Page 8 of Lock Up the Darkness

Ivy covered walls.

Hallowed halls.

Pretentious rich, overprivileged students.

Check. Check. And check.

All exactly as I’d expected.

I’d even anticipated all the eyes on me as I ventured through the campus.

Suspicion and intrigue lit their gazes as they tried to reconcile an outsider in their midst.

“Sweet, huh?” Liza spoke, pulling me from my observations.

“It’s definitely something,” I agreed. “Thanks for the tour.” She’d met me here early before classes started just to show me around.

“It’s the least I could do after you saved my butt the other night.”

I waved my hand dismissively. “I got lucky. The guy was shit-faced drunk.”

“Yeah, I wish there was an alcohol detector in place, you know like those metal detectors, where customers have to pass through and be cleared before they can enter Fusion?”

I chuckled. “That would come in handy.”

I studied her as we continued walking the halls. She was clad in a pink Chanel jacket, a plunging silver metallic cropped top beneath that put her rainbow navel piercing on display. A bubblegum pink skirt ramped up the bold and vibrant outfit, along with a pair of silver Jimmy Choo’s. She was dressed to the nines like she usually was when walking into work before we shifted to uniforms. And her bright and excitable attitude also seemed like it hadn’t been compromised by what had happened that night. “You’re good?” I asked carefully.

“Good?” she asked, her attention drawn back to me from waving at the students she knew passing on by.

“After what happened?”

She shrugged. “Fine, yeah. I mean, it’s just how it is for us.”

“Us?”

“Women.”

I started at her response. That was several levels beyond disturbing. Accepting it as mere fact, something to lean into… it made me feel sick to my stomach. “That’s not—”

“Ready to get coffee before classes start?”

I saw the need in her gaze for me to drop it, to pretend it hadn’t happened at all, it looked like. As much as I didn’t want to, it wasn’t up to me. People processed things at their own rates, and in their own ways.

“Sure,” I said, brightly. “I could do with an additional jolt.”

“Right there with you, sweets,” she said as she led me out of the main building and around the edge of the quad.

We hadn’t gotten very far when she squeezed the arm of my denim jacket all of a sudden, her body literally shaking with nervous excitement. “Oh my God! He’s coming!”

I followed her line of sight and watched just as what could only be described as swirling chaos made its way beneath a large stone archway a few feet from us.

As it got closer, I managed to get a lock on the person at the center of the storm of girls and guys fussing around excitedly, an immaculate pearly white smile brightening his face as he lapped up the attention and adulation between taking sips from his coffee cup.

Killian Carmichael.

The Prince.

He boasted classic movie star looks, the chiseled jaw, high cheekbones, an angular nose perfectly proportioned with his face. He took up a lot of space with his broad shoulders and he moved with powerful purpose that made it clear he knew how to work that space well to his advantage. He was wearing a dark green and brown hoodie, the hood flipped down and revealing his chestnut-brown hair, floppy on the top and short on the sides. It was open, the white muscle tee beneath pulling taut across his muscular chest. It rested on a pair of designer distressed blue jeans that gave way to a pair of high-performance sneakers.

---