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“Compose yourself at once.” Verrine’s tone was cutting enough to make the woman flinch. “The system remains intact. The ether flows as it should. We are not in danger. Order, as always, will be restored.”

Esmerelda wrung her hands. “But if they aren’t guiding it, who is? I dread to think…”

There was a long, tense pause before Verrine smiled. “Make yourself a tonic. Everything is as it should be.”

The words sent a shiver down my spine. Esmerelda’s face was pale, but she nodded stiffly. Then, under her breath, like it was the only thing tethering her to reality, she murmured, “ Ante Post.”

Verrine’s attention shifted back to me. Something cold and knowing settled in the deep lines that traced her face. Without another word, she turned and swept from the room, leaving only silence, and Esmerelda, trembling in her wake.

A moment later the door groaned open, and the very air in the room recoiled. Dante Darkblood stepped inside, his uniform in deliberate disarray, tie loosened, cuffs undone.

He didn’t look at me. Instead, his silver eyes skimmed the room, then landed, just for a second, on the bookshelves at the back of the classroom.

I recognized a few of the authors on the shelves.

Milton, Blake, Chopin’s Nocturnes . The rest were in languages I couldn’t read.

Then, finally, he turned to me. His lips curled, his expression the something between amusement and indifference as he tucked into the lab bench several seats away. “ Ante Post , Esmerelda.”

Esmerelda returned from the store room with several roots of knobbled root vegetables, ginger, turmeric, and others I didn’t recognize. “ Ante Post . Good evening, Mr. Darkblood. These should be chopped evenly and stored in the vinegar, please. You both may go once this pile is finished.”

“Understood,” Dante nodded, snatching a root for himself. I was happy to chop silently under the watchful eye of Esmerelda, able to lose myself in thought as I surveyed the room. I needed a quiet moment for my brain to process; maybe in the stillness, I would start to understand.

“How are you chopping so damn fast?” Dante murmured a few lab benches over, his large hands clumsily wound around his knife. I noticed he had a few nicks across his skin, the blood dried black, but he didn’t seem to care. His chops were uneven, the cuts jagged and varied in size.

“I’m not that fast.” I reached for another root. My chest squeezed as Esmerelda disappeared into the storeroom again. Dante seemed to have returned to a state of relative calm, but I felt far from safe.

“Toss the peels in the bin when you’re done, and then you can go. I have somewhere to be.” Esmerelda swung a leather satchel over her shoulder, the strap twisting in the folds of her strangely patterned dress.

No, please no.

My heart kicked as the door groaned shut behind her.

Dante let out a deep, rumbling laugh. His eyes seemed to darken as he looked at me, shifting to a deeper shade of gray.

I swallowed hard, hurrying to sweep away the remains of the root before he spoke to me again, but I felt his eyes on me, burning.

He glanced lower. “That’s an interesting necklace.”

I stilled, fingers reflexively brushing the pendant against my collarbone.

“Thank you. It was… a gift.” From my mother the night before she died, I could have added.

Dante didn’t respond right away, but something about the way he looked at me made my pulse spike. He moved from his place several seats away, sliding into the one next to me. “You shouldn’t be here, you know.”

“Trust me, I don’t want to be.” I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, like I was already lost to this place.

For a second, I thought he might say something else, something real. Instead, he said, “Then leave.”

I shifted. I had been here less than a day, and already he seemed to have a vengeful hatred of me, almost as much as he seemed to hate this place. “If it were that simple, Dante, I would .”

Dante shook his head. “You won’t last.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” The certainty in his tone sent something cold through me, and I gripped the knife tighter.

“If you don’t want to be here,” he murmured, hands winding around mine to get me to set the knife down. “I can help you get out.”

“What, you’ll help me pack?” I asked, jerking my hand away.

“Packing won’t get you out of Evermore,” he warned. “You’ll need to be expelled.”

I forced out a laugh. The sound came out wrong, all hollow and thin. “This is a school, not a prison. I can leave if I want to.”

But something stirred in my chest. Maybe if I got expelled, that would do it. Maybe that was the loophole. This place needed to refuse my attendance, and then I could inherit without needing to waste two years of my life in a religious nuthouse.

Dante’s eyes narrowed, watching me like he was seeing something I hadn’t yet figured out. Like he was waiting for me to put the pieces together. “You sure about that?”

“No,” I admitted, and this time I leaned in. “What do I do, then?”

His lip twitched. “Something worthy of expulsion. ”

A thrill of panic, or something else, skated through me. “You look like you have a few ideas.”

“Oh, I do.” He tilted his head, studying me like he was deciding something. “Many, many ideas.”

“Let’s hear them. Surely ditching detention is a start.” I stood. I wasn’t going to pickle Esmerelda’s root vegetables if she wasn’t watching, that was for sure. I started toward the door.

Dante was in front of me before I could reach it, cutting off my exit. “Ditching detention won’t get you expelled. It will only drop your score. You need to do something worse.”

“ Worse ?” I blinked up at him. Maybe this was a bad idea. “How much worse?”

“You are either all in,” His voice was velvet-soft. “Or all out. What is it, Arabella?”

“In,” I said quickly, all too quickly. “I think. But I can’t tonight.

” I’m afraid. I need to think this through.

I couldn’t tell him that. Every primal part of me knew that he was a threat.

I felt the darkness in him, the same darkness I’d felt in Astoria Manor.

The same darkness I felt within myself, sometimes.

I shoved that thought down.

“No, not tonight.” He shook his head, already stepping back, already turning away. The warmth of his touch lingered. “Too many eyes on you night one. I’ll be in touch, Arabella. Don’t bother unpacking.”

Dante didn’t look back as he walked away, melting into shadow.