Isobel didn’t see Kilian for weeks. He seemed to disappear entirely. Even Theodore was distant, spending more and more time training or practising … though he was still at every one of the small group sessions with Easton every morning. The Alphas were very careful to keep her surrounded, while still somehow maintaining their distance. She saw them all daily, and at least one of them had transferred into all of her classes, but they avoided the topic of Kilian, and she was too scared to push for more information.

Reed was as distant as the professors during their piano lessons, and Easton had upped the ferocity of their small group sessions—for everyone except Isobel. The others weren’t even pretending to do vocal training anymore and were simply beating each other up.

Brutally.

They dragged themselves out of each session panting and bruised, completely sapped of energy. She was too intimidated by Easton to ask what was going on, and Theodore artfully evaded the question whenever she dared to bring it up.

Ironically, the only Alpha she felt any normalcy with anymore was Niko. He called her out of her dorm room for training sessions a few times a week—eventually taking the place of her physiotherapy sessions at the medical centre—and she was really starting to enjoy his company. Especially after seeing him let loose on the other Alphas during Easton’s sessions. It was now painfully obvious just how drastically he was holding back on her.

Like now.

“Again,” he said, hauling her up. There wasn’t even a drop of sweat on his brow.

Her shirt was already sticking to her skin. She groaned, planting her hands on her knees. “Just a minute.”

She had gone back to her full academy schedule only a week ago, after several weeks of being banned from dance classes and practises. Her body was struggling with the increased amount of exercise.

“Take a break.” Niko reached over the ropes, grabbing two water bottles, and tossing one to her. He sank to the mat, stretching his legs out and draining half the bottle before recapping it and rolling it away.

She gulped the cool water, collapsing opposite him and trying to rub out the cramp in her calf with her free hand. He rolled his striking eyes at her, gripping her ankle and hauling her closer so that her leg landed over his lap. She almost sloshed water all over herself.

“You aren’t one of my surrogates,” she said. “You don’t need to do that.”

He gave her a flat, bemused look. “No, I’m not. I’m your trainer.”

“I’m too sweaty.” She tried to pull her leg away again, but he held firm, his brows dropping lower.

“Stop it,” he ordered. “Let me check the muscle and then you’re free.”

She wiggled uncomfortably. Niko didn’t touch her unless it was to sweep her onto her ass and pull her up again so that he could knock her straight back down with a bored look on his handsome face. That was the extent of their physical contact.

It wasn’t that he made her uncomfortable, the problem was that his touch felt … good, and she had no right feeling like that. Niko was as detached and cold toward her as the professors, always stringently maintaining boundaries and keeping their relationship black and white.

Still, her body wasn’t getting the message.

Her skin warmed when his fingers dug into her muscles, pulling a strained moan of relief from her throat. His gaze shot straight to hers, but his fingers didn’t still, deftly working the cramp out of the muscle.

“It’s my birthday,” he said conversationally.

“What?” This time she did dribble water over herself. She quickly wiped her chin and set the bottle away.

“Today.” His well-formed brows arced up as if to ask: “Are you going to do anything about it?”

“Ah … happy birthday,” she managed. “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

“I was debating inviting you to hang out tonight.” His talented fingers brushed the full length of her calf, drawing a shiver out of her body that she tried to hide by shifting on her butt in a pretence of getting more comfortable. “We’re going to do a movie night.”

“We?” she croaked, even though she knew the answer.

Niko gave her an exasperated look and then stood, sweeping her up again. He never let her take long breaks and he didn’t hang around with her after their sessions. She suspected it was because of the cameras. After airing their first few sessions and making as big a deal out of it as possible, the production team seemed to get bored, and they moved on when Niko didn’t give the show anything interesting to air. Either that, or they had decided to stock up on footage for some diabolical future episode, which was always possible.

“I share a birthday with Kilian,” he said as he effortlessly swept her onto her ass again, except this time, the breath was knocked out of her from his words as well as his actions. “He’ll be there.”

“Is he okay?” She bounced back to her feet, dropping into the defensive position Niko had taught her. She gripped the opportunity to talk about Kilian like a lifeline, her blood buzzing frantically. They all refused to talk about him, and she didn’t want to text him in case he needed space from her.

“They removed him from Ironside for a little while,” Niko answered, his tone casual but his eyes guarded. “Just to make sure he didn’t know anything about Aron’s involvement in the Vermont attack.”

The Vermont attack. It was the first time anyone had said those words to her since the night of their disastrous dinner. Even Teak and Charlie were careful to skirt around the topic during their sessions, since Isobel had declared that she didn’t want to talk about it. Hearing it mentioned so casually was like a physical kick to the stomach. The air whooshed out of her, and she winced.

The chain around her wrist warmed, constricting tightly. She jumped a few inches, staring down at it. It had been acting up lately—warming or buzzing when her emotions went haywire—but never anything like this.

It vibrated so hard it looked like it was moving.

No … it was moving.

It uncoiled like it was stiff from holding its shape for so long, stretching out languidly before darting up her arm, the metal warm and smooth against her skin. She shrieked, but Niko quickly snatched her wrist before she could pull it off.

“Don’t ever mess with a soul artefact,” he whispered, his eyes hard as the chain snuck beneath the sleeve of her shirt and crawled across the centre of her chest, dipping into her cleavage. It grew prickly, like the links were sprouting little metallic caterpillar legs, and Niko gripped her other hand when it tried to fly up to her chest. The chain settled along her sternum and then it pinched in, those little metallic legs piercing her skin.

Niko swore, his expression torn as she yelped.

“What the fuck is it doing?” he groused, his usually controlled tone unsteady.

A shrill ring sounded through the room. At first, she thought it was a phone, but then she realised it was echoing all around her. An alarm.

“I d-don’t know,” she stuttered, as Niko’s eyes flashed with unease, his grip on her tightening to the point of pain. “What’s that alarm? I’ve never heard it before.”

“What alarm?” he asked, as the sound dwindled into something softer, almost like a twinkle.

He released her wrists and her hands immediately tunnelled into her shirt, her fingertips coming away wet with blood.

“It’s embedded itself into my skin,” she breathed out unsteadily. “But it’s … finished. I think.”

She gripped Niko’s forearm, using him to keep herself upright as a small whine of pain slipped from between her lips. The chain felt alive again, like it had been resting up and healing right alongside her these past few weeks, but now it desperately wanted to be a part of her again.

Niko pulled her out of the ring without warning, tugging her in the direction of the bathroom. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” The statement was tight-lipped, his voice rigid with restraint.

As soon as they passed through the door, he suddenly changed, his touch gentling, his eyes sparking with frantic energy.

“It’s glowing,” he hissed, pushing her up against the counter, his body tight behind hers.

They both stared into the mirror at the subtle light peeking through her shirt, and she pulled down the neckline with shaking fingers, staring at the links nestled into her cleavage.

It was thinner than before, the most delicate gold chain spouting little beads of blood that had smudged against her skin. She leaned forward, entranced, the pain falling away as that tinkling sound turned into a warm, happy hum before fading away into nothing. She could make out the tiny links arching from the chain to the skin on either side: little metallic hooks to secure the jewellery in place.

The brighter it glowed, the less it hurt, until the wounds from those little hooks were completely healed. Niko was breathing hard against the top of her head, his hands braced either side of her, gripping the counter tightly.

“Are you okay?” she asked him, watching his face warily.

He twitched, his gaze sweeping up to hers in the mirror.

His energy was off.

His usual warm and inviting whiskey scent was curdling, bubbling, and boiling until he smelled more like gasoline, the green sinking out of his eyes until the more dusky, tawny hue took over, darkening his entire expression.

“Dammit.” The word was spoken through his teeth, more a hiss than anything else. “Give me a minute, Sigma.” His voice sounded completely different.

A sense of danger skittered across her skin, his power suddenly swelling into the room like an ominous cloud, closing in against her mind like a metal compress. Her breath turned shallow, her thoughts tripping over themselves. It was eerily similar to what had happened to Sato in the hotel room in Nevada, and just like that time, her mind snapped back to her father.

To when he would lose control.

Sato hadn’t acted like her father, but faced with that dangerous roll of influence again, Isobel’s mind was suddenly blank, filled with the trauma of her childhood. There was no room for her to kneel on the ground, to stretch out her back for her father’s belt, to turn her head to the side against the ground where the carpet fibres would tickle her nostrils.

And she was too scared to reach for her phone, to call Reed.

She let out a low sound of distress, turning around with her shirt still tugged down to show him that she was fine. She wasn’t bleeding any more. It was instinctual, and it seemed to work. Niko’s eyes narrowed in on her pale skin. His hands switched from the counter to her hips, drawing her up onto her toes. It didn’t seem to be enough because he pulled her up further, higher and higher.

She scrambled to draw her legs up, needing to feel something beneath her, and he sat her on the counter, her legs tucked beneath her. It put her a little higher than him, his face level with her chest. Niko was wearing a completely alien expression, like the real him had stepped out for a while, allowing some kind of Alpha predator to take his place. It terrified her, but he was the last person who would hurt her—outside the wrestling ring—and she repeated that fact inside her head. Niko stood up for her. He was doing all of this so she could protect herself. And he had helped her through a panic attack with all the patience and kindness of a person who was used to caring for victims of violence—not like he was a perpetrator of it himself.

It didn’t matter that there was a dangerous rattle emanating from his chest.

His strong hands drifted up her sides, uncaring that her shirt was still damp with sweat, his focus narrowing in on the few spots of blood showing through the material. She watched warily, both of them ignoring the trembling of her body as his hands drifted back down, gathering the hem of her shirt and pulling it up.

His eyes flicked up to hers once, his Alpha ring so swollen it almost seemed to be merging with his pupil, the black and gold meld of colour turning him into a stranger for a brief moment, and then he was ducking, his warm breath scattered low across her belly. He pressed his face against her skin, breathing deeply, like he was trying to regain control of himself, but his attention was dragged up higher, past her belly button, to the bottom of the chain. He pushed her shirt up further, and a low growl vibrated out of his mouth, teasing along her skin.

He flattened his tongue to the base of the chain, causing Isobel to jump in shock, but he didn’t stop there. He dragged his tongue up the length of the chain, pushing her shirt higher and higher, until the material was at her chin, bunched there, blocking his path. He buried his face in her shirt, his whole body vibrating, and she hesitantly tunnelled her fingers into his hair, feeling the sweep of panicked violence that emanated off him.

She tried to focus all of her energy on him—to ignore the fluttering in her stomach, the coolness of his saliva striking a line all the way up her sternum. His quiet rumbles were making her squirm and she fought back the insane urge to pull her shirt the rest of the way off and see where else he licked.

Christ.

Maybe she should have been spending a little more time with her surrogates.

Or any time with her surrogates.

Niko suddenly pulled back from her with a shudder, releasing her shirt. “How did you know what to do?” he demanded in a roughened tone. “Why the fuck does it feel like you’ve had experience with this?”

She couldn’t make sense of his tone, or the muddled press of emotions battering against her chest.

Fury, possession, disquiet.

“With Alphas?” she dared to ask, the words barely more than a squeak. “My father is an Alpha.”

“He’s one Alpha.” Niko’s perfect brows pulled down, his lips pressing tightly together as he frowned. “And he lived outside the settlements. He’s practically human.”

She chewed on her lip, wondering if they were even talking about the same thing.

“How did you know what to do?” he asked again. He wasn’t moving back or releasing her, but at least his eyes were only focussed on her face and her shirt had mostly fallen back into place.

“My father has rages. My mother taught me to always submit when he’s angry.”

Niko breathed in deeply, his nostrils flaring.

Rage.

The sweep of his emotion lashed out at her, but his face remained impassive, his eyes burning. “It’s not the same thing,” he whispered. “We don’t have rages. We have … well, according to Elijah, it’s our hindbrain. Your father is an abuser. It’s different. We don’t want to hurt you. The last thing we want is to hurt you …”

He trailed off, easing back slightly, his face dipping at the last second like he was quickly scenting her skin before he lifted her from the counter. “Your skin broke. I tasted blood.” He set her on her feet, and then backed several paces away, running his hands down the front of his wrinkled shirt. “It must not have been deep enough to scar you.”

She froze, realising what could have happened, before quickly shaking her head. “The chain healed the skin right after it pierced it. How is what just happened to you different to what happens to my father?”

“Surging only happens in Alpha formations. Our hindbrain can be triggered to take control, turning us into … well, our base instincts. While we struggle to hold onto our humanity, the trigger usually needs to be remedied. You were hurt. It triggered me. You offered up your skin for me to taste and scent, which allowed me to reassure myself that you were okay.”

She stared at him, a slow realisation dawning. “You weren’t supposed to tell me that, were you?”

He smiled slightly, shaking his head. “I just … um.” He motioned to her chest. “I figured I owed you an explanation.”

She snorted out a shaky laugh. “Yeah, maybe. You were a gentleman about it, though.”

He looked like he was blushing. “We shouldn’t linger in here. I’ll see you at the dorm in an hour. Don’t come in smelling like blood unless you want a riot on your hands and … go easy on Kilian.”

“Go easy on him?”

“One more thing.” He stepped up to her, ignoring her question. “If it’s about Alphas and it isn’t common knowledge, best you don’t repeat it. The whole base instincts thing in Alpha formations? The officials don’t need to know. I really can’t emphasise that enough.”

She nodded, watching as he walked out before wetting a paper towel and cleaning the remaining smudges of blood from her chest. The chain now looked completely innocent, the glow dying away.

Niko escaped the gym and walked all the way back to the dorm without a flicker of emotion for the cameras, but as soon as he was enclosed safely inside his own room, he quickly sank to the floor, his eyes staring blankly through the window, a tremor taking up residence in his hands.

He could still taste her blood on the back of his tongue and there was a burning, overwhelming urge exploding somewhere in the back of his brain, trying to convince him to run back there and lick up her quivering torso again and again until the metallic taste of her blood mixed with the thick, sweet scent that had tried to creep out of her when his head was buried in her shirt and he was trying to wrestle himself under control.

This should have been easier.

He liked the girl, but he wasn’t desperately in love with her or desperate for a mate. He just liked her, as a person. It should have been easy to brush off this incident, to hunt down Elijah and record it the way they were supposed to be doing. But selfishly, he wanted to keep this to himself. Elijah didn’t have fucking boundaries. He might ask if Niko got turned on. He was worse than the goddamned officials.

Niko groaned, scrubbing a hand down his face. It was getting harder not to touch her … and worse than that, he knew it wasn’t the bond. She was small and sweet and vulnerable and also none of those things at all, and he was struggling to keep his thoughts under control when his hands were always on her and her scent, heavy with sweat, was always clinging to his clothes.

And now her blood was in his mouth.

She was invading him … and he didn’t like it.

Isobel had an hour. She should probably run back to her room and get changed, but instead, she found herself walking toward the chapel, her fingers running over the chain now fused to her skin. It wasn’t even sore anymore, and it hummed happily beneath her touch, sitting almost flush with her skin, like a tattoo made of metal.

She checked the chapel first, but when she only found a first year huddled before a candle, she skipped around to the back, where there was a small residence surrounded by an enclosed courtyard. She pressed the button on the outside of the gate and rocked back on her heels, waiting.

It was Sophia who came out, Luis’ head appearing in the opening of the door his sister had left hanging open. He peered at Isobel with big eyes, his spectacles hanging off his nose again. Sophia tucked her black hair behind her ear, flashing a wrist stacked with shining, beaded bracelets.

“Was expecting you sooner, to be honest.” Sophia unlatched the gate, standing to the side and waving Isobel in.

“I don’t have long,” Isobel said, her eyes darting around what appeared to be a haphazard herb garden overgrown with weeds as Sophia flicked the gate shut and led the way back to the house.

Luis skittered away, hiding in the next room, his owlish eyes blinking out from another shadowy doorway as Sophia led her into a pokey kitchen. “Tea?”

“Ah, sure.” Isobel glanced around. “Where’s the Guardian?”

“Mom is sleeping. She gets these awful migraines that knock her right out. But let’s be honest, you came here to talk to me.”

“I did?” Isobel furrowed her brow at the other girl.

Sophia’s lips twitched. “You want information. But do you want it from the obviously super cool and super pretty Soul Keeper with the world’s most adorable little helper, or from the Guardian who cut your soul artefact off and bargained to keep it?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Her light mahogany gaze caught on the top of the chain peeking out from Isobel’s now-stretched neckline and she dropped the kettle she had picked up, the sound of it clattering back to the stovetop, making Luis flick back into the shadows.

“Is that …” Sophia drifted forward, eyes wide in wonder.

“It just happened.” Isobel covered it with her hand, feeling oddly protective. “It’s … kind of embedded into my skin.”

Sophia whistled, taking in Isobel’s body language before backing off and spinning to the kettle. She pulled down three mugs and dropped teabags into each of them, glancing furtively to the doorway her brother was hiding in. “You have any idea what it means?” she asked.

“I don’t know what anything means anymore,” Isobel said. “And I … don’t trust anyone.”

“Understandable.” Sophia leaned against the counter, folding her arms. “After what that bitch did to you. We heard the officials talking about it in the hospital. They didn’t bother much with your friendship on the show, but the officials said you guys were close and that she was always the first person there to comfort you after she orchestrated an attack against you.”

“Well …” Isobel scoffed. She could have done without the knowledge that the officials were gossiping about the attacks they allowed to happen. “Yeah. It was pretty messed up. I really thought she was on my side.”

“Maybe she was?” Sophia shrugged. “For a little while, anyway. I mean, it makes sense to pretend to be your friend while they haze you, in a sadistic sort of way. But when you gained some popularity on the show, maybe she tried to switch things up to get some screen time with you. Until she thought you were bonded to her crush, that is. Then I supposed she had to weigh up whether the screen time was worth it.”

“You know the game pretty well for someone who isn’t even playing it.”

“Girl.” She laughed. “Everyone knows how this game works. At Ironside, you’re predator or you’re prey. There’s no in between. And the prey? Well … they never make it very far, do they? I’m surprised you’re still kicking.”

“I’m not prey.”

Sophia poured hot water into the mugs, setting one on the far edge of the counter before carrying the others to the small, circular dining table. Luis ducked out from the hallway, grabbing the third mug and hovering by the counter indecisively.

“Those Alphas are definitely trying to push you into the predator category, especially with all that ‘initiation’ crap Sato started a little while ago,” Sophia allowed, pulling out a chair and plopping into it, folding her legs as she blew on her tea. “It’s pretty obvious what he was trying to do. But you aren’t there yet. Maybe the Vermont attack was just the push you needed.”

Isobel sat, pulling her mug closer, fiddling with the tag from the teabag as Luis approached his sister’s side, eyes fixed on Isobel as he nervously fiddled with his overlong sleeves.

“Anyway”—Sophia waved a hand as though to disperse the topic—“you said you didn’t have long. What is it you wanted to ask?”

“These soul artefacts.” Isobel touched the links through her shirt. “What do they do?”

Sophia grinned like she approved of the question. “Literally anything. It entirely depends on the god who gifted it to you. If you believe that kind of thing.”

“Which we do,” Luis squeaked. “It’s really real.”

“I thought the Guardian said it was from the woman in the picture?” Isobel asked, switching her gaze between them.

“Aphelina?” Sophia clicked her tongue. “I find that hard to believe. You were gifted the chain before you even knew who your mate was. Her gifts are usually preoccupied with love and desire, so if you were gifted the chain when you were alone, then there’s no reason for it to be from her.”

Well, that answered that question. If it was all real, then Aphelina had been trying to matchmake her and Sato. Which could only mean one thing.

The Gifted goddess of love was a terrible matchmaker.

“And now?” Isobel dropped her hand. “What does it mean that it’s doing this?”

“May I?” Sophia brushed her hand through her brother’s inky mop of hair before she stood, rifling through the kitchen drawers to pull out a magnifying glass.

Isobel hesitated.

“It’s okay,” Luis said shyly, slipping into a third chair. “Sophie—” He pronounced it like Sof-ee. “—is really good at this. Even better than Mama.”

“I’m just a Soul Keeper,” Sophia quickly inserted, shaking her head at Luis. “I’ve got a long way to go to be a Guardian.”

She hovered until Isobel finally sighed and nodded, turning in her chair, and pulling the neckline of her shirt down. Sophia hovered the magnifying glass over the chain, making thoughtful sounds every now and then as she examined it. She was more thorough than Isobel expected.

“It doesn’t like me,” she noted with a laugh, pulling her hand back quickly like the metal had given her a little zap. She fell back into her chair, placing the magnifying glass on the table and folding her arms over her chest to stare narrowly at a spot just below Isobel’s collarbone, apparently deep in thought.

Luis watched her, waiting expectantly, some of his shyness melting away to be replaced by a bashful eagerness. Isobel wasn’t sure how to feel about all of this. Her father was scathing when he spoke about the Gifted religion and the “stupid fanatics” who still followed it. But on the other hand, a lot had been happening recently that she couldn’t explain. She was seeing ghosts. She had ten mates.

And now her body was producing light and gold … which seemed to have a mind of its own.

It was all a bit too much.

“I don’t know.” Sophia sighed, but the look on her face told a different story.

“You have an idea,” Isobel prompted.

Sophia winced. “It’s not any of the nice gods, let’s put it that way.”

“The only god I know is … Artos? Artus?”

“Arterus,” she corrected easily. “The King of Gods. It could be from him, but there’s no historical record of him giving gifts to mortals, so I doubt it. And it wouldn’t make sense for him to give a gift so strongly associated with Aphelina, like the chain.”

“Historical record?” Isobel asked doubtfully.

Sophia smirked, surveying her metallic blue nails. Some of the blue beads on her bracelets were the exact same shade. “They can’t ban books or art from any of the Guardians’ collections. They’re classified as religious artefacts. You know, because it’s a dead religion and all that.”

Something sparked inside Isobel, a feverish need to get her hands on some of those artefacts, but she didn’t trust Sophia enough to ask. Especially since Isobel’s main research interests were focussed on Alphas going feral and Sigmas seeing dead people.

“Stygian!” Luis suddenly exclaimed, slapping his hands onto the table with an excited gasp. “It’s Stygian, isn’t it?”

Sophia winced again. “Yeah, I think it is.”

“Which god is that?” Isobel asked nervously.

Sophia pulled up from her chair, disappearing into the other room for a moment and returning with a huge tome. It had a thick spine and faded gold edges, but it was clearly very well used. She found the page she was looking for and set it onto the table in front of Isobel, tapping the image of an hourglass on the first page. It was half filled with twinkling, airy light and half filled with twisting, menacing shadow, the two mixing at the waist of the hourglass like coloured smoke.

“Stygian,” Sophia announced. “The Duskfall Warden. He maintains the balance between dark and light. He’s very powerful, and … terrifying. People who don’t understand how the Gifted religion works sometimes call him the God of Mysteries.”

Isobel scanned the paragraphs detailing Stygian’s power, skipping over to the next page, where it showed an illustration of a man with eyes like stars—a bright galaxy of light twinkling through his stare, though it wasn’t a peaceful expression. It was hard and fierce, most of his delicate face cast into heavy shadow, his skin a meld of deep ebony and shadowed dusk. He wore strings of stars around his neck and held an apple in each hand. One was rotten, with worms crawling through the brown flesh. The other sparkled with vibrant colour, its skin flawless, a fuzzy green leaf unfurling from its stem.

“Why would a god of mystery make my chain turn into some sort of … piercing?” Isobel sat back from the page, her stomach churning, her head feeling heavy.

“That’s exactly why I think it’s him,” Sophia emphasised. “Because there’s no plausible reason. If this has anything to do with Stygian, then all you can do is wait for him to reveal its purpose.”

“He’s scary,” Luis said to the table. His excitement over guessing the right answer dying off. “He fixes good luck.”

Isobel quickly took a few hasty gulps of the tea before taking the mug to the sink. “Maybe he’ll be nice to me.” She forced out a faint laugh. “I’ve had pretty shitty luck.”

“Maybe not,” Sophia said carefully, standing to walk Isobel back to the gate, her arm winding around the narrow shoulders of her brother. “Your mate is exceedingly strong. Stygian might think you’ve been given too much.”

Ten mates was definitely too much.

Damn.

Isobel’s hands shook when she opened the gate and stepped through, but she paused to look back at the siblings. “Thanks,” she said softly. “It’s nice to talk to people who aren’t … you know.”

“Fighting to the death for a spot of fame?” Sophia chuckled, an accent that Isobel hadn’t taken much note of the first time she had met the girl becoming more obvious the more at ease she became. There was the slightest lilt to her words, the s sound softer and the consonants crisper. They might have been from Mexico or another Spanish-speaking country.

“Yeah, I knew I was right about you,” Sophia seemed to decide out loud. “You’re exactly how you appear on screen. You should work on that. Be more like Kane. Be a better actor. Be a predator.”

Sophia saw it too.

The real Theodore.

For some reason, that made Isobel like her just a little bit more. Most people didn’t see through Theodore’s golden boy mask. She kept her mouth shut instead of commenting on Theodore, but her lips curled into a smile.

“You can come back,” Luis offered, answering her smile with a toothy grin. “You can finish your tea next time.”

“Maybe I will.” Isobel waved at them and then started off toward Dorm A.

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