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7

I use the water tower common room to read Bastian's book because I don't want to wake Mireen with my candlelight. At this hour, it's empty—nobody is crazy enough to deprive themselves of sleep with the hell we endure every day.

Nobody except me, apparently. Or whoever is causing a girl in a nearby room to moan loud enough that I occasionally hear it.

My fingers tremble as I carefully open the book. I've spent weeks searching for answers about what the hell I am, and Bastian may have just handed me all of them. The leather cover is cool against my palms, the pages inside worn with age and heavy with secrets. The book even smells old, reeking of forgotten knowledge and buried truths.

It's just a book, but I can't seem to slow my breathing as I crack open the ancient cover and run my fingers down the first page.

It takes me a minute to get the hang of the key and the encoded text. It's not as simple as swapping letters for letters—there's a complex system based on sound patterns that makes my eyes burn with concentration. Every deciphered word feels like a small victory as I whisper them under my breath.

It’s a full five minutes before I’ve decoded the first few lines.

"Unbound. The fifth affinity. Mender and the breaker. Dangerous, powerful, and essential."

My breath catches in my throat. The fifth affinity. My affinity.

The small scrap of information is already more than I've managed to learn after pouring through half the academy’s library. And this is only the beginning. I already feel myself getting faster with the key Bastian provided in neat, precise handwriting. But at this speed, it will take me days, if not weeks to decode the entire book.

It’s half an hour before I’ve managed my way through the next passage.

"I mark these words in secret, for the tri-emperors have deemed the truth too dangerous to be known. I refuse to let the truth be destroyed. The real story is one of betrayal, love, destruction, and creation. It’s a story that centers around the most powerful to ever claim the title of unbound: a story of Lorkan Grace. The truth they wish to hide is how a man seen as a hero single-handedly led to the death of thousands upon thousands, nearly breaking our world in two.”

A ball of ice forms in my stomach as I process the words, dread coiling through me like a serpent.

Destruction. Thousands dead. Is that what I'm capable of? Is that what waits inside me?

I push my burning eyes a little more, decoding the next two sentences to finish the first page.

"But that is where the story ends. This is where it begins..."

I sit back, closing the book as the excitement I felt mingles with a new feeling of dread. I thought this book would teach me how to excel. How to use the power I’ve been given. Now… Now I’m terrified it’ll simply show me what nature of monster I can become.

A sudden yawn cracks my jaw. The candle flickers beside me, casting dancing shadows across the common room.

I don't remember falling asleep, but I jolt awake with a gasp, nearly knocking the unbound book and Bastian's written key from my lap.

Water. Everywhere. Filling my lungs. Something ancient watching from the depths. Waiting. Hunting.

Hunting for me.

I gulp for air that feels too thin, my uniform clinging to my sweat-soaked skin, heart hammering against my ribs like it's trying to punch its way out. The nightmare that woke me lingers, even as my brain switches itself back on. I can still see the dark water, the watching eyes, and feel the sensation of being hunted by something ancient and patient. The words that thing whispered still echo in my mind.

“Come to me. Find me. Free me.”

"Fuck," I hiss, swiping at the cold sweat on my forehead. My hands are shaking.

The common room suddenly feels too exposed, too vulnerable.

I swear under my breath at how careless it was to fall asleep here with the book and key. Anybody could've stumbled in and taken them.

The thought sends a fresh wave of panic through my chest. I fold the key into a small square and tuck it into my bra, the paper scratchy against my skin. I clutch the unbound book in one white-knuckled hand and hurry back to my room, every shadow in the corridor making me jump in alarm.

I open the door quietly so I don't wake Mireen, whose gentle snores fill our small room. I slip the book under my mattress, checking twice to make sure it's completely hidden. I consider crawling into bed and getting much-needed sleep, but I know the nightmares will come back.

I'm not ready for them. My mind is too full of questions and fears, like a cauldron about to boil over.

Ambrose's warnings about Serena and Malakai echo in my mind alongside his revelations about rogue elementals. And I'm still thinking about the little I was able to decipher from the book.

If Lorkan Grace was so important, why have I never heard of him? But the answer seems obvious. It’s like Bastian said. Somebody destroyed all records of whatever happened. Of people like me.

I already knew being unbound was dangerous, but now my understanding runs deeper. Far deeper. Whatever I am is dangerous enough that someone tried to wipe all memory of people like me from history itself.

In other words, I shouldn’t exist. If the wrong person finds out I do, they’ll make me disappear. I have no doubt of it.

My room suddenly feels too small, the walls pressing in, Mireen's soft breathing too loud in my ears. I need air. I need space.

I slip out and make my way down the stairs of the water tower, the stone steps cold beneath my bare feet. The chilly autumn night air hits me like a slap when I step outside, raising goosebumps across my arms. I pull them tight against my body, but I don't turn back for a coat. The cold is grounding, real—something to focus on besides the chaos in my head.

The castle is different at night—hushed and watchful, shadows pooling in corners where torchlight can't reach. Every creak of ancient wood, every whisper of wind through stone corridors makes me flinch. I have no destination in mind, just the desperate need to move, as if I can outrun all the things that seem to be chasing me. All the dangers closing in from every possible angle.

My feet carry me upward, through rarely used passages and narrow staircases, until I find myself at the top of the western wall. The air here is crisp with the last gasp of summer, warm days giving way to cold nights.

I give that a moment's thought, because the idea of seasons continuing to change and the world going on, even while I'm trapped in these murderous walls is strange and alien. It was the peak of summer when I volunteered for selection. I was sweating that day, the sun beating on my exposed neck as I stood in the town square, wondering if I would actually do it this year.

And now I’m here. The leaves will fall soon, and life outside these walls carries on, oblivious to our struggles here. On the outside, passing weeks meant shifting where we looked for fish and what we could catch. It meant summer festivals, fall ceremonies, the harbor games that came every spring. Here, though?

Each new day only means I’ve survived a little while longer. Each new day brings the threat of approaching danger, like Confluence Day, which keeps creeping toward us like a prowling beast.

I pull my arms tighter around myself, suppressing a sudden shiver that has nothing to do with the bite in the air, the reality of it all sinking into my bones.

From here, I can see all four elemental towers glowing in the darkness. They’re all as beautiful as they are strange. With enough power, primals can apparently imbue objects with magic, which is how they were constructed centuries ago.

I'm halfway along the raised castle wall, hand trailing idly on the waist-high wall that's the only thing standing between myself and a hundred-foot drop, when I notice I'm not alone.

Raith stands at the edge, his scarred profile outlined against the night sky. He doesn't turn at my approach, though I know he hears me. His hands rest on the stone, shoulders rigid with tension, muscles coiled tight beneath his thin shirt.

For a moment, I consider retreating. Whatever brought him here in the middle of the night is his business, not mine. But something stops me—maybe the way his knuckles have gone white where they grip the wall, or the haunted set of his jaw.

I see something of how I feel in his posture. Sense some connection.

"Couldn't sleep?" I ask, my voice barely carrying over the soft night breeze.

He doesn't answer immediately. With Raith, the silence seems to be a kind of language in its own right. It carries weight and meaning.

His profile is sharp in the moonlight, the scarred side of his face catching the light in a way that makes my chest ache.

"No," he finally says, the single word rough around the edges.

I move to stand beside him, not too close, leaving space between us. We both stare out at the academy grounds, the green field where we were all unloaded from Empire carriages as offerings. It was only five weeks ago, but it already feels like I was another person then—naive, terrified, unaware of the power building beneath my skin. Unaware of what terrible potential might lurk within me.

Beyond the fields, I see the forest and finally a ridge of mountains rising like black teeth against the star-filled sky.

"Bad dreams?" I ask, the words feeling inadequate for the weight they carry.

His jaw tightens, the scarred side of his face catching moonlight in a way that makes the damaged tissue look almost silver. "Always."

I nod, understanding more than he probably realizes. Even before I began dreaming of the beast in the dark waters, I was haunted by dreams about a storm so massive and powerful it destroyed everything in its path. Three years ago, the nightmares of the storm included horrific glimpses of tanned, familiar hands rising above churning waters—the last glimpses I ever had of my father and brothers.

Compared to these new dreams haunting me, those all feel quaint and gentle by comparison. "Mine are getting worse. More real," I admit, the words raw in my throat. "Like something's trying to claw its way into my head."

"What do you dream about?" he asks, surprising me with the question. He seems different tonight. More approachable, somehow. Maybe it's the simple fact that he's not glaring like he wants to kill me. Or fuck me. With Raith, it's honestly hard to tell. Or maybe it's my own confusing attraction to the man clouding the picture, making me see what I want to see.

I hesitate, unsure how much to reveal. My fingers absently trace the disguised mark on my hand. "Water. Darkness. Something watching me, hunting me. It feels ancient, hungry." I swallow hard. "It feels like it's waiting for something."

His eyes shift to me then and my breath catches in my throat, an electric current racing down my spine. "Since when?" he asks.

"They started maybe three weeks ago, I think, maybe before. But it's every night now. The same dream, but... more. Clearer." I wrap my arms tighter around myself. "What about yours?"

I don't actually expect an answer, but I'm surprised when he exhales slowly, a sound so weighted with pain it makes my chest ache. "Fire," he says simply.

The word hangs between us, heavy with everything he isn't saying.

Fire.

My memory flashes with the image of his fear when fire sprouted from my fingertips during our training match that first day. The way his eyes widened, the way his body went rigid.

It makes sense. How else would he have those twisted scars running up half of his face and the right side of his arm and hand?

I almost ask him how he's managing to not just survive but thrive as a fire affinity—how he could stand to be bound to the thing he must fear. My fingers itch to reach out and touch his scars, to trace their jagged paths.

And yet I don't need to ask, because I feel I understand completely.

Fire took something from him. What, exactly, I can't say. But he's learning to use the thing that hurt him—to control what he fears.

Isn't that exactly what I tried to do by choosing to join the water affinities? Only I'm hardly learning to channel. It feels more like I'm fumbling in the dark with my unbound power. The book Bastian gave me will hopefully hold some information I can use to improve, but I'll have to keep finding time to work through the complex code, and spare time isn't something we have a lot of here at Confluence.

"Do you always come here when you have bad dreams?" I ask, my voice softer than I intended.

"Ever since my first night here." His gaze remains fixed on the distant mountains.

"It's peaceful," I say, my eyes drawn again to the vast expanse of darkness before us.

"It's quiet," he corrects, but there's no edge to his words.

He's right in his own way to correct my wording, I realize. Peace is an illusion here. There is quiet, yes. There is sometimes even the semblance of calm. But there's always danger nearby, isn't there? Always a threat hanging over our heads, ready to strike us down when we least expect it.

We stand in silence that gradually shifts from awkward to something almost comfortable, the space between us charged with something I can't quite name. I don't know how long we remain there, side by side without speaking, before voices drift up from below.

"Who the hells told him?" a woman's voice asks, low and urgent. “He wasn’t supposed to be back for months yet. Perhaps not even until the Crucible.”

"That remains to be seen," a man responds. "But the Rector obviously heard about the body with the burnt out mark. Why else would he be here?"

Raith and I both go still, listening. His body tenses beside mine, still as the night itself.

Both voices sound older. Instructors, I think, though I can't see them because they're walking in the open third-floor hallway directly beneath the wall we’re standing on. Their whispers are drifting up from the many windows below.

"Elements. What a fucking mess. If anyone asks, we assumed it was a prank by one of the fires. Scorch marks to imitate a siphon, not the real thing.”

“If anyone asks, I’m claiming I never saw a thing. Do you have any idea?—”

The voices are silenced suddenly as a door snaps shut below.

Siphons? Goosebumps rise all over my skin, a chill that has nothing to do with the night air settling deep in my bones.

I glance at Raith to find him already watching me, his expression unknowable but his eyes burning with intensity.

"Siphons?" I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. "Did I hear them right? And what would that have to do with dead people's marks?"

Part of me wants to laugh the idea away, but I can't ignore the amount of fear in their voices as they spoke. I can't ignore the way my own mark seems to burn beneath my skin, as if responding to the words. Siphons are supposed to be monsters from children’s tales. Pure fantasy.

Raith’s expression hardens. In an instant, the vulnerability and openness brought on by his nightmares is gone. He's all hard lines and intensity again. Unreachable and unreadable. "You should go back to your room. It's not safe to wander at night."

"And yet you told me you've been wandering the castle at night since day one." I raise my eyebrows, surprised by my own boldness.

His full lips come the closest to a smile I've ever seen on him, and the sight is breathtaking—transforming his face into something almost unbearably beautiful. I forget to breathe for a moment, but the near-smile is gone as quickly as it came. "Nobody else here has the balls to tease me, let alone provoke me," he says.

"If you think you’d find balls between my legs, you’d be sorely disappointed.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.

Smooth, Nessa.

His eyes flick to mine, something dangerous flaring in them as he steps closer. "Trust me," he says, his voice dropping to a tone that slides over my skin like velvet, "disappointment is the last thing I'd feel."

The air between us charges with electricity, and I'm suddenly aware of how close we're standing, how the moonlight cuts across the sharp angles of his face. His gaze drops briefly to my lips before returning to my eyes, the intensity in them making my heart stutter.

Holy. Shit.

Fire explodes in my lower belly, unwelcome but not quite unpleasant. It spreads through my veins like wildfire, leaving me dizzy with a hunger I've never felt before. I'm hyperaware of him—his height, the breadth of his shoulders, the way his fingers curl around the stone railing. When did breathing become so difficult?

My brain scrambles, all thoughts of mysterious deaths and fairytale beasts forgotten. My mouth opens, and I can't seem to form a coherent thought in response. And the way my name sounded in his rough, deep voice? Gods. I could get used to that, even if I know Raith and everything he represents is not a good idea for me.

It's worse than "not a good idea." It's suicidal.

He's a fire. He's probably somebody Serena either wants, or, for all I know, already has. If he showed the slightest interest in me where she could see, I'd probably be dead before dawn.

Getting involved with Raith could literally get me killed in more ways than one, which is a fact I very much need my body to understand. Why, then, does every nerve ending in my body feel like it's been set alight at the mere suggestion of his touch?

"Go back to your room, Nessa," Raith says suddenly, his voice deeper than before, rough like he's fighting for control. "Try to sleep."

"Will you?" I ask, reluctant to leave despite every rational thought screaming at me to run, my traitorous feet refusing to move.

He turns back to the view. "Eventually."

I know a dismissal when I hear one, but I linger a moment longer. It is taking time and effort for the arousal he sparked with those few words to fade—for common sense to wrestle control of my thoughts and body again. "If I have the dream again tomorrow night... will you be here?"

Raith doesn't look at me, but I see his shoulders tense, then relax on an exhale. "I don't make promises."

It's not a yes, but it's not a no either. I'll take it.

"Goodnight, Raith."

As I turn to go, his voice stops me. "What we heard... I wouldn't speak of it to anyone. If the Rector is involved, then the information is extremely dangerous. You don't want to be called into his office for questioning. Trust me." For some reason, his eyes fall to my left hand when he says that—to my disguised mark.

I slip it in my pocket, nodding, a chill running down my spine at his warning.

Trust him. Yeah. That hardly seems like a good idea. And yet... part of me wants to. Part of me already does, whether I like it or not.

He's facing away, his broad silhouette a solitary shape against the vast night sky.

His words follow me all the way back to my room, settling into my mind like heavy stones in the churning current of my thoughts.

When I finally sleep again, the nightmares don't return. Instead, I dream of amber eyes and scars that look like rivers of gold in moonlight—and of strong hands touching places that make me wake with a gasp, my body aching for someone I know I can never have.

But the most dangerous things are always the ones we want the most, aren't they?