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“I wanted an early start, George, and I didn’t feel like making the trip with the trustees.”

The guffaw on the other end of the line was loud and heartfelt.

“Oh, you should see them. Huddled inside the cabin, some of them retching. They are having one heck of a journey. I had high hopes Timothy would lose his breakfast as well, but he seems fine, to my immense chagrin.”

George’s voice had taken on a decided note of disappointment, and Magdalene sighed. The battles her friend and her ex-husband fought on the regular were none of her concern. For what was to come, she’d need them both, and if verbal sparring was how they preferred to blow off steam, who was she to deny them?

“I don’t care if you wrestle each other in the middle of the deck, since I’m not there to witness it, just as long as you both make it to the island in one piece. We have work to do, George.”

George’s sigh was exceedingly theatrical. “Oh, I am once again wrapped in the warm embrace of being loved, wanted and needed.”

Magdalene rolled her eyes, hit theendbutton, and pocketed her phone. She’d given the unwanted interruption what little time and heart she could spare. It was all she could muster these days, her mind preoccupied as it was and her own lack of a well-established course—speaking in boating metaphors—both disturbing and strangely freeing.

Here she was, on the verge of her crowning achievement. The Headmistress of Three Dragons. Her sixteen-year-old self—wishing fire and destruction on this very place that loomed in the distance—surely would have rejoiced. And yet, she did not know what the right path was. Only that the ultimate decision would be hers and hers alone.

“I am the Lord, thy God…”

The words came unbidden, and she could hear them ringing in her ears. Reverend Sanderson, the old bastard, had drilled them into her mind within all of six months. She had never once opened that book since then, yet here she stood, reciting the First Commandment, watching her domain approach with every wave that broke against the ferry’s rugged and rusty bow.

The contours of the cliffs were inescapable now. The ocean rebelled and spewed its might, implacable in its task at breaking them down. And yet they stood arrogant, just as imposing, just as implacable in their impervious indifference.

But she wasn’t made of stone, no matter how much she’d wished she were three decades ago, when these rocks, these waves, these people, and this place broke her. How many times had she sat inside the nook of the Amber Cliff watching the elements battle, wishing she was just as invincible as they were? And in the absence of that, to have the power to pay back her tormentors.

Well, here she was. Holding all that power. So why now, when everything she’d wanted was within her grasp, was her mind replaying how her heart had stuttered in her chest at the trustees’ careless and deliberate cruelty? Why hadn’t she rejoiced and gloated alongside them? Why hadn’t she taken their blanket support as a carte blanche to take this place apart brick by brick?

“Isn’t that what you wished for?” Her mother’s voice and that conversation continued to raise her hackles.

“Maybe I’m being contrary?” She remembered firing back at Candace, who’d just laughed.

“You are my daughter, of course you are.” The laughter, so rarely crystal-pure like this, was real, and the deep wrinkles under her mother’s eyes attested to the fact. There was also something akin to pride in that mirth, and it struck Magdalene how little a child—no matter what age—really needed from a parent. Some approval, a little affection. Some level of reliability within either of those.

She didn’t have that stability anywhere in her life, however. Except here. On these godforsaken rocks. They were a constant, standing eternal, guarding this piece of land in the middle of nowhere in the Atlantic.

* * *

Magdalene choseto disregard the damage the sand and rocks did to her Louboutins as she climbed the path from the ferry dock to the school’s magnificent quad, the strap of her briefcase heavy on her shoulder. It wouldn’t be the first pair of shoes this place had claimed, and the view that greeted her was worth it.

“Well, damn…” The sentiment escaped her, more inhalation than words. Her lungs burned with the emotion of seeing the old sprawling buildings again. Just as imposing, if somehow gentler than the cliffs, the Three Dragons Boarding School for Girls remained a sight to see. The backs of her eyes began to sting with something she chose to tamp down. But as she tried to ignore it, Magdalene was aware it wasn’t the sweeping hatred she’d fervently hoped would overtake her and snap her out of the grotesquely maudlin romantic notions about this place that her mind had been conjuring for weeks.

Her eyes burned and startled, she blinked, willing the tears away, and swallowed the lump of surprising warmth at seeing the place she once thought could be home. She slowly made her way towards where the familiar oaken doors stood open. Gaping like a wound, surely.

Into the breach…

The smell was the same. Wood and stone and industrial cleaner mixed with sweat and coffee. And above all, jasmine. Faint, but unmistakable.

Goddamn June. Goddamn jasmine. Goddamn Dragons.

She stopped for a moment, fishing out a carefully folded cloth from her briefcase and wiped the dust off her shoes. Then she straightened and took her first steps, three decades in the making, on the black marble of the school. The halls were deserted, and only the echo of her heels accompanied her on her now-steady walk through the familiar hallways towards the only source of sound within the building.

The Mess Hall. Where she’d first met Hilda. Where she’d almost choked on her milk, because a girl had smiled at her. She frowned at her own foolishness, dispersing the intrusive thoughts. These were not the memories she needed at the forefront of her consciousness right now. She had a mission, a job to do, and she needed to focus.

The exclamation of a name attracted her attention, and she slowed her steps. She could swear she’d heard Timothy being mentioned. Magdalene rounded a corner, and another set of familiar doors was open in front of her. Beyond them, a group of people huddled around one of the long lunch tables, an epitome of a ragtag bunch, sipping what was probably coffee from white ceramic mugs and… whiskey? A bottle was being passed between the men and women in rumpled clothes, with their unshaved chins and barely combed hair.

The liquor kept changing hands until a stubborn jaw, muscles working in either anger or revulsion, moved in refusal. The whiskey continued its path down the table, but Magdalene’s eyes didn’t follow it. Her feet had stopped their already slow progress. She blinked as her world narrowed. The conversation faded into the background, in spite of a rather loud, animated voice ringing from the group. Magdalene barely registered the Nox name being spoken again, as her heart stuttered in her chest, one long whimper of supreme anguish set on repeat.

Oh, no… Oh, no…

The blonde hair. She was familiar with how the moonlight reflected off it, how it glowed in the dark, all burnished gold, how it scorched her fingers as she ran them through the disheveled tresses. How it spilled over her heated skin as those sweet, sweet lips branded her thighs.