BONDED TO THE VAMPIRE PRINCE

(Wren’s POV)

The letter called it an honor.

I read that word so many times on the train that it stopped looking like a real word. Honor. Honor. Honor. By the time we pulled into the station closest to Ravenmoor, it had cracked open in my head and shown me what was actually inside it, which was: property. They just don’t like putting that word on nice cardstock.

I want to be honest about something, before I tell you the rest of this — I was scared. Not brave-girl-hiding-it-well scared. Actually scared, the kind that sits behind your ribs like a stone, the kind where you keep swallowing because your mouth won’t stop going dry. I’d cried twice on that train and told myself both times it was allergies.

Nobody warns you that the worst part of losing control of your life isn’t the big dramatic moment. It’s the small ones. It’s standing in a marble entrance hall with your one duffel bag, wearing the same jeans you slept in, watching thirty kids in actual silk look at you like you’re something that wandered in off the street.

“Ashworth. W.” The registrar didn’t even look up. “You’re late.”

“The train was late. I was on time for the train.”

I don’t know why I said it like that. Some part of me — some stupid, stubborn, still-alive part — refused to just take it lying down, even though every rational cell in my body was screaming don’t, not here, not on day one.

“The correct response,” she said, “is my apologies.”

“I’ll work on my manners. Give me a few days.”

Someone laughed behind me. Not with me — I felt that difference immediately, in my stomach, like swallowing something cold. They were laughing at the idea of me. The Claimed girl, mouthing off before she even had a room number.

My face went hot. I hated that it went hot. I hated that I could feel exactly how many people were looking at me and exactly what they were probably thinking — plus-size, no name, no House, no business talking like that. I’ve spent my whole life getting looked at like that, actually, so it wasn’t even new. It just hurt in a new location.

“You’ll learn quickly,” the registrar said, “that House Nightshade doesn’t tolerate insolence in its bonded.”

Bonded. There it was. I’d known it was coming. It had been in the letter too, dressed up in that same falsely gentle font, like softening the font softens what it means. Hearing it out loud, in a room full of strangers in silk, landed different. Heavier. Like it had weight now that it hadn’t had on paper.

I thought about my mom, for a second. What she’d say if she could see me here. Then I made myself stop thinking about that, because if I kept going down that road I actually was going to cry in front of these people, and I’d already decided somewhere around hour four of that train ride that I wasn’t giving them that.

“Where do I sign,” I said instead, because when you can’t stop the ground from moving, the only thing left to do is keep walking on it.

I met him twenty minutes later.

The receiving room had a fireplace big enough to stand up in, and a boy standing in front of it who looked like someone had carved him instead of raising him. That’s genuinely the only way I know how to describe Kai Nightshade the first time I saw him — like a very expensive, very cold sculpture that had been taught to wear clothes.

He didn’t turn around when I came in. Just stood there, one hand braced on the mantel, dressed in black that fit him with a precision that suggested somebody’s tailor had cried actual tears over it.

When he finally did turn and look at me, his eyes went over me exactly once. Jeans. Duffel bag. The soft part of my stomach I stopped apologizing for years ago, mostly. And something in his face just — smoothed out. Went blank. Polite, distant, done.

I felt that too. I want to be honest about that. It’s a specific kind of small, ugly feeling, getting sized up and filed away in under two seconds by someone that beautiful. I hated that I felt it. I hated it more that he probably didn’t even notice he’d done it.

“You’re the Claimed,” he said. Not a question.

“You’re the one who’s supposed to be grateful I showed up,” I said, because apparently my mouth just does whatever it wants when I’m scared. “I read the contract. Bonded blood-source, room and board covered, all expenses of my education paid, in exchange for—” I gestured vaguely at my own throat “—snacks. Should I curtsy? Or does the sarcasm cover it?”

Something flickered behind his eyes. Not amusement, I don’t think. Closer to surprise — like a piece of furniture had spoken to him.

“You should be afraid of me,” he said quietly.

And here’s the thing — I was. My hands were shaking behind my back where he couldn’t see them. My heart was going so fast it hurt a little. But I’d already decided, somewhere on that train, that I wasn’t going to let this place see that. Not on day one. Maybe not ever.

“I’ll add it to the list,” I said. “Right under find the dining hall and make these boots last the semester.”

He looked at me a long moment. I made myself hold still under it — chin up, not the first to look away, even though every instinct I had wanted to shrink down and disappear into the corner of the room. Whatever he expected walking in — tears, groveling, some girl small enough to vanish into the edges of his life — I don’t think I was it.

“Dinner is at seven,” he said finally, turning back to the fire like I’d already stopped being interesting to look at. “Don’t be late. And Ashworth—”

“It’s Wren.”

“—don’t embarrass me in front of my House.”

“No promises,” I said, and left before he could see my hands were still shaking.

I made it exactly to the hallway before I had to stop and press my back against the wall and just breathe for a second. Just — breathe. Nobody warns you how much energy it takes, being brave when you don’t feel brave at all. It’s exhausting. I was exhausted, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

I met the second one on the stairs, and I didn’t know yet that meeting him was the second domino to fall in a line that was going to knock over my whole life.

“You’re new.” A boy leaning on the banister, scar through one eyebrow, the kind of restless energy that told me he’d spent his whole life being told to sit still and had never once listened. His House crest looked like it had been scratched off his jacket on purpose. “And you just talked back to Kai Nightshade like he was a rude waiter.”

“Was I supposed to know who he was?”

“Everyone knows who he is.” He grinned — and it changed his whole face, made him look younger, warmer, a little dangerous in a way that didn’t scare me the way Kai had. “Ronan Vale. If the House name still means anything, which it doesn’t, but people love reminding me of it anyway.”

“Wren.”

“I know.” At my look, he just shrugged, easy. “News moves fast here. New Claimed for House Nightshade, mouthing off in the front hall before she even had a room number. Half the school’s already betting on how long you last.”

“And you?”

“I bet on you.” And his eyes weren’t sizing me up the way Kai’s had. They were just — warm. Interested. Like I was a person and not a problem someone had handed him. It had been such a long, strange, terrible day that I genuinely didn’t know what to do with someone looking at me like that. “Longest odds pay best. Something tells me you’re going to be an expensive bet.”

A bell rang somewhere below us. Dinner.

“Careful, Wren Ashworth.” He was already backing down the hall, that grin still going. “This place eats girls like you for breakfast.”

“Good thing,” I called after him, “I’ve never once been anybody’s breakfast.”

His laugh echoed all the way down the stairwell, and for the first time since I’d opened that letter, something in my chest that wasn’t dread showed up to sit there instead.

I had no idea yet what was actually running through my veins, or that it was the one thing standing between the Houses and a war they’d spent forty years pretending they’d already finished. I had no idea that both of the boys I’d just met were going to find that out right alongside me, and that none of us were walking away from it unchanged.

I just knew I was hungry, my boots hurt, and I had exactly one hour to figure out how to walk into a dining hall full of vampires and not let a single one of them see me flinch.