Page 22 of Obsidian and Frost

I stared after him for a while, stunned by the whole thing, and struggling to process what the hell had happened.

And then I took in the space again.

My dorm room.

My space in a brand-new place.

The start to a whole different life.

Yes.

5

~Lazriel~

The necromancer was sucking up all the attention in the room again.

Just like he’d been doing every fucking where he went for the last couple of days on campus.

Students were fawning over him, some tripping over themselves to be near him or to engage him in conversation, others flirting with him like he was a dark god among men.

The fuck he was.

There were others who were wary of him—I’d felt their fear—but even then their response was pitiful deference, stepping out of his way.

It was pathetic.

He shouldn’t even be here. He was already learned and way beyond the scope of every other student here.

I’d found out he was here as some sort of punishment. The Head of the Guardian Movement had actually forced him into an academy setting because of some vigilante bullshit the guy had been doing.

Word had spread amongst some of the students already and that made him even more revered, mysterious, and dangerous in their eyes.

Cocksucker.

As I finished piling my plate high at one of the food stations of the Dining Hall—rare prime rib with sausage links, pepper-crusted stake bites, arugula because I liked the bitterness, and then dark chocolate pieces off to the side—I watched him sitting there and flippantly entertaining all the talk and attention thrown his way.

I caught sight of what he was having for dinner.

He was eating oatmeal.

Oatmeal? At dinnertime? How bland was that? Especially for such an apparent charismatic and magnetic celebrity among us like him.

I frowned as I saw him pull something out of the pocket of his hooded coat.

Huh.

He unwrapped whatever it was from a couple of napkins secured around it, as he answered yet another question from those down the long mahogany table, and then I took in several pieces of smoked jerky. Didn’t see that coming.

As he took a bite, I watched that cunt, Kelsana, arrive and sit down opposite him, shoving an unsuspecting wolf girl aside, then start flirting away.

My gaze darted to her boyfriend walking in and zeroing in on what was happening, and the arrogant fuck didn’t look pleased at all.

Rennick Darrow.

The guy’s style was really out-there. And me noticing that after living amongst the types of students here at Wraeven Academy for the last three years was really saying something.

He was draped in black and gold, a suit of midnight-black fabric saturated with swirling gold embroidery, sharp lapels basically glowing, and with hundreds of gold studs that even caught the light with the somber candlelight barely illuminating the Dining Hall space. The whole thing clashed with his swirl of rainbow-hued curls. He had rings on every finger, opulence and luxury emphasized furthermore than the suit itself was already doing.