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W hen he thought Atta might be asleep, he knocked lightly on the door and opened it. She looked like a painting of a Faerie Queen, lying there in that bed surrounded by clouds of duvet and pillows. The very moment he confirmed she was fast asleep, grabbed his keys.

Rage buzzed under his skin, his headlamps two beams in a dark haze of fury. He didn’t even turn off the car when he pulled up to the stately brick and column place housing a common-faced demon.

slammed the knocker repeatedly, then pounded his fist against the door when no one answered. He was seconds away from breaking the damned thing down when he finally emerged.

“?” Finneas Lynch blinked blearily at him from the doorway. “It’s three o’clock in the morning. What are you doing here?”

“How dare you expel one of the most brilliant minds Trinity College has ever seen?” he spat through gritted teeth.

Dean Lynch sighed. His hand dropped from the door handle as he stepped outside in his dressing gown to meet on the footpath. “Is this about Miss Morrow?”

“Of course it is. She’s brilliant, Finneas. This is ridiculous.”

“She was trespassing on private Trinity property in the middle of the night,” he shot back, his face sallow in the porchlight.

“All part of the collegiate experience, wouldn’t you say? How many times have all of us trespassed? Done something stupid during college?” He couldn’t possibly think this excuse would hold.

“Not where there were Plague corpses , .”

He threw his arm out, his voice rising louder. “Maybe she simply wanted a stroll through a graveyard.”

Lynch stared him down. “With a shovel?”

Fuck .

“She wasn’t alone, either.” The dean’s eyes narrowed, his winning hand splayed out between them.

Two could play that fucking game.

“You know damn well this is about that fucking paper she wrote.” snarled, taking a step forward, meeting the bastard eye-to-eye. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you and your lackeys rifling through my things? You’re fucking scared.”

“I suggest,” Lynch snapped, jowls shaking, “that you leave my property, Dr Murdoch, before I begin to look into why you are so viscerally opposed to the expulsion of this imbalanced student.”

The threat to Atta hit him square in the jaw as hard as any fist could. He should rip his throat out, right there.

But if he said one more word right now, made one more argument, he’d only make things worse for Atta.

Instead, he turned on his heel and drove away.