I smell him before I see him. The corridor outside the headmaster's office carries a scent that makes Rhys's cold-winter-and-dark smell like a watered-down imitation. This is the original. Ancient. Glacial. The kind of cold that doesn't come from temperature but from something older and more deliberate.
"That's him." Rhys stands beside me at the end of the hallway, his hand locked around mine, his pulse hammering against my fingers. "My father."
The man who steps out of the headmaster's office looks like Rhys in thirty years—same dark hair silvered at the temples, same sharp jaw, same gray eyes. But where Rhys's features carry the tension of something held back, his father's carry the satisfaction of something permanently crushed.
"Rhys." Lord Vance's voice cuts clean across the corridor. No warmth. No greeting. Just the name, spoken like an item on a checklist. "You'll join me for dinner tonight. Seven sharp."
His gaze slides to me. Takes in our joined hands. The assessment lasts two seconds and contains more contempt than Grayson has managed in a lifetime.
"Alone," he adds. Then he turns and walks away, every step precise, the headmaster trailing behind him with the desperate energy of a man trying to keep up with someone who doesn't wait.
Rhys's hand has gone bloodless around mine.
"Hey." I step in front of him, blocking his view of the retreating figure. "Talk to me."
"He doesn't visit." His voice comes out flat, mechanical. "Not once in four years. Not for matches, not for grades, not for anything. He doesn't come here unless—"
"Unless what?"
"Unless something's wrong." His eyes refocus on my face, and the flatness gives way to something rawer. "Unless someone's talked."
"The amber eyes at Aaron's party. The rumors."
"Maybe." His jaw works. "Or maybe Grayson found a way to reach him. After the assembly, after I exposed the fake evidence—my brother would be exactly the kind of ally Grayson needs."
"Your brother?"
"My father's legitimate son. Pureblooded. Perfect." The corner of his mouth twists. "Everything I'm supposed to be."
I squeeze his hand. His fingers tighten around mine, crushing, and I let him.
"Seven sharp," I repeat. "So we have until seven."
"Sloane—"
"The cottage. Right now. Whatever's coming, we deal with it after you eat something and stop looking like you're about to shatter."
The cottage wraps around us—dim light, familiar mats, the space that's become ours in ways neither of us planned. I lock the door with the brass key and Rhys sits on the training mat with his back against the wall and his head tipped back, staring at the ceiling.
"He choked me when I was seven." His voice comes out quiet, conversational, like he's discussing the weather. "Held me against the nursery wall with one hand and reached for the fireplace poker with the other. My mother threw herself across the room and took the blow meant for me."
"Rhys—"
"If he's here because he knows, then the deal is broken. My mother—" His voice fractures. One clean break, right down the middle. "She dies, Sloane. That's the agreement. If anyone finds out what I am, she dies."
I lower myself beside him. Our shoulders press together, his cold seeping through my sleeve.
"No one's found out anything. The rumors died. The assembly was about fake screenshots, not your blood." I turn my head to look at him. "He might just be checking up on the 'inappropriate relationship.' The halfblood girlfriend. That's scandalous enough for a Vance."
"You don't know him."
"I know you survived him for twenty-one years." My hand finds his thigh, pressing down. "You'll survive dinner."
He turns his head. Our faces are inches apart, his breath ghosting across my lips, and his eyes hold that terrible mixture of gray and amber that surfaces when his control is thinnest.
"Whatever happens tonight." His hand covers mine on his thigh. "Whatever he says. Whatever comes after." He pauses. "This was real. You know that, right?"
"I know." My voice comes out steadier than the rest of me. "I've known since the elevator."
He kisses me. Slow and deep, his hand sliding into my hair, his mouth moving against mine with a thoroughness that borders on memorization. I taste the fear underneath—metallic, sharp—and I kiss him harder to drown it out.
His arm hooks around my waist, pulling me into his lap. My knees bracket his hips, my hands pressed flat against his chest where his heart slams against my palms. His mouth drags down my throat, teeth scraping my pulse, and I arch into him because the world outside this cottage is closing in and his body is the only barrier I trust.
"I need you to promise me something." His lips move against my collarbone. "If things go wrong—if he finds out—you walk away. You deny everything. You tell them I manipulated you, blackmailed you, whatever it takes."
"Absolutely not."
"Sloane."
"I said no." I pull back, gripping his jaw, forcing his eyes to mine. "I'm not your mother. I'm not making deals that trade my silence for your survival. We're in this together or we're not in it at all."
His throat works. Something cracks behind his eyes—something that's been holding weight for twenty-one years—and he pulls me against his chest so hard the air leaves my lungs.
We stay tangled together until the light through the cottage window turns amber, then gold, then the deep orange of a sun that doesn't care about our problems. Six-thirty. He has to go.
"Seven sharp," I say against his mouth.
"Seven sharp." He pulls away, stands, reassembles himself piece by piece. The mask slides into place—jaw set, eyes steel, shoulders squared. The vampire prince. The perfect son. The performance of a lifetime, rehearsed since the age of seven.
He stops at the door. "Stay here tonight. Don't go back to the dorms. I'll come find you after."
"I'll be here."
The door closes behind him and the cottage shrinks. I pull out my phone, check messages, try to distract myself from the image of Rhys sitting across a dinner table from the man who held him against a wall by his throat.
An hour passes. Then two. I pace. I sit. I pace again. The walls press closer with every circuit.
At nine-fifteen, my phone buzzes. Not Rhys. An unknown number.
Your research journal on hybrid bloodlines was found in the library. It's been delivered to Lord Vance.
My blood stops. The journal—my private notes, my research from those first weeks at Blackmoor. Observations about Rhys. Questions about amber eyes and transformation knowledge and which hybrid combinations include shifting. I kept it in my desk drawer. Locked.
Someone took it. Someone planted it where it would be found and delivered to the one person who would understand exactly what those notes meant.
My thumbs shake over the keyboard. I type Rhys's name, start a message, delete it. If his father is reading those notes right now—if he's connecting my observations to the secret he's spent twenty-one years burying—then a panicked text from the halfblood girlfriend is the last thing Rhys needs lighting up his screen across the dinner table.
The cottage door opens at nine-forty. Rhys stands in the frame, and the look on his face empties my lungs.
"He has your journal." His voice is barely human. "He read every page."
"I know. Someone just—"
"He's summoned me back." Rhys grips the doorframe, knuckles white, the wood groaning under his fingers. "He said—" A breath. Shallow. Controlled. "He said we need to discuss what his son's halfblood girlfriend thinks she knows about him."
The cottage walls close in. His eyes flash full amber in the dim light and this time, he doesn't try to hide it.