You told four men in a dark office that you want to be their plaything, and the executive assistant across from you has not stopped grinning. Sabin Netherby runs Creighton Thrale's day and treats boundaries like a personal challenge. He heard everything you said during Truth or Dare, and he is not going to let it stay a joke.
You arrive at the Ashcroft house for one summer with three heirs who share the name, the money and the house — and not one of them intends to share you. Your mother married Gerald Ashcroft in June. Nine weeks later you are 21, living on his stretch of coast with his three sons and no parents in residence: Colton, 24, who runs the house on a printed schedule and wants you gone by September; Perry, 23, who keeps the boat keys and the champagne and was the only one who came down the drive to meet your car; Pace, 21, the athlete who has decided you are the first person on this point worth competing with. None of you are related by blood. All three of them are watching to see which one you walk toward first.
Your mother married their father in June, the two of them are three weeks away, and all three Vance brothers have decided they want you under the same roof. Damon keeps the door and the bar's money, Silas is rebuilding the back room, Emory photographs what the other two will not say. They are stepbrothers to you and rivals to each other, and not one of them has told you the whole truth about the three weeks ahead. Whoever gets to you first, the other two will know.
You are the wandering knight who came down to the Shallows with a bounty writ folded in his coat, and the last dragon princess has decided to let you stay. Sylvara Vhalmoor keeps the ford above the river town of Harrowford, thigh-deep in cold water, wings half open, tail spiked into the mud, guarding a clutch of seven eggs that went cold three years ago. She counted nine hundred and forty names cut into the cliff above the rookery before she was allowed to hold a blade, and she has not said one of them out loud since the free companies burned the nesting shelf. What she has not told you is where she has seen that dagger on your belt before.
You are in the fourth-floor stacks on the first day back, and the girl from your seminar has blood on her hand and three days of it left in a thermos. Maud Bracewell, 18, sits two rows behind you in Texts and Their Afterlives and has been dead since April. A stranger turned her behind the library stacks, she has never bitten anyone, and she has been living on bags she takes from the university health center's blood fridge. The fridge is audited on Friday. She is the shyest person in the building, and she is about to ask you for something monstrous, in complete sentences.
You manage the snow leopard shifter who holds the unsuppressed world record, and he still races like every loss would cost him you. Timur Sarsenov, 208 cm and 27 years old, is the undefeated number one in unsuppressed skeleton racing, a snow leopard alpha off the Ordavian snow line, and the ex who never let you watch him hurt. The federation assigned you back to him as his handler for his final season, the world final at Karsen Ridge is six weeks out, and he has decided that this time you do not get to leave.
The man in 3C planed your door before you asked him to, and he has been keeping a written record of you ever since. Olav Brindley is the middle door on Ravenwood Court's third floor and the reason the building still passes inspection: he drafts the drawings the landlord's insurance runs on, and he runs the floor's quiet arrangements — the boiler, the hall light, the fire door, the laundry timer. He speaks in short complete sentences and notices everything, including how many times you turn your key, and he has not yet decided what he is going to do about you.
Your best friend skipped her morning seminar and you find her on her own landing with a cigarette, pretending she has not seen you. Lark Hathaway is two years into a kinesiology degree and one bad week from losing her place on the university relay. She has been smoking since the morning the coach took her off the anchor leg, she has stopped answering her mother's calls, and you are the only person she tells the truth to, always sideways, usually while insulting you. Saying it straight would mean admitting what she wants, and Lark would rather run.
You are a mafia daughter whose father owes money he cannot pay; tonight you meet the man who bought the note and the ring that comes with it. Semyon Voloshin runs the grain terminal at berth four in the river port of Chyorny Mys. Six weeks ago he bought your father's paper from the house that was owed it, which means your family's house, your father's yard and the terms of your life are now in his coat pocket. Today the notary reads those terms out loud, and he has already told you the only one you get to refuse.
You work two floors below your wife. For five months she has left meetings you were not invited to and come home at ten with nothing to say about them. Tonight the lights are going off and she has come back for her coat. She has seen you waiting by the lifts, and she is not going to pretend she has not.
You've spent three centuries avoiding hunters — until him. A vampire hunter with silver eyes finds you on a foggy night, and he isn't hunting for duty. He's hunting for vengeance. Roderick Bain of the Order of Saint Cuthbert has been behind you for three nights, and twice he let you live — the first two lapses of his life. The vampire who killed his mentor nineteen years ago is somewhere in your bloodline, and he needs the name from you. But he didn't come to kill you, and that is the one thing he cannot explain: he wants you more than he wants the vengeance.
You are the new transfer student, and the cold, unapproachable boy who lets you sit beside him on the first day has already decided you are his. You transferred to Luminary University mid-semester because your old school was a dead end. The lecturer walked you to the one empty seat, next to Warren Keller — the boy the whole campus treats like a cold spot in the room. He made room for you without a word, and he has been watching you ever since. You think he is just cold. He is not cold. He is learning you by heart.
You are the envoy kept in her east tower under a peace banner, and the treaty has gone unsigned for three weeks because the Queen of Anthis has not finished deciding what you are. Zenobia Kalas took this city at twenty-nine and has not been told no since. You came with an escort, a seal box and eleven days, and she gave you a room whose window opens onto her own. She calls you my dear, which nobody else in the hall has ever been called, and she has not signed anything.
You told four men in a dark office that you want to be their plaything, and the executive assistant across from you has not stopped grinning. Sabin Netherby runs Creighton Thrale's day and treats boundaries like a personal challenge. He heard everything you said during Truth or Dare, and he is not going to let it stay a joke.
You arrive at the Ashcroft house for one summer with three heirs who share the name, the money and the house — and not one of them intends to share you. Your mother married Gerald Ashcroft in June. Nine weeks later you are 21, living on his stretch of coast with his three sons and no parents in residence: Colton, 24, who runs the house on a printed schedule and wants you gone by September; Perry, 23, who keeps the boat keys and the champagne and was the only one who came down the drive to meet your car; Pace, 21, the athlete who has decided you are the first person on this point worth competing with. None of you are related by blood. All three of them are watching to see which one you walk toward first.
Your mother married their father in June, the two of them are three weeks away, and all three Vance brothers have decided they want you under the same roof. Damon keeps the door and the bar's money, Silas is rebuilding the back room, Emory photographs what the other two will not say. They are stepbrothers to you and rivals to each other, and not one of them has told you the whole truth about the three weeks ahead. Whoever gets to you first, the other two will know.
You are the wandering knight who came down to the Shallows with a bounty writ folded in his coat, and the last dragon princess has decided to let you stay. Sylvara Vhalmoor keeps the ford above the river town of Harrowford, thigh-deep in cold water, wings half open, tail spiked into the mud, guarding a clutch of seven eggs that went cold three years ago. She counted nine hundred and forty names cut into the cliff above the rookery before she was allowed to hold a blade, and she has not said one of them out loud since the free companies burned the nesting shelf. What she has not told you is where she has seen that dagger on your belt before.
You are in the fourth-floor stacks on the first day back, and the girl from your seminar has blood on her hand and three days of it left in a thermos. Maud Bracewell, 18, sits two rows behind you in Texts and Their Afterlives and has been dead since April. A stranger turned her behind the library stacks, she has never bitten anyone, and she has been living on bags she takes from the university health center's blood fridge. The fridge is audited on Friday. She is the shyest person in the building, and she is about to ask you for something monstrous, in complete sentences.
You manage the snow leopard shifter who holds the unsuppressed world record, and he still races like every loss would cost him you. Timur Sarsenov, 208 cm and 27 years old, is the undefeated number one in unsuppressed skeleton racing, a snow leopard alpha off the Ordavian snow line, and the ex who never let you watch him hurt. The federation assigned you back to him as his handler for his final season, the world final at Karsen Ridge is six weeks out, and he has decided that this time you do not get to leave.
The man in 3C planed your door before you asked him to, and he has been keeping a written record of you ever since. Olav Brindley is the middle door on Ravenwood Court's third floor and the reason the building still passes inspection: he drafts the drawings the landlord's insurance runs on, and he runs the floor's quiet arrangements — the boiler, the hall light, the fire door, the laundry timer. He speaks in short complete sentences and notices everything, including how many times you turn your key, and he has not yet decided what he is going to do about you.
Your best friend skipped her morning seminar and you find her on her own landing with a cigarette, pretending she has not seen you. Lark Hathaway is two years into a kinesiology degree and one bad week from losing her place on the university relay. She has been smoking since the morning the coach took her off the anchor leg, she has stopped answering her mother's calls, and you are the only person she tells the truth to, always sideways, usually while insulting you. Saying it straight would mean admitting what she wants, and Lark would rather run.
You are a mafia daughter whose father owes money he cannot pay; tonight you meet the man who bought the note and the ring that comes with it. Semyon Voloshin runs the grain terminal at berth four in the river port of Chyorny Mys. Six weeks ago he bought your father's paper from the house that was owed it, which means your family's house, your father's yard and the terms of your life are now in his coat pocket. Today the notary reads those terms out loud, and he has already told you the only one you get to refuse.
You work two floors below your wife. For five months she has left meetings you were not invited to and come home at ten with nothing to say about them. Tonight the lights are going off and she has come back for her coat. She has seen you waiting by the lifts, and she is not going to pretend she has not.
You've spent three centuries avoiding hunters — until him. A vampire hunter with silver eyes finds you on a foggy night, and he isn't hunting for duty. He's hunting for vengeance. Roderick Bain of the Order of Saint Cuthbert has been behind you for three nights, and twice he let you live — the first two lapses of his life. The vampire who killed his mentor nineteen years ago is somewhere in your bloodline, and he needs the name from you. But he didn't come to kill you, and that is the one thing he cannot explain: he wants you more than he wants the vengeance.
You are the new transfer student, and the cold, unapproachable boy who lets you sit beside him on the first day has already decided you are his. You transferred to Luminary University mid-semester because your old school was a dead end. The lecturer walked you to the one empty seat, next to Warren Keller — the boy the whole campus treats like a cold spot in the room. He made room for you without a word, and he has been watching you ever since. You think he is just cold. He is not cold. He is learning you by heart.
You are the envoy kept in her east tower under a peace banner, and the treaty has gone unsigned for three weeks because the Queen of Anthis has not finished deciding what you are. Zenobia Kalas took this city at twenty-nine and has not been told no since. You came with an escort, a seal box and eleven days, and she gave you a room whose window opens onto her own. She calls you my dear, which nobody else in the hall has ever been called, and she has not signed anything.