Soren woke at six and the first thing he thought was I'm still here.
The second thing was that the puppy was on his face.
The third thing was the note someone had slid under his door during the night.
He peeled Grimm off his cheek, rolled out of bed, and picked it up.
Three words. I'm watching you.
Soren looked at the note, then at the floor, then back at the note.
Troy's handwriting was neat and forward-slanting.
He had seen it in three different chapter illustrations and two bonus art pieces.
This was it.
He crumpled the note and threw it at the wall and missed, because the body he was borrowing apparently had terrible aim.
Grimm immediately grabbed the crumpled paper off the floor and started chewing it.
"Give that back," Soren said.
She did not give it back.
◆◆◆◆
Class Z was in the basement of the academy's third building.
The narrator in chapter twelve had called it "where the academy kept its mistakes," and had been so pleased with that line he'd italicized it twice.
Soren walked in carrying Grimm under his arm and counted the students.
Eleven.
There were supposed to be twelve.
He recognized ten of the eleven, cross-checked against the chapter data in his head, then looked at the eleventh.
She was sitting in the back row with her feet on the desk and her jacket hanging open over a black undershirt.
She was watching him walk in with the kind of expression that meant she had already decided he wasn't interesting and was waiting to be proven right.
Pale blue hair, pale blue eyes, light frost pattern on her knuckles.
Selah Young.
She was supposed to be in a frozen cave three hundred kilometers north of here, dying, for another three chapters.
Soren had read her introduction four times, and looking at her now, he understood that the forum had never done her justice.
The art always made her look cold and distant in a decorative way.
The actual person in that chair was nothing decorative.
She was already looking at him like she had decided he was wasting a seat.
"You're staring," she said.
"Sorry."
"Don't apologize. Just stop."
Soren walked to the empty desk at the front and put Grimm down.
Grimm immediately pointed her sealed face toward the back row and made a low sound that wasn't quite a growl.
Selah's feet came off the desk.
The boy two seats over, Hansel Jay, leaned toward Soren and whispered that she had frozen some guy's leg yesterday over a bag.
Soren nodded and filed it under useful, do not forget.
[DING!] — Unclassified Tamer detected in proximity. Rank: E+ (anomalous). Bonded beast: [Frostbite Sprite] (unregistered, illegal early bonding).]
[DING!] — Notice: this individual does not match your event log. Timeline deviation confirmed.]
Soren read the notifications, then read them again.
Timeline deviation confirmed.
So she was a variable.
She was here three chapters early, the system knew it, and now he knew it.
The reason this was interesting rather than just alarming was that she had an unregistered illegal beast, which meant she had pulled off an early bonding nobody in the academy was supposed to know about.
Which meant she was either smarter or more reckless than the book had made her seem.
Both options were more useful to him than an empty seat.
Selah stood up and walked down the aisle between the desks.
Every head in the room tracked her, because the cold in the air had picked a direction and that direction was forward.
She stopped in front of his desk and looked at the puppy.
Grimm looked back.
Selah reached out one finger and booped her on the nose.
Grimm bit her.
Not hard, just a clear opinion.
Selah did not flinch and did not pull her hand back.
She looked at the puppy with her finger still in Grimm's mouth, one eyebrow doing a thing that meant she was recalibrating something.
Then Grimm let out a shadow-flare that rattled the whole desk.
Selah yanked her hand back on reflex, heel catching the edge of Soren's chair leg.
For half a heartbeat the world tilted.
She pitched forward.
Soren's hands shot up automatically, too late.
Selah Young landed right on top of him.
Her open jacket flared as she came down.
The black undershirt underneath was thin, warm from her body, and suddenly pressed flush against his chest.
One of her knees slid between his legs for balance and the other braced on the seat beside his hip.
Pale blue hair spilled everywhere, curtaining their faces so the rest of Class Z disappeared.
Her breast, full and soft and way too close, squished against his chest.
Soren's left hand had ended up on the small of her back, fingers splayed right where the undershirt had ridden up to bare a strip of cool skin.
His right palm was somewhere far more embarrassing, cupping the side of her hip where the training pants hugged tight.
For one stunned second they were nose-to-nose.
Her pale blue eyes widened, lashes brushing his cheekbones.
Soren felt the heat of her breath against his lips and the rapid thump of her heartbeat.
"Uh?" he managed to say.
Selah blinked once slowly.
Then the corner of her mouth twitched into that same not-nice-not-mean smile from earlier.
"Personal space, F-rank," she said, low enough that only he heard it.
The edge in her voice was there, but she had not moved yet.
"You fell on me," Soren said.
"I'm aware."
Something crossed her face that she shut down before it finished.
She pushed herself up off his shoulder, swung her leg back, and stood.
She walked back to her seat and did not look at him again for the rest of the hour.
But twice he caught her glancing at Grimm.
Grimm had her chin on her paws, her sealed face pointed steadily at Selah.
The book is already wrong, Soren thought. I need to start paying attention.