I woke screaming in my sweat-soaked bed, the familiar crisp dawn streaming through the window. Gasping for breath, I threw my arm over my eyes.

Levi’s pale face flashed against the blackness.

Levi was in danger — Levi was being hunted — I had to — I had to—

Get a grip on reality. I removed my arm, blinking in the light. The very clear daylight.

“Just a dream,” I told myself. It had to be. I didn’t even remember returning to bed.

Levi was probably tucked in his bed at home, while his family’s cook worked furiously to prepare him a sumptuous welcome breakfast.

Still, my heart refused to quiet in my chest, pounding against my ribcage as if I had been the one chased through the forest. I didn’t even count the nightmare as one of my most frightening, since it was vastly preferable to the recurring one where I showed up to the Practicum final exam only to discover the test was worth one hundred percent of my grade, I’d forgotten all of Le Savant’s symbols, I’d lost my sorcery powers, and because that wasn’t bad enough, I was also stark naked.

One of my dream friends could have pointed out that particular detail earlier.

I shivered, and then cursed as my heartbeat finally slowed down. As if that nightmare was a comforting thought!

I shoved down the quilt, and instead of cool night air, appropriately warm air greeted me. Obviously, everything about that had been a dream. It never grew that cold in the dorms.

Sitting up, I glanced at my empty desk. A shower would clear my head, I decided, and with exams finished and the school empty, there would be no long line of perennially odorous adolescents.

I stretched, found my shoes, and padded down the corridor to the shower room. Out of all of Le Savant’s inventions, this one was my favourite, although it struck fear in the hearts of conservatives. The warm showers would encourage young men to pollute their bodies, they claimed, against Le Chasseur’s teachings. Of course, with Blaise as my dorm mate, I knew young men needed very little to encourage them to such ends.

No, the danger lay in boys like me, its open plan providing no privacy from their brethren’s eyes. Who would abuse themselves with twenty other boys staring at you?

Meanwhile, I kept my eyes averted, each visit to the shower a torturous experience. Instead of relaxing, I feared if I lay so much as an eye on a nude buttock, someone would notice my infliction. The showers hadn’t posed much of a problem before that ill-fated kiss, but after…

After was just a daily reminder of what a shameful creature I was.

But no one would be there today. I could simply enjoy the spill of hot water over the back of my neck, clearing the night’s terrors away, and steeling myself for the journey home. The journey toward my father.

The lamps flickered on as they detected my presence, revealing the antechamber, lined with wood floors and wood benches, racks of towels and potions on one wall, cubbies the opposite, blessedly empty. The warm, humid air kissed my skin.

Empty, but not silent. I paused, listening to water slapping against the tiles in the shower room, but the frosted glass door leading there remained dark. Who would shower with the lights off?

Someone must have left it on, wasting hot water. I rolled my eyes and removed my shoes, before opening the dark door.

The antechamber’s lamplight streaked across the white tile, stopping at two porcelain heels. The room’s own lamps refused to turn on, as if they were spelled off. Someone was actually showering in the dark? Why?

I opened my mouth to ask before my gaze flicked to the body. The words choked in my throat. The very nude body.

The very glorious, nude body of one approaching divinity.

The figure faced the opposite wall, leaning on his two hands spread across the tile, his head dropped forward as the water pounded over his pale back, twisting down his limbs — and were my eyes following the trail? I covered my eyes with my hand, but then spread my fingers, giving me just as good of a view as before. I dropped my useless shield.

There should have been steam rising from the hot water, something more than scant shadows to hide his body.

I didn’t need to see his face to know who. Who else looked like an ice storm sculpted into a god?

Valere.

I should leave. I really should leave. If Valere looked back, if he saw me standing here, my eyes welded to his bare shoulders, his back, the strong curve of his buttocks… I swallowed, and it felt like swallowing shrapnel.

My feet refused to move, but stayed planted on the tiles, as if I’d taken root. How had Valere become so… athletic? For all of Blaise and Marcus’ handball playing, they had never looked so muscular, so… taut. Just imagine what he would look like if he’d continued playing…

His back muscles tightened, bringing my eyes to the blanket of black and violet marks circling around welts as if someone had beaten him with a whip. Or he’d beaten himself in contrition.

“What are you doing?” Valere snaked his head back to watch me watch him, his blue eyes barely visible over his shoulder. I couldn’t turn away, his eyes drawing me in, just like the hypnotic trails of water swirling down his sides.

“You’re hurt.” Oh yes, let’s pretend my unwanted fascination was altruistic.

Valere glanced down his front, as if he had forgotten, then pushed away from the wall to stand tall, as if such bruises were a mere gnat to his full glory. He turned around, and my gaze dropped to his navel and below — up! Look up, damn it, up! My tongue swept out to wet my dry lips.

“Have you seen the nurse?” I hit my temple with the palm of my hand. “No, sorry, the nurse left, Marcus had said…”

Valere tipped his head to the side, barely a quarter of an inch in movement.

“They — they look bad,” I stammered. “Y-your bruises. Worse than I’ve ever received.”

His expression remained blank but harsh, like it had been carved from a glacier. Not even a twitch of anger crossed his features.

My knees itched to drop to the tile and beg forgiveness for my heathen desires. My feet itched to flee before Valere realised my wicked thoughts. If only the rest of me felt that urge, rather than the itch to move forward, to cup his jaw and…

Bad thoughts, bad thoughts!

What did Valere think? Was he cross? His stance, so carefully blank even to my starving eyes, betrayed nothing. Not a crinkle of his nose, nor a scrunching of his brow, nor a tenseness in his shoulders. He might as well have been a statue, standing for all time in marble.

Or did I simply not matter to him? Could I not even arouse him to pretend either anger or aloofness?

“There should be hot water still,” I said. His shower couldn’t be very warm if it lacked steam. And yes, I very, very much needed there to be steam. “No one’s left.”

There! A deeper shadow around the corner of his mouth, as if I’d said something funny.

“I mean, it must be pretty cool—”

“It’s not cold enough.”

My heart leapt in my chest. “Not… n-not cold enough?”

Valere didn’t repeat himself, but neither did he snap at me for being slow.

My feet stepped toward the shower, even as I screamed in my head that closer proximity was the worst idea I’d ever had. The door behind me swung shut, the antechamber’s lamplight dimmed to a faint blush through the frosted glass. In the gloom, Valere transformed into a phantom — no, more like the moon’s soft glow in the otherwise black sky.

I stepped into the puddle straining for the drain, the cold water soaking up my trousers, and only stopped when I’d reached the cascade swirling around Valere like a transparent cloak.

Valere should strike me. He should plant his fist in my gut. He should beat me until these nefarious desires left me—

But Valere watched me evenly, like it mattered not to him whether I stood one foot away or a dozen.

I reached for his arm, to stroke him, to—

My hand hit the spray of water. “Vampire’s frigid teat!” I jumped back. The water on the floor had been warm in comparison. What could Valere possibly mean, it wasn’t cold enough? He might as well have stood naked outside on a crisp Janvier night. “That’s — that’s cold!”

And I possessed the linguistic skills of a toddler.

“Is it?” His tone was strange, nothing like I’d heard before.

I wrung my hand to fend off impending frostbite, for all the good it did, since Valere’s next action stopped my heart cold.

He smiled.

Not a smile by Blaise’s standards, or anyone’s really, but the tips of his lips reached upward. Not a mere deepening of shadow, but something I could glimpse even in the dark. Not an ice storm anymore, but the soft fall of snow during twilight.

There was nowhere else in Fallion I’d rather be.

Then my cheeks reddened. I rushed to the door, shaking hands plying at the handle, but the door itself remained shut even when I hauled on it with all my weight. Damn it, damn it, damn it — of all the times for the door to stick!

I felt his presence more than I heard his approach, his breath surprisingly hot on my neck. His arms reached around me, and I tensed, for what else could I do?

The world’s most beautiful man, lacking even a stitch in clothing or jewellery, slid his arms around me until I felt his body heat kiss my skin through my shirtsleeves. How could he be so warm after enduring that shower?

I bit back a whimper, my mind racing to fill in the details of what Valere would do to me, but instead, there was a click. The presence retreated. The door had slid forward, revealing a line of light around its shape. Only my shaking hands on the panel handle kept me there.

I didn’t dare look behind me, or even thank Valere for his assistance. I fled, abandoning my shoes, racing down the corridor until I dove under my mother’s quilt, my heart pounding against my ribs from more than exertion.