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I lifted my head and opened my eyes. Thankfully, Wolf’s gaze stayed focused on my boots, giving me space to reply.

I wasn’t sure I could have said the words if he was looking at my face.

“That I’m a threat,” I said finally.

The words sounded ridiculous after what had transpired in the courtyard today, but Wolf didn’t laugh. His fingers stopped working on my laces as he looked up, pinning me beneath his gaze. “You don’t have to torture yourself to get to The Golden City,” he whispered. “You can show them how strong you are and still make it.”

“You know that’s not true,” I replied. “They’ll go after the strongest competition first. If not now, then they’ll target me during the final test.”

“Not if you become dangerous enough to scare them. If they knew what you were back in Midgrave—”

“Stop,” I interrupted, my voice stronger than I meant it to be. “Nobody can know where I came from. Nobody can know what I am.”

A trained vampyre assassin. A weapon. An undeniable slayer. A Phantom.

“They would respect you if they knew.” He was trying to help, I knew that. Why? I wasn’t sure. I had battled with the idea of showing my dominance in this academy, but ultimately, it would only create more problems.

“I’m asking you not to tell anyone,” I whispered. My eyes pleaded, begged him to listen to me. I was at Wolf’s mercy, which was the absolute last place I wanted to be right now.

He stared back at me for a second. I thought maybe he would argue with me again, perhaps tell me how stupid I was to let them think of me as prey. But after a while, he busied himself with my other boot, untying the laces faster than before.

“Fine,” he said, finishing his job and rising from his knees. “If you want to get pummeled into the dirt every day until the Transcendent, that’s on you. But when you’re too weak and injured to stop pretending you can’t fight back, you’re going to wish you had.”

“We’ll see about that,” I muttered, kicking my boots off and trying to stand.

Wolf’s hands shot out, ready to catch me if I fell. The worry on his face was unmistakable. “Let me at least help you.”

“No,” I argued. Wolf already questioned me. If he saw the scars on my back, he wouldn’t look at me the same. “I can do it myself. Just go to bed.”

His jaw tightened as he searched my face, no doubt waiting for me to change my mind.

But a few seconds later, he turned and left, closing the bathroom door behind him.

For fuck’s sake. First, he threatens me. Now, he’s unlacing my boots and offering to help me undress?

I didn’t understand him, not in the slightest.

With Wolf gone, I peeled my black top off and surveyed my body in the small, rusted mirror that hung above the stone sink. Against my stark pale skin, bruises had already formed. Red marks littered my chest, my shoulders, my ribs.Especiallymy ribs.

My face had a nasty split, likely from my fight with Ryder. It had already scabbed over, but the skin below was angry and swollen.

I turned around, glancing over my shoulder at my back.

The whipping scars had been healing nicely, but now? The skin split open, the bruises mixing with the damaged surface to create an anomaly of horrid, disfigured marks.

No, Wolf certainly wouldnotwant to see this.

Nobody would.

But that didn’t matter, I reminded myself. I wasn’t here to heal my back or to look nice for the males in this academy.

Stay quiet. Stay under the radar.

I peeled the rest of my clothes off and, somehow without audible grunting, sank into the hot water of the bathtub.

The bath felt like the goddess herself had blessed the water. I didn’t have hot water back home. The cold water of the river had been the only way to relieve the screaming pain in my body. But this? This was better than all of that. This was better than the river, better than any ointment Lord could have given me.

I laid my head back on the edge of the tub, submerging my bruised body until everything below my chin soaked in the water's warmth.