Ronan’s POV

Sleep didn’t come that night.

I told myself I wasn’t thinking about him, that my mind was just working through the day’s chaos but the truth was harder to ignore. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the way he flinched when I said his name. The way his pupils had blown wide with fear.

Elias.

The name shouldn’t have meant anything. And yet it did.

It wasn’t on any student registry, not under Arden, not anywhere in the academy’s protected archives. And that was what ...