The days began to blur.

I had been on Earth for three weeks. Three weeks of lectures and libraries and the ceaseless pulse of the stone beneath the chapel. Three weeks of watching and waiting and killing in the shadows when the shadows demanded it. Three weeks of Kael's grey eyes lingering in my thoughts like smoke, and Ivy's laughter echoing in my memory like a song I had not meant to learn.

The mission was not progressing.

The stone was close — I could feel it, a constant pressure at the base of my skull — but the hunters guarding it were disciplined and numerous. They patrolled in shifts, their silver blades catching the moonlight, their blood bitter with ancient oaths. I had mapped their movements, catalogued their weaknesses, and determined that I could kill them. All of them. It would be bloody, and it would draw attention, but it was possible.

What stopped me was not fear. It was uncertainty.

Lilith's warning echoed in my mind every time I stood at the edge of the chapel grounds, ready to strike. You know this mission stinks of Dorian's design. And she was right. The stone had been lost for centuries, guarded by creatures even our historians feared, and now — suddenly, conveniently — it was within reach? The timing was too perfect. The location too accessible. The hunters too... expected.

Something was wrong. I could feel it like a splinter beneath my skin. But I could not name it, and I could not prove it, and until I could do both, I was trapped in this interminable waiting.

So I waited. And I watched. And I tried, with diminishing success, not to think about the two humans who were slowly, inexplicably, becoming something more than complications.

---

The second assassin came on a Thursday.

This one was better than the first. Faster. Quieter. She did not announce herself with a blade at my throat — she came from above, dropping from the chapel bell tower with the silence of a hunting owl. I sensed her at the last possible moment, the displacement of air the only warning before her claws raked across my shoulder.

Pain flared, hot and immediate. I spun, my own claws extending, and caught her across the ribs before she could retreat. She hissed — a sound of fury, not pain — and lunged again.

We fought in the shadow of the chapel, our movements too fast for human eyes to follow. She was old, this one. Not as old as me, but old enough to have skill. Her claws were coated in something that burned — not silver, but something older, something that made my blood sting where it welled from the wound in my shoulder.

"Who sent you?" I demanded, catching her wrist and twisting until the bones creaked.

She laughed. It was a broken sound, unhinged and desperate. "Does it matter? You'll be dead before dawn."

"Unlikely."

I snapped her arm. She screamed — a sound that would have woken the campus if I had not chosen this hour for its silence — and dropped to her knees. I gripped her throat and lifted her until her feet dangled above the ground.

"One last chance," I said, my voice cold and even. "Who sent you?"

Her eyes met mine. In them, I saw something unexpected. Not hatred. Not fear. But pity.

"You think you're the hunter," she rasped. "But you're the prey, Princess. You just don't know it yet."

Then she bit down on something in her mouth — a capsule, a poison — and her body went rigid in my grip. Within seconds, she was ash, scattering into the wind like the first assassin had scattered. No trace. No evidence. No answers.

Only the wound in my shoulder, burning with whatever poison she had laced her claws with, and the echo of her final words.

You're the prey, Princess. You just don't know it yet.

I stood in the silence, my blood dripping onto the cobblestones, and for the first time since arriving on Earth, I felt something close to fear.

---

The wound did not heal.

By the time I returned to my dormitory, the burning had spread from my shoulder down my arm, tracing the pathways of my veins like fire. I stripped off my coat and examined the injury in the mirror. Four parallel gashes, deep and angry, the skin around them turning an ugly shade of grey. The poison was slowing my regeneration. Not stopping it — my bloodline was too old for that — but slowing it enough to be a problem.

I needed blood. Fresh blood, not the cold, preserved animal blood I had been subsisting on. Something living. Something warm.

The hunger stirred, sharp and demanding. I pushed it down.

Not tonight. Not yet. I could endure a little longer.

I bound the wound with strips of fabric torn from an old shirt, the pressure dulling the pain but not extinguishing it. Then I sat on the edge of my narrow bed, staring at the rain-streaked window, and tried to think.

Two assassins in three weeks. Both Underworld. Both sent by someone who knew where I was and what I was doing. The first had been a hired blade, likely from one of Dorian's rivals. But the second — the female, the one with the poisoned claws — had spoken with the certainty of someone who knew more than she was paid to know.

You're the prey, Princess.

Someone was watching me. Someone who knew the mission was a lie.

Dorian? It was possible. The alliance between our houses had always been political, never personal. He had no reason to love me. But he was supposed to be asleep, wasting away under the grip of his curse. If he was awake — if the curse was a fabrication — then everything I had been told was a lie.

And if everything I had been told was a lie, then what was the stone? What was I retrieving? And for whom?

The questions circled like vultures, and I had no answers.

---

The knock on my door came just after midnight.

I was on my feet before the second knock fell, my claws extending, my senses sharpening. The scent beyond the door was human — warm, living, with the faint undertone of coffee and charcoal.

Ivy.

I retracted my claws, smoothed my expression, and opened the door.

She stood in the hallway, clutching her sketchbook to her chest like a shield. Her auburn curls were damp from the rain, and her hazel eyes were wide with something I could not quite read. Fear? Concern? Both?

"Hi," she said. "I know it's late. I'm sorry. I just... I saw your light on, and I wanted to check on you."

"Check on me?"

"You missed our coffee thing. Well, not missed — it's not like we have a standing appointment or anything. But you weren't in the café, and you weren't in the library, and I got worried. Which is stupid. You're clearly fine. You don't need me checking on you. I'm going to stop talking now."

She bit her lip, her cheeks flushing. The rambling was endearing in a way I did not wish to examine.

"I was occupied," I said.

"Occupied." Her gaze flickered to my shoulder, where the bandage was visible beneath the torn fabric of my shirt. Her eyes widened. "You're hurt."

"A minor injury."

"That's blood. Sera, that's blood." She stepped forward, her hesitation vanishing, replaced by something fierce. "What happened? Did someone hurt you?"

"It was an accident. I fell."

"You fell." She did not believe me. It was written all over her face — the scepticism, the worry, the stubborn refusal to accept my lie. "Sera, you're the least clumsy person I've ever met. You move like... like water. Or a predator. You don't fall."

I said nothing.

She stared at me for a long moment. Then she did something that surprised me. She stepped past me into my room, set her sketchbook on my desk, and turned to face me with her hands on her hips.

"Let me help," she said.

"I do not need help."

"Everyone needs help. Even mysterious, terrifying, beautiful people who sit alone in the back of lecture halls and never eat croissants." She pointed at my bed. "Sit."

I did not sit. I did not take orders from anyone, least of all a mortal girl with charcoal smudges on her fingers and rain in her hair. But I did not throw her out, either. I stood frozen in the doorway, watching her, caught between irritation and something far more dangerous.

Curiosity.

"Why do you care?" I asked. "You do not know me."

"I know you enough." She opened my desk drawer — a presumptuous act that should have angered me — and found the first aid kit I had never used. "I know you're lonely. I know you're hiding something. I know you look at people like you're expecting them to hurt you. And I know that when I talk to you, you listen. Actually listen. Do you know how rare that is?"

I did not answer.

She crossed the room and stood before me, close enough that I could smell the rain in her hair and the faint sweetness of her soap. She held up a roll of bandages.

"Please," she said, softer now. "Let me help. You don't have to tell me what happened. Just... let me help."

No one had ever said please to me before. Demands, yes. Commands, certainly. But never a request. Never a choice.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

Ivy smiled — not triumphant, but relieved — and knelt beside me. Her fingers were gentle as she peeled away the torn fabric of my shirt and examined the wound. She did not flinch at the sight of it, though it must have looked terrible: four jagged gashes, the skin around them grey and sickly, the blood still seeping slowly through the makeshift bandage.

"This doesn't look like a fall," she said quietly.

"No. It does not."

She did not press. She simply dipped a cloth in water and began to clean the wound, her touch steady and warm. The poison made the contact sting, but I did not pull away. Her closeness was strange. Unfamiliar. No one had touched me with gentleness in over a century. Touch, in the Underworld, meant violence or politics or both. It was never soft. Never kind.

Ivy's touch was kind.

"You're cold," she murmured, her fingers brushing my skin. "Like, really cold. Are you sure you're okay?"

"I am always cold."

"That's not an answer."

"It is the only one I have."

She looked up at me, her hazel eyes searching my face. I did not know what she was looking for. Whatever it was, she seemed to find it. She nodded once and returned to her work.

When the wound was cleaned and bandaged, she sat back on her heels and surveyed her handiwork. "There. It's not perfect, but it should hold until you can see a real doctor."

"I do not require a doctor."

"Of course you don't." She smiled, that small, tentative smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. "You probably heal by moonlight and sheer force of will."

Something close to a laugh caught in my throat. I did not release it. But Ivy must have seen something in my expression, because her smile widened.

"There," she said. "I knew you were human in there somewhere."

Human. The word should have been an insult. Instead, it landed somewhere soft, somewhere I had long since armoured over.

I looked away. "It is late. You should return to your dormitory."

"I know." She stood, gathered her sketchbook, and moved toward the door. But she paused with her hand on the frame. "Sera?"

"Yes?"

"Whatever you're running from... whatever you're hiding... you don't have to carry it alone. I know we just met. I know you don't trust me. But I'm here. If you ever want to talk. Or not talk. Just... I'm here."

She did not wait for a response. She slipped out the door and closed it softly behind her, leaving only the scent of rain and the ghost of her touch.

I sat alone in the lamplight, my wound throbbing, my thoughts churning. The poison was still burning through my veins, but the pain felt distant now. Something else occupied the space beneath my ribs. Something warmer. Something more dangerous than any assassin's blade.

I did not name it. I would not name it.

But when I finally lay down to rest, I did not dream of the Underworld. I dreamed of hazel eyes and gentle hands and a voice that said please instead of obey.

And somewhere, deep beneath the chapel, the stone pulsed on, patient and eternal, waiting.

---