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“Mr Thorne.” Professor Jamieson’s voice cuts across the hall from the centre of the first row.
Thorne does not flinch. He doesn’t even blink, as he turns his head toward Jamieson with a casual ease.
“Nobody asked for your input,” Jamieson states, her pen tapping against her manuscript with increasing aggression. “Keep your commentary to yourself, or remove yourself from the hall.”
He tilts his head. “Just offering a technical observation, Professor.”
He says it like he genuinely believes what he did was an observation rather than the public evisceration of someone that was already struggling.
“That is quite enough.”
She turns back to the stage, her expression shifting into something that is clearly intended to be kind, but lands as pity—which does not help.
“Miss Vance, take a moment to compose yourself and restart when you are ready.”
Thorne.
The name settles in my head before I have decided to let it in.
I look down at him from the stage, at those eyes that have not left me for a single moment since I stepped up here. A slight arrogant curve is pulling at the corner of his mouth, and at the complete absence of anything resembling an apology in his expression.
The British guy with the attitude problem.
An hour ago I looked at him and felt something I am not going to name. I was an utter fool.
Now, I'm standing under the judgement of those eyes, in the specific and particular humiliation of the worst performance of my life, with tears threatening at the edges of my vision that I will not under any circumstances allow to fall down my face in front of him.
Don’t you dare cry, Ellise. Get it together.
My boots feel glued to the stage floor. I can’t move. I can’t lower the violin from my shoulder and can’t find a single thought that isn’t this guy, this moment, this devastating destruction of every careful and meticulously practiced thing I've built for myself.
The spotlights continue to blur at the edges as the hall begins to spin around me. In the span of an hour, this guy has walked into my life and systematically ripped it apart.
I do not, as a rule, hate people, but for him, I make an exception.
As the tears finally threaten to spill, I realise with a cold and clarifying certainty that I do not just dislike this guy, Thorne.
I detest the very air he breathes.
1
Ellise
OCTOBER
The air in the room doesn’t just shift as Julian Thorne walks in.
It curdles.
He strides through the heavy double doors of the lecture hall over twenty minutes late, which, for Julian, is practically punctual. He’s wearing his signature leather jacket and his normal bored expression. The one that says he is completely aware of exactly which rules he is breaking, he has already calculated the cost, and he has decided that it is worth it anyway. The entire lecture hall holds its breath in the particular, irritating way that rooms always do the moment that Julian Thorne enters them.
And honestly? I hate it.
I hate that he gets away with it.
But in a place like Belrose Academy, Julian Thorne isn’t just another student—he’s one of the elite. He’s the billionaire heir to a real estate empire, his generational wealth seeming to buy him total immunity from consequences. There are whispers that his father provides funding to the music department—significant funding. Though I don’t know if that’s actually true or merely another myth built around the Thorne name.
Worse than his utter lack of respect? He’s infuriatingly talented. The undisputed best pianist this academy has seen in a decade, playing with effortless brilliance that makes the faculty overlook every missed deadline and broken rule. It seems they need his name to boast about, more than he actually needs them.
