Chapter 3: Something Under Her Skin

Three weeks into her first term, Wren had learned exactly two things about her own supposed magic. It refused to show up when she tried to summon it on command, no matter how many hours she spent in the practice yards attempting the basic exercises every other first year could do without thinking. And it apparently had opinions of its own about when it preferred to appear, opinions nobody had bothered consulting her on. She’d tried meditation exercises a kind upperclassman had suggested, tried the breathing patterns from her elemental theory textbook, tried simply wanting it hard enough in the dark of her room at night. Nothing worked. Whatever lived inside her clearly answered to a different set of rules than the ones this school seemed built around.

She was still failing every practical exam. She’d stopped expecting otherwise.

What she hadn’t stopped doing was walking the back corridor between the library and her dormitory after evening study hours, mostly because it was faster and mostly because she’d never once had trouble on it before. That streak ended on a Thursday.

Three upperclassmen were waiting for her at the corridor’s midpoint, positioned with the kind of deliberate spacing that meant they’d planned exactly where to stand before she ever turned the corner. Wren recognized one of them from the dining hall, a girl who’d made a point of loudly wondering aloud whether admitting a human lowered the academy’s entire reputation.

“Nice night for a walk,” the girl said, and the other two shifted to close the gap behind Wren before she’d fully registered she was being boxed in.

“I don’t want any trouble.”

“Funny. We do.” The girl’s eyes had already gone that particular shade of gold that meant whatever she was under the surface was getting closer to it. “We just want to make sure you understand something. This place wasn’t built for things like you. Someone should have told you that before you wasted a letter on it.”

“I didn’t write the letter. I didn’t ask for any of this either.” Wren kept her voice steady even though her hands weren’t. “If it bothers you this much, take it up with whoever sent it.”

“We’re taking it up with you. You’re the one standing here.” The girl took another step closer, close enough that Wren could smell something faintly like ash coming off her skin. “Humans don’t belong past the front gate, let alone in a dormitory built for people who actually earned their place.”

Wren’s back found the corridor wall. Her pulse was loud enough in her ears that she almost missed the first upperclassman stepping toward her, hand already closing into something that wasn’t quite a fist and wasn’t quite a claw.

Something ignited low in Wren’s chest.

It didn’t feel like fear, though fear was certainly present too. It felt like pressure, like a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding for three entire weeks finally deciding it was done being held, and it moved through her fast enough that she didn’t have time to brace for what it did next. Heat rushed up through her chest and out along her arms, sharp enough that she expected to see her own skin glowing when she looked down at her hands.

Every torch lining the corridor flared violet all at once, bright enough to sting, and then guttered out completely, plunging the whole hallway into sudden, total dark.

Someone screamed. Feet scrambled against stone. By the time Wren’s eyes adjusted enough to make out shapes again, the corridor was empty except for her, alone, hands shaking so hard she had to press them flat against the wall just to make them stop.

She had no idea what she’d just done. She only knew it had come from somewhere inside her that had nothing to do with the elemental theory she’d failed twice, and that whatever it was, it had been strong enough to send three upperclassmen running in the dark without a single one of them looking back.

She told no one. Whatever had just happened, she was certain admitting to it would end with her expelled faster than any failed test ever could, human exception or not. She walked the rest of the way to her dormitory with her hands jammed in her pockets, willing them to stop trembling before anyone noticed.

She wasn’t as unseen as she’d hoped.

Kaelen Ashfyre found her outside the dormitory entrance that same evening, leaning against the stone wall like he’d been waiting there specifically for her to arrive. He didn’t look angry. He looked, if anything, unsettlingly focused, the way she imagined a predator looked right before it decided something was worth its full attention.

“You felt that too,” he said. Not a question.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I was three corridors away.” His voice stayed even, almost gentle, which somehow made it worse. “Dragons feel power the way sharks feel blood in water, Wren. Whatever pulsed through that hallway tonight, I felt it from across the building, and it was not remotely human.” He tilted his head slightly, studying her the way she imagined he studied a puzzle he intended to solve regardless of how long it took. “So I’m going to ask you plainly. What are you?”

“Maybe I’m nothing. Maybe your senses are wrong for once.” She hated how thin her own voice sounded even as she said it.

“My senses have never once been wrong about power. Not in nineteen years.” He didn’t move any closer, didn’t need to. “You can keep pretending you don’t know what just happened. I’ll wait exactly as long as it takes you to stop.”

Wren opened her mouth to answer and found she had absolutely nothing to give him. She didn’t know what she was. She had never known, not for one single day of the seventeen years she’d spent believing herself ordinary in every way that mattered.

“I don’t know,” she said, and for the first time since the letter had arrived in that heavy cream envelope, she understood the admission was true in a way that terrified her more than any expulsion threat had. Whatever mistake everyone at Alliance Elite Academy had quietly assumed was hers to eventually explain away, standing here in the dark with Kaelen Ashfyre watching her like she was something worth being afraid of, Wren finally understood it had never been a mistake at all.