to direct requests. Margot had come in ten minutes earlier looking for a spare helmet, and somewhere between her finding the helmet and me finishing the last shelf, the door had swung shut and refused to open again."It's the ward," I said, pushing against it a second time. "Academy security wards lock external doors automatically after six. It'll release in the morning or someone has to manually override it from outside.""So we're stuck," Margot said."We're stuck."She didn't seem bothered by this the way I would have liked her to be bothered by it. She sat down on a stack of crates and pulled out her phone, found no
Adrian's POVIsadora found me in the workshop on Thursday, which I should have predicted because she'd been finding me everywhere since Wednesday with the kind of consistency that wasn't accidental."I've been thinking about the rune-suspension idea," she said, setting her bag down on the bench like she'd been invited.She hadn't been invited."It's a flawed concept," I said, not looking up from the panel I was recalibrating. "Rune stabilization requires a fixed reference point. A suspension system is, by definition, in constant motion. The math doesn't hold.""What if the rune moved with the suspension instead of against it?"I stopped what I was doing.It was a good question. That was the problem. Isadora asked good questions, the kind that made me want to actually answer them instead of redirecting her somewhere else, and I'd spent the last day and a half being annoyed at myself for finding her interesting."Theoretically possible," I said. "You'd need a rune that updates its refer
Luca's POVCoach Harlan put up the pairing sheet at eight AM and I already knew before I looked.Margot Duval. Black Ridge circuit, full lap, head to head.I stared at the sheet for a second longer than I needed to. Not because I was nervous about the race. I wasn't nervous about races, that wasn't a thing that happened to me anymore, not since September, not since I had three other heartbeats running through my chest at all times telling me I was fine even when my brain hadn't caught up yet.I was nervous about Audrey's face when she saw the sheet."Oh, this is going to be great," Theo said, way too loud, reading over my shoulder. "This is going to be so great.""It's a training exercise," I said."It's a training exercise where you're racing the hot French girl who's been looking at you like you're a problem she wants to solve," Theo said. "Audrey's going to lose her mind.""Audrey is not going to lose her mind.""Audrey is one hundred percent going to lose her mind," Theo said, gri
Audrey's POVThey arrived on a Wednesday, which felt wrong. Bad news should arrive on a Monday. Mondays were built for it. Wednesdays were supposed to be harmless.I was in the garage when I heard about them. Knee deep in the Hellcat's engine bay, completely content, listening to Theo's playlist through the villa speakers, when Ji-yeon appeared in the doorway with the expression she wore when she had information she knew I wasn't going to like."Three transfers just checked in," she said."Okay," I said, not looking up."From the Lyon Academy."I looked up. Lyon Academy was the other serious racing program in Europe. Smaller than Black Ridge, more selective, better funded. The kind of place that produced drivers who won things."All three?" I said."All three. Mid-year transfer, which apparently the new council approved last week." Ji-yeon leaned against the doorframe. "They're already at the track."I went back to the engine. "And?""And they're gorgeous," Ji-yeon said. "Like, aggres
.Audrey's POVThe drama started because of a rune.Not a dramatic rune. Not a Nexus-level spatial displacement situation. A small, ordinary stabilizing rune that Adrian had etched into the doorframe of the garage back in October, one of about forty he'd quietly placed around the villa without telling anyone, and which had apparently been slowly degrading for weeks because nobody had recalibrated it.She found out because the garage light started flickering at eleven PM on a Tuesday and Adrian appeared from nowhere in his dark grey sweater with a kit she'd never seen before and crouched at the doorframe like he'd been expecting this.She leaned against the Hellcat and watched him work.That was the thing about Adrian that had taken her the longest to understand. He showed up. Not loudly, not with announcement, not in the Theo way that filled every room he entered. Just — quietly, consistently, in the specific place where something needed doing. The coffee at the right temperature. The
Audrey's POVThe rooftop was cold and she'd come up without a jacket, which was stupid, but going back down meant walking past three doors behind which three people would ask if she was okay, and she didn't have an answer that wasn't I don't know yet.She sat with her knees pulled up and looked at
Theo's POVShe came in from the garage at nine fourteen PM and the bond did something new.Theo had learned the bond's vocabulary over months of living inside it — Audrey's panic was static, her fury was directional heat, her happiness was the frequency that made everything feel slightly more worth
Audrey's POVThe last exam finished at three PM on a Friday.Theo celebrated by sliding down the villa hallway in his socks, which was both a tripping hazard and, she had to admit, impressively committed as an expression of relief. Luca closed his exam folder with the particular finality of someone
Adrian's POVHe almost made it.Four days. That was all he'd needed. Four days of controlled precision, of keeping the grade report in one compartment and everything else in another, of answering questions with half-truths that were technically accurate and cost him nothing he couldn't afford.He a







