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“Now.” He brings his hands together. “You must find a virgin. You have almost three months to prepare her to become your sacrifice. To make sure she’s pure of heart as well as body.”

Pure of heart. I almost smile at the phrase. What he means is she needs to be a little nothing. Someone no one will miss when she disappears. Someone from Ashford’s Providence Scholarship. A group of poor kids the university recruits every year to add to our inventory of expendables.

“I understand,” I say.

He nods. “In a few months, I’ll come to Thornecroft and anoint her. You’ll bed her on the night of Winter Solstice, and then she’ll come back with me here.” He gestures his hand around the room. “For her transcendence. Then your power will be solidified.”

I nod, fighting the urge to ask eager questions like I did as a kid.

Why do we call it a virgin sacrifice if we bed them first? What does sex with a virgin have to do with becoming a leader?

Do you really still sacrifice the girls?

That one I know the answer to.

“I must tell you,” he says, “that you’ll likely meet with opposition when you return.”

I raise my chin. “I’m prepared.”

I’m prepared because I already knew I would be in this position. Hunter, Asher, and Kane are the only other students in the entire university with fathers who are members of The Four Hundred. Neither Hunter nor Asher want this position, but Kane does.

More specifically, his father wants it for him so that he can control one of The Four Hundred’s recruitment centers through Kane.

“Of course you are. Keep your cool head. I chose you for a reason.”

I will. I’ll keep a cool head because nothing can stand in my way. I’m finally getting what I’ve always wanted.

Now, to find my virgin.

2

Ava

The professor’s voice hums—something about the fundamental attribution error. The clatter of typing echoes through the room, and my gaze is fixed on the sparsely written notes on my laptop screen, but it’s the whispers behind me that hold my attention.

“I heard he was lying on the floor of his bedroom,” a guy says. “His skin was purple.

“Oh my God,” a girl says. “I’ve never seen a dead body before. It must have been traumatic for whoever found him.”

They’re talking about Ben Cartwright—the fraternity president. Everywhere I’ve gone on campus these past five days, people have been talking about his overdose. In lurid detail.

I don’t like it. Not gossip. The fact that they almost seem to be enjoying his death. He was a person.

I never met Ben, but I knew of him through Rhett—one of my closest childhood friends. Rhett pledged Thornecroft last year, and while I still see him on occasion, his fraternity friends are above my social status. I never thought popularity was much of a thing on college campuses except in movies. But when I came toAshford over a year ago, I learned what it means to mingle with the extremely rich.

“Damian Cross found him.” The whisper cuts through my reverie.

“Poor Damian.”

I want to scoff.Poor Damian.The guy they made Thornecroft president only a few days after Ben died? Damian is probably rejoicing.

No, that’s unfair. I don’t like Damian for a host of petty reasons. His father is billionaire Lucas Cross, and besides that, he’s extremely good-looking, which makes me assume he’s spoiled and vain. He’s always late for this very class, if he attends at all. I take my education very seriously because I’m a nerd, but a lackadaisical approach to school doesn’t signal a lack of integrity.

And it certainly doesn’t mean Damian is happy his friend died.

“They say—” the guy’s voice is much quieter now “—it might not have been an accidental overdose. That Ben was…taken out.”

“Shit.”