Page 63 of Collared by the Vampire Prince

Chapter 11

Kira

I’ve resigned myself to enduring my first day as a student. It would draw too much suspicion to be absent, and I’ve not yet come up with a plan to leave.

Literature turns out to be a remarkably normal sort of class, held in a long room lined with double desks. Becky claims the seat beside me before anyone else can, turning to a rosy-cheeked shifter girl with mousy brown waves already halfway into the chair. She is short and solidly built, with a square jaw softened by a surprisingly pretty mouth.

“Sorry, Jane, but you’ll have to sit somewhere else. I’m looking after Kira today,” Becky says, with the importance of someone assigned a diplomatic post.

“Of course.” Jane gives me a small smile as she gathers her books. “Hi, Kira.”

“Hi. Err, thanks.”

She smiles and drifts to another desk, and I take her seat with a flicker of guilt. I’m not sure I’d give up my seat so easily after three weeks, but Becky has apparently decided this is happening, and Jane seems content to let her.

I’m somewhat surprised to see Victoria sitting four rows across from me beside Felix, the caramel-haired vampire from breakfast, the two of them holding hands upon the table. It hadn’t occurred to me they might be first-years too—or that I’d end up sharing classes with the same vampires who propositioned me outside my bedroom.

Professor Marmala assigns a passage from a book no one seems to have read and demands a mini-essay in twenty minutes regardless. Becky whispers helpful advice to me throughout, and Marmala moves past us without comment, which I gather is as much leniency as I can expect.

History is uncomfortable in a different way. Professor Saunders, a slender, middle-aged vampiress with eyes slightly too large for her narrow face, recounts the territorial disputes that led to the Takeover with the breathless solemnity of a woman describing a personal tragedy rather than a war her own people started. I still find myself leaning forward to catch every word, engrossed despite myself at the way lies mingle with truth.

Recess comes as a fifteen-minute reprieve, and Becky introduces me to a handful of other first-years clustered near the stairwell. While they seem politely curious about me, the Academy feels quite new for them, too, and thankfully the conversation soon moves away from me.

I’d hoped for a chance to slip towards the courtyard Susie showed me earlier to get a proper look at the grounds, but the bell rings before I can excuse myself, and we’re herded upstairs to Mathematics instead.

The room splits the moment we enter it, vampires to one side of a partition wall, wolves to the other, and I understand why within minutes. The vampires are working through something dense and diagrammed, numbers folding into geometry and something to do with engineering.

Ours is simpler. Ledgers. Columns. The mechanics of tallying coin and stock.

“Bookkeeping’s a good trade,” Becky whispers, entirely too pleased with the fact. “My friend knows someone whose cousin keeps books for a nobleman who fought beside Henrikk in the Takeover.” She almost sounds proud.

I wonder if she hears herself. Then I remember she’s not preening. She’s surviving.

Living on the run meant always looking over my shoulder, but at least I knew I was running. I had people who taught me to call a cage a cage. But she was raised to decorate hers.

It is not fair for me to hold her up to lofty ideals she could never afford to have.

I chew the inside of my cheek as I stare at the balance sheet before me. I’ve never had patience for numbers, but two rows over, Felix murmurs something to the vampire beside him about wolves lacking the head for higher learning. The comment isn’t aimed at me or anyone in particular. He simply states it as a fact everyone in the room already understands.

None of the wolves so much as flinch.

Victoria hums in agreement.

And me…I bend over my ledger and refuse to let a single column of mine come out wrong for the rest of the lesson.

Lunch means the dining hall again, warmed by the sun pouring in through the glass ceiling, the sunken pit close and airless as Susie’s pack settles into their circle.

I take only a few bites before I claim I’m off to the library, certain Susie will accept it as a reasonable excuse.

It works a little too well.

“Oh, good idea,” she says brightly. “I wanted to show you this morning but I knew we didn’t have the time to do it justice. Come on.”

She links arms with me—a gesture I’ve not yet grown accustomed to—and half the pack trails after us, apparently under the impression I’ve invited them.

The library is hard to dismiss. It occupies not only the ground floor, but several levels above it, all winding staircases, iron galleries, and rolling ladders that glide along shelves reaching higher than some cottage roofs. The ladders in particular seem to be a great source of pride for them all. I have to admit, the grandeur is impressive.

Despite the openness of the place, I spend most of lunch break in a stuffy corner while Harvey explains the plot of a mystery novel he’s selected for the pack’s book club, thrusting a copy into my hands before I can decline. I make a vague promise to read it.