Lillian hit the corridor at full speed like a badly aimed spell.
Her shoes slapped against polished stone, satchel bouncing wildly against her side as the academy blurred into streaks of gold-lit arches and shifting shadows.
Every instinct in her body screamed the same instruction: do not stop, do not think, do not breathe too loudly in case reality noticed her.
The halls of Valerius Academy were no longer elegant architecture.
They were a maze designed by someone who had clearly never been chased by their own schedule before.
A group of sirens drifted past, their laughter soft and liquid like water over glass.
Lillian barely avoided them, skidding sideways so fast her shoulder clipped a wall.
“Sorry—sorry—academic emergency—” she blurted, though nobody was listening.
She rounded the final subterranean landing at a full sprint, her boots skidding on the chilled masonry.
Ahead of her stood the heavy, iron-reinforced double doors of the Blood Dispensing Registry.
She hastened her pace, hoping to make it in time.
And that was when the universe, with impeccable comedic timing, decided to breathe.
With all the momentum of a runaway freight train, Lillian threw her weight forward and shoved the heavy doors burst open.
At that exact, horrific millisecond, the doors were already swinging inward from the other side.
Lillian’s eyes widened to the size of saucers as the gap opened, revealing a broad, impeccably tailored chest encased in a dark academy blazer.
Higher up, a sharp jawline, messy dark hair, and two crimson eyes widened in sudden, sharp surprise.
Oh no!
Roman Laurent was standing on the top step of the short stone staircase leading up from the dispensary floor, right in the threshold, with another vampire a step behind him.
Her left boot slipped.
Her right boot betrayed her.
With a pathetic, choked squeak, Lillian lost her balance entirely.
Gravity took hold, and she pitched forward, completely airborne for a fraction of a second, hurtling straight down the short flight of stairs toward Roman’s shins like a human bowling ball.
But Roman certainly was not sentimental.
So with the terrifying, split-second reflexes of a pureblood who valued his tailored clothes far too much to use his chest as a crash pad, he smoothly twisted his torso sideways, pulling his shoulder back in one effortless blur of motion.
Lillian sailed right past the empty space he had occupied a millisecond prior.
“Whoa—!” Jett Winslow, who had been standing a step behind Roman and completely lacked his friend’s sociopathic disregard for a damsel in mid-air, did not have time to dodge.
Oof!
Lillian collided directly with Jett’s broad chest.
The sheer momentum carried them both down two steps before Jett managed to plant his boots firmly against the chilled stone, wrapping his arms around her upper torso to stop the violent descent.
Her satchel gave a dramatic, final heave, dumping three notebooks, a rogue inkwell, and a half-eaten sleeve of Mrs. Llewellyn’s blueberry muffins onto the stairs with a series of pathetic clatters.
For a moment, the only sound in the subterranean stairwell was Lillian’s frantic breaths and the distant hum of the dispensary’s cooling charms.
She was completely buried in the fabric of Jett’s charcoal coat, her fingers white-knuckling his sleeves.
She did not dare move.
She did not dare look up.
Because what the hell just happened?!
“You know,” Jett grunted, his chest heaving slightly as he looked down at the top of her dark, thoroughly unraveled bun.
“I usually prefer a girl to ask for my name before she tackles me down a flight of stairs.”
From the top step, Roman stood completely unbothered, looking down at the tangled pair with his hands tucked casually back into his pockets.
“Elegant evasion, Laurent,” Jett muttered, shooting a glare up at his friend while ensuring Lillian actually had her feet under her.
“Thanks for the backup.”
“You had the better angle, Jett,” Roman drawled smoothly, tilting his head as he studied the back of the girl’s head.
“I was training your reflex.”
Lillian felt her face ignite with a heat so intense she was fairly certain she was violating several laws of thermodynamics.
She quickly scrambled backward, untangling herself from Jett’s arms and practically vibrating with embarrassment.
“I’m so sorry! I am so, so sorry!” she stammered, keeping her head ducked so low her nose was nearly touching her collarbone.
Her dark hair fell forward like a protective curtain, completely shrouding her face as she dropped to her knees to gather her things.
“It’s fine, really,” Jett said, his voice dropping into a surprisingly gentle cadence that cut right through her internal screaming.
Unlike his sociopathic counterpart at the top of the stairs, Jett actually knelt down on the chilled stone, gathering the scattered notebooks before the rogue inkwell could ruin them.
Lillian watched him for a while.
And to her horror, he even picked up the stray sleeve of blueberry muffins, dusting a speck of lint off the wrapping with a sympathetic tilt of his head.
Oh, Lord.
He could have just left it there.
It was so embarrassing!
“First-year hunger is no joke, huh? Don’t worry, the ledger doesn’t close for another three minutes. You didn’t miss the rotation.”
Lillian’s hands shook violently as she grabbed her ruined notebooks.
She did not even bother to correct him about being a sophomore.
“Thank you… I’m so sorry… The condensation… The door was just too heavy, I didn’t mean to—”
”Lordling, you’re practically running a charity down there,” Roman’s voice cut through the damp air from the top of the stairs.
“Be careful. If you keep coddling the freshmen, they’ll start expecting you to carry them to all their lectures.”
”Ignore him,” Jett muttered dryly, handing Lillian her neatly stacked notebooks.
“He lacks a basic sense of chivalry.”
“I possess a spectacular sense of self-preservation,” Roman countered, stepping down one stair.
“My blazer is silk. Her momentum was lethal.”
Lillian reached out to take the notebooks from Jett, her frantic gratitude tumbling out in a continuous, breathless rush.
“Thank you— thank you, really—”
In her haste to grab the satchel strap from Jett’s hand, her fingers slipped.
She yanked upward a bit too forcefully, causing the heavy leather bag to catch the edge of her coat.
The sudden, awkward movement jerked her upper body back, and the thick curtain of dark hair shrouding her face split right down the center.
The subterranean cooling sconces cast a sharp, brilliant blue light across her features.
“Here,” Jett said, handing over the final strap, completely oblivious to the sudden stillness that had just infected the air.
His hand, which had been casually lifting to brush a stray strand of fringe from his brow, froze mid-air.
And his crimson eyes, previously heavy with lazy boredom, narrowed instantly into two sharp, piercing points of absolute focus.
“Hold on,” he said.
The low drawl had completely vanished, replaced by a dangerously precise friction that made the temperature in the stairwell feel like it had dropped ten degrees.
He took two steps down the stairs, his boots making absolutely no sound against the masonry until he was standing directly in front of her.
Lillian’s breath lodged firmly in her throat.
Trapped between Jett’s crouching form and Roman’s towering shadow, she had nowhere left to slide.
Against every single useful survival instinct her brain possessed, her gaze drifted upward.
And their eyes locked.
The brilliant red of her eyes met the intense, predatory crimson of his pureblood gaze.
The silence stretched between them, heavy and suffocating, broken only by the steady ticking of the registry ledger behind the heavy doors.
“…Huh,” Roman said softly.
His gaze sharpened a fraction.
“…You.”
Lillian’s soul left her body again.
It seemed to be doing that a lot today.
Jett stared at them as he slowly rose to his feet.
Roman tilted his head, his infamous smirk making its way to his lips.
“I’ve seen you before.”
“No,” Lillian said immediately.
“You haven’t.” Which did not help her case.
Roman’s smirk deepened, widening into something wicked as a low, smooth laugh rumbled in his chest.
“No? You’re entirely certain about that?”
Lillian did not break eye contact.
In fact, she could not.
She was staring straight up at him with wide eyes, her spine rigid and her entire expression screaming a mixture of absolute panic and stubborn defiance.
It was a spectacular contradiction.
She looked like she was ready to face a firing squad, yet she was practically vibrating with the urge to melt into the floorboards.
Lucky for her, Roman found it utterly hilarious.
“Funny,” he murmured, taking a deliberate half-step closer until his shadow completely eclipsed her.
“Because I have an exceptionally good memory for faces. Especially faces that burst into private residential quarters without unlatching the lock first.”
From a step beside them, Jett looked between Lillian’s horrified expression and Roman’s predatory amusement, his brow lifting in genuine confusion.
“You two know each other? When did you have time to get to know a freshman, Laurent?”
“Oh, she’s not a freshman, Jett,” Roman murmured, never taking his eyes off Lillian’s burning face.
He leaned down a fraction, dropping his voice into a stage whisper that easily carried across the quiet stairwell.
“Are you,” he asked.
“312?”
The numbers hit Lillian’s ears like a lightning strike.
He remembered…
Of course he remembered.
He had even remembered the room number she had shouted over her shoulder before fleeing yesterday like a startled woodland creature.
Roman watched understanding slowly bloom across her face, his smile turning almost unbearably pleased.
“There you are,” he said softly.
“I was wondering if you’d admit it.”
Lillian stared at him in silent horror.
Roman’s head tilted ever so slightly.
“You never did answer my question yesterday.” His crimson eyes glimmered with lazy curiosity.
“What’s your name?”
The question hung in the chilled air.
Tell him.
Just tell him.
It was the perfect opportunity to introduce herself as his partner for the Academy Integration Evaluation Framework.
After this, she would not need to worry about walking up to him anymore.
But every coherent thought immediately abandoned her the moment she parted her lips.
Just then, her gaze darted toward the glowing registry beyond the doors.
The clock mounted above the ledger flashed a big red One minute remaining.
Her soul, which had only just returned moments ago, promptly packed its bags again.
“I n-need to go!” The words exploded out of her before she could think better of them.
She took a desperate, uncoordinated step backward down the stairs, nearly tripping over her own boots again.
“T-there’s only one minute left— I need my vital essence—”
Before Roman could say another word, Lillian clutched her satchel against her chest, ducked around him with an apology that was mostly unintelligible and bolted down the remaining stairs.
“Excuse me! Sorry! Academic emergency!”
The heavy dispensary doors swung shut behind her and silence settled over the stairwell.
Jett looked toward the closed doors.
Then toward Roman.
“…What,” he asked carefully, “was that?”
Roman watched the doors.
“No idea,” he admitted with an amused chuckle as he turned on his heel.
He folded his arms, his sharp brows knitting together as a new realization struck him.
“Hold on a second,” Jett said, a look of genuine surprise breaking through his usual aristocratic indifference.
“Did you finally decide to crack a vampiress?”
Roman let out a scoff at that.
“That’s a dramatic interpretation.”
“Is it?” Jett looked him up and down.
“Laurent, every girl you’ve ever entertained has been anything but a vampire. I can’t remember the last time you paid this much attention to one of our own. You avoid them like they’re carrying marriage contracts.”
It was a well-known fact among their inner circle that Roman’s afternoon distractions were almost exclusively outside their own kind.
Dealing with women from the vampire aristocracy always came with strings attached.
So seeing Roman actively teasing a vampire sophomore was unchartered territory.
Roman merely smiled.
“An accurate survival instinct.”
“Exactly my point.” Jett gestured back toward the dispensary.
“So what’s going on? You cornered the poor girl until she forgot her own name.”
“She forgot it long before I say anything.”
Jett snorted.
“Roman, she looked one heartbeat away from collapsing onto my boots.”
Roman did not answer immediately.
That alone made Jett glance at him twice.
Because Roman Laurent always had an answer.
Even when he did not care.
Even when the answer was insulting, vague, or dressed up in sarcasm like a silk ribbon around a blade.
Silence from him was not absence.
It was attention.
His gaze veered towards the heavy dispensary doors where she had vanished for a moment before back to the front.
Well, not really at the doors themselves, but at the path she had taken through them.
Like he could still trace the echo of her panic in the air.
It was faint and easy to dismiss.
But Roman never miss things.
That was the problem.
Yesterday, a girl with a voice too shaky standing in a place she absolutely should not have been, eyes wide like she was trying to negotiate with fate itself while actively losing.
Her face had betrayed her more honestly than her words ever did.
Fear, yes.
But also something else.
Raw expression.
Like whatever she felt did not stay inside long enough to be filtered.
Strange.
He had thought nothing of it at the time.
Just another nervous student orbiting the academy’s gravity well, briefly colliding and escaping.
But then today she had come flying out of a door like the academy itself was chasing her down the stairs, and for a split second before the chaos, he had seen it again.
Same thing.
She panicked easily.
Every surprise sent her into motion before thought could catch up, reacting as if danger had arrived a heartbeat earlier than everyone else realized.
Roman watched the pattern play out in his mind like a quiet little phenomenon only he could hear properly.
The way she kept trying to vanish, the way panic sharpened her movements, they way her ears turned red as she looked away, the way she stood so stiffly and awkwardly.
It was consistent.
It was obvious.
It was—
His lips curved faintly.
“…cute,” he murmured under his breath, so soft it almost did not exist.
Jett veered his head towards him.
“What was that?”
Roman did not look at him.
The word had already been buried under his usual calm expression like it had never surfaced at all.
“Nothing.”
…
Inside the dispensary, the digital clock struck precisely Twelve-twenty with a sharp, definitive electronic chime.
Lillian slid her silver student crest across the scanner at the absolute last second.
Her heart hammered an exhausting rhythm against her ribs as the ledger flashed a brilliant, saving green.
[Ration Logged: Shaw, Lillian.]
The automated system whirred, sliding a chilled glass vial across the cold marble counter toward her.
Lillian grabbed it with trembling fingers, her knees shaking so violently she had to lean her entire weight against the desk just to stay upright.
She had made it.
She had survived the stairs, she had survived Jett, and she had survived Roman’s terrifyingly sharp memory.
But as she stared down at the dark, cold crimson liquid in her hand, a fresh wave of unadulterated despair washed over her.
Oh God…
He knew her face now.
He knew her room number.
And before the sun dipped below the horizon, she was going to have to walk right back up to him and confess that the disaster from Room 213 was the partner he was bound to for the rest of the year.
Lillian squeezed her eyes shut, pressing the cold glass vial against her burning cheek.
Mrs. Llewellyn, she thought, a miserable whine catching in her throat, I want to go home.