Chapter 1 Welcome to Thornfield (Ember's POV)
"Thorne! You're two minutes late!" Coach Martinez's voice boomed across the court before I'd even pushed through the double doors.
"Sorry, Coach." I dropped my bag and started stretching, ignoring the smirks from Sarah and her crew. They'd been waiting for me to slip up since freshman year.
"Positions!" Martinez blew her whistle. "We've got regional qualifiers in six weeks, and St. Helena's libero made thirty-six digs last season. What'd you make, Thorne?"
"Forty-one." The number came out sharper than I meant it to.
"Then why are you stretching like my grandmother? Move!"
I dropped into position as Jessica served.
My body moved without thinking, diving parallel to the floor, arm extended. The ball kissed my forearm and popped up perfect for the set.
"Jesus, Ember." Mika stared from the net. "How do you even do that?"
I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the burn in my shoulder. "Practice."
But it wasn't practice. It was something else, something that made my reaction time just a fraction too quick. I'd been hoping it would fade as I got older. Instead, it was getting stronger.
Two hours later, my legs shook as I climbed the stairs back to the dorm.
"You look like death warmed over." Sage was already dressed and perched on her window seat, painting her nails a shade of green that shouldn't exist in nature but somehow looked perfect on her.
"Thanks. You're a real confidence booster."
She capped the polish and studied me with those sharp hazel eyes. "Seriously, Em. When's the last time you slept through the night?"
"I sleep fine."
"Mmm." She didn't buy it, but she also didn't push. That was Sage, she knew when to let things go. "Breakfast? I'm starving, and if we get there before the football team clears out the bacon, we might actually get some."
The dining hall buzzed with typical Monday morning energy.
And then there was Trey Jarred's table.
He sat at the center like some kind of medieval king holding court, surrounded by his teammates and a rotating cast of admirers. Everything about him commanded attention.
I grabbed a tray and tried not to stare, but my eyes kept drifting back to him. Today he wore a simple gray henley that stretched across shoulders broader than any eighteen-year-old had a right to have. His dark hair was still damp from his morning workout, and when he laughed at something Knox said, the sound carried across the entire dining hall.
"Ember... " Sage waved a piece of toast in front of my face. "You're doing that thing again."
"What thing?"
"The thing where you stare at Trey Jarred like he's a particularly complicated math problem you're trying to solve."
Heat flooded my cheeks. "I wasn't staring."
"Right. And I wasn't just watching you watch him scratch his arm and lick your lips."
"I did not..."
"Ladies." The voice came from directly behind us, low and amused. My spine went rigid.
Knox Ravencrest dropped into the chair next to Sage, all casual confidence and knowing smirks. As Trey's cousin and best friend, he was almost as untouchable, though in a completely different way. Where Trey was golden and magnetic, Knox was dark and dangerous, with black hair and gray eyes that saw too much.
"Knox." Sage's voice stayed perfectly level, but I caught the way her fingers tightened around her orange juice. "Slumming it with the peasants today?"
"Ouch." He pressed a hand to his chest in mock pain. "Here I thought we were friends."
"We're friendly. There's a difference."
Knox grinned and turned those unsettling gray eyes on me. "And how's the star libero this morning? Ready to demolish St. Helena next month?"
"We'll see." I kept my voice steady despite the way he was looking at me, like he could see straight through my skin.
"I'm sure you will." Something in his tone made the hair on my arms stand up. "You've got quite the talent for... anticipating where the ball's going to be."
Sage's foot found mine under the table, a warning. But Knox just smiled wider and stood.
"Well, I'll leave you ladies to your breakfast. See you around, Ember."
He sauntered back to Trey's table, and I watched him lean down to whisper something in his cousin's ear. Trey's head turned toward our table, and for one heart-stopping moment, his eyes met mine.
The connection lasted maybe two seconds, but it felt like drowning in reverse.
Then Sarah slid into the empty chair beside him, breaking the spell, and he turned away.
"That was weird," I muttered, stabbing my scrambled eggs with unnecessary violence.
"Which part? Knox being creepy, or Trey looking at you like you were about to spontaneously combust?"
"Neither. Both. I don't know." I pushed food around my plate, appetite gone. "Can we talk about something else?"
But even as we switched to safer topics, I felt that something had shifted.
The intensity in Trey's stare.
The rest of the morning blurred past in a haze of calculus and American literature. I took notes, participated in discussions, played the part of the normal student. But underneath it all, I felt restless, like my skin was too small for whatever was growing inside it.
During third period, I caught Trey watching me through the classroom window.
When I looked back, he didn't look away. Just kept watching with those dark eyes until the bell rang and he disappeared into the crowd of students changing classes.
By the time I crawled into bed that night, exhaustion weighed heavy in my bones. Sage was already asleep, her breathing soft and even in the darkness. I closed my eyes and let myself drift, grateful for the promise of dreamless sleep.
But my hand moved across the notebook on my nightstand, fingers gripping the pen without conscious thought. Words flowed onto the page in handwriting that looked like mine but felt foreign:
When silver eyes meet crimson moon,
The wolf-born child shall rise too soon.
In blood and bone and ancient stone,
She'll claim the power, stand alone.