Page 39 of Ashen Souls

Not today.

The university rose from the street in a blur of gray stone and glass. Students clogged the steps in loud, disorganized groups, a mess of caffeine-fueled energy and overheard complaints about midterms.

Here, I was just another girl with a backpack and a deadline.

For the first time in days, my thoughts stayed exactly where I put them. Or at least they did, right up until I pushed open the door to the lecture hall.

Our Greek & Comparative Mythology class met in one of the older lecture halls, the kind built long before comfort was considered a priority. The room was designed for acoustics and intimidation in equal measure: tiered wooden benches polished by decades of restless students, high windows that let in more light than warmth, and a faint smell of chalk that seemed permanently embedded in the walls.

The benches creaked as people filed in. Backpacks thumped against wood, and conversation rose and fell in quick bursts of gossip.

“Where’s Professor Whitman?” someone behind me whispered.

“Sabbatical,” another voice answered. “He broke his hip fencing or something.”

“Fencing?” a third person scoffed. “What is this, the nineteenth century?”

Harper slid into the seat beside me just as I opened my notebook.

“That’s what happens when tenured academics start having hobbies,” she murmured, dropping her bag by her boots. “Someone should probably take away his sword.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing and turned to the blank page in front of me. For a moment, my pen hovered. Then, I wrote Myth & Meaning across the top margin.

Before I could stop myself, my brain drove the pen back down to the paper, adding another word beneath it.

Daeren.

I stared at the name as if it had appeared without my permission. A second later, I crossed it out hard enough to leave an impression on the page and replaced it with ARCHETYPES, written in aggressive capital letters.

At the front of the room, the door opened.

The chatter died almost instantly.

The man who stepped inside didn't bother checking if we were paying attention. He crossed the floor without hurry, tall and broad-shouldered beneath a charcoal jacket, his dark hair slightly tousled as though he’d dragged a hand through it moments before entering. He looked to be in his early thirties, with a day’s worth of dark stubble softening the otherwise sharp lines of his jaw.

When he set a stack of papers on the desk, the sleeves of his shirt were pushed far enough up his forearms to reveal the tight movement of tendons beneath his skin. He looked out over the tiered rows of the lecture hall as though we were a problem he fully intended to enjoy solving.

I know him.

Oh my god. It’s him.

The man who had kept me from dying of hypothermia or drowning in the river. Out of all the men in this city, of course he had to be the one taking over our mythology class.

Beside me, Harper exhaled a scandalized oh.

“Good morning,” he said, and the room seemed to collectively lean in. His voice was low, a steady, resonant baritone that carried to the back rows without him having to raise it.

“I’m Dr. Ethan Hale. I’ll be taking over this course for the remainder of the term.”

He turned to the board, the chalk cracking against the slate as he wrote HALE in clean strokes. My pen hovered uselessly over my notebook. My lungs hit a snag, my throat suddenly too tight to swallow. A jolt of pure, animal “wrong” spiked through my chest.

“Professor Whitman sends his regrets,” Hale continued, dusting his hands, “and insists you memorize his footnotes in his absence.” A self-aware smirk touched his lips. “If you’re on the roster, you’re in the right place. If you’re not, you’re welcome to stay, provided you don't snore.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the room.

Harper leaned into my shoulder. “See. I was right. He’s hot.”

“Don’t be obvious,” I murmured back, though my eyes stayed fixed on the front of the room.