Chapter 6
Faye
I stood there and watched.
Savienne stepped back from the department head, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. In the dim light, I caught a glimpse of something dark staining her lips—something that wasn't honey.
The department head hung limply against the ropes, her eyes rolled back, showing only white. Her breathing was shallow, mechanical. The honey-coated wounds on her throat glistened wetly, two perfect puncture marks that caught the ambient light like tiny crimson jewels.
I couldn't move. My back was flat against the ivy, both hands pressed to the stone wall behind me, and my brain was running the image in front of me against every framework it had and finding zero matches.
Then something clicked.
So the four societies Adrian had mentioned earlier carry more weight on this campus than any teacher, any department head, any administrator with a title and an office ever could.
Savienne set the empty jar carefully on the root of the nearest tree, then stepped back to survey her work. The department head's head lolled to one side, completely unconscious now, her skin pale as marble except for the angry red marks where the fangs had pierced. A thin trickle of blood mixed with honey dripped steadily onto the forest floor.
The air had been doing something strange since I'd crossed the fence. Sweet and metallic, honey layered over something iron-edged and faintly warm, sitting at the back of my throat—and now it was heavier, thicker, like the fog was carrying it directly to me. My mouth had gone completely dry without me noticing, and my knees felt weak.
I swallowed.
The sound was nothing. A reflex. Barely audible even in dead silence.
Savienne stopped moving.
Not a slow pause—she simply stopped, mid-motion, like a frame had frozen. Her head turned a fraction of an inch toward my direction, and she went completely still in a way that had nothing to do with human stillness. The specific stillness of something that had just registered a sound and was now deciding what to do about it.
Oh, shit.
I did not breathe. I pressed harder into the stone wall and counted three seconds while my pulse slammed against my ribs, then started easing backward—one inch, weight off my heels, slow. The ivy rustled against my jacket, each tiny sound magnified in the oppressive silence.
My palms were sweating.
The star chart slipped.
It hit the leaf litter with a sound that was objectively not loud. In that silence, it landed like a gunshot—a flat crack of metal on packed earth, followed by the dry scatter of dead leaves settling around it.
I bent down, grabbed it blind, and ran.
I made it three steps.
"Why are you in the restricted zone?"
Savienne's voice came from directly behind me. No footsteps, no warning—just her voice, calm and conversational, materializing out of the fog like she'd been standing there the whole time.
I stopped so fast I nearly went down.
She was right there. Two feet away, champagne hair catching the ambient light, jaw tight, breathing too controlled. Her eyes, when they landed on me, carried the particular tension of someone holding something back very carefully. There was still a faint smear of darkness at the corner of her mouth.
She's pissed. I interrupted her and she's pissed.
"I just—I got here today, so." I gestured vaguely at nothing. "Jet lag. You know how that is. Couldn't sleep, thought I'd—walk it off, get some air, and I just... didn't realize I'd crossed into the—"
"What did you see?"
Too fast. Way too fast. "Nothing—I didn't see anything. I just, I heard something and looked over and it was—nothing. It was nothing."
She took one step forward. I held my ground through sheer stubbornness, because backing up felt like losing something I couldn't afford to lose.
"What did you see," she said again. Not a question.
"I told you. Nothing. I looked through the ivy, saw someone near the trees. That's it."
Her gaze dropped—sliding from my eyes to the side of my throat, then back up. Her lips pressed together, then relaxed. I caught a glimpse of something sharp behind them, gleaming white against her perfect teeth.
Fangs.
The realization hit me like ice water. The department head's wounds. The honey ritual. Savienne standing here now with that predatory stillness, looking at my throat like she was calculating something.
"Look at me," Savienne said.
Her fingertips found the underside of my chin—not grabbing, just resting there, a light pressure somehow harder to pull away from than a grip. The contact landed directly over my pulse point, and she went very still the moment it did, like she'd found something she was listening to. Her skin was ice cold against mine.
Her throat moved. A slow swallow.
Up close, her breathing wasn't controlled at all. Shallow, slightly uneven, and her fingers against my jaw had the faintest tremor. I'd been wrong about the anger. Whatever was making her jaw tight and her eyes go dark at the edges had nothing to do with frustration.
It was hunger.
She wants to feed, my brain said, with real urgency. And you need to leave.
"Look at me," she said again, softer.
Her caramel eyes met mine, and something shifted—the way the edges of your thoughts go soft right before sleep takes you, the room tilting slightly, the thread of what you were thinking slipping away. My mind lifted. The fog seemed to move inside, filling the space behind my eyes, and Savienne's face was the only thing that stayed sharp.
Look at me, the fog said, in her voice.
The thought dissolved before it finished. My hands went slack. The star chart pressed warm against my hip—suddenly burning hot, like it was trying to wake me up—but the warmth felt distant now, like something happening somewhere else. Savienne's fingers were still under my chin, and I couldn't remember why I'd wanted to pull away from them.
Just stay here. Just look.
The last thing I registered clearly was the way her eyes had changed—caramel gone darker, deeper, pupils expanding until the color was almost swallowed whole. Beautiful, in the specific way that things are beautiful right before they stop being safe.
Then the fog took the rest, and there was nothing at all.
