Tap, Tap, Tap, Tap
The corridor stretches ahead of her like a throat she's already been swallowed by.
Footfalls. Too loud. Her own. Sneakers against stone that's been worn smooth by centuries of feet not quite like hers. The sound echoes anyway, bouncing off walls hung with tapestries so old their original colors have faded to the muted palette of bruises—purple and black and deep, deep red. The figures woven into them shift in the corner of her vision, hunters and prey locked in eternal pursuit, but she knows better than to look directly. Some things in this place don't appreciate being watched back.
Her lungs burn.
She's been running for—what? Minutes? Forever? Time moves differently in these halls, stretched thin and strange by the violet flames that gutter in iron sconces every few feet. They cast no heat, those flames. Just light. Just enough to see by. Just enough to be seen.
Her hair clings to her temples, damp at the nape. Deep purple-black, almost black entirely in this lighting, though every so often she catches a glimpse of herself in the polished obsidian of a pillar and sees hints of something richer bleeding through at the ends. Her bangs have gone lank, plastered to her forehead. She should push them back. She doesn't.
Her bag thumps against her hip with every stride. Inside: two notebooks, a pencil case, a copy of something in a language she's still learning to read. Nothing valuable. Nothing worth stealing. Nothing worth—
Laughter. Behind her. Distant but not distant enough.
She pushes harder. Her legs burn now too. A stitch claws at her side. She's not built for this, not built for any of this—not for running, not for hiding, not for being what they made her. What he made her. The memory surfaces unwanted: teeth, hands, the moment everything went dark and then light again, wrong light, wrong everything.
She shoves it down. Keeps moving.
The corridor branches. She takes the narrower path without thinking, ducking under an archway carved with figures that seem to writhe in the flickering light. This hall is older, less traveled. The gas lamps here burn a deeper violet, almost blue at the edges. The tapestries are fewer, the walls bare stone in places, rough-hewn and cold.
She presses her palm to one as she passes, just for a second. The cold grounds her. Reminds her she's still here, still real, still—
Another corner. A dead end. An alcove.
She's trapped.
She turns, back to the wall, chest heaving, and listens. The laughter has faded. Maybe they took a different path. Maybe they got bored. Maybe—
A sound. Footsteps. Not hers.
She closes her eyes.
---
He's only half-listening to the girl beside him, which is more than most people manage.
"—and I told him, absolutely not, I'm not wearing last season's cut to the autumn gathering, can you imagine? Vivienne would never let me hear the end of it, and you know how she gets about—"
He nods. It's the right frequency, the right duration. She doesn't notice the difference between a nod that means I'm listening and a nod that means I'm aware you're speaking. She's never had to notice. Beautiful girls rarely do.
The hall they're walking through could swallow a cathedral and still have room to spare. The ceiling vanishes into darkness overhead, lost somewhere in the shadows where even vampire eyes can't quite reach. Pillars of black marble line the way, each one carved with the history of a different family—their crests, their triumphs, their dead. Between them, tapestries hang in heavy folds, these ones newer than the ones in the older wings, their colors still sharp: deep crimsons, forest greens, gold that catches the light and holds it.
The floor is obsidian, polished to a mirror shine. He can see himself in it as he walks—dark hair, dark clothes, expression carefully neutral. Beside him, her reflection is a spill of perfect blonde waves and a pout that's already forming because he hasn't responded to whatever she just said.
"—hello. Orion. Are you even listening?"
"Vivienne would never let you hear the end of it." He doesn't look at her when he says it. "I heard."
She narrows her eyes, but she's already smiling—she can't help it, smiling is what she does, it's as natural to her as breathing. "Fine. But you're agreeing with me, right? About the cut?"
"I always agree with you, Tory."
The flat delivery, paired with the absolute lack of evidence to support it, makes her laugh despite herself. She's about to say something else—
A pause.
Because something else has reached him, cutting through her voice like a needle through silk. Faint. Almost too faint to register. But there.
A scuffle. The slap of flesh against flesh. A whimper so quiet it's barely a breath.
He stops walking.
She takes two more steps before noticing, turning back with a frown. "What? Where are you going?"
"Class." He's already turning, eyes fixed down a branching corridor. "Go ahead. I'll catch up."
"But—"
"I'll catch up, Tory."
She opens her mouth to argue—she always argues—but something in his voice makes her stop. He's not looking at her. He's looking down that corridor like it's the only thing in the world.
She huffs. Crosses her arms. Her blonde hair swings as she tosses her head. "Fine. But if Moryn marks me absent, I'm telling him you—"
He's already walking away.
Her boots make a sharp, angry sound against the obsidian. He doesn't look back.
---
The sounds guide him. Through an archway, down a narrower corridor, past doors with handles shaped like reaching hands—bronze, cold, the fingers curled as if in supplication. The violet flames here burn lower, dimmer. This part of the school doesn't see much traffic. Too old. Too far from the main halls. Too easy to get lost in.
He rounds a corner and stops.
They're gathered in an alcove where the corridor dead-ends, five of them backlit by a single guttering flame. Two boys, three girls. All young. All wearing the particular expression of those who have found something smaller than themselves to fill the time.
He doesn't register their faces at first. Doesn't register much of anything except what's in the center.
Her.
On the floor. Dark hair tangled across her face, so deep a purple it's almost black. One cheek already darkening with a bruise that shouldn't be there—shouldn't be there because bruises on vampires fade in minutes, in seconds, in the time it takes to blink. Her lip is split, a thin line of blood welling at the corner, blood so dark it's nearly black. Her glasses lie on the stone beside her, one lens cracked, reflecting the violet light in fractured pieces.
She's not moving. Not fighting. Not even looking at them. Her eyes are fixed on the floor, on the cracked lens, on nothing at all. One hand grips her own sleeve. The other is pressed flat to the stone, palm down, fingers splayed, like she's trying to hold herself in place.
One of the girls—tall, dark-haired, cheekbones that could cut glass—crouches in front of her. Reaches out. Tilts her chin up with one manicured finger.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you." Her voice is sweet, almost affectionate. "Come on. Look at me."
The girl on the floor makes a sound. It's barely there. A whimper, maybe. A breath. Something that might have been words once, in another life, before whoever she is learned that speaking only made it worse.
The dark-haired girl's smile widens. "What was that? I couldn't hear you. Say it again."
---
He steps forward.
Not loudly. Not quickly. He simply steps into the alcove, and the space suddenly feels smaller.
They notice. All at once, the way prey notices when something larger has entered their territory. The dark-haired girl's hand drops from the other's chin. She straightens, turning, and her face goes through a series of micro-adjustments—annoyance, recognition, calculation, and finally something that's trying very hard to be charming.
"We were just—"
"I can see what you were just."
His voice is quiet. It fills the alcove anyway.
The dark-haired girl's smile flickers. Beside her, one of the boys—sandy hair, sharp jaw, the kind of handsome that's already starting to sour—puffs up slightly, shoulders back, chin up. The universal posture of someone about to say something stupid.
"This doesn't concern you. It's between us and her. So why don't you just—"
He looks at the boy.
That's all. Just looks. And something in the boy's voice dies. Because looking at him is different from looking at other vampires. He's taller than the sandy-haired boy by half a head, broader in the shoulders, but it's not the physical difference that makes the boy's throat work silently. It's the other difference. The one you can't see but can feel. The one that separates old lines from new ones, families that have existed for millennia from families that have existed for centuries.
The boy's mouth opens. Closes. He takes a step back.
The dark-haired girl laughs, too bright, too quick. "God, whatever. She's not worth this." She steps over the girl on the floor like she's furniture, gesturing to the others. "Come on. This is boring now."
They go. All of them. The sandy-haired boy lingers half a second longer than the rest, long enough to save face, not long enough to do anything memorable. Then he's gone too, his footsteps fading down the corridor.
---
Silence.
The girl on the floor hasn't moved. She's still pressed to the stone, still gripping her own sleeve, still breathing too fast. The blood at the corner of her lip has dried to a dark crust. Her split lip hasn't healed. It should have healed. It should have healed seconds after it happened.
He takes a step closer. Then another. He stops at the edge of the space she's carved for herself, close enough to see but far enough not to crowd.
Her hair has fallen forward again, hiding her face. He can see the rise and fall of her shoulders, too quick, too shallow. The hand pressed to the stone trembles slightly.
He crouches. Slowly. The way you'd approach a wounded animal. He doesn't speak. Doesn't reach out. Just waits.
Long moments pass. The violet flame flickers. Somewhere distant, a bell tolls—not the class bell, something older, something that marks hours no one remembers.
Her hand moves.
Slowly, carefully, her fingers creep across the stone toward her glasses. They brush the cracked lens, once, feather-light. She doesn't pick them up. Just touches the broken glass, confirming it's real, confirming she's real, confirming something only she understands.
He reaches for the glasses.
Not to take them. Just to help. Just to hand them to her so she doesn't have to stretch any further than she already has.
But the moment his fingers touch the frame, she flinches.
It's violent, that flinch—her whole body jerking backward, away from him, away from the unexpected contact. Her back hits the wall behind her—
Or no. It doesn't.
Because in the fraction of a second between her movement and the impact, he's moved. Faster than she expected anyone to be. His hand is there, cupped between the back of her head and the stone, taking the force of the collision himself. His palm presses against cold rock. Her skull presses against his palm. Soft. Fragile. Wrong.
She freezes.
He's close now. Closer than he meant to be. Close enough to see the individual strands of her hair, dark purple bleeding into black. Close enough to see the flecks of something lighter in her irises, grey maybe, or pale blue. Close enough to see the fear there, raw and immediate and utterly without pretense.
He doesn't move.
Slowly, carefully, he lifts his other hand. Her glasses dangle from his fingers, one lens cracked, the frame warm from his grip. He holds them where she can see them.
"Are these yours?"
His voice is quiet. Neutral. The kind of voice you use when you're trying not to startle someone who's already been startled enough.
She stares at him. Her eyes are wide, too wide, ringed with dark circles that shouldn't exist on vampire skin. Her lips part, but no sound comes out. Then, slowly, she lifts both hands. Cups them together. Holds them out like an offering.
He blinks. Then understands.
He places the glasses in her palms. Carefully. Gently. Like they matter.
She takes them. Her fingers close around the frame. For a moment she just holds them, staring down at the cracked lens. Then, with movements so small they're almost invisible, she lifts them to her face and slides them on.
They sit crooked on her nose. The crack runs diagonally across her right eye, splitting her vision into fragments. She doesn't adjust them. Doesn't try to fix it. Just leaves them there, askew and broken, and looks at the floor again.
His hand is still behind her head. He becomes aware of this slowly, the way you become aware of something you've been holding without noticing. Her hair is soft against his knuckles. Her skull feels small beneath his palm. Fragile. Like something that could break.
He withdraws his hand. Slowly. Carefully. Giving her time to flinch again, to pull away, to do any of the things he expects her to do. She doesn't. She just sits there, head bowed, glasses crooked, breathing too fast.
He looks at her split lip. At the bruise darkening her cheek. At the dried blood at the corner of her mouth. None of it has healed. None of it has even started.
He doesn't understand. He's never seen anything like this. Vampires heal. It's what they do. Wounds close. Bruises fade. Blood stops. That's the way it works.
Hers hasn't.
He exhales slowly. Then, without thinking, he brings his own hand to his mouth. His canines lengthen—not much, just enough—and he bites down on the fleshy part of his palm below his thumb. Two small punctures. Blood wells up, dark red, almost black in this light but shot through with something that shimmers when the violet flame catches it. Precious. Old. Powerful.
He holds out his hand. Between them. An offering.
"Here." His voice is low. "For your bruises."
She looks at his hand. At the blood welling from the punctures, dripping slowly, once, twice, three times. The first drop hits the stone between them and vanishes into the dark. The second lands on the toe of her sneaker. The third—
Her face goes red.
Not the pale flush of embarrassment. Deep red. Burning red. The kind of red that comes from somewhere visceral, somewhere primal, somewhere she clearly doesn't want him to see. She makes a sound—small, high, distressed—and shakes her head violently. No. No, no, no.
He frowns. "It'll help you heal. That's all."
She shakes her head again. Harder. Her hands come up, pressing against her own chest, pushing back against nothing. Her breath comes faster now, hitching, catching on something that might be a sob.
His blood keeps dripping. Once. Twice. Three times.
She whimpers.
He makes a sound low in his throat—frustration, confusion, something else he can't name. He pulls his hand back, and even as he does, the punctures close, the skin knitting together like they were never there. Clean. Healed. Instant.
"Fine." Not harsh. Just tired. "Fine. Then I'll take you to the infirmary."
He doesn't ask. Doesn't give her time to refuse. He reaches down, wraps his fingers around her wrist—carefully, gently, but firmly—and pulls her to her feet. She stumbles, catches herself, stands there swaying slightly. Her hand is cold in his. Too cold. Wrong cold.
He starts walking.
She doesn't follow.
He feels it immediately—the resistance. Not much. Just enough. Her feet planted, her weight pulling back, her grip on his hand tightening as she tries to stop him. He's stronger than her. Much stronger. He could keep walking and she'd have no choice but to come with him, stumbling and falling and being dragged across the stone.
He stops instead. Turns.
And feels her strength.
It's not much, not compared to his. But it's there, surprising in its intensity, a core of something that doesn't match the fragile exterior. She's holding his hand like she's trying to anchor herself, like she's afraid of where he's taking her, like—
She speaks.
The sound is so faint he almost misses it. A whisper. A breath. Less than either. Three syllables, maybe four, shaped by lips that barely move and a voice that's been worn down to nothing.
He can't hear her. Can't make out the words. But he hears something—the attempt, the effort, the fact that she tried at all—and it hits him like a blow.
Because the others called her mute. He heard them. Mute. The word they threw at her like a stone. And here she is, speaking to him, trying to speak to him, her voice so quiet it barely exists even for his ears.
He looks at her face.
And finds her crying.
Tears stream down her cheeks, silent and endless, carving tracks through the dust and the dried blood and the shame. Her nose is running. Her breath hitches in her chest, small sounds escaping despite her efforts to contain them. She's trying to wipe her face with her free hand, but the tears keep coming, faster than she can catch them, and her hand is shaking, and her glasses are still crooked, and—
He has no idea what to do.
He stands there, frozen, staring at this girl who's falling apart in front of him. He doesn't know her name. Doesn't know what happened to her before today, before this moment, before he found her on that floor. Doesn't know why she won't heal, why she won't feed, why she's crying like the world is ending when all he did was try to help.
He looks around. The corridor is empty. No one's watching. No one's coming. It's just him and her and the sound of her crying, soft and broken and utterly without shame.
He pulls her close.
It's not a decision he makes. It's not calculated or considered or even particularly gentle. He just—does it. Wraps his arms around her and pulls her against his chest and holds her there, solid and warm and present.
She goes rigid.
Every muscle in her body locks, her back bowing, her hands pressing against his chest like she's trying to push him away. A gasp escapes her—sharp, shocked, frightened. She's stiff as a statue, frozen in his arms, and for a moment he thinks he's made it worse, thinks he's terrified her even more, thinks he should let go—
Then she hears it.
His heartbeat.
Strong. Steady. Powerful. Thrumming through his chest like a drum, like a promise, like something she hasn't heard in a very long time. It fills her ears, fills her head, fills the space between them. Steady. Steady. Steady.
She stops pushing.
Her body softens, incrementally, by degrees so small he almost doesn't notice. Her hands uncurl from his chest. Her forehead drops forward, resting against the fabric of his jacket. Her breath comes in shudders, in gasps, in hitches that slowly, slowly begin to ease.
His arms are around her. Strong—she can feel how strong, can feel the power held carefully in check—but not crushing. Not breaking. Just holding. Just there.
She's warm. Solid. Alive. And his heartbeat is still going, steady as a clock, steady as something that's never been broken.
Her fingers find the fabric of his jacket at his back. Curl into it. Hold on.
He doesn't move. Just stands there, arms around her, letting her cry. Something stirs at the edges of his memory—sounds of crying, someone else's crying, from somewhere long ago and carefully walled off. He shuts it down. Not now. Not here. Not with this girl in his arms who he still doesn't know.
---
Eventually, the tears stop.
Not all at once. Gradually. The sobs become sniffles become hitches become silence. She doesn't pull away immediately, just stays there, pressed against him, her fingers still twisted in his jacket. Her breath is warm against his chest. Her body is still too cold.
Then, slowly, she pulls back.
She doesn't meet his eyes. Looks at his chest, his shoulder, the wall behind him—anywhere but his face. Her eyes are puffy, red-rimmed. Her nose is red too, and she wipes at it with the back of her hand, a gesture so human, so ordinary, that it catches him off guard.
He extends his hand again. Not grabbing this time. Just offering.
"Infirmary?"
She looks at his hand. Doesn't take it. Doesn't move.
He waits.
Nothing.
He exhales. Drops his hand. Turns to go.
Takes two steps.
Something catches his sleeve.
He looks back. She's holding on to the fabric of his jacket, just the edge of it, just enough to stop him. Her grip is light. Tentative. Like she's not sure she's allowed.
He waits.
She looks at him. Her lips part. She's trying to speak—he can see it in the way her throat works, the way her breath catches, the way her mouth shapes sounds that won't come. A second passes. Two. Three.
Her eyes drop to the floor. Her hand falls away from his sleeve.
He doesn't say anything. Just reaches down, takes her hand—the same one, the cold one, the fragile one—and starts walking.
She follows.
---
The infirmary is three floors up and half the school away. He walks fast—not because he's in a hurry, just because that's how he walks. Purposeful. Efficient. The kind of stride that covers ground without thinking about it.
Behind him, she's struggling.
He hears it before he notices it: the quick, sharp sound of her breathing, the skip in her footsteps as she tries to keep up, the small gasps she can't quite suppress. He looks over his shoulder and finds her almost running, her legs working twice as hard as his to match his pace, her cheeks flushed with effort.
He slows down.
Immediately, her breathing eases. Her steps lengthen. She falls into pace beside him, still slightly behind, still not meeting his eyes, but no longer gasping.
He looks at their joined hands. Hers is small in his. The bones feel delicate, like they'd snap if he squeezed too hard. Her skin is cold—colder than it should be, colder than any vampire he's ever touched. And there's something else. Something he can't quite name. A thinness to her, a transparency, like light passes through her differently than it does through others.
His thumb brushes across her knuckles without his permission. Just a movement. Just a noticing.
She doesn't react. Doesn't look up. But her hand doesn't pull away.
He looks at her again—really looks. The pallor of her skin. The shadows beneath her eyes. The way her collarbones rise sharp against the neckline of her tank top. The way she moved on the floor earlier, slow and heavy, like she was fighting through water. Signs of only one thing.
Hunger.
Not the casual hunger of a vampire who missed a meal. Something deeper. Something chronic. The kind of emptiness that changes a person, hollows them out from the inside.
He thinks of the split lip that wouldn't heal. The bruise that stayed purple when it should have faded in seconds. The blood at the corner of her mouth, dark and sluggish, moving like it didn't have the strength to flow.
She's not healing because there's nothing to heal with.
His jaw tightens. He doesn't know why it matters. Doesn't know why the coldness of her hand makes something in his chest pull tight. He doesn't know her. Doesn't know her name, her history, her reason for any of this.
But he knows what starvation looks like. He's seen it before—centuries ago, in places his family would rather forget. The hollow eyes. The slow movements. The way the body eats itself when there's nothing else.
She's doing that. Eating herself. And for reasons he can't articulate, the thought makes something in him go very, very still.
---
They've arrived.
The infirmary door is black wood, old, carved with symbols he doesn't recognize. He stops in front of it, turns to her.
"We're here."
She looks at the door. Her hand comes up to her mouth. A small sound escapes—not a word, just a sound. Distress. Fear. Something like that.
Is she scared of the infirmary?
Before he can ask, the door swings open.
The woman standing there is tall, slender, with dark hair pulled back in a severe knot and glasses perched on her nose. She's wearing white scrubs with black trim, a black lab coat over them with red piping at the edges. For a moment, looking at her, he thinks she could almost be related to the girl beside him—the same dark coloring, the same delicate bone structure. But no. Not quite. Close, but not quite.
"Mr. Morrow." The woman's voice is dry, professional. Her eyes slide from him to the girl at his side. Her expression shifts—not surprise, not concern. Something else. Something that looks almost like resignation. "What can I do for you and—"
She stops. Looks harder.
"Oh," she says. Flat. "You again."
The girl beside him stiffens. A tiny sound escapes her—eep—and she actually moves, half a step, trying to hide behind him. Her hand tightens on his.
The woman's expression doesn't change. She pushes the door wider, steps back. "Come in."
---
The infirmary is clean, white, clinical in a way that feels almost aggressive after the ancient stone and violet flames of the rest of the school. Rows of beds line the walls, each one neatly made, each one with a small table beside it holding a pitcher of water and a single glass. The windows are high and narrow, letting in thin slices of grey sky.
The woman leads them to one of the beds, gestures for the girl to sit. She does, perching on the edge like she's afraid of wrinkling the sheets. Her hands clasp on her thighs. Her back is straight as a board. Her eyes are fixed on the floor.
The woman looks at her. Sighs. Pulls on a pair of black gloves.
"What happened this time?" She doesn't wait for an answer—moves closer, tilts the girl's chin up with one gloved hand, examines the split lip. "I told you. If you would actually feed, you'd be able to heal on your own."
Even as she speaks, the split lip is closing. He watches it happen—the edges knitting together, the skin smoothing, the blood disappearing like it was never there. The woman's other hand hovers near the bruise on her cheek, and beneath her palm, a faint green light pulses. The bruise fades. Slowly at first, then faster, until the skin is pale and unmarked once more.
The girl doesn't move. Doesn't react. Just sits there, hands clasped, eyes down.
He watches. His gaze drifts from the fading bruise to the girl's face. To the hollows beneath her cheekbones. To the way her collarbones rise and fall with each breath. To her hands, clasped so tight the knuckles are white.
Feed.
The word hangs in the air. He looks at the doctor—at her matter-of-fact tone, her lack of surprise, the way she clearly knows this girl, knows this situation, has dealt with it before.
She's done this before. More than once.
His eyes return to the girl. To the girl whose name he still doesn't know. To the girl who won't look at him, won't look at anything except the floor.
So you won't feed. You're starving yourself.
He doesn't understand. Can't understand. Feeding is survival. It's as natural as breathing, as automatic as a heartbeat. The idea of refusing it—of choosing to waste away, to let wounds fester, to exist in this half-dead state—makes no sense to him.
But there's something else, too. Something beneath the confusion. A thread of something he can't name, tugging at the edges of his chest as he watches her sit there, small and still and so terribly, terribly pale.
He looks at the doctor. "The people who did this," he says. "I heard them calling her mute, so I don't think you'll get much of an answer since she wouldn't speak to me either.."
The woman finishes removing her gloves—snap, snap—and drops them in a bin. Her heeled boots tap against the floor as she moves to a counter, picks up a chart, scribbles something on it without looking.
"Mute?" She scoffs. Actually scoffs. "She's anything but mute, that one."
He blinks. "What?"
The woman turns. Looks at the girl on the bed. The girl who's currently trying to disappear into her own shoulders, her head ducked low, her eyes squeezed shut like she's bracing for impact.
"Ask her," the woman says. "She's the one who said I'm mean, isn't that right?"
Pause.
"Selene."
-