تسجيل الدخولTheo's POVThe bar thing was everywhere by Sunday night.I know this because I woke up Monday morning to forty seven notifications, three voice messages from people I barely knew, and Ji-yeon had apparently posted a written account of the whole thing in the year group chat titled "Audrey Warner Said What She Said" with three fire emojis and zero further context.I was, genuinely, having the best morning of my life.Luca came downstairs in the villa looking like a man who had made peace with being perceived and found it acceptable. Adrian was already at the kitchen table with coffee, reading, but there was something in the set of his shoulders that was the Adrian version of extremely pleased with himself.Audrey came down last, looked at her phone, looked at Ji-yeon's message, and said "oh no" in a tone that meant the complete opposite of oh no."You kissed all three of us on a dancefloor in front of the entire year group," I said."I'm aware," she said, stealing my coffee."In order.
Audrey's POVTheo suggested the town trip at breakfast on Sunday with the energy of someone who had definitely been planning it since Thursday and was pretending it was spontaneous."Fresh air," he said. "Normal human activities. Bowling. Food that isn't academy cafeteria food. We deserve this.""We literally had a rest day four days ago," Adrian said."That was recovery," Theo said. "This is living. Different category."Twenty three people ended up going which was how I found myself on a academy minibus at noon sitting between Luca and the window watching the mountain road unspool below us while Theo ran a playlist through the bus speakers that Coach would have definitely vetoed if Coach had been there, which he wasn't, because this was a civilian operation.Cece sat three rows ahead of me.She'd found me at six AM at the track like she said she would, and what she told me was not spy stuff, not empire stuff, not anything I'd been bracing for.It was so much more annoying than that.
Audrey's POVOkay so here's the thing about being competitive.I'm not proud of it. I'm self aware enough to know that spending my Saturday engineering reasons to be physically attached to my boyfriends because three pretty girls transferred from Lyon was not my most mature moment. I know that. I fully acknowledge that.I was doing it anyway.It started at breakfast when I sat in Luca's lap instead of the chair next to him, which I had never done before at the breakfast table, and which made Theo choke on his coffee and Adrian look up from his book with the specific expression of someone recalibrating their morning expectations.Luca didn't say anything. He just put his arm around my waist and kept eating like this was completely normal, which it wasn't, but he was clearly not going to be the one to point that out."Good morning," Theo said, once he'd stopped choking."Great morning," I said."You're in his lap.""I'm aware.""At the table.""Theo.""I'm just noting the location," he
Audrey's POVI noticed it on Friday and by Saturday I was done being subtle about it.Friday was when Isadora showed up to the library at the exact time Adrian always studied. Not approximately. Exactly. Which meant she'd been watching his schedule, which meant this wasn't accidental, which meant I needed to seriously reconsider my policy of giving people the benefit of the doubt.She sat down across from him with a textbook she definitely didn't need and a smile she absolutely knew what to do with and within ten minutes they were deep in something that looked, from the doorway where I was standing, extremely like a study date.Adrian wasn't encouraging it. He was doing the Adrian thing — answering questions precisely, not making unnecessary eye contact, keeping his hands busy with his own work. But he also wasn't leaving. And every time Isadora laughed at something he said, which was often, something in my chest did an extremely uncharitable thing.I went to the garage and reorganize
Audrey's POVThe F1 Academy ran on two things: adrenaline and gossip. Not necessarily in that order.By Thursday morning the Margot situation had evolved past its original shape into something the academy could collectively chew on, which meant it had been combined with at least three other rumors, assigned motivations nobody actually had, and was now apparently part of a larger narrative about Lyon Academy transfer politics that Coach Harlan had to address at morning briefing."Training assignments are final," Coach said, in the tone he used when he wanted everyone to understand the conversation was over before it started. "Miss Duval's reassignment was requested and processed. We're moving on."Nobody moved on.The track at nine AM had a specific energy that wasn't about racing.I noticed it the second I got there. The way people clustered differently than usual, the particular quality of attention that meant everyone was watching something without looking like they were watching i
Audrey'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
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 th
Audrey's POVMonday arrived with the specific energy of an institution that had been quietly losing its mind for two weeks and had finally run out of exams to distract itself with.I found out approximately four minutes into my walk to first period.A junior — someone I vaguely recognized from the
Theo's POVThe day after the empire ended, I woke up and immediately had a crisis.Not a real one. A scheduling crisis. Because for the first time in months — actual months — nobody had anywhere to be. No exam, no council summons, no mysterious black box on the doorstep. Just a Saturday. A complete
Audrey's POVAdrian had the thing set up by nine, which honestly was kind of insulting given the scale of what it was about to do.It looked like the inside of a broken radio. Copper, some wires, a few runes etched around the edge. That was it. That was the device that was about to end a criminal e







