Chapter 42: The Banquet
(Nova POV)
The day before the banquet felt like a countdown I couldn't escape.
I woke up in my dorm for the first time since the kidnapping—back in my own bed, my own room, my own mess of clothes and half-read books. It should have felt safe. Familiar. Instead, it felt wrong. Too small. Too empty. Like I'd outgrown it in the space of one night.
Tessa was already up, sitting cross-legged on her bed, scrolling through her phone. She looked up when I groaned and rolled over.
"You're alive," she said, half-teasing, half-relieved. "I was about to send out a search party."
I rubbed my eyes. "I'm fine."
"You look like you got hit by a truck." She tossed her phone aside and scooted closer. "Spill. Everything. I heard rumors—kidnapping? Damien carrying you out like some dark prince? And now you're his plus-one to the Blackwood banquet?"
I groaned again. Pulled the blanket over my head.
She yanked it back. "Nope. You don't get to hide. Talk."
So I talked.
