Chapter 1 Selene's POV

IRONVEIL ACADEMY

"You are early."

The guard at the gate didn't look up from his clipboard. The rain kept beating the stone archway above us, running in cold rivers down the back of my neck, and I shifted my suitcase from one hand to the other.

"The letter said seven." I said.

"It did." He looked up then, and studied me the way people study something they have been warned about.

"Selene Voss?"

"That's me."

He held my gaze for a while before unlatching the gate. "Welcome to Ironveil Academy."

I should have turned around right there but I didn't.

I dragged my suitcase through the gap and told myself the feeling crawling up my spine was just the cold.

That it was just the rain, just nerves about a new school in a new city on a scholarship I never applied for.

The letter had arrived three weeks ago and there was no return address. My name spelled correctly, which was more than most people managed.

My foster mother had called it a miracle: a full ride to one of the most exclusive private academies in the country, free housing, free meals, free everything.

I had called it suspicious.

My mother had packed my bag before I finished the sentence.

So here I was at Ironveil Academy and God, it looked exactly like the kind of place where bad things happened to girls who asked too many questions.

The buildings were massive dark stone, pointed rooftops, ivy growing so thick it looked like the walls were being slowly eaten. Gargoyles crouched above doorways with their mouths open.

The windows were tall and narrow and I could see lights moving behind some of them. Shadows that paused when I passed below.

I walked faster.

The rain wasn't stopping. I followed the path the guard had indicated, cutting across a wide courtyard where maybe thirty students stood clustered under stone overhangs.

They were dry, they were watching me not the way people watch a new student curious, bored, vaguely sympathetic. They watched me the way wolves watch something that crosses their territory.

A group of girls near the fountain went quiet as I passed. One of them inhaled sharply through her nose.

Another one took a small step back and I told myself that was also nothing.

The symbols carved into the stone walls were harder to explain away. They ran in long lines beneath the windowsills, along the edges of doorways, across the courtyard paving stones under my feet.

Old carvings, worn smooth in places, but deliberate. Intentionally someone had put those there on purpose and nobody had ever removed them.

I stopped in front of a door marked ADMISSIONS and pushed it open.

Inside was warmer, which helped. A woman with silver hair and a lanyard sat behind a reception desk, already holding a folder with my name on it. She smiled the smile of someone who had been told to smile.

"Miss Voss, we have been expecting you." She slid a printed sheet across the desk.

"Your orientation packet Please read the Tier guidelines carefully; they govern most aspects of student life here."

I picked it up and started reading while she talked.

Ironveil ran on a five-tier system. Tier One at the top. Special dining privileges, priority housing, first access to academic resources, full protection under academy rules.

The language got increasingly sterile as it moved down.

By Tier Five Bottom Tier the privileges listed were basically. 'Access to meals and use of communal bathrooms.’

"What determines your tier?" I asked.

"Lineage." She said it simply, like it was obvious.

"Family bloodline, Legacy standing."

"And if you don't have one?"

She looked at me over her reading glasses. "Then you're assigned."

She stamped a card and slid it across the desk. VOSS, SELENE. TIER FIVE.

I stared at it.

"Your dormitory is Ashwick Hall," She said.

"At the far east end of campus, your RA will meet you there."

I found Ashwick Hall without help, which was lucky because nobody offered any. The students I passed gave me a wide look once they clocked my ID card.

One boy actually changed direction mid-stride when his eyes landed on the TIER FIVE printed at the bottom.

A girl with a Tier Two lanyard was walking just behind me on the path. She pulled level, glanced sideways, and then her face changed. Her eyes watered suddenly and she pressed two fingers to her upper lip.

Blood is just a thin line of it, running from her nostril.

"I'm sorry, are you-"

"I'm fine," She said, she looked frightened and she turned and walked the other way.

I stood in the rain and watched her go and didn't say anything else.

Ashwick Hall was smaller than the other dorms. Darker, the stone here looked older, and two of the ground-floor windows were boarded over from the inside.

My roommate was already there when I arrived. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed furthest from the window, textbooks open, not looking at me.

"Hi," I said.

"I'm Selene."

"I know." She turned a page.

"I moved my things to this side, you can have the other bed."

The other bed was pushed against the far wall as far from hers as the room allowed.

"Okay," I said carefully.

"Did I do something?"

"Not yet." She turned another page.

"I'm Maya, don't touch my stuff, don't leave food out, and don't talk to me after nine." She paused. "People don't usually last long in this room, try not to make noise when you go."

I unpacked in silence.

I woke at 2am to the sound of scratching.

It came from below from the floorboards, slow and deliberate, like something dragging its fingers along the underside of the wood. Back and forth, back and forth.

I lay completely still and counted my own heartbeats. Told myself it was pipes, old buildings made sounds that meant nothing.

Then it stopped.

And in the silence that followed, something directly beneath my bed exhaled slow and wet and close and whispered.

"The Null bloodline survives."