Chapter Two: The Floating Mountain

“You’re actually going.”

Priya said it like an accusation, arms crossed, blocking my apartment doorway like she could physically stop me from leaving.

“I have to go. It’s not optional. It’s the only way out of four flights of stairs and a landlord who thinks ‘broken heat’ is a personality trait.”

“It’s a school for monsters, Mia.”

“They prefer ‘races.’ I read a pamphlet.”

She didn’t laugh. I’d never seen Priya not laugh at something, not once in four years, and it made my stomach twist worse than the letter had.

“What if something happens to you up there?”

“Then I guess you get my apartment. Rent’s due on the fifth.”

“I hate you.” She hugged me anyway, hard enough to hurt my still-bruised elbow. “Text me. Every day. I don’t care if it’s just one word.”

“Every day,” I promised, and meant it, and knew even as I said it that I probably wouldn’t manage it.

The train to the Academy left from a platform I’d never noticed before, tucked behind the regular station like the city was embarrassed of it. No ticket booth. Just a set of stone steps going down instead of up, which should’ve told me something.

I wasn’t the only human on the train. I counted four others, all younger than me, all wearing the same expression. Somewhere between excited and about to throw up.

“First time?” the boy across from me asked. He had a duffel bag with a peeling luggage tag and hands that wouldn’t stop moving.

“Yeah.”

“Me too. My cousin says the entrance exam nearly killed him and he’s part troll.”

“Comforting.”

“I didn’t even take the physical trial,” he said, lowering his voice like it was a secret. “Got a waiver. No idea why.”

I went very still.

“Me too,” I said.

We looked at each other for a second too long. Neither of us said anything else about it, but I filed it away. I wasn’t the only anomaly on this train, which meant maybe I wasn’t as special as that letter made it sound.

Or maybe it meant something worse. I didn’t know yet which one to be scared of.

The train didn’t stop. It climbed.

I felt it happen before I saw it, the angle of the floor tilting, my stomach dropping the way it does on the first hill of a rollercoaster. Outside the window, the city fell away, buildings shrinking to the size of teeth, and then there was nothing but cloud, thick and gray and close enough to touch.

“Whoa,” the boy across from me whispered.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. My hands had found the edge of my seat and gripped it hard enough to hurt.

Then the clouds broke.

The Academy didn’t sit on a mountain. It was the mountain, or what used to be one, a jagged slice of rock hanging in open sky with no visible support, towers spiraling up from it like something had grown there instead of been built. Waterfalls poured off the edges of it and disappeared into cloud before they ever hit ground. Bridges of pale stone connected floating gardens to floating courtyards to a central hall with a roof made of glass that caught the light and threw it back gold.

It looked like something that shouldn’t exist. It looked like it had been built by people who didn’t believe in limits.

“That’s insane,” the boy said.

“Yeah.”

“You scared?”

I thought about lying. Didn’t see the point.

“Terrified.”

The train let us off on a platform carved into the mountain itself, and the second my feet hit stone, I understood something the pamphlet hadn’t bothered to mention.

Everyone else already knew each other.

Kids in expensive coats greeted each other with names and titles, clan crests stitched into their collars, a boy with actual small horns laughing with a girl whose eyes were solid gold, no pupil at all. Someone’s luggage floated behind them without anyone touching it. A group near the stairs turned into wolves and back into people just to settle an argument about who walked faster, and nobody so much as blinked.

I stood there in my one good jacket, holding a duffel bag I’d packed in twenty minutes, and felt about as out of place as a human could feel.

“Move it,” someone said behind me, and I turned in time to get shoved sideways by a guy who didn’t so much as glance back to see who he’d hit.

Broad shoulders. Dark hair. Moving like he owned the platform and everyone standing on it.

“Excuse you,” I said.

He stopped.

Turned around slow, like he wanted me to see him deciding whether I was worth the effort of a response. Sharp jaw, golden eyes that weren’t human and weren’t trying to hide it, a look on his face like he’d just found something unpleasant stuck to his shoe.

“You’re the human,” he said. Not a question.

“I have a name.”

“Don’t care.” His eyes dragged over me, unimpressed, and something in my chest went hot and furious in a way that had nothing to do with fear. “Waived the physical trial. Didn’t earn your spot. Everyone already knows.”

“Good. Saves me the introduction.”

That got a reaction, at least. His eyes narrowed, and his jaw tightening like he wasn’t used to people talking back.

“This isn’t a place for people who don’t belong,” he said. “You’ll figure that out fast.”

He walked off before I could answer, disappearing into the crowd of students who all seemed to know exactly who he was, several of them stepping aside without being asked.

“Who was that?” I asked the boy from the train, who’d gone pale watching the whole thing.

“Ronan Kade,” he said, like the name should mean something. “Werewolf clan heir. Top of the first years.”

Great.

I hadn’t even made it through the gates yet, and I already had an enemy.