Nightshade: An Enemies to Lovers, Dark Academic Romance (Sorrowsong University Book 1)
Nightshade: Chapter 8

I step into the hallway a few minutes past eight with an odd sense of light-headedness.

Shrugging a wave of nausea off, I fire Divya a text about the uselessness of my call with Nicholas. As I hit Send, an email pops up at the top of the screen.

_____________________________

From: Alex Corbeau-Green

Subject: Punctuality (noun) the fact or quality of being on time.

Date: Tuesday 1st October 20:04 BST

To: Ophelia Winters

I’m in the library. Look for the charming gentleman in the black shirt.

-ACG

_____________________________

I consider blocking his email, too, but I need good feedback from my lecturers.

_____________________________

From: Ophelia Winters

Subject: Patience (noun) the ability to wait, or to suffer without complaining or becoming annoyed.

Date: Tuesday 1st October 20:05 BST

To: Alex Corbeau-Green

I’m on my way down now. Are you sitting to the left or the right of the charming gentleman?

Signing your emails with your initials is obnoxious,

Ophelia

_____________________________

I slide my phone into my tote bag and wind my way down the staircase to the foyer of the Nightshade mansion, clutching the ornate banister a little tighter as my head swims. All I had was one glass of wine. Perhaps I’m becoming a lightweight.

It becomes clear as I hit the second floor why Alex thought it was a bad idea to study downstairs. The thick stone walls grumble with each beat of heavy bass, and the cheers of drunk people occupy every floor.

I pass Nightshade, Hemlock, Cortinar, and Snakeroot students on the stairs, and when I hit the final step, I’m faced with half of the rugby team chugging beer from funnels held up by half-naked celebrities, the room so loud I can’t hear my own thoughts. Never mind, the library will be quiet. I shove my way through the crowd of sweaty people and through the old double doors.

The library is not quiet.

Colette Dupont is dancing on one of the oak desks with another woman I don’t know. Louis, a law student from my hallway, is passing neon whisky shots off a metal tray and out to the heaving mass of people occupying every square inch of floor space. Alex and Vincenzo’s friend Jack is making out with two women at once.

“Jesus Christ, Vincenzo, that’s a first edition!” I shout, watching Alex’s friend put his overflowing beer down on the world’s most expensive coaster. I snatch the book from under the glass and cringe at the circular mark on the cover.

“Ophelia!” he exclaims, slamming me with all two hundred pounds of his weight. “You came!”

“No, I didn’t. I’m here to work.”

“Huh?” he shouts, turning his mangled ear to me over the music. I shake my head at him and shove my way to the back of the room, where Alex sits on a corner desk by the window, typing on his laptop in a pair of fucking reading glasses. He pulls out an earbud, green gaze connecting with mine before it drops down to my midsection. “You wish.”

I follow his eyes to the book in my hands. Far From the Madding Crowd. That would be nice.

His eyes coast over me once more, distant and disinterested. “You look disheveled, as ever.”

His black shirt looks like it was ironed by Giorgio Armani himself, molded to his athletic frame in a way he does not deserve. “And you’re comically overdressed. What’s new?”

His smile wanes as a raucous cheer erupts over by the library’s bar. “We should’ve gone to my room.”

I pull my tangled earphones from my pocket and open up the report that Alex started on my laptop. “I’d sooner insert this pencil into my eye socket than join you in your bedroom, Alex. Have you started the conformity write-up?”

“Yeah, figured you could write up the section on obedience,” he mutters, as his thumb traces the line of his jaw. He looks over the screen of his laptop at me, eyes glittering with some sort of private joke.

I pause my irrationally enraging fight with my earphones. “Something to say?”

He leans back in his chair, interlacing his fingers behind his head. I fight to keep my eyes on his face, and I hate that I must. “Not at all.”

For twenty minutes, we’re productive despite my growing headache. Then Vincenzo presses the Power button on my laptop to get me to join the party. Unfortunately for him, I cannot be stopped when I’m on an academic roll, even if my laptop takes another twenty minutes to start up again. It sounds like a 747 trying to take off.

The crowd in the library thins slightly, thanks to a game of strip poker finishing upstairs. I decide I need to start fishing for information. “The section on strategies of persuasion is interesting, don’t you think?”

He doesn’t look up from his phone, thumbs furiously typing. My fingers tighten around my pencil. “Alex.”

He looks up. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Yeah. Like…if someone at your dad’s company saw something was wrong and was persuaded to keep quiet…that would be kind of…interesting?” Christ, Ophelia. Real smooth. I strike police detective off my potential career list.

Lazily, he takes his reading glasses off and hangs them over the V at the top of his shirt. It reveals another inch of tattooed muscle. The desk groans as he rests his elbows on the wood and leans toward me slightly, his voice slow and quiet like he’s about to reveal something secret. He smells good. “Ophelia, is this your first attempt at holding a conversation with someone?”

I retain my steely expression, but I know my blushing face betrays me. “Yes, how am I doing?”

His focus returns to his phone, raising my blood temperature yet another degree. “Horribly.”

I square my shoulders and return to the report, but the letters start jiggling at the edges, a ringing piercing in my ears as my light-headedness worsens. Maybe I ate something bad, or maybe it’s just Alex’s proximity. I look up and study the man sitting opposite me as he rubs the tension out of his left shoulder. He wouldn’t have put something in my drink.

Right?

“I might…” The world tilts on its axis slightly. Something is wrong. “I might have to head upstairs in a minute. I’ll catch up tomorrow.”

Alex doesn’t look up, sitting farther back in his chair with his hand glued to his phone. It’s the final straw. I scrape my chair back, yank my overheating laptop from the table, and swipe the stupid phone from his hand. “A phone addiction is an extremely unattractive characteristic, Alex. Come back to me when you can be bothered.”

He pushes his sleeves further up his forearms and nods down at the device in my hand, expression neutral. “Please, sir. Can I have some more?”

“Fuck you,” I seethe, shoving it into his chest and storming out.

The sweaty sea of students churns like the tarn as I push my way through the dark foyer. Through the fog that seems to be pervading my vision, I vaguely see Vincenzo, who sounds like he’s in a fishbowl even though he’s right in front of me.

A shadowy figure hovers over his shoulder, but I can’t quite make out who it is in the haze. Wobbling on my feet, I stare down at my hands, watching them slowly shift back into focus. When I glance back up at Vincenzo, my arms seize at my sides, body rigid with terror.

It’s Achlys. The woman from the painting and the stained-glass window.

She’s real, and she’s staring back at me.

Her eyes are raw from crying, her wet hair is stuck to her face, strewn with algae as though she has just been pulled from the darkest depths of the tarn.

And even though I can hear her strangled sobs over the boom of the music, what’s left of her teeth form a chilling grin. Something about her is so awful, so abominable, that my legs start propelling me backward of their own accord. I stumble back through the crowd, but two lifeless eyes follow me the whole way, never blinking.

The banister is cold as my trembling hands replace it. The skin over Achlys’s cheek melts away, like her soul is rotting her body from the inside out. Her cackle turns to a mournful wail that makes my ears bleed.

No one else reacts. No one else is scared. It’s hard to breathe. The foyer is spinning, my footsteps are faster. I run up the stairs as fast as my body will allow, stumbling into my bedroom before the yawning black hole engulfs me.

All I hear as the world fades to nothing is Achlys’s bony fingers turning the door handle and following me inside.