CORIN

  Billard Academy woke before dawn.

  By the time the first Rolls-Royce slid past the iron gates, whispers had already run ahead of it like wind through the trees. She's coming. The phrase snapped down comm lines between security. Guards straightened jackets. The gardener clipped the last stray rose petal, ensuring the beds looked preordained in their perfection. Even the driveway was quietly cleared, not a bicycle nor an unpolished shoe left in sight.

  Corin Clarendon was on her way.

  Students knew what that meant. The golden boys tugged their collars straight, brushed hands through glossy hair. The girls adjusted skirts and smoothed over lipstick prints until nothing but that curated, flawless "I-woke-like-this" sheen remained. Even the gum-chewers spat discreetly into bushes—Corin would not see them in their commonness. The faculty fumbled with jackets, ties, heels, trying, and failing, to reach her standard.

  Her black town car rolled across the gravel, gliding to its rightful place at the foot of the Academy's marble steps. No one needed to be told to step back.

  Corin noticed every detail, of course. She was trained to—polished roses, polished people, all in careful reverence of her family's empire. She saw the too-obvious way a boy shifted his Patek to catch the morning light, the professors suddenly so grave and buttoned-up. She saw, and she smiled, because that was the part demanded of her.

  Smile for the empire.

  It was performance, all of it. She did it as though the act didn't burn her throat raw. Some mornings, she wanted to vomit straight into the gold sink in her bathroom. On others, she wanted to claw her perfect face until only the truth bled through. She wasn't some fairy-tale princess. She was a crownless queen about to be reduced to a wife.

  The curse of her gender. The thing that made her want to set every oil portrait in the Billard dining hall alight. Clarendon Industries should have been hers, not handed to the top boy of Billard.

  Yes, the chairman found the most wicked knife to drive into her chest. Whichever boy ranked first on her final year would have her hand in marriage and his empire

  And everyone smiled at her as though she should be grateful.

  She walked into the main hall, students parting as if she were Moses and they the Red Sea. Her patent leather shoes echoed over the stone, and every whisper followed her like confetti: admiration, jealousy, longing. A chorus she had grown up inside.

  She said nothing. She only smiled, played her role, flicked her hair like sunlight catching in glass.

  Whispers shifted that day from her arrival to someone else's, subtle but sharp, cutting through the usual hymn of her perfection.

  "That's him."

  "A scholarship, can you imagine?"

  "Must be somebody's bastard—no other way he'd even breathe the air here."

  Corin's gaze cut across the hall, finding him instantly. The face of the rumour.

  Lucien Green.

  He didn't belong here, which was precisely why everyone was watching him. The uniform looked wrong on him, second-hand or ill-fitting, though his shoulders wore it better than half the legacy boys. His hair was too long, his eyes too sharp, his presence all wrong for Billard's hallowed halls. He wasn't polished, he wasn't careful—he was a blade unsheathed, gleaming beneath the fluorescent lights.

  A transfer in the sixth form. Practically unheard of. Billard did not take strays. Which meant he might not actually be one.

  The girls whispered that he was beautiful.

  Maybe if he let Corin fix that crooked Windsor knot, he would be.

  Her thoughts changed to violence immediately when someone blocked her view.

  "Morning, baby."

  She did a quick inventory of the sharp objects in her bag, which one for a quick death, and which one for a slow bleed-out.

  "Vicki." She said, as calmly as she could.

  As tradition demanded, the current holder of Billard's highest honour—the top scholar of the previous year—should walk her to class.

  He grinned and offered his arm. His tie was loose, his shirt untucked, his ears pierced—so far from the dignified nightmare he was during the fashion show. The walls of Billard are protection. No press could get in to immortalize such sloppiness. Only eyes and ears. Some belonged to her father's allies, more to his enemies.

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  Corin could never break inside these walls.

  Vicki, of course, thrived on breaking rules. He was the current holder, the potential heir, and the entire school acted accordingly. He could be as insufferable as he pleased, and no one would call him out.

  Today, he was at his worst. His untucked shirt alone made Corin's jaw clench.

  "Aren't you going to spank me?" he murmured against her ear as they walked.

  "I've already murdered you in my head."

  He laughed. "You've been itching to fix my tie. I can see the way your fingers twitch."

  Corin clasped her fists behind her back. He wanted her to crack. Wanted the perfect Clarendon rose to shred her petals and bare her thorns. He had no idea how dangerous that could be.

  They reached the hall outside their first class, shared with the other two contenders for Billard's crown. That was when Victor struck.

  With a sudden shove, he pinned her in the alcove and stole a kiss, mouth hot and reckless against hers.

  There was no one in sight. He knew it. He thought it was safe forgetting that doing so meant the devil in her would reveal itself.

  Corin pushed him back and slapped him hard enough to sting his pride. Before he could recover, she gripped his chin, nails digging cruelly.

  "Don't test me, Vicki," she warned. "Do that again, and I'll forget you're a Vandercourt. I'll send your head in a box—with a bow."

  A chorus of giggles floated closer, and the instant Corin caught them in her periphery, she kissed the cheek she had just struck, hiding the evidence of her cruelty.

  The girls gasped, thrilled.

  "You're blushing," Corin announced brightly, loud enough for the corridor. "You're so adorable, Vicki."

  The trio cooed and whispered to each other, starstruck, before turning wide-eyed smiles on Corin herself.

  First years, she thought.

  New subjects, new audience to the play of her life. They dressed like her, probably begged their mothers for her perfume, called her their role model. The kind of girls who worshipped her, who probably even knew her blood type.

  "Walk with me," she said graciously. "I trust you'll enjoy your stay at Billard."

  "Thank you, Ms. Clarendon," they chorused, glowing with delight.

  Victor glared, his cheek still burning. Corin only smiled wider as she swept her new little audience away, victory humming sweet in her veins.

  ***

  It was the third class of the day. Advanced Chemistry.

  Corin stepped into the lab, heels clicking against the tiles, and immediately saw him—a boy sliding into her table. The one at the front. The one no one else dared touch.

  The room gasped in unison, like an audience that had just seen a knife drawn onstage. Every head turned to him, then to her, waiting.

  The three heirs were already in their places.

  Vicki lounged with a grin, his fingers grazing the cheek she had slapped raw that morning, eager for another performance. Alistair, as usual, looked bored, as if existence itself was beneath his notice. Rothwell glared at the boy like he was filth, unworthy to breathe the same air as them, let alone steal her throne in the classroom.

  Corin crossed the room with unhurried grace, every eye pinned to her movement. She stopped at the table.

  "Why are you here?" she asked, voice smooth, lethal beneath the silken ribbon.

  The boy looked up at her, dark eyes steady.

  "No one's sitting, so I sat."

  A ripple ran through the class. Corin smiled, the sort that meant you don't belong here, but you'll learn.

  Someone with more sense—or cowardice—leaned toward him and hissed, "You're poor."

  As though that explained everything.

  "So?" he returned flatly.

  The word struck like a slap, sharper than hers that morning. Then his gaze returned to her, unshaken, and he extended a hand.

  "My name's Lucien Green. You can sit here if you like."

  The class erupted in gasps, mouths falling open.

  No one—no one—ever offered her a seat.

  And before they could recover, Corin took his hand, shook it, and said:

  "Corin Clarendon."

  "Pleasure, Corin."

  Pens snapped. Rothwell nearly broke his own in two. A peasant had called her by her first name.

  Vicki clapped, delighted, leaning back to watch the fire spread. Alistair didn't so much as blink.

  "Ah!" the professor beamed as though nothing at all was amiss. "Finally, you've found a lab partner, Ms. Clarendon. Go on, take your seat. Welcome back, everyone, to Billard."

  Corin lowered herself beside Lucien, her smile never wavering. But inside, her thoughts sharpened like blades.

  A transfer had taken her table.

  And she had just let him live.

  Everyone was still watching, stealing glances at the Clarendon rose seated beside the transfer boy who had dared sit at her table.

  On the board, the professor scribbled equations in white chalk, droning on about acid strengths and reactivity. Bronsted-Lowry theory. Conjugate bases. Safety protocols.

  Corin tuned him out. Safety protocols were boring.

  Her eyes drifted across the supplies laid out in front of her. Glass beakers, droppers, a row of neatly labelled acids. Hydrochloric. Sulfuric. Acetic. Nitric. Concentrations strong enough to burn skin. Strong enough to do more.

  Her hand wandered, almost idly, to the beaker of concentrated hydrochloric acid. Beside it, a bottle of potassium chlorate waited innocently on the rack. Together—if paired with the wrong conditions—they could generate enough violent gas release to turn the neat lab into shrapnel and flame.

  She reached for the dropper.

  "Don't," Lucien said sharply, his hand closing over hers before she could mix. His voice wasn't panicked, just firm, steady. "Are you messing around, or do you actually want an explosion?"

  Corin tilted her head, lips curving in amusement. No one had ever dared catch her hand before. "Sometimes," she whispered, low enough for only him to hear, "I just want to blow the whole place to the ground. You wouldn't understand. You're new."

  Lucien held her gaze for a long moment. Then, without ceremony, he plucked the acid from her grip and set it back on the counter.

  "I know," he said. "But do it when I'm not here."

  The casual delivery startled a laugh out of her, quiet and unexpected. Dangerous, reckless boy. She thought he was funny.

  Around them, the class continued scribbling notes, oblivious. Only Vicki, lounging in the back, noticed the exchange—his grin sharp, hungry for the next crack in her perfect mask.

  Corin adjusted her gloves, ignoring him, and looked back at Lucien.

  He might be poor, but he knows his acids... a smart stray.