And he smelled like the after scent of rain on earth.
Charlotte
I jolted from the new voice, and I nearly dropped my bag but recoiled and clutched it tighter.
The voice had come out of nowhere, soft and melodious, the kind of voice that slipped straight into your head before you had the chance to stop it, like a hypnotic pull. For a moment my brain refused to process what I had heard, and my body reacted first. I took a quick step back, putting distance between myself and the shadow leaning against the wall before the figure finally moved.
He stepped forward into the faint light from the wall lamp, and I saw him.
The first thing I noticed was the robe. It was long and dark purple, the same kind most students here seemed to wear, but on him it looked different somehow. The fabric hung loosely from his shoulders and moved softly when he walked forward.
His hair was silver, long enough to fall past his shoulders; strands fell loosely from his face, making him look ethereal. His ears were pointed, the tips sharp and precise, and a small stud earring glinted faintly in his left ear when he tilted his head.
What's with men with piercings in this school? If I wasn't mistaken, the first guy I clashed with this morning had a nose piercing also.
Back to the man in front of me, his eyes were forest green—the bright, glowy kind of green—but there were tiny flecks of gold scattered through them, freckles spread across his face in clusters, dusted over the bridge of his nose and across his cheekbones.
I swallowed slowly, putting my hands up in defense as my heart was already beating too hard after everything that had happened today, and this felt like another surprise waiting to go wrong.
Yet another hot shot in a day.
He was strikingly beautiful, but I pulled myself back from that thought fast; I wasn't going down the rabbit hole because the two jerks I had met earlier had also been unbelievably good-looking. One of them had threatened my life in the middle of a hallway, and the other had dropped me on my backside without a second thought. Clearly being beautiful in this place didn't mean someone was kind.
So I looked at him with the same cautious suspicion I had started reserving for everyone in this academy.
He watched me carefully for a moment, and I felt the faint prickling sensation along the back of my neck, making the hair rise from his gaze, and my heart skipped a beat.
"You are new?" he asked in a soft voice, and I nodded then shivered from the cold. His eyes didn't miss that as he just walked closer, and I took two steps back out of reflex, but he didn't give my reaction a mind as he already reached up and unrobed himself with calm, unhurried movements and stepped forward to wrap the robe around my shoulders.
I jolted slightly from the sudden warmth and stood still.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
I smiled at the gesture as I wrapped his robe tighter around me, and the warmth seeped into my skin. It smelled like petrichor, the scent of rain hitting dry ground, and underneath that something deeper and greener, like a forest floor after rainfall. It was one of the most calming things I had smelled all day, and I felt something in my chest ease slightly.
"The attic," I grumbled in response, remembering how those girls had bullied me.
He nodded once, his brow pulling together. "You'll need to go now before the patrol catches you out after hours," he said, and I wanted to bare my teeth at him; there was no need to tell me the obvious. I knew and I was already going before he stopped me.
But my thoughts came to a halt when he pointed in a direction that was the complete opposite of where I had been heading. "The attic is that way, not this one," he added calmly.
I stared at him and then at the map and then at him again incredulously. "Are you joking with me right now? Are you actually playing with me?"
He blinked slowly; shock flashed in his eyes. "Why would I do that?" he said in all honesty.
"Because you could," I shrugged. "Everyone else in this place seems to take a very specific kind of pleasure in making things harder for me, so why not you too?" I bit off.
He shook his head. "I'm a fae," he said, and I raised a brow. What should I do with the information? he added. "Fae cannot lie."
That made me pause, and I looked at him properly when he said that, searching his face, and something in his green eyes made the tension in my shoulders drop back down. I trusted him. I didn't know how to explain it, except that I did, immediately.
"Okay," I mumbled. "That's good," nodding my head.
I turned to start walking in the direction he had pointed, and then I remembered my manners and turned back to thank him and ask his name. But the corridor was empty. He was nowhere to be found. No sound of footsteps; it was like he disappeared, and I shivered, not from cold now.
I looked at the lamp on the wall and the shadows he emerged from earlier and me standing in the hallway with his coat around my shoulders.
I smiled despite everything. "Thank you," I mumbled quietly to the empty corridor, and the air whooshed softly as though in response.
Then I turned and walked toward the attic, practically running, because the grand clock above had started marking the hour, and the sound of it bounced off every wall in the building.
When I finally found it, I stood at the door for a moment, hand on the knob, and took a single breath. Whatever was inside, I would deal with it. If it came to a fight, I'd gladly return because I'm a deadbeat now and I need somewhere to fall on.
So I pushed the door open.