Chapter 86

• Zara’s POV
• It was the semester’s back-to-school party night.
• The music was already leaking down the hallways long before we reached the ballroom, bass vibrating faintly under my shoes, laughter and shrieks spilling out whenever someone pushed open the wide double doors. The semester’s back-to-school party wasn’t supposed to be this important, just another academy tradition—another excuse for students to parade themselves and size up who had power and who didn’t. But tonight, it felt charged. Like every look, every touch, every word had something underneath it.