Chapter 5

Serena:

Ashley's phone was still pointed at Keira when I stepped forward.

Four. Enclosed space, glass on both sides, single exit behind them. The one on the far right had her weight on her back foot already.

I moved between Keira and Ashley and said, "Put the phone away."

Ashley blinked. One full second of genuine surprise — she hadn't expected anyone to just walk up and say something. Then her chin lifted and the phone went higher. "Why does this have anything to do with you?"

I didn't answer. I closed the distance by half a step, reached up with my right hand, and pressed two fingers against the inner side of Ashley's forearm, just below the elbow. Light pressure, precise angle. The kind that doesn't leave a mark.

The phone hit the floor. Ashley made a sharp, involuntary sound and jerked her arm back, staring at it like something had bitten her. Nothing was there. She couldn't figure out what had happened, which was the point.

The girl on Ashley's left started to move forward. I turned slightly, caught her wrist with my left hand, used her own momentum to redirect her sideways, and let my heel catch her front foot on the way through. She stumbled into the glass wall and stood there with both hands flat against it, looking confused. She wasn't hurt. She also wasn't moving anymore.

The second girl behind her stopped walking.

I looked at her. Just looked.

She took a step back.

The one on the far right had already put half a body length between herself and the rest of them. Her eyes were on the far end of the corridor.

The whole thing took maybe eight seconds. Anyone watching from outside the glass would have thought we were having a very strange conversation.

Ashley found her voice again when she was already ten steps away. She turned back and her expression had gone tight and ugly. "You're going to regret this." Her voice was low, controlled. Then she walked around the corner and all four of them were gone.

I bent down and picked up Keira's books from the floor. She took them without looking at them, still staring at the spot where Ashley had been. Her knuckles were white around the soggy cup lid.

"We're so dead," she said. Then, like she needed to hear it again: "We are so dead."

I waited.

She turned to me. "Do you know who that was?"

"Someone wearing the same jacket as my sister."

Keira opened her mouth, closed it, and then said, "Okay, also — that's Ashley Pryce. As in Julian Vance's girlfriend."

The name meant nothing to me. She must have seen that in my face, because she immediately started talking faster, and then she couldn't stop.

We walked. Keira talked.

"Okay so there are basically three powers at Crestview and you have just made an enemy of all of them simultaneously, which is genuinely impressive for day one —" She shifted her books to her other arm without slowing down.

"Iron Wolf Fighting Club, that's Julian Vance's thing. Founded it himself, runs it himself, two national titles, never lost a single sparring match on this campus. Nobody challenges him. Like, nobody. And Ashley is his girlfriend, so congratulations, you are now officially on his radar."

She paused for half a second. Not to breathe — just to reload.

"Then there's the Ice Hawks, which is your brother's team, and they and the Iron Wolf guys have hated each other since before I got here, so that's its own whole situation. And Kappa Rho is your sister's — she's president, Ashley's vice president, which makes what you did in the hallway about ten times worse than it already was. So basically what I'm saying is that the three groups that run this school are now all aware that you exist, and not in the good way."

"Julian Vance is going to want to know who you are. That's the part that worries me."

She finished as we reached the locker room door. Then she looked at me and said, very calmly, "So we're done."

"Probably," I said.

"You're not scared."

"I've had worse Mondays."

She stared at me for a moment. Then: "I genuinely don't know what to do with that."

We were seven minutes late. Keira changed in a controlled panic, checking the clock every forty seconds. I changed at my usual pace, which I was aware looked strange next to her, and waited while she fumbled with her last button.

The MMA center was loud when we pushed in — partners drilling, the floor shaking with impact, enough noise that nobody noticed us right away. The combat instructor was standing at the edge of the mat with his arms crossed. He saw us and his eyebrows came together.

"Mr. Foster, I'm so sorry —" Keira was already talking before we'd fully crossed the threshold. "We got held up in the east connector, it wasn't our fault, there was a —"

Foster didn't look at her. His eyes moved to me, up and down, the kind of look that's already reached a verdict.

"Tardiness is ten laps," he said, loud enough that heads turned. "Track's out back. Come back when you're done."

He paused. Deliberate.

"Combat conditioning isn't for everyone. Especially —" his gaze stayed on me — "new students who don't know what they're getting into. Maybe ten laps will help you figure out whether you actually belong in this class."

A few people laughed. Not many, but enough.

Keira's fingers closed around my sleeve. "Let's just go," she whispered, barely audible. "Ten laps, we come back, done. Mr. Foster, she'll run them right now —"

I felt my pulse tick up once — not fear, something colder and more familiar. Six steps. Lead shoulder dropped, weight on right hip, open left side. It was there before I'd consciously decided to look for it, and I put it away and said, "Understood," and turned toward the track.

"With that frame? And a girl?" He let out a short laugh. "Complete lack of self-awareness."

Keira's grip tightened on my sleeve. "Serena." Quiet, urgent. "We run the laps. That's all we do."

I turned around.

"Can I skip the laps and spar with you instead?"

She made a small, pained sound.

The drilling dropped off in waves, one pair at a time, until the room was close to quiet. Foster looked at me for a long moment and then he laughed.

"Excuse me?"

"One round. I lose, I drop the class. I win, I'd ask that you stop underestimating women."

The crowd shifted. Voices came loose from different directions — overlapping, unhurried, with that particular quality of people who've already decided how this ends.

First week and she's already picking fights.

Someone tell her what happened to the last guy who challenged Foster.

She's going to get flattened.

"Serena." Keira stepped closer, her voice dropping even further. "Please. Mr. Foster, she doesn't — she's new, she doesn't understand how this works —"

"I understand," I said.

Foster had already pulled off his jacket. He walked to the center of the mat and rolled his shoulders, and I clocked his actual size for the first time across open space — a full head taller, broad through the chest and shoulders, the kind of mass that doesn't need to rush.

He'd done this before. Probably many times, with students considerably more experienced than anyone in this room thought I was.

He came forward without a full telegraph — a sudden drive, both hands reaching to establish contact before I could set my footing. His left hand caught my shoulder, and the weight behind it was real.

He pushed me back. Two steps, then three, my heel finding the mat's edge and my center of gravity scrambling to compensate. Someone in the crowd made a sharp, interested sound.

He pressed it. Lower this time, targeting my base, his full weight bearing down through the contact. I felt the force of it in my collarbone and down my spine — he knew exactly what he was doing, and he had about sixty pounds on me that he wasn't wasting.

He's waiting for me to brace. Stop bracing.

I went with it instead of against it.