Chapter 3

Thea’s POV

Soren was too close.

I could feel his breath against my forehead. His fingers were still curled around the leather cord, the tooth resting in his palm. His grip wasn't rough, but it wasn't gentle either — like he was holding evidence.

I snatched the necklace back. The cord dug into my neck before it came free, and I stumbled two steps away from him, my hand pressing the tooth flat against my chest.

"I found it in a junk pile," I said. My voice came out sharper than I meant. "It's worthless."

That was a lie. But he didn't need to know that.

The necklace was the only thing my father ever left behind. Not a letter, not a name, not a reason for disappearing. Just a tooth on a leather string, so cheap that Margot hadn't even bothered to sell it. She'd tossed it in a garbage bag with the rest of my mother's belongings when I was five years old.

I'd waited until the house was quiet. Then I'd climbed out of my basement bed, opened the bag in the dark, and dug through old clothes and paperwork until my fingers closed around the cord. It smelled like trash. I didn't care. I put it around my neck and never took it off.

For years I wore it because I thought it connected me to him. But I was eighteen now, or would be in a few hours, and I knew better. The man who'd left this necklace was a stranger who hadn't bothered to stay. I couldn't even bring myself to say the word father anymore.

I kept wearing it anyway. Not for him. For me. A reminder that no one was coming, so I'd better keep walking on my own.

Soren studied me for a long second, his gold eyes flat and unreadable. Then he turned away like I'd stopped existing.

"Let's go," he said to Ash. They turned and walked into the crowd, and people moved out of their way without being asked. Like it was instinct.

Neither of them looked back.

"There you are!" Juno pushed through a wall of bodies and handed me a red cup. "I've been looking everywhere. Where'd you go?"

"I thought I saw Vesper." I took the cup. "Turns out it was one of the twins."

Juno glanced in the direction Ash had gone. "OK, I can see it from behind — the hair, the height. But up close? Totally different type." She sipped her drink and raised an eyebrow. "Ash is probably way more hands-on in bed, if you know what I mean."

I reached for her face. "I'm going to pinch your mouth shut."

She dodged, laughing, and pulled me toward the makeshift dance floor.

I never found Vesper. It didn't matter much after the first hour. Juno pulled me onto the dance floor and we danced badly and loudly to songs I didn't know. She introduced me to three of her classmates whose names I forgot immediately. One of them spilled punch on her own shoes and laughed so hard she had to sit down.

For a while I forgot about the basement, about Margot, about the necklace and the stranger with gold eyes. I was just a girl at a party, in a dress somebody loved her enough to buy.

Then the clock hit midnight.

The room didn't notice. The music kept going, people kept dancing, but Juno grabbed both my hands and squeezed them hard. The bass swallowed everything, so she leaned in close and said it right against my ear.

"Happy eighteen, Thea."

My throat tightened. I squeezed her hands back. Standing there in the middle of all that noise and sweat and cheap colored light, holding on to the one person who had never let me down, I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time.

Happy.Just happy.

Then my skin caught fire.

It started in my chest — a low heat that spread outward through my ribs and into my arms. I pressed my hand flat against my stomach. My fingers trembled.

"Thea?" Juno pulled back, her eyes scanning my face. "You're really warm. Are you okay?"

"Fine." I forced a smile. "It's too crowded in here. I just need air. I'll find a bathroom."

I blamed the room. Too many bodies, no ventilation. The dress was tight and I hadn't eaten enough today and the air was thick with sweat and perfume. That was all this was.

I pushed into the hallway. The party thinned here — fewer bodies, cooler air. It should have helped. It didn't. My legs didn't feel right — loose and slow, like the signal from my brain was arriving a half-second late. Then the noise hit me.

Every voice sharpened. Every laugh, every clink of a glass, every bass note punched into my skull at full volume. I pressed my palms over my ears but it didn't help. I could hear someone whispering two rooms away. I could hear ice rattling in a cup across the house.

I kept walking. My shoe caught on something — my own lace, untied, dragging — and I pitched forward.

I hit something solid and cold.

Hands caught me before I hit the floor. One gripped my arm, the other pressed against my upper back. The chest I'd crashed into was wide and rigid, and the person behind it didn't budge. Not even a step.

"Sorry—" My voice came out thin and unsteady. I pushed against him and tried to find my footing. "I didn't mean — I wasn't—"

Soren looked down at me. His gold eyes narrowed, the same way they had earlier, but something was different now. He wasn't annoyed. He was paying attention.

He didn't let go. His grip shifted from my arm to the back of my neck, and he pulled me closer. Close enough that I felt his breath graze the top of my head.

I froze. His face was angled downward, his gaze fixed on a spot just below my collar — not my face, not my chest, but a specific point on the skin at the base of my neck. He was reading something on my skin.

His other hand reached for the edge of my neckline.

I screamed. And I slapped him across the face.