ARIA'S POV
The car doesn't stop.
We've been driving for hours. My phone died twenty minutes after we left—just blinked off like something sucked the life out of it. The charger doesn't work. Nothing works.
I try the door handle again. Still locked.
"Hey!" I pound on the divider between me and the driver. "Where are we going? How much longer?"
Silence.
He hasn't said one word since I got in. Hasn't turned around. Hasn't even moved except to steer. The back of his head is perfectly still, like a statue.
Outside the window, trees blur past in the darkness. We're climbing—I feel it in my ears, the pressure building. Mountains. We're going into mountains I don't recognize, on roads that twist and turn like snakes.
I pull out my dead phone anyway, desperate. Maybe if I restart it—
The screen flickers to life for just a second. The GPS loads. But instead of showing streets and highways, there's just... nothing. Blank space. Like we're driving through a place that doesn't exist on any map.
Then the phone dies again. Completely. Won't turn back on no matter how many times I press the button.
"This is insane," I whisper to myself. "This is completely insane."
But what choice do I have? Jump out of a moving car on a mountain road in the middle of nowhere? Go back to Celeste?
I see her smile again in my mind. That satisfied, knowing smile. Like she'd won something.
It's a trap, Vivian had said.
My chest tightens. I press my face against the cold window, trying to see anything familiar. Any sign. Any town. Any other cars.
Nothing. Just trees and darkness and roads that shouldn't exist.
How long have we been driving? Three hours? Four? It feels like forever. My stomach growls—I haven't eaten since yesterday. My eyes burn from not sleeping.
I lean back against the seat, exhausted. Maybe if I just rest for a minute...
Sleep pulls at me like a riptide. I try to fight it, but I'm so tired. So tired of everything.
My eyes close.
"You're special, Aria."
Dad's voice. I'm fifteen again, sitting in his study while he shows me old books with strange symbols. He looks healthy. Alive. Before the car accident that killed him.
"Special how?" I ask.
He touches my hand, and his expression is serious. Scared, almost. "Promise me something. If anything happens to me, run. Don't trust anyone. Not even—"
"Not even who, Dad?"
But he's fading, disappearing into smoke and shadows. "RUN, ARIA! BEFORE THEY—"
"We've arrived."
I jerk awake, heart hammering. The driver's voice—the first words he's spoken—sounds wrong. Too deep. Too cold.
My door opens from the outside. Cold air rushes in, smelling like rain and something else. Something old.
I grab my suitcase and stumble out, my legs shaky from sitting so long.
And stop breathing.
Thornveil Academy rises before me like something out of a nightmare.
It's massive. A castle of black stone with towers that stab into the sky like knives. Mist swirls around its base, thick and unnatural. The moon hangs directly above it—huge and full and so bright it hurts to look at.
This isn't a school. This is something else. Something wrong.
The car is already gone. I spin around, but there's nothing behind me except forest and fog. No road. No tire tracks. Like the car just vanished.
"No. No, no, no—" I turn back to the castle. There has to be another way out. A path. Anything.
But there's only the huge front doors, carved with symbols that make my eyes hurt when I look at them too long.
Those doors swing open by themselves.
My feet move before my brain catches up. What else can I do? Stand out here in the cold until I freeze? There's nowhere else to go.
Inside, my breath catches.
The entrance hall is enormous—bigger than my entire house. The ceiling disappears into darkness above. But there are lights. Candles.
Floating candles.
They hover in the air like someone's holding them, except there's no one there. They drift slowly, casting shadows that move wrong. Stretch too far. Bend in impossible ways.
The walls are covered in portraits. Hundreds of them. All showing beautiful people with pale skin and dark clothes, staring down at me with eyes that seem alive. I walk past one—a woman in an old-fashioned dress—and I swear her eyes follow me.
I spin back. Did her head move?
"This isn't real," I whisper. "This can't be real."
But it is. The stone under my feet is real. The cold air is real. The fear racing through my veins is definitely real.
Where is everyone? It's a school—there should be students, teachers, someone. But the hall is empty except for the floating candles and the watching portraits.
My footsteps echo as I walk deeper inside. Every shadow seems to move. Every corner hides something I can't see.
"Hello?" My voice sounds small and scared. "Is anyone—"
A girl appears from the shadows so suddenly I scream.
She's about my age, with dark curly hair and a bright smile that doesn't match this creepy place at all. She's wearing normal clothes—jeans and a sweater—and bouncing on her toes like this is the most exciting thing ever.
"Finally!" she says, grabbing my arm. "I'm Elena, your roommate! We have to hurry—come on!"
She pulls me toward a staircase before I can process her words.
"Wait—what? Slow down!" I try to pull back, but she's surprisingly strong. "What's going on? Why is this place so—"
"No time!" Elena glances over her shoulder, and for just a second, her smile drops. She looks terrified. "We have to get you to our room before they smell you."
She drags me up the stairs, moving fast. Too fast.
"Before WHO smells me?" I gasp, struggling to keep up.
Elena doesn't answer. Just pulls harder, practically running now.
Behind us, I hear something. A sound like footsteps. Lots of footsteps. Coming closer.
"Elena! Who's following us?"
She bursts through a door, yanks me inside, and slams it shut. Multiple locks click into place—way more locks than any normal door should have.
Elena leans against the door, breathing hard. Listening.
I hear them outside. The footsteps. They stop right at our door.
Silence.
Then... sniffing. Like animals tracking a scent.
My blood turns to ice.
"What—" I start to ask.
Elena slaps her hand over my mouth, her eyes huge with fear. She shakes her head frantically. Don't make a sound.
We stand frozen. The sniffing continues. Shadows move under the door—multiple shadows. At least five or six. All waiting outside.
One of them speaks. The voice sounds human but wrong somehow. Hungry.
"New blood. Young. Fresh."
Another voice laughs softly. "The human girl. I can taste her fear from here."
Human? Why would they say human like that? Like I'm something different from them?
Elena's hand is still over my mouth. Her heart is racing—I can feel it. She's as terrified as I am.
Finally, after what feels like forever, the footsteps move away. Down the hall. Fading.
Elena releases me and slides down the door, shaking.
I stare at her. "What was that? What's happening? Who were those people?"
She looks up at me, and her expression makes my stomach drop.
"Aria," she says quietly. "Don't freak out."
"Too late!"
"Thornveil Academy isn't a normal school." She takes a deep breath. "It's for supernatural students. Vampires, specifically."
The word hangs in the air between us.
Vampires.
I laugh. It comes out broken and hysterical. "That's not funny. Vampires aren't—"
Elena pulls back her sleeve. Her wrist is covered in small scars. Bite marks.
"My family serves vampire houses," she says. "I grew up around them. I know what they are." She looks at me with sympathy and fear. "You just walked into an academy full of predators, Aria. And you're human. You're prey."
The room spins. This can't be happening. Can't be real.
But I think about the floating candles. The portraits with living eyes. The driver who never spoke or moved like a normal person. The roads that didn't exist on any map.
The people outside our door who smelled me. Called me "new blood."
"Why?" My voice cracks. "Why would they invite me here?"
Elena's expression turns grave. "That's what I'm trying to figure out. Humans don't get invited to Thornveil unless they're really, really special."
She stands and locks the last bolt on the door. When she turns back to me, I see actual fear in her eyes.
"Whatever you are, Aria? Whatever makes you different?" She moves to the window and looks out at the dark campus. "They know. And they want you."