Theo was predictable. Chivalrous, gullible, always eager to rescue someone who didn’t need rescuing. Especially when that someone was charming and mildly tragic.

  That was her assumption. And how badly wrong she was. The Queen of Shadows, tripped up by her arrogance. Delightful.

  Sighing, she glared at the towering stack of best-selling paranormal romances on the counter—fangs, fur, forbidden romance, enemy-to-lovers bait. Cerberus would be grinning ear to ear, the smug pupper.

  A throat-clearing snatched her attention away from the trashy romantasy stack.

  Across the desk stood a freckled, red-haired boy who looked like he might vibrate right out of his skin. He hugged a tower of paperback romances to his chest before setting them down.

  This one she had privately christened "Jeremiah," in honour of the bible’s foremost merchant of misery and misfortune. Apt, she mused, for a boy whose romantic palate ran exclusively to beautifully doomed one-sided yearning.

  "I-It's Joseph!” he squeaked.

  Eydis raised an eyebrow. Her smile was polite in the way fire was warm. “Interesting. Did my internal monologue become external without asking for permission?”

  “Internal... monologue? You, uh, called me Jeremiah. On the bus. And just now. Like outloud.”

  She nearly sighed. The last thing she needed was another potential telepath, a budget version of Athena. The President was the only confirmed mind reader on campus, but Natalia’s unpredictability had cured her of ever finding “Gifted but unclassified” harmless.

  That, and also…

  She eyed the black pin on his uniform. D-Class. Gifted, though just barely. Natalia had climbed back to C-Class and now carried her green pin like it meant something.

  Which it did.

  "Well, my apologies, J.” Eydis scanned the last book. “And please, take a complimentary wet wipe on your way out.”

  “W-w-wet—what? These books are PG-13!”

  Eydis turned her chair in a slow half-circle. “Whatever ‘pee-gee thirteen’ is supposed to signify. It’s flu season. Sanity wipes are standard issue.”

  His freckles vanished under the rising flush. His lips parted in a helpless, flopping-fish mime before he walked briskly toward the exit, muttering something about the link between hot and crazy.

  With Jeremiah gone, Eydis leaned back.

  Time to reflect.

  She had “accidentally” run into Theo more times than logically plausible, given the library’s sprawling layout. Under the pretext of their coincidental shared hobbies, she probed about his weekend plans and went as far as adding the occasional flutter of lashes. Nothing had worked.

  Because Theo, dear Theo, had found religion.

  Silver eyes alight with unhinged cult energy, he preached, yapped the gospel of his frostbitten Gift like the high priest of the Church of Chills. One more sentence and he’d be raising ice walls around himself and belted out Let It Go.

  Who, exactly, was responsible for this?

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Eydis sighed. Yours truly. It was all her.

  “Borrowing” that ancient tome from him had ignited something. Just not what she intended.

  He had fallen for frost theory. A passion that rivalled her own love for power and, well, herself.

  Which was how she ended up here, trapped behind this forsaken counter, surrounded by overdue slips, misfiled Dewey decimals, and a leaning tower of steamy, trashy romance novels. Trashy, of course, because true love was as real as a selfless Primal Sin.

  Theo stood at the far end of the room, holding a tome titled The Thermodynamics of Permafrost, his eyes brightening with every step he took closer to her counter.

  Seriously? Again?

  Spinning back to the holoscreen, she attacked the keyboard with the intensity of a woman pretending to be busy to avoid conversation.

  Ignoring Theo's puppy-dog eyes, (which, admittedly, were quite adorable), she mentally revised her plan.

  Plan A: dead. She’d suffered enough of his enthralling (to him) snow-soaked mythology, of endless tales of Silverkeep about frost giants, sentient blizzards, noble sacrifices, yadda yadda.

  Operation Defrost Defrsot was officially on ice.

  And with the gala five days away, she needed the entry, not more snow metaphors.

  With a speed born of repressed violence, she pounded out a stream of keystrokes, QWERTY bending to her will almost before she had begun.

  (And yes, she was very, very good with her fingers. Now, get your mind out of the gutter.)

  A well-timed smile at Birgit, the academy’s unofficial tech priestess, had earned her a crash course in computer literacy. Turned out computers were just oversized phones with physical keys.

  After all, a Queen was nothing if not adaptable. She had to concede that her time behind the library counter had proven surprisingly instructive, chiefly in the fine art of digital espionage (limited, of course, to the perfectly legal and perfectly public information).

  “Um, Eydis…”

  Moving from the official layout listed on the Alchymia City Hall website, she scanned the publicly shared photos on the affiliated Tweeter account, then mentally sorted them into a complete blueprint.

  Plan B seemed plausible, it might even work. The place would be heavily guarded, of course, given the high-profile attendance.

  But before Eydis could think it through any further, someone had to ruin it.

  “Eydis!”

  She didn’t look up, assuming it was yet another disciple of the sacred Bodice Ripper. Was there truly no intellectual curiosity in this realm beyond lusty vampires and equally lusty werewolves?

  When she finally lifted her chin, she met a pair of eyes as clear and blue as the ocean.

  “Adam?”

  He smiled and set a small stack of books on the table. "You remember me, Eydis?"

  "One doesn’t forget the one who makes a cryptic comment about your identity and then disappears for a month. That tends to leave an impression.”

  While Adam was parsing her last sentence, Eydis let her gaze glide over his reading material. Still AI and Python. The first time, she’d assumed Python referred to reptilian linguistics. This time, she knew it was a programming language.

  Fascinating.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Envy slithered in her mind, ‘acquiring reptilian linguistics isn’t such a bad idea either. You mocked this serpent’s foresight last time. And yet—EEK.”

  She zapped the Sin mid-gloat.

  Adam cleared his throat. “I tend to check out a few books and then hole up and read in my dorm. Not very social, I guess.”

  “Hmm.”

  She didn’t believe him. She had looked for him, occasionally, in the brief pauses between Envy’s schemes, Gluttony’s appetite, and Astra’s everything. And Adam had been conspicuously absent.

  A sharp voice cut in.

  “Chop-chop. Some of us came here to read, not watch whatever this is.”

  She had expected the green-haired willow from last time, who always seemed to follow Adam everywhere he went. Instead, it was a petite girl glaring daggers from behind Adam.

  Eydis smiled sweetly, flicking a look at her reading choice. “Apologies, Julia. Far be it from me to interrupt your tender reunion with Lord Broodingbite. I’m sure he misses you terribly.”

  Julia looked aggrieved as she strutted forward. Eydis plucked the ID and book from her grip, scanned them and slid them back across the counter without ever taking her eyes off Adam.

  Adam chuckled, his gaze following Julia’s retreating back before turning to Eydis. "Do you have a photographic memory for Eydis?"

  Eydis reclined in her chair. "Ah, Julia is just memorable. Like yourself, Adam Sapphire."

  His eyes widened.

  Resting her chin lightly on steepled hands, she raised her eyes from the small, gleaming green pin on his blazer lapel until they locked with his.

  “Tell me… what exactly did you mean by knowing who I am?

  He cautiously checking over his shoulder, then leaned forward. “About what I said… before. I didn’t mean to make it weird. I just… You are the Queen of Shadows, right?”

  The amusement drained from her face. "You have my attention. Elaborate.”

  He opened his mouth but closed it abruptly when he heard footsteps behind him.

  Without looking away from him, Eydis loosened an invisible thread of dark energy, discreetly tugging at the Persian rug beneath the approaching student sideways.

  Satisfied with the resulting thud and yelp, Eydis nonchalantly pressed Adam, “Where did you hear that name?”

  Adam Sapphire — St Kevin’s Student