The cool rush of the tap water was the only sound echoing through the empty, high-ceilinged washroom as Lillian leaned over the porcelain basin, her palms flat against the cold marble counter.
Her dark academia blazer, which was stained a disgraceful, gritty grey with volcanic soot sat discarded on a nearby sink.
She had rolled her white uniform sleeves past her elbows, letting the freezing water run over her wrists, but no matter how hard she scrubbed, she could not rid herself of the invisible weight clinging to her skin.
Her thoughts drifted, cycling through the absolute madness of the last hour in a frantic, exhausting loop.
What was that?
The question clawed at the inside of her skull.
A living marble figure.
The first weave.
Ancient language.
The fact that it knew what she was the moment it laid its eyes on her…
She looked up, staring at her own reflection in the frosted glass.
Her crimson eyes were bloodshot from the soot, completely normal, completely baseline.
There was no trace of magic left.
No scent of mana on her skin.
She reached up, splashing the freezing water directly onto her face, desperate to shock her system out of the lingering panic.
Was any of it even real?
Or had the toxic gases of the Lower Vaults finally driven her to a vivid, stress-induced hallucination?
Lillian shut the tap off.
And the sudden silence in the restroom felt heavy and expectant.
Wiping her face with a coarse paper towel, she pulled her sleeves down, mentally calculating how many minutes she had left to sprint back to the dorms, change into a fresh uniform, and make it to the evening assembly without drawing any more attention to herself.
She turned around, ready to bolt for the door only to have her breath catching so hard she nearly choked.
Roman was leaning casually against the heavy oak doorframe, his broad frame entirely blocking the exit.
The pristine, untouchable Laurent heir was currently in a state of deeply irritating, unbothered unruliness with one hand rested loosely on his hip as he leaned his weight into the frame.
His midnight-silk blazer was hooked carelessly over a single finger, dangling over his shoulder, while his crisp white button-down was half-unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the sharp line of his collarbone.
His dark hair was slightly damp at the tips, a clear evidence that he had already utilized the washrooms to scrub the soot from his skin.
Lillian stared at him, her eyes wide with shock as a hot spike of panic and disbelief warred in her chest.
“What are you doing inside a girl’s washroom?!” The words practically screamed themselves behind her locked jaw.
If any of the tracking professors or housing registrars walked down this corridor right now, the scandal alone would secure them both a permanent detention in the disciplinary cells.
But Roman did not move an inch.
His eyes slowly traveled from her wet face, down to her bare wrists, and finally dropped to the tiled floor right beneath his expensive leather boots.
“I’m not inside,” he said, his lazy drawl echoing perfectly through the tiled room.
He pointed at his boots.
“My boots are precisely two inches outside the threshold. Technically, I’m merely occupying the corridor.”
Lillian stared at him, her mouth opening and closing slightly as she tried to process the audacity of his technicality.
Right.
Of course the top-ranking tracker in their year would apply legalistic logic to a bathroom threshold.
The silence stretched between them, thick and humming with a sudden, suffocating pressure that had nothing to do with magic.
The air in the washroom felt incredibly warm all of a sudden.
Lillian’s gaze drifted down his open collar, shifting away uncomfortably before she realized how intensely he was studying her in return.
His crimson eyes were not lazy anymore; they were sharp as they tracked the line of her throat.
Instinctively, her fingers flew up to her neck, defensively tugging her own unbuttoned collar together to shield herself from his transparent scrutiny.
She swallowed hard, looking down at the tiled floor, her boots suddenly becoming very interesting.
The weight of his presence was overwhelming, and the guilt she had been suppressing since the vault finally pushed past her defenses.
It took every ounce of her courage to force the words out.
“I… I wanted to apologize,” she started, her voice sounding awkward and terribly small.
She cleared her throat, forcing herself to look back up at his half-bothered, half-amused face.
“For your clothes, I mean. I know how much you… value your tailoring. And also for the delay. You shouldn’t have had to waste twenty minutes of your diagnostic because I fell into a dead zone.”
Roman did not answer right away.
He just stared at her, his brow lifting slowly as if she had just started speaking in that primordial, ancient language from the vaults.
Then a low, dry click of his tongue echoed against the tiles.
“Apologizing for a structural variance? How profoundly touching,” he mocked, though the sharp edge of his voice lacked its usual bite.
He shifted his weight, the midnight blazer dangling over his shoulder catching the ambient light.
Lillian frowned, her defensive walls snapping back up.
“Are you still angry about earlier?” Get faster updates on g.com.
“I’m not angry, never have been,” Roman countered smoothly.
“I’m simply pissed.”
Lillian blinked, her hands slowly dropping from her collar.
“Isn’t that the exact same thing?”
“Not even close.”
Before she could process the movement, Roman stepped directly across the brass strip.
The calculated two-inch boundary vanished.
The sudden shift in his proximity was so abrupt that Lillian’s instincts flared, her back immediately pressing against the edge of the cold marble basin as he loomed over her, entirely violating the threshold.
He stopped just a foot away, the faint scent of expensive cedarwood and clean winter air radiating off his damp skin that she could not help but move her head away.
“Anger is an emotional deficit,” Roman said, his voice was a harsh, beautiful whisper that vibrated against her skin.
“It is loud. It is disorganized. If I were angry with you, I would have left you in the dark to rot, or perhaps I would be raising my voice to ensure the entire corridor knows your incompetence.”
“You did… yell at me,” she pointed out hesitantly, her heart doing a frantic tap-dance against her ribs, her hand reaching back to grip the marble basin if only to anchor herself.
“Back in the vault. You snarled.”
“That was entirely different,” he dismissed without a shred of shame, his voice dropping into a softer register.
“That was a reprimand for vanishing from my grid.”
The space between them shrunk to nothing.
The tension became a physical entity, tight and fragile as a spun glass thread.
A single, stray droplet of water from her washed face slowly tracked its way down Lillian’s temple.
It tickled her cheek, moving in a agonizingly slow path down the curve of her jawline, hanging there for a fractured second before it finally dropped.
She did not move.
She could not.
Because the entire time, Roman’s eyes were fixed on that single droplet.
His gaze tracked its descent with a hyper-focused intensity that made her skin burn.
She saw how his finger twitch against his hip that for a terrifying, breathless second, she thought he was actually going to reach out—that his long fingers were going to cup her jaw again and wipe the dampness from her skin.
But then he abruptly broke the spell, his eyes snapping back up to meet hers, the intense focus fracturing back into his usual unbothered mask.
“I came to ensure my evaluation partner hadn’t succumbed to delayed ash inhalation,” he stated, stepping backward with an effortless grace that put the threshold back between them.
He hooked his blazer a little higher over his shoulder as he looked at her up and down.
“You look perfectly functional. A bit pathetic, but functional.”
Lillian let out a breath she had not realized she was holding, her fingers slowly loosening their grip on the marble counter behind her.
“I’m perfectly fine…”
“Good then.” He nodded and turned on his heel, his dark hair catching the light of the corridor arches.
“Change quickly. See to it that you look decent for the next class. We still have hours together ahead of us.”
With that, he walked away, his long strides carrying him down the hallway until the arrogant click of his boots faded into the ambient noise of the academy.
Lillian stood frozen by the sink, a shaky hand lifting to touch the jawline where the water had fallen as she exhale a trembling breath.
What was wrong with him?
Lillian quickly gathered her blazer, walked out of the washroom and straight down the path towards her dorm.
Her heart, which had only just settled from the confrontation with Professor Alder, was hammering against her ribs all over again.
Did he find out?
Roman was not just any vampire; he was the Laurent heir.
His baseline instincts were sharper, more predatory, and far more analytical than any student she had ever encountered.
He must have sensed something amiss.
He might not have words for it yet because he still looked irritated, but she knew that he knew the math did not add up.
A simple dead zone did not leave a vampire completely scentless.
It did not cause a registry drop that felt like a missing heartbeat in the academy’s grid.
Truly, if she was him, she would be suspicious too.
I have to be extra careful from now on.
The bells of Valerius tolled across the courtyards, their solemn chime rolling beneath the ivy-covered arches as the last glow of afternoon surrendered to dusk.
By the time Lillian returned, the soot had been scrubbed from her skin, her uniform exchanged for a fresh one, and every visible trace of the Lower Vaults had disappeared.
She slowed to a stop just outside the heavy oak doors, her hand hovering a mere inch above the heavy brass handle.
Through the thick frosted glass panels, the sharp voice of Professor Amarila was already cutting through the room, indicating that the lecture had already commenced.
She bit her lower lip.
Going in late to class was an automatic invitation for scrutiny, something she absolutely could not afford right now with her nerves still frayed from the vaults.
But… she could not possibly escape the class.
She was just about to knock the door when she felt a presence behind her, causing her to turn her head.
Fresh from changing, Roman looked as though the Lower Vaults had never touched him at all.
His midnight blazer sat flawlessly across his shoulders, every silver button fastened with maddening precision.
Even his dark hair had been combed back into effortless order, leaving no evidence that less than an hour ago he had been tearing apart centuries-old stone with his bare hands.
He did not stop his stride though.
As he reached the threshold, his gaze flicked down to her anxious profile, his brows lifting by a fraction of an inch in a silent, mocking greeting that asked exactly why she was lingering like a ghost.
Without a single word, he reached past her, gripped the heavy brass handle, and pushed the massive oak door inward.
Startled, Lillian was about to make way when he stepped into her shadow, one arm hovering just an inch behind her shoulders—not touching her, but effectively creating a physical barrier that urged her to step inside.
Lillian took the unspoken cue, quickly stepping into the lecture hall before the delay could draw Amarila’s ire.
Roman followed right on her heels, his arm dropping back to his side with a casual grace as the heavy door clicked shut behind them, cementing the illusion that they had arrived precisely on time, completely unfazed by the world.
Unfortunately for them, the sudden silence that blanketed the lecture hall was instantaneous.
“Ah, Mr. Laurent and… Miss Shaw,” Professor Amarila’s voice cut through the ambient warmth of the room like a frost spell, as she took some time to recognize the brunette girl.
“How generous of you to grace us with your presence. I was unaware the curriculum permitted a private extension for whatever it is you two were doing out in the courtyards.”
Lillian’s stomach plummeted.
Panic spiked hot and fast in her chest, and she instantly whirled around on her heel mid walking up the aisle.
“Professor Amarila, I’m incredibly sorry for the delay, we were just—”
“Apologies are unnecessary, Professor,” Roman’s smooth, unbothered voice glided right over hers, cutting her off entirely.
Lillian stiffened as Roman stepped up right behind her, his close proximity radiating that familiar, infuriatingly calm winter-cedar scent.
Amarila lowered her chalk, a knowing look dawning across her features as her gaze traveled between the two of them.
In an elite academy like Valerius, a male and female student disappearing together right after a major trial and walking into the next class concurrently late—looking perfectly refreshed and adjusted—implied only one thing to a traditional professor.
“I see,” Amarila nodded, clearly unimpressed.
“Lost track of time, Mr. Laurent? I suppose the academy’s scheduling is a minor inconvenience when one is occupied with secondary partner engagements.”
Lillian’s face burned a furious, mortified crimson.
No. No, that’s not it!
She frantically shook her head.
“Professor, it isn’t what it looks like, we were actually—”
“I assure you, it’s merely a minor miscalculation of the hour, Professor,” the lunatic pureblood countered again, his tone dripping with an arrogant charm that completely played into the assumption as he smiled sweetly.
“The afternoon weather was simply too pleasant to cut short. I’ll ensure we adhere more strictly to the bells next time.”
Lillian’s breath caught in her throat as she swiftly looked up at him, her eyes wide with absolute betrayal.
This guy… Instead of deploying his lethal logic to dismantle the implication, Roman was casually letting the professor believe they had been off hiding in the gardens together.
A collective, hushed whisper immediately rippled through the rows of watching sophomores.
But before Lillian could even form a single syllable to deny it, Roman’s hands clamped firmly onto both of her shoulders.
The sudden touch sent a jolt straight down her spine.
With effortless fluidness, he whirled her back around so her back was to the professor, completely cutting off her ability to defend herself.
“Roman—” she hissed under her breath.
“Keep walking, Lillian,” he murmured directly behind her head.
With a deceptively gentle push, he propelled her up the stone steps of the aisle, using his broad frame to block her from the view of the entire class who is clearly ogling at them as he steered her toward the empty seats in the upper tiers.
“Just sit down and look pretty.” Roman said and pushed her down her seat, watching her stagger before sliding into the mahogany desk right beside her, giving her a funny look.
“You’re terrible at lying to professors, and I value my ears too much to listen to you dig us a deeper grave.”
Lillian stared at him in complete disbelief.
“I wasn’t going to lie,” she hissed under her breath.
“I was going to tell her the truth. We were in the vaults. A simple cross-reference with the registrar log would have cleared us.”
“And subjected us to a tedious, half-hour interrogation about grid anomalies and tracking mechanics while she stands there holding a piece of chalk.” Roman raised a brow.
He reached into his satchel, casually pulling out a leather-bound notebook.
“Much faster to let her believe I’m a rogue romantic. People love a predictable cliché. It satisfies their lack of imagination.”
Lillian nearly choked at his casualness.
He really does not have an ounce of shame.
The entire lecture hall was still buzzing behind them like an enchanted beehive when a voice came from the seat beside her.
“Hey, Shaw.”
Lillian turned her head.
There, a fae girl leaned forward over the back of her seat, her silver-green eyes bright with unconcealed curiosity while two other students had already abandoned any pretense of taking notes.
She asked, “…Since when are you two dating?”
Lillian stared at the fae for several long seconds, utterly incapable of forming a response.
Then, with all the quiet dignity she had left, she slowly lowered her face into her hands, burying her eyes in her palms as the last fragile remnants of her peaceful academy life quietly crumbled to dust.