Room 304.

Hill stopped at a side office, ducked in, and returned with a single sheet of parchment that looked far too ordinary for how heavily it weighed in my hand when he passed it over.

“Your schedule,” he said, voice as flat and formal as ever.

I glanced down.

Thornhill Academy Class Schedule – Allison Rivers

8:00 AM – Intro to Arcane Theory

9:45 AM – Magical History & Law

11:00 AM – Potions & Alchemy

1:00 PM – Elemental Studies

2:30 PM – Divination & Vision Crafting

4:00 PM – Elective: Defensive Training

I blinked at the page, reread it, and then let out a bark of laughter I couldn’t quite choke back. Defensive training. Me. The sound echoed down the hallway, drawing curious looks from passing students. I clutched the parchment to my chest and shook my head. “Defensive training?” I scoffed under my breath. “That’s rich.”

Hill’s storm-grey eyes cut to me, calm but sharp. “You have defensive training,” he said smoothly, “which is mostly full of shifters, because all the other electives were full.”

My laughter died in my throat. Mostly full of shifters. Great. Just what I needed, to get tossed into a pit of oversized puppies who probably thought ripping things apart with claws counted as “education.”

I dragged my gaze back up at him. “And how the hell am I meant to find my way around to all these places?” I waved the schedule as if it were written in a foreign language. Which, for me, it might as well have been.

Hill didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted a hand and stopped a boy passing us in the corridor. The boy turned, golden eyes flashing with irritation before settling on me. He had short, spiked blond hair, his uniform blazer slung lazily over one shoulder, and the air around him buzzed faintly with restrained power. He looked at me once, up and down, and his mouth twisted like he’d just stepped in something foul.

“Cage,” Hill said, his voice even. “Make Ms. Rivers here a map of the school.”

The boy’s brows arched. “Her?” His voice was smooth but dripping with disdain.

Hill’s silence was enough of an answer. Cage sighed, rolled his eyes, and snapped his fingers. Magic flared golden around his hand, threads weaving together midair until a folded parchment appeared between his fingers, glowing faintly before dimming to a normal piece of paper.

He shoved it toward me, his lip curling. “Try not to get lost anyway.”

I took it, ignoring the burn of his disgust, and unfolded it. The map shimmered in my hands, the hallways alive with shifting lines, glowing markers moving across it like fireflies. When I focused, I could feel it tug at me, showing me exactly where I stood and where I needed to go.

“Useful,” Hill said simply.

I scowled, tucking the map under my arm. Useful. Everything in this place seemed to come back to that word.

Hill walked me through another courtyard, up a path lined with stone archways where groups of students lounged, magic sparking between their fingers like casual toys. I held the map Cage had given me under my arm, but it wasn’t the paper I needed to tell me what was wrong. It was the silence. The moment we stepped into Dorm Building D, it hit me. The stares. The low laughter. There was a heavy reek of too much cologne and wolf musk in the air. Everywhere I looked, boys were leaning against doorframes, sprawled across worn couches in the common area, or crowding the hall with books under their arms. All boys. Shifters with cocky smirks, warlocks with glowing eyes, a fae or two that looked carved from marble. But not one girl.

My boots slowed, scuffing against the tile. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Hill’s sigh was quiet but deliberate, like he’d been waiting for this. “Yes, Ms. Rivers, typically, this building houses the male students of the school. Unfortunately for you, being enrolled late, the rest of the girls’ blocks are full.”

My stomach twisted, and I stayed rooted where I was. The heat of all those stares prickled my skin.

Hill’s voice went on, calm as ever. “Fortunately for you, however, you get a single room. A privilege many in this school are not privy to.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “lucky me.”

We reached the end of a long, dim hallway lined with heavy wooden doors. Instead of stopping, Hill pressed his hand against the last door at the end. The wood groaned open to reveal a narrow stairwell spiralling upward into shadows.

“Up,” he said.

The steps creaked under my boots as we climbed, dust motes dancing in the narrow shaft of light from a single lantern on the wall. The air grew heavier, mustier, with every turn until we reached a door at the very top. Hill unlocked it with a brass key and dropped the cool metal into my palm before pushing the door wide. The “room” wasn’t a room at all. It was the entire attic. The ceiling stretched higher than I expected, rafters crisscrossing above like dark ribs. The space was massive, swallowing sound as soon as we stepped inside, but it was empty, just a sea of dust and shadows. On one side, a gigantic stained-glass window blazed with fractured colour, the reds and blues throwing warped patterns across the floor. Beneath it sat a single bed, small and sagging, its mattress peppered with stains I didn’t want to investigate. The air smelled stale, thick with dust and neglect, like no one had set foot up here in years.

I wrinkled my nose and glanced around the vast emptiness, then back at Hill. “This is a privilege?” I asked, voice dripping with disbelief. “The dirt I used to sleep on is better than this.”

His mouth twitched, maybe irritation, maybe amusement, but his storm-grey eyes gave nothing away.

“You have class in one hour, Ms. Rivers. Do not be late.” Hill’s voice was flat, final, already turning toward the door.

“Ah, wait,” I called after him, raising a brow. “Do I get one of those preppy uniforms or not?”

He didn’t even stop walking. Just lifted a hand and waved vaguely toward the far end of the attic. I squinted into the shadows and barely made out the hulking outline of an old wardrobe, its doors crooked and half-broken, sitting like a forgotten skeleton in the dust. Hill didn’t bother with another word. The heavy door creaked shut behind him, the click of the lock leaving me alone in the cavernous silence.

The attic swallowed me whole. I blew out a breath, dragging my hand through my hair as I eyed the wardrobe far across the room. The dust swirled in lazy clouds where the colored light from the stained glass window cut through, spilling across the floor like blood and bruises.

“Preppy uniform,” I muttered under my breath, rolling my eyes. “Yeah, this should be good.”