Page 40 of Ashen Souls

Hale began scanning the tiered rows.

I braced myself. My grip on my pen tightened until the plastic dug painfully into my fingers. I waited for his eyes to lock onto mine. I waited for that flash of recognition, for him to see the girl he had pulled out of the freezing mud.

His gaze reached my row. It swept over Harper. It slid over me.

And it just kept going.

He didn’t stop. The cool, detached expression on his face didn’t falter for a second as his eyes moved on to the upper tier.

He had absolutely no idea who I was.

The sudden release of tension left me dizzy, followed by a strange sting of insignificance. To me, he was the man who had saved my life. To him, I was just another anonymous face in a crowded room.

“Let’s start with a question,” he said, shifting his attention back to the front rows. “Why do myths endure?”

Hands rose. He gestured to a student near the center aisle.

“They explain the unexplainable,” a girl offered shyly.

“Good. What else?”

“They give us heroes,” someone called from the back.

“And villains,” another voice added.

“Hm.” He nodded. “Heroes, villains, explanations. Anyone else?”

My hand lifted. His eyes found me. For a man who hadn't even registered my existence ten seconds ago, his gaze locked onto mine with a weight that made the rest of the room recede.

“Yes?”

The answer was there, waiting on my tongue. “They make our desires safe. They let us want impossible things without the consequences. Inside a story, wanting is allowed.”

Beside me, Harper let out a triumphant breath.

Hale didn't immediately reply. He paused, his head tilted a fraction of an inch. His expression remained unreadable, as if he were cataloging my answer, and me along with it.

“‘Allowed,’” he repeated, the word dropping into the silence like a stone into deep water. “What’s your name?”

“Aveline Hart.”

“Aveline.” He let the name linger for a second too long. “I like that answer.”

He dismissed the moment, turning back to the rows of students.

“Desire contained by narrative. Interesting. But what happens when the story leaks?”

The room went unnervingly still.

“When the thing we want steps off the page and into the room?” he continued. He began to pace the front of the hall with an unhurried gait, hands tucked into his pockets. “When the line between a dream and a memory becomes... porous?”

A few students let out an amused ripple of laughter. A cold knot tightened at the base of my stomach.

Hale’s mouth quirked. “We panic. We legislate. We label it a taboo, a madness, or a miracle. Myths are just the safety nets we weave to catch ourselves when the world stops making sense.”

He stopped at the center of the hall and looked toward the high windows. “Today, we’re going to talk about nocturnal visitations: incubi, succubi, and the gods who visited mortals in the dark and left them... altered by morning.”

My pen slipped, clattering against the desk like a gunshot.