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“Well played, little necromancer.” His voice was soft, almost wondering. Then his mask slammed back into place, his smirk sharp and unshaken. “Perhaps there’s hope for you yet.”

He turned to leave, every movement calculated for maximum effect. But at the door he paused. “Next time,” he said without turning around, “try not to let the trials consume you. Some of us prefer more creative challenges.”

“Next time,” I shot back, my pulse hammering, “try being yourself instead.”

After he left, I heard Raven release a shaky breath. “Holy shit, Mari,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I thought he was going to… I’ve never seen him that angry.”

I collapsed back into my chair, suddenly exhausted. The weight of his deception—how thoroughly he’d played on my insecurities—hit me hard. Scout climbed into my palm, his tiny bone-feet oddly comforting against my skin.

“Are you okay?” Raven asked quietly, still not quite meeting my eyes. “What he did… that was cruel. And the way he looked at you…”

“Yeah,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure it was true. “Welcome to life in the royal dorm.”

But in the back of my mind, I kept thinking of that moment—when his mask had cracked. And how, for just a second, I had seen him.

The real Dr. Reyes arrived apologizing for the delay. As she began the actual lesson, my mind kept drifting to that crack in Elio’s performance.

My head wasstill spinning from Dr. Reyes’s actual tutoring session when I made it back to the royal dorm. She’d been brilliant but demanding, and my brain felt stuffed with magical theory I was struggling to absorb. Scout had fallen asleep on my shoulder, probably as overwhelmed as I was by trying to learn control over my surge-prone power.

The common room was quiet except for Keane in his usual corner, surrounded by books. His silver fox lay curled at his feet, watching me with unnervingly intelligent eyes as I stepped in. The dead things in the walls stirred more than usual, but I couldn’t tell if it was curiosity… or warning.

“Your familiar?” I asked, nodding toward the fox.

“Her name is Wisp,” Keane said without looking up. His voice was quiet, even. Still, the fox’s ears twitched, like she heard something deeper in the words than I did. “She’s been with me since… for a while.”

There was a pause—like maybe he wasn’t used to talking about her. Or maybe he was choosing his words too carefully.

“Mine’s Scout,” I offered, as the skeletal mouse darted up and perched on the arm of my chair.

Scout twitched his shadow-thread whiskers like he was showing off.

Keane looked up long enough to nod politely. “Elio’s familiar is named Echo. Cyrus calls his Ember.”

That caught me off guard. I hadn’t asked. “Why are you telling me this?”

His gaze returned to his page. “Information is power,” he said simply.

Cryptic. Of course.

But he’d answered anyway. That meant something.

Keane was, objectively, unfairly attractive. The kind of broody, bone-structure-blessed nonsense that made it hard to think straight, and it was increasingly unfair how that affected me. Here he was, being decent to me while also managing to remain infuriatingly unreadable. I couldn’t decide if he was trying to be kind or just keeping his distance in a more subtle way than the others.

Scout scrambled down to the floor, bones clicking softly as he made his way toward Wisp—clearly interested in meeting another familiar.

I expected the fox to ignore him, maybe even bristle or back away.

But instead, Wisp rose to her feet with slow, graceful movements and stepped forward, her misty form shimmering faintly. She lowered her head, nose twitching as she studied Scout with what looked like… curiosity. Maybe even recognition.

Definitely not the reaction I’d braced for.

“She doesn’t mind dead things?” I asked, watching their careful investigation of each other.

“Wisp’s seen enough strange magic to know what’s actually dangerous.” Keane’s hands trembled slightly as he turned a page. “And what just looks that way.”

I dropped into the nearest chair, my shoulders sagging the second I let myself stop pretending to be fine. No one was attacking me, testing me, or shoving me into another magical mind game. For once, I could just... sit.

Between the magical theory overload, Elio’s illusions, and trying to keep my power under control all day, I felt drained in a way that cleaning houses had never managed. And the illusion—that perfect deception Elio had spun around me—still lingered in my mind.