The rain beat a steady, relentless rhythm against the leaded panes of Room 304, blurring the spires of St. Jude's into smudges of wet charcoal.
I sat with my elbows pinned to the dark wood of the desk, my knuckles white, my lower lip trapped beneath my teeth until the sharp tang of iron threatened to break through. My mind refused to settle. It circled the morning like a trapped moth battering itself against glass. What if he makes me pay for this?
The thought was absurd. Professors at this level did not hold petty grudges over spilled ink and clumsy collisions in the foyer. He was an endowed scholar from Cambridge; I was a first-year graduate transfer. He didn't know me. There was no earthly reason for a stranger to harbor design against someone who had merely dropped a book at his feet.
You're making monsters out of shadows, I told myself, drawing a long, shallow breath. He doesn't know who you are. He doesn't care.
The tall grandfather clock in the corner shuddered, its brass gears grinding before delivering twelve deep, hollow chimes.
Noon.
On the final stroke, the heavy oak door groaned on its hinges.
The latch clicked shut, and the room went instantly cold.
A silent curse caught behind my ribs. My heart stuttered, dropped into my stomach, and stopped altogether. My ears went completely muffled, as if tons of freezing river water had poured over my head, drowning out the murmurs of the room in a single rush of white noise. A sudden, sickening heat flared beneath my collar, scorching up the sides of my neck and painting my temples in a fever of raw panic. I couldn't fathom why my body was reacting with such sheer, primal dread—it was just a man walking into a room.
Yet Alexander Vance never merely entered a space. He conquered it.
He moved toward the lectern with slow, lethal grace, carrying a thick leather folio and two heavy reference volumes. He set them down without a sound—no scrape of paper, no click of stone on wood. The stillness he commanded was suffocating, thick enough to choke on.
He didn't consult his notes. He didn't offer a polite midday greeting. Alex merely raised his head, his gaze skimming over the rows of students like a blade brushing over silk, before coming to a slow, deliberate halt.
His eyes locked onto mine.
The temperature plunged. The classroom ceased to exist, stripped down to the narrow, electric corridor of space between us. His irises were the pale, unforgiving gray of freshly quarried slate, entirely devoid of warmth, yet burning with an unsettling, predatory focus. It felt as though the suffocating quiet of the hall was so absolute he could hear every wild, ragged thump of my heart hammering against my ribs.
For three seconds, neither of us blinked. The silence stretched until it felt razor-sharp.
Then, his lips parted.
"Luna."
The name rolled off his tongue like velvet over iron—deep, effortless, and devastatingly precise.
My breath caught in my throat. My vision tunneled.
"Come down to the front," Alex commanded quietly, never breaking the stare that held me pinned to my chair. "Introduce yourself to the cohort."
The world seemed to tilt beneath my boots. How does he know my name?
We hadn't done roll call. I hadn't spoken to the registrar's assistant in his presence. My syllabus had been blank when I enrolled, and my registration slip had been stuffed at the bottom of my bag since dawn. Yet he hadn't asked for the girl in the back row, nor had he glanced down at a seating chart. He had spoken my name as though it had been etched into his mind long before I set foot in Verenford.
Panic crowded my throat, chasing away every coherent thought. The simple task of stating who I was felt suddenly like reciting a foreign language.
"Now, Miss Jones," he added softly, the faintest trace of that dark, mocking curve returning to the corner of his lips.
My chair scraped against the floorboards, the noise jarring in the quiet amphitheater. Every face in the tiered rows turned toward me, but I felt only the weight of his attention. My knees felt hollow, trembling violently beneath the hem of my wool skirt as I forced myself to step out into the aisle.
The walk down the wooden stairs felt miles long. Each step echoed with terrifying clarity. With every descent, the subtle scent of cedarwood and black pepper grew stronger, wrapping around my senses like a silk cord tightening around my neck.
I stopped beside the edge of the mahogany podium, careful not to step too close to him. Even standing, he towered over me, his broad shoulders blocking out the gray daylight from the tall windows behind him.
I faced the blur of thirty expectant faces, cleared my parched throat, and willed my voice not to crack.
"Hello," I began, my voice sounding faint, detached from my own body. "I'm Luna Jones. I moved to the city to pursue my degree in literary theory. I'm glad to be here, and I hope... I hope to form good connections with all of you this term. Thank you."
The introduction was flat, safe, and generic—a pathetic little shield offered up to thirty strangers.
"Thank you, Miss Jones," Alex murmured from behind me. His voice was low, smooth, and laced with quiet amusement that nobody else in the room could possibly decipher. "You may return to your seat."
I didn't dare glance at him. I turned on heel, my legs shaking so severely I could barely feel the floorboards beneath my boots. How does he know? How could he possibly know?
I scrambled back up the narrow steps, slipping into the shadow of the back row like a wounded animal crawling back into its den. I sank into the chair, wrapping my arms tightly around my waist, my pulse still racing out of control.
A fresh shiver rippled down the nape of my neck, cold and piercing.
I kept my eyes pinned to the blank page of my notebook, but I didn't need to look up. I could feel the invisible weight of his stare pressing against my skin, unwavering, possessive, and entirely deliberate.