Chapter 45: The Waking of the Dead Heart
{ZEPHYROS}
"Even for you—bored as you are—you would not toy with a student without reason. What made that girl catch your attention?"
Valtheris’s voice drifted lazily through the air, velvety and amused, as if he were already certain he knew the answer. The sound grated on my nerves.
I did not dignify him immediately with a response.
Instead, I hovered a few feet above the floor, reclining in the air as I flipped a page of the book in my hands. My legs dangled idly. My tone, when I finally spoke, was as bored as the dust on these ancient shelves.
"Nothing of note," I drawled. "I merely deduced she was new. She failed to flee the moment the clock struck six."
"That alone?" Valtheris stepped forward, his boots silent upon the marble. "Other new students have done the same. Yet you did not torment them."
I clicked my tongue. "How rude. I did not torment her. I simply... educated her."
"And I am asking you," he continued, "why you chose to ’educate’ her in such a manner."
I sighed loudly and lowered the book just enough to glance at him.
Valtheris stood with that accursed smile—knowing, wicked, and irritatingly charming—like he held the world’s secrets in his palm and was amused that the rest of us didn’t.
"Hmph. Nothing much," I muttered. "She simply... caught my attention."
Of course, I could not tell him what truly stirred me.
Iris Snow . . .
A strange little mortal—no, not quite mortal—wrapped in a veil of energy so clean, so untainted, it glowed to my eyes like moonlight on fresh snow.
Most creatures stink of their own corruption.
Filthy emotions. Dark impulses. Rotting energies clinging to their souls like soot.
Even Valtheris—especially Valtheris—was drenched in a suffocating miasma of ancient darkness.
I dared a glance at him. His aura pulsed like obsidian smoke. Heavy. Poisonous.
I quickly looked away, inhaling sharply to clear the foulness from my senses.
"It will not happen again," I said curtly. "Now—leave me to my reading."
He chuckled. "Very well. Enjoy your book."
There was a soft pause.
"...Your upside-down book."
My eye twitched.
I glanced down—and cursed under my breath.
The book was indeed upside down.
Before I could hurl it at his arrogant head, Valtheris’s laughter echoed through the library as he slipped into the shadows, vanishing like a ghost.
I tossed the wretched book back onto its shelf and drifted lower, letting myself hover just beneath the ceiling beams. The silence settled in again.
How long had I existed within these walls?
Long enough for centuries to blur together, long enough for purpose to fade into monotony.
Guard the forbidden tomes.
Watch the hours pass.
Terrify students who forget the rules.
A dull existence... until tonight.
My thoughts wandered back—unwillingly—to her.
Iris Snow . . .
The moment she crossed the threshold of the library, I sensed her.
Her aura was unlike anything I had ever witnessed—pure, untouched, crystalline, as if the world had not yet stained her with its inevitable darkness.
And she had no scent. No trace of wolf, mortal, or magic clung to her. She was... an oddity.
She sat by the window, reading, smiling to herself like a child discovering stories for the first time.
Before I realized it, she held my full attention.
Then the sun dipped.
The halls darkened.
The students all hurried back to their dorms.
And she still had not noticed the danger creeping around her.
It irritated me—more than it should have—that she wandered so carelessly. So I decided to teach her what this academy would not.
A harmless scare, I thought.
But then—
She cried.
A soft, trembling sound.
Fear wide in her eyes.
Her hands shaking as she curled upon the floor.
Something twisted inside me.
Guilt.
And... something dangerously close to delight.
Her smiling face had been pretty—bright and naive.
But her crying face... her trembling breaths, her vulnerability...
It was intoxicating.
Heat crept up my neck. I pressed a hand over my mouth, mortified.
I did not know such a side existed in me.
I, who feared nothing, felt nothing, cared for nothing—was stirred by a girl with moon-bright eyes and an aura too pure for this wretched world.
Boredom had been my companion for centuries.
But now...
It seemed a new toy had wandered into this school.
Iris... Snow...
Her very name lingered on my tongue like a forbidden hymn.
Iris Snow.
How fitting it was—too fitting, almost cruelly so. Her hair truly carried the pallor of fresh winter frost, soft and pale as though woven from drifting flakes.
And those eyes... those ethereal, amethyst-tinted eyes... saints above, they gleamed as if carved from the moon itself.
Even now, as I sat cloaked in shadow, her face—tear-stained, flushed, trembling—rose unbidden into my mind.
The image struck through me like a fevered spark, and heat rolled beneath my skin, pooling low, tightening everything inside me with a sharp, unwelcome ache.
A hiss escaped me before I could stop it. "Ugh... this is wretched. Absolutely wretched..."
I dragged in a breath, yet my lungs felt heavy, constricted, as if bound by unseen bands. My hand lowered before I could command it otherwise, brushing against the pronounced hardness straining against my pants.
The contact alone made my breath falter. My fingers, traitorous and willful, slipped to the zipper, undoing it with a soft metallic rasp that echoed too loudly in the stillness.
This was foolish. I knew it the moment my hand moved. I was supposed to be beyond these mortal impulses—no longer a man of flesh and blood, but a ghost... a wraith born from arcane remnants and lingering will.
Desire should not cling to me. Hunger should not coil through me like this. My very existence should have been untethered, distant, unfeeling.
And yet—
Apparently, the arcane was not enough to strip me of certain... urges.
Apparently, I could still feel heat. Still experience want. Still touch, if only because I willed myself to. A strange loophole in my metaphysical nature—one I had never bothered to consider until this very moment.
