Chapter 2

Iris' pov~

The woman waiting for me outside the principal's office is not what I expect. I come out of that door ready to be difficult with whoever is on the other side because that is the energy I have decided to carry through this entire experience. However, she smiles at me like she means it and that throws off my whole plan.

She is tall with warm brown eyes and neat locs pinned back from her face. She is holding a clipboard and wearing a lanyard that says STAFF. She introduces herself as Miss Odera, the principal's secretary, and she tells me she will be showing me around before getting me settled.

"I also want to say," she adds, and her voice drops just slightly, "that I know this was not how you planned your Tuesday. The way you were brought here was not easy and I am sorry for that, even if I cannot change it."

I look at her. My silver eye is doing its quiet reading of her and she actually means it. There is no performance in her, no script she is following to make me compliant. She is just a person who thinks the method was rough and is saying so. I clear my throat and tell her the tour sounds fine. She nods and we start walking.

Aethon Academy is not a building. I understood that vaguely from what Principal Adaeze told me but understanding it and seeing it are two completely different things.

It is more like a city that someone put a roof over and called a school. The corridors connect to courtyards that open into training grounds that lead to whole separate buildings, all of it in the same ancient stone, all of it lit by a combination of actual torches and something that glows without any visible source.

I have to admit though. This place is beautiful...

She tells me Aethon has existed for over four hundred years. It was built as a place where supernatural bloodlines could train, develop their abilities, and exist without the complications of hiding from the human world.

Students come from all over, some enrolled young, some brought in later when their abilities manifest in ways. They live here, train here, eat here, and for the duration of their enrollment this is their entire world. There is no going home for the weekend. There are no visits unless the academy approves them.

The students are the part that really gets me. We pass a group of them in a wide courtyard. I slow down without meaning to because they are moving together in a coordinated way. Miss Odera tells me they are wolf students and keeps walking. I follow her and make myself stop staring.

The vampires are worse. We pass two of them in a corridor and the problem is not that they look dangerous, it is that they look like eye candy.

They are too still and composed. One of them glances at me as I pass and I look right back at him with my silver eye and he blinks, just once, and looks away first. Small victory. I will take it.

The fae are in a glass walled studio we pass on the upper level and I stop walking entirely for a full three seconds because I cannot help it.

They look like someone took the idea of beautiful and pushed it past the point where it stops being comfortable. They look so symmetrical and bright. Miss Odera tugs my sleeve gently and I remember how to walk.

The mages are the most interesting to me. Their marks move. I notice it on a girl sitting on a bench outside what looks like a library, symbols running up her forearms in dark ink that shift and rearrange themselves while I watch.

She is reading and completely unbothered by the fact that her skin is doing that. I want to ask her about it but Miss Odera is already explaining that mages carry their power visibly on their bodies and the markings reflect their current ability level and focus. The more complex the mark the more powerful the mage.

"And what do I carry?" I ask. "Since I am apparently just human."

Miss Odera is quiet for a beat. "You aren't entirely one anymore," she says carefully. "The academy is still determining the full scope of that."

Which is a very polished way of saying they do not know what I am and they are keeping me around to find out. Fantastic.

Then she tells me about the hierarchy. Power is everything here. Your bloodline, your ability, your rank in training, all of it determines how much space you get to take up and how people treat you.

As a registered human with no declared supernatural bloodline I am at the bottom of that system officially. She tells me some students will see that on paper and behave accordingly.

I nod like I am taking this very seriously. "And what would you suggest I do about that?"

She looks at me sideways. "I would suggest patience."

"And what would you suggest if patience is not really in my personality?"

She almost smiles. "Then I would suggest you be very careful and very smart about which battles you pick."

I tell her I am always smart about it. She looks like she believes me approximately forty percent. Fair enough.

We reach the female dormitory building at the end of the tour and it is actually the nicest building I have seen so far, warmer stone, window boxes with actual flowers, a common room visible through the ground floor windows with students sprawled across furniture looking comfortable and normal.

Miss Odera tells me to wait and goes inside to sort out my room assignment. I lean against the wall outside and look up at the sky. I breathe for a moment without performing anything for anyone.

She comes back out seven minutes later and the look on her face tells me everything before she opens her mouth.

"The female dormitory," she says, "is currently at full capacity."

I stare at her.

"There is not a single available room or bed in this building."

"However, academy policy states that any enrolled student without assigned housing is to be placed in whatever space is available regardless of the dormitory building."

I continue staring at her.

"There is a vacancy in the male dormitory." She says it in one breath as if she's scared of my reaction.

"I want to be clear that you do not have to be comfortable with this and I can raise the issue with Principal Adaeze if you would like to wait while alternative arrangements are explored."

I am quiet for two full seconds. I think about the fact that I was kidnapped this morning. I have been enrolled in a supernatural school without my consent, informed that my entire childhood was built on a lie and told that I cannot leave. I think about all of that and then I think about the male dormitory.

A slow smile works its way onto my face.

"The male dorms," I say.

Miss Odera watches me carefully. "Yes."

"With supernatural men."

"That is correct."

I push off the wall and pick up the small bag of things she gave me after the tour, basic supplies the academy apparently provides for new students.

I look in the direction she came from and then I look back at her. "Well," I say, "at least something interesting is finally happening." I start walking before she can respond and I hear her footsteps hurrying to catch up behind me and I keep smiling because this whole day has been a disaster but this, at least, this I can work with.

Miss Odera falls into step beside me and clears her throat. "I do want to mention that the two students you will be sharing with are quite..."

"Quite what?" I ask.

She pauses for just a moment too long. "Significant," she finishes.

I have no idea what that means. I am also not sure it matters. I am Iris Vael and I have been handling significant all day. At least, in all these bullshit, I'll definitely be getting some action soon.