The week leading up to the Fen-Ball season opener felt like the static hum before a lightning strike—taut, electric, and dangerously poised.
Gwen had spent Monday through Wednesday appealing not to her peers’ better natures but to their selfish interests. It was a strike of genius born from one of her prefects complaining that the faux horse-hauntings weren’t just terrifying Vapours—it was annoying Inks. She presented her argument to the Council: The incessant horse-haunting illusions not only interfered with her investigation by creating ‘false sightings,’ but also clogged her prefects’ schedules with redundant paperwork about the mounting pile of complaints.
By re-framing the ban as a way to restore Ink dignity and efficiency, she had successfully pushed it through.
The phantom clop-clop-clop of hooves vanished from the cloisters. The Vapours could finally walk to their lectures without looking over their shoulders, though the silver horse-head badges remained—a metallic sneer pinned to the lapels of Oliver Anderson and his ilk.
The protests thinned. By Thursday, the freckled-shouter and the fuchsia-caster were the only ones left, huddled outside club meetings and defence practice rooms with their soggy cardboard signs. Even Charlotte and Estelle, usually the barometers for social catastrophe, admitted over tea that their Fashion Society meeting had been blandly peaceful.
Will had paused their session on Thursday evening just to say thank you. She had dismissed it with a cool, practiced wave of her hand, citing it as her responsibility as the Service Chair, but the truth was more inconvenient: the moment the words left his mouth, the ache that had cricked her neck for seven days dissolved.
By Friday afternoon, the transformation on the Fen-Ball field was undeniable. Will was no longer just a vessel of raw, chaotic power; he was beginning to move with the gravity of a seasoned athlete.
Gwen sat in the wooden stands, ostensibly to track his progress, but she found herself captivated by the way Will moved—a chaotic dance of muscle and momentum—and the surprising, fluid ease with which he took direction from Cal Whitley.
As she descended the stands, her loafers squeaking on the damp, sun-bleached wood, Will caught her. Breathless and damp with sweat and mist, he intercepted her at the base. His bone-white jersey was smudged with dark earth. He looked vibrant, dangerously alive, his eyes searching hers with a terrifyingly focused intensity.
“You saw that, right? Tell me that was good,” he said. He was grinning, the expression boyish and arrogant, but his pupils were blown wide—a silent, vulnerable plea for her to validate the praise his teammates had already showered upon him.
Gwen felt her chest tighten, a sharp, airless constriction that had nothing to do with the October wind. It was a dizzying realization: she wasn’t the only one hostage to an opinion. The Chosen One didn’t care that the team thought he was a god; he was waiting for the Ice Princess to tell him he wasn’t a failure.
“I saw it,” she said, her voice carefully neutral. “Your funnelling was adequate. You managed to carve a narrow ice path without frosting the entire field and tripping your teammates. A marked improvement over Tuesday’s clumsy disaster.”
Will’s grin didn’t falter; it deepened. He knew the geography of her praise well enough to find the gold buried beneath the thorns.
“I was right,” Gwen continued, her voice gaining its usual authoritative clip as she tried to ignore how his presence seemed to shrink the world down to the two of them. “You needed more practice with other people. You’re too thick-headed for theory. And while Whitley lacks even a passing acquaintance with academic rigour, he is a… functional model learning physical transformations. His resonance is naturally suited for all that weather-moulding and earth-shaking nonsense. I’m surprised he’s capable of being such a decent influence.”
Will blinked, stunned into a breathless laugh. “I think I might be hallucinating. Did the O’Dorchaidhe Princess just admit that Cal Whitley is better at something than she is?”
Gwen’s brow furrowed into a regal, dangerous frown. “At one thing, Clark. Don’t let the adrenaline rot your brain.”
“Cal!” Will shouted over his shoulder, eyes sparking with a sudden, mischievous heat as he turned toward the field.
“Don’t you dare,” Gwen hissed, her hand darting out to snatch the damp collar of his jersey. She yanked him back, bringing him so close she could smell the rain on his skin and the woodsy musk of sweat.
“Hey, Cal!” he shouted again, not breaking eye contact with Gwen, grinning at the challenge. “You’re never going to believe this!”
“Do not,” she breathed, her knuckles brushing the heat of his throat.
“Or else?” Will asked, his voice dropping an octave. He didn’t pull away; he leaned into her space.
Gwen seethed, her fingers trembling against the fabric. There was no ‘or else.’ She had no leverage left that wouldn’t hurt her more than him. She released him as if burned, watching as he adjusted his undershirt to cover the splintered point where his curse-mark peeked over his collarbone.
“Would it really kill you to compliment Cal to his face?” Will asked, the teasing fading into a softer, genuine curiosity.
“It might,” she snapped.
Cal jogged over then, looking like a disaster in human form—red-faced, caked in muck, and confused by the summons. “You need me to team up with you to fight the Wicked Witch, Will? I’ve got a bucket of water somewhere.”
Will shoved Cal’s shoulder, a sheepish grin returning. “C’mon, don’t…”
“Work on your insults, Whitley,” Gwen said, flipping her notebook open with a sharp snap. She tore out the pages of raw notes she’d taken—unrefined, biting observations she usually spent an hour softening. Since he wanted to play games, he could have the truth. She thrust the paper at Will. “Review these together. Since you’ve decided to be a package deal, I couldn’t help but mention Whitley’s technical failures while observing yours.”
Cal crowded into Will’s space to read, their shoulders bumping. “What the hell, O’Dorchaidhe? That was an amazing practice! What could I—” He paused, his nose wrinkling as he squinted at a bullet point. “Okay, that move did feel a little off.” He mimed the gesture, side-stepping and tracing a wide alchemical symbol for earth in the air.
Gwen couldn’t help herself. The perfectionist in her screamed louder than her pride. She set her notebook down on the damp stand. “Your problem is the size of the gesture, Whitley. You’re over-acting.”
Cal scowled. “Which one of us is in Cairngorm?” he asked sarcastically. “You need movement to direct transformative energy, Princess.”
“If you have a Vapour level of resonance, perhaps,” she quipped, stepping into the mud to face him. “Focusing intent is one of your few strengths. Don’t waste it doing what everyone else is doing. It slows the draw.”
She mimicked his movement, but her version was a surgical strike—small, sharp, and devastatingly efficient. “Waste less energy gathering. Less momentum, more control.”
Cal copied her, his face screwed up in concentration. Gwen turned to Will, her voice softening despite herself. “And you. Your resonance is huge, but your lack of control means those big moves overcharge your intentions. Smaller. Contained. Focus on the release.”
For a few minutes, the world shrank to the oblivious safety of her small lesson. They repeated the movements, a strange, rhythmic trio in the fading light. Once Cal got it, he re-demonstrated it for Will, describing an imaginary play to help him ‘feel’ the resonance flow. It was a bubble of camaraderie—an unusually easy, rough warmth—that Gwen had never been a part of. Until the silence of the rest of the world rushed back in.
Gwen looked up, and her blood turned to ice.
The Vapour protesters at the fence had lowered their signs to gawk at the sight of the O’Dorchaidhe heir teaching an outcast and a someday-hero in the mud. Further down, Oliver Anderson stood with his clique, his silver horse-head badge catching the last of the sun. He was gesturing wildly, miming fixing a pair of glasses and pirouetting like a ballerina before tripping dramatically into the dirt. His followers erupted in cruel laughter.
They hadn’t just seen her teaching. They had seen her belonging. The panic was a cold, rolling cluster of marbles in her stomach.
Gwen snatched her notebook from the stand, the porcelain mask of her face snapping back into place.
“Don’t make a fool of yourselves at Saturday’s game,” she said, her voice loud, carrying over the wind to where Oliver and other Inks stood. “I’d hate to think my tutoring was a waste.”
She didn’t look back to see the confusion on Will’s face. She simply turned and hurried off, her loafers sticking in the mucky sidelines, slowing her escape.
***
The first Saturday of October arrived with a bite, a dreariness tasting of peat smoke and turning leaves. The Highland sun was a pale, watery disc hung in a grey sky, providing light but no warmth. A full week had passed since the Red Letters had turned the common rooms into nests of paranoia, and though the horse-haunting illusions had been successfully banned, nothing had been resolved.
The Fen-Ball stadium was a dizzying amphitheatre of dark, weathered granite and tiers of obsidian-glass and wood overlooking a field of emerald turf. It was a liminal space where, for a few hours, the vitriol of prejudiced conflict was buried under the primal, thundering heartbeat of school spirit. High above, pennants of obsidian-black and bone-white—the Cairn-Gait’s colours—snapped in the Highland wind. The university’s mascot, the Shadow Stag, loomed on every banner, its twelve-pointed antlers silhouetted against the pale, autumnal sky.
It was the first match of the season—Cairn-Gait Conservatory versus Rame University, stags versus rams. Students sat in uneasy proximity, the gap between Inks and Vapours marked not by empty seats, but by a brittle, watchful tension.
Gwen sat in the Aurelius Box, her posture a study in feigned indifference. She was the definition of O’Dorchaidhe poise in her tailored charcoal wool coat, Ouroboros gold pinned to her lapel, and royal blue silk ribbon woven through her braid. She told herself no one would read into why she was here. Showing up to support her school, and only her school, was expected of a Circle member.
But that was before Tristan sat beside her, his presence felt like a cold draft. He wore the Aurelius gold and royal blue with an assertive ease, but Gwen’s sharp eyes caught a flicker of something else: a pair of silver-and-indigo cuff-links, the deep twilight colours of Vespertine dorm.
“I didn’t expect to see you here, Tristan,” Gwen remarked, her voice a cool chime. “I thought you had a standing reservation for the Genealogy & Heraldic League on Saturdays.”
Tristan didn’t look at her; his eyes were fixed on the field where the players were warming up. “Julian is the Captain, Gwen. If you had real friends instead of fair-weather allies, you’d know that people of quality show up for one another.”
Gwen flinched. The distance between them was a canyon of expectations and unspoken resentments. She looked toward the pitch, searching for the Vespertine indigo of Julian Vane’s jersey. She had appointed Julian as a prefect because he was a summer breeze in a family that only valued the storm—reliable, polite, and blissfully uninterested in the bloodsport of Circle politics.
Tristan and Julian were an odd pair. Tristan was a necessary means to achieve their father’s expectations; he would carry on the family name and take over the family business. Julian’s parents certainly hoped he’d succeed, but he had the freedom to decide whatever that looked like. Gwen wondered if Tristan had sought Julian out as a relaxing opposite to his high-strung nature.
The whistle blew, and the stands erupted with cheers. Gwen watched Tristan leap up to join the vibrating applause, confusingly excited for someone who’d never even dared to try out for Fen-Ball.
Below, the teams found their positions on the field: Will and Cal joined Leap Wong and Ezra Lee on offense; Julian joined Hallie Wong and Riley Lee as midfielders; and Roman Smith and Milo Patel lined up their defense in front of Nancy Khan, their goalkeeper.
Cairn-Gait’s team looked formidable in their obsidian-and-bone-white jerseys. Will and Cal wore the emerald green and copper patches of Cairngorm on their shoulders, their movements sharp and hungry.
The game was a brutal ballet. Milo Patel anchored the defense with tectonic rumbles that sent the Rame strikers stumbling, while Hallie Wong and Riley Lee wove lattices of blinding light that turned the field into a kaleidoscope of confusion. Leap Wong sent the ball zipping away with magnetic pulses anytime a Rame player got close.
Then, Julian sent a blindingly fast pass through a gap in the Rame defense—straight toward Will.
Gwen’s breath hitched. A Rame player lunged, shouting a Dormite Arma! spell meant to numb Will’s arms. Will didn’t panic. Instead of the explosive, messy magic she’d first seen in him, he executed a perfect, energy-efficient Aegis Bastion. It was a disc of shimmering force no larger than a dinner plate, held just long enough to deflect the hex before he launched the ball with a controlled Percute! toward Cal. With an eruption beneath the turf, Cal hammered the Fen-Ball through the Rame goal-hoop.
“Yes!” Tristan shouted, half-rising. He wasn’t cheering for the goal, but for the victory of Julian’s setup. “Look at that open lane! Vane is going to brag about that for a month!”
Gwen found herself leaning forward, her clinical detachment shattered. Will caught her eye for a split second from the field—a flash of emerald green against the grey sky—and gave a small, cocky nod toward the Aurelius box before diving back into the fray.
The second half turned vicious. Rame’s Golden Rams began a heavy press. Their midfielders were flashes of gold and slate grey, tossing gusts and tripping spells. When a Rame player created a patch of black ice that sent Julian flying backward, Gwen saw Tristan’s face go ashen. His breath hitched in a way that felt raw. A concern so tight that it made Gwen feel like she was intruding. But Julian roared a Caligo! incantation, summoning a thick Highland fog that only those trained at Cairn-Gait knew how to navigate.
“He’s got it,” Tristan whispered, his voice thick with a relief he couldn’t mask.
In the final minutes, Will executed a Geiséar! strike—a move Gwen had suggested in her notes. It was his signature wild power forced through the precision of a needle. The ball whistled into the net, sealing the victory.
Gwen was on her feet, clapping with a genuine, unforced smile. “He actually listened,” she murmured, her heart thudding with a warmth that had nothing to do with the stadium’s warming charms. “He’s really good.”
Tristan looked at her, his grey eyes shining. “Now that’s a game worth watching, right, Gwenny?”
She playfully blocked his view with her Shadow Stag flag, and he gave her a gentle, playful shove. For a fleeting moment, the O’Dorchaidhe masks were gone, replaced by the ghost of the children they had been before the legacy divided them. Maybe there was something to this commoner’s game after all.
As the team began their victory lap, Gwen’s smile faltered.
Will was being swarmed. A group of first- and second-year girls—waving Cairngorm flags and wearing emerald ribbons—had crowded him. They were flushed, their eyes wide with the frantic adoration people reserved for legends. One young woman reached out to touch his arm, her laugh high and melodic. Will backed into Cal, looking overwhelmed but… smiling.
A sharp, cold knot of irritation tightened in Gwen’s chest. It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t reasonable. It was a visceral, stinging jealousy that she immediately tried to bury under a layer of frost.
“Not staying to see how your pupil handles the fawning?” Tristan asked, a mischievous glint in his eyes.
“Sloan might need help with the victory party,” Gwen said, her voice regaining its clipped, silver edge.
“Of course,” Tristan chuckled. “Go aid your ambition-ally. I’ll see you at the official event. Or maybe I’ll just head straight to the after-after-party.”
Gwen frowned. “The what?”
Tristan laughed, and it sounded dangerously like rebellion. “Oh, come on, Gwen. I know you’re a naive little first-year, but the Great Hall event is for the ‘stuffy Inks.’ The team will show their faces for 10 minutes, then disappear to where the real fun is. Without the Circle breathing down their necks.”
The confession stunned her. Tristan—the golden son, the heir—calling his own kind stuffy?
“But you’re a Circle member,” she reminded him. “The Collections Chair shouldn’t be absent.”
Tristan rolled his eyes. “Why do you think I ran for Collections? No one cares about the archives. I dust shelves once a week and check the inventory every odd day. Low stakes, high rewards. It leaves me plenty of time for… other things.”
Gwen’s eyes widened with surprise. Tristan had always been social. But she’d thought it was all a ploy. A way to stay popular. She’d never imagined it was a tactic he’d used to run away from the group he was supposed to rule. The very group she too thought was supposed to be hers.
He patted her shoulder, a gesture that felt like a goodbye. “Go, Gwen. Enjoy the official performance. The rest of us are counting down the minutes until we can actually start living.”
As she watched him walk toward the stairs, Gwen felt the world shifting again. Her brother had found a loophole in the legacy she was trying so hard to save. And as she looked back at Will, still surrounded by his new admirers, she wondered if she was the only one left who still believed the performance was the most important part of the play.
***
The victory party following the match was not a gift; it was a hard-won conquest. Sloan had spent the first half of the week desperately petitioning Chancellor Eddow and the Board of Trustees with a tenacity that bordered on the fanatical. She’d framed the event as a mechanical necessity to mend the fractured morale after the Equinox disaster. To seal the deal, she’d brandished digital data, using social platform polls as social proof that the student body was starving for a win they could actually celebrate together.
Because the party was ostensibly for the team—Vapours, Newbloods, and Inks alike—it lacked the blatant exclusion of the Circle’s private galas. Eddow had finally buckled, seeing the party as a convenient way to placate the Ink demands to restore tradition and honour Vapour cries for inclusion.
But as the doors to the Great Hall swung open, it was clear that ‘unity’ was merely the Trojan horse Sloan had used to wheel in the usual opulence.
The Great Hall had been transformed from its everyday gothic splendour into a temple of sports chic. The centrepiece was a Shadow Stag sculpture carved from massive slabs of black opal, its twelve-pointed antlers reaching for the hammerbeams. Within the stone, candlelight caught vibrant, electric flashes of blue, green, and yellow, like trapped lightning. Everything else was a monochrome study in obsidian and bone—the official, unyielding colors of Cairn-Gait. The air was a suffocating, heavy blend of expensive tuberose, formal floral arrangements, and the crisp, yeasty sting of vintage champagne.
Gwen felt the golden strings of expectations tighten around her with every polite nod. Beside her, Sloan was a masterpiece of political choreography. She moved through the crowd with a fixed, radiant smile in her indigo-and-white ribbed cocktail dress. Gwen watched with a cynical eye as Sloan stopped to effusively congratulate Julian Vane and Hallie Wong—players of Ink lineage—yet only offered curt, paper-thin nods to Newbloods like Nancy Khan and Riley Lee as she glided past them.
Nearby, Oliver Anderson nursed a glass of sparkling cider with the unearned swagger of a war hero. He told the story of the team’s victory to an admiring circle of Inks. He hadn’t touched the field for a single second of the match, yet he accepted their praise as if he’d personally landed the winning goal. Occasionally, he threw a look of pure, curdled jealousy toward the far end of the hall where the Vapour players huddled, looking like rough charcoal sketches in a room full of refined oil paintings.
Estelle was, irritatingly, extra clingy—latching onto Gwen whenever Sloan flitted away to greet a donor or Ink alumni. It made the room feel smaller, the oxygen thinner. Estelle, radiant in a champagne-gold silk gown that matched her golden-hued features, was hovering nearby. Every few minutes, she reached out to smooth a nonexistent wrinkle in Gwen’s midnight-silk sleeve or whispered a frantic update on who was looking at them.
“Sloan looks perfect tonight,” Estelle breathed, her eyes darting around the room to ensure the right people were witnessing her proximity to power. “Oh, you do too, Gwen. Doesn’t she, Charlotte?”
Charlotte stood a pace behind them, a dark, cynical shadow in her signature layered black. She held a glass of dark violet wine like a whetted weapon. “She looks like an O’Dorchaidhe is expected to look,” Charlotte drawled, her voice a dry rasp. “Stiff. Impeccable. Boring. Honestly, this entire display is derivative. Just because you throw a party doesn’t make Fen-Ball worth celebrating.”
Sudden nausea rolled over Gwen, more bitter than the champagne on her tongue. She looked at Estelle’s performative fawning and Charlotte’s hollow, acidic elitism, and felt a cold shudder of recognition. She had spent her entire life meticulously carving this version of herself: the Ice Princess, the flawless O’Dorchaidhe heir, a statue designed solely to weather the heat of their scrutiny.
Every nod was a choreographed lie. No one in this hall cared for the substance of her thoughts; they were all merely actors performing the same suffocating script, reciting lines that had been written by dead ancestors and reinforced by living ghosts. An impeccable, boring play,
Gwen didn’t want to fit into a world that required her to be small enough to stay within the margins. She had wanted to be better than them—to be so stratospheric, so above their petty insecurities and sour judgments, that they couldn’t touch her.
But here she was, repeating predictable lines to earn their applause. Every rehearsed, empty smile, every carefully curated presentation of her virtues was designed to showcase that she was worthy of them. She had believed the delusion that she controlled the narrative—that she could choose to walk off the stage at any moment. But she was just another pedigreed beast pacing the length of a golden cage, performing for a crowd that only loved her for the bars that held her in.
Gwen found herself trapped in a corner with her fellow Circle Chairs, Isolde Thorne and Catriona Sinclair. As always, they wore their matching iron pendants, a subtle sign that even standing with them didn’t mean they were on the same side. Isolde looked as sharp as a glass shard in her royal blue peplum dress, her eyes tracking Will across the room.
“The boy should be eternally grateful,” Isolde murmured, her voice a low, dangerous purr. “Without your tutelage, Gwenhwyfar, and Julian’s… charitable directions as Captain, a Vapour like Clark would only hold the team back. He’s a blunt instrument in a game that requires precise strategy.”
“Will is talented,” Gwen countered, her voice firmer than she intended. She felt the heat of the second glass of champagne beginning to hum in her veins. “He doesn’t just have power; he has… an instinct. He simply needs to learn control.”
Isolde’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m sure. But it’s sad he starts at such a genetic disadvantage. All Vapours do. Vessels with cracks.”
“Yes, but what’s Callum Whitley’s excuse?” Catriona teased, a cruel giggle escaping her. “He has the blood, yet he chooses to bumble about like a common Newblood.”
Isolde sighed, the sound of velvet sliding over stone. “It’s a classic example of what happens when Inks are cut off from other Inks. The Whitleys were once a relevant name. Now, they might as well be as wild as the mixed bloods they associate with.”
Gwen’s grip tightened on her crystal flute. A slow, hot fury began to simmer beneath her ribs. She valued merit—the cold, hard evidence of skill she had seen on the field today. To hear these women, who probably hadn’t broken a sweat in years, mock the very excellence that had brought the school glory made her stomach turn. It was a reminder: If she ever stumbled, they would dissect her just as ruthlessly.
Now, when she looked at Cal and Will—the ostracized Ink and the talented Vapour—and saw the unexpected temptation of an unmanufactured life.
Across the room, her gaze snagged on Tristan. He was with Julian Vane, whispering and rolling his eyes as he gestured to the crowd. Then Julian leaned in, whispering something in Tristan’s ear that broke through his weary guard. Tristan let out a genuine, radiant laugh—a sound so authentic it felt out of place in this room of rehearsed smiles. Without a word to the Circle or the party’s host, the two of them slipped out of a side door. Tristan had simply chosen to step through the gilded bars and walk away from the performance.
Enough, Gwen thought. I can’t breathe in here.
She made for the exit, but Sloan intercepted her halfway to the heavy oak doors.
“Where are you going?” Sloan asked, her eyes darting around the room. “I need you here. I need a temperature check every half hour.”
“Things are going perfectly, Sloan,” Gwen assured her, her voice smooth despite the rebellion in her heart. “The Inks are satisfied, no one’s picking fights, and your reputation is restored. But I heard a rumour of an after-party.”
Sloan’s shoulders dropped an inch, relief washing over her sharp features. She rolled her eyes toward the exit. “Oh, the Cairngorm thing? Let them go. More champagne for us.” She gestured toward the bar, already scanning the room for her next target, moving on before Gwen could think up an excuse.
Gwen didn’t hesitate. She set her glass on a passing tray and slipped into the corridor.
The hallway was shockingly cold—but the shiver was worth it. Ahead, she saw two shadows retreating toward the South Wing. Will and Cal.
“Will, wait!” she called out. The sound of her own voice, unvarnished and loud, felt like a transgression. It made her already rosy cheeks bloom a deeper, undeniable red.
The two boys stopped. Cal rolled his eyes, muttering something under his breath before Will waved him ahead. Will turned, the golden light from the Great Hall spilling behind Gwen and silhouetting her in amber.
“I saw you in the stands,” Will said, his grin lopsided and bright. He was wearing the same borrowed blazer he’d worn to the Social Equinox, but paired with dark jeans.
“It was your first game,” Gwen said, flipping her loose curls over her shoulder to free her neck and relieve some of the sudden heat. She’d never struggled to stay composed after two glasses of champagne before. “I had to see if you’d actually listened to my pointers.”
“And?” he asked, stepping closer. The scent of the field—crushed grass, wood-smoke, and honest sweat—clung to him, far more intoxicating than the perfume inside.
“It was a well-deserved win,” she admitted, her voice dropping. She tried to summon her O’Dorchaidhe mask. It wouldn’t come. “You were…good. Really good, Will.”
Will laughed, a soft, bashful sound. He looked down at his scuffed sneakers, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Thanks, Gwen. That’s… It means a lot. Really.”
The silence stretched between them, thick with the tension of the recent weeks. Gwen’s palms were clammy; she crossed her arms, fingers brushing against the prickle of frisson as she subtly dried the nervous damp with skin against skin.
“I guess I’ll see you later,” Will said, taking a tentative half-step back. “I’m sure you’ve got to get back to your… Ink stuff.”
Gwen looked back at the closed doors. She could almost hear Estelle’s nervous chatter and see Charlotte’s dark, judgmental silhouette waiting for her to return to her place.
“Who says?” she asked. The champagne was lending her a boldness she didn’t recognize.
Will paused, his brow furrowing. “It only takes two glasses to give you amnesia? Your people are all in there,” he teased, gesturing with his thumb toward the muted orchestral music waiting beyond the doors.
“I’d rather be with the winners tonight,” Gwen said, her chin lifting.
Will stared at her, his green eyes widening with genuine shock. He scanned her face, looking for the joke, the hidden sting. “It’s really not your scene, Gwen,” he warned, his voice dropping low. “It’s loud, messy, and there definitely isn’t any champagne.”
Gwen stepped into his space, her silk skirt rustling against his jeans. “Worried to be seen with me, Clark? Or, afraid I’ll get in the way of your adoring fan club?”
Will tilted his head, his gaze dropping to the flush on her cheeks before meeting her eyes again. A slow grin spread across his face.
“Don’t blame me if you hate it, Princess,” he said, stepping back and beckoning her with a jerk of his head. “Come on.”