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Blake’s arms came around me. He rolled us, guiding me onto my back as he lay over me. His mouth moved over mine, claiming me briefly. Then he moved it down my body. Trailing kisses over my throat, my breasts, my stomach, my hips … then lower. I breathed out, letting him take his time. Letting him make me forget the creeping darkness just outside the walls. The danger that was always threatening, always just beyond our reach.

When we finally came together again, we moved with a desperate urgency. Our hearts were bare in those moments, at least. No lies. No fear. Just him and me.

When it was over, I watched his chest rising and falling. I tried to let myself believe that this could last. That this feeling, this sense of happiness, might be real.

Blake slept on, his breathing even, his hand loosely tangled with mine. My mother’s words came back to me. Are you so very different? Are you not angry? Are you not lost?

I was angry. Anger fueled me as it did Blake; we were similar in that way. I’d always be angry. But lost? Alone? It had been true once. Maybe it wasn’t anymore, not with Blake beside me. I smiled, shifting, turning my head toward him.

But something wasn’t right.

Blake was looking back at me. And yet … wasn’t. His good eye was closed, relaxed as he slept. But his other, the ruined one—the one Viktor must have ripped away and left empty—it was open.

And it wasn’t empty anymore.

It watched me unblinking. The globe wasn’t the gray it should have been. It was red. Red as blood.

CHAPTER 12

REGAN

Let’s continue to the next point on the agenda. The list of revisions to the School Code of Conduct.” I stood and faced the faculty seated at the long narrow table. “Let’s begin with the dress code. A fairly straightforward point: All blightborn students will return to the standard First Year approved wardrobe. Blue and silver only, no house colors.”

A murmur of confusion rippled through the room. I suppressed a sigh: It was almost as if they hadn’t bothered to read the agenda in advance. Considering some of these professors had once chided me about failing to read their syllabi, I thought it was rather ironic.

I glanced around the room. It was full of dark polished wood furniture, much of which was covered with rather creepy little carvings of naked women that Headmaster Kim had added in his term. Professor Vane leaned forward, squinting to look over the agenda, and his hand wrapped around a carved blightborn woman’s left breast. I bit my lip, repulsed. The carvings would have to go at once. I wouldn’t even ask Viktor’s approval. This was my suite of offices now, wasn’t it?

Though, the truth was it was hard to believe I now ran the school and wasn’t still a student myself. I saw Headmaster Kim every time I walked into his office. The ghost of him, scribbling with his quill on parchment or frowning up at me as I approached his desk.

At night, I saw him, too—more often than I’d ever dreamed I would. Saw his mouth slack, head jammed ruthlessly onto a blood-slicked spike, cheeks a mottled greyblue with frost. Had he still been able to feel when Viktor had slammed his head down onto that spike? At what point precisely did nerves cease to feel?

Professor Rodriguez would probably know—not that I’d be asking.

I tapped my foot. “Highbloods, of course, will retain their traditional house colors. No changes there. Any questions?”

“For identification purposes,” a familiar voice muttered from the far end of the table.

I gritted my teeth. “What was that?” Was it too much to hope that he’d shut up and let me continue? Apparently, yes.

Rodriguez slowly rose. “It says here that the blightborn uniform is being changed for identification purposes.”

“Yes,” I said, as brightly as I could. “That’s correct. So much easier this way, and think of the money saved on clothing. Many of our blightborn students come from families of limited means. I’m sure their parents will be thrilled.”

There were some titters of laughter from highblood faculty.

“What about the danger this dress code alteration places our blightborn students in?” Rodriguez demanded.

“Danger?” I laughed. “I hardly see a change of fashion as a danger, Professor.”

More titters of laughter. I tried to relax. I’d been manipulating people my entire life. A group of underpaid, poorly dressed academics was no different. They weren’t smarter than me, they just thought they were. I was the one with the real power. I could do this. Still, my entire body felt tight and tense.

“Visible markers of being blightborn,” Rodriguez said flatly. “If you’re going to brand them, why not come out and say so?”

“How ridiculous,” I said, my smile still not dropping. “We’d never be so savage. They’re not cattle, they’re people. No one is questioning that. It’s a simple change. Really, what got into your kava this morning, Professor Rodriguez?”

Some staff members laughed, but then came the sound of a second chair backing up.

“I beg your pardon, Headmistress,” said a female professor. “But I have to admit, I see Professor Rodriguez’s point. This makes blightborn students immediately visible and, as such, much easier targets.”