Chapter 3 The Ice Professor

The morning light felt like a physical assault. I sat in the back row of Lecture Hall 4, my skin crawling and my stomach tied in knots. I hadn't slept. I hadn't eaten. I just sat there, staring at the empty space on my laptop where three years of my life used to live.

Dominic was three rows ahead of me, laughing with a group of lacrosse players. He looked refreshed, a stark contrast to the monster I'd seen sweating over his sister in the archives. Every time he glanced back at me, his eyes held a smug, lethal triumph. He'd won. He'd erased me.

The heavy oak doors at the front of the hall slammed shut, and the room went dead silent.

Professor Caspian Blackwood didn't walk; he prowled. He was dressed in a charcoal suit that looked like it had been carved onto his frame. He didn't look like a teacher; he looked like the architect of a nightmare. He was only thirty-two, but he carried a gravity that made seasoned deans flinch.

"Architecture is the art of what remains when everything else is stripped away," he began, his voice a low, cold vibration that hummed in my marrow. My heart skipped. That voice. It was deeper than it had been in the garden, more clinical, but the resonance was unmistakable.

He turned to the digital board, pulling up a list of senior projects. My name was at the top, flagged in red. File Not Found.

"Miss St. Claire," he said, not even looking at me. "It seems your thesis has... vanished. A careless mistake for someone from a family known for losing things."

A few people snickered. Dominic's laugh was the loudest. I felt the heat rise in my cheeks, a mix of shame and a sudden, violent urge to scream.

"I... I'm working on it, Professor," I managed to choke out.

"Don't lie to me," he snapped, finally turning. His eyes were like ice-shards, pinning me to my seat. "In this room, you are either a builder or a ruin. Right now, you look like a ruin. See me in my office after the lecture. The rest of you, open your blueprints."

The next hour was a blur of torture. When the bell finally rang, I moved like a convict to the gallows. His office was at the top of the North Tower, a brutalist space of glass and concrete that overlooked the gray Maine sea.

I knocked.

"Enter."

He was standing by the floor-to-ceiling window, his back to me. The tension in the room was thick enough to choke on.

"Close the door, Seraphina."

I did as I was told. My hands were shaking. "Professor, about my thesis... Dominic, he-"

"I don't care about your boyfriend's pathetic power plays," he said, turning around. He leaned against his desk, crossing his arms. "I care about debt. And right now, you're drowning in it."

He tossed a folder onto the desk. I opened it. My breath hitched. It wasn't academic records. It was a ledger of every cent my brother, Vane, owed to the O'Shea syndicate. Fifty thousand dollars.

"How do you have this?" I whispered.

"I bought it," Caspian said, his voice devoid of emotion. "The debt, the interest, and the contract on your brother's life. It all belongs to me now. Just like your scholarship, which the Board is prepared to revoke by five o'clock today."

I felt the world tilting. "Why? Why are you doing this?"

He took a step toward me, and the air seemed to vanish from the room. He was so close I could smell the sandalwood and the faint, metallic scent of expensive ink. He reached out, his thumb catching my chin and forcing me to look up.

"Because I want to bang the fight out of you," he whispered, his voice dropping into that raw, unfiltered growl from the garden. "I want the girl in the mask back. But this time, I want her silent."

My knees nearly buckled. It was him.

"I'm offering you a deal," he said, pulling back as if the touch disgusted him. "I will restore your thesis. I will pay off Vane's debt. In exchange, you will spend thirty days at my studio. You will be my muse. My model."

"Modeling? That's it?"

"Not just modeling," he said, his eyes darkening. "There are rules. You will wear a silk mask. You will wear a weighted collar. And most importantly, you will never speak. If you utter a single word, a single moan, the contract is void and your brother dies."

He pushed a paper toward me. A contract.

"Thirty days of silence, Seraphina. Thirty days where you belong to me, body and soul. Do we have a deal, or should I call the O'Sheas?"

I looked at the pen. I looked at the man who had ruined me in the dark and was now offering to save me in the light. I had no choice. I picked up the pen and signed my name.

"Good," he said, a ghost of a cruel smile touching his lips. "Report to The Glass Cage at midnight. And Sera?"

"Yes?"

"Bring your pussy. You won't be needing your voice."