Ildaria tilted her head to the side, positive her confusion was showing on her face. “The answer?”

“You will switch to day classes,” Lucian announced.

“What?” she asked with disbelief.

Lucian considered her briefly and then said, “At Jess and Raffaele’s wedding your old captain, Vasco Villaverde, told me you were a trouble magnet, but had a good heart.”

Ildaria sighed inwardly over the fact that the man had tattled on her about her tendency to get herself into scrapes. She’d been in trouble several times in Punta Cana. In fact, if it weren’t for Vasco, she probably would have been executed long ago. He’d saved her hide repeatedly, and Ildaria would be forever grateful for that. She just wished he hadn’t felt the need to mention it to Lucian.

“It seems obvious to me that Vasco was right,” Lucian continued now. “If there is trouble around, you will find it. So, to ensure I do not have to execute you, it would behoove me to ensure you avoid situations where trouble might occur. That means no more night classes. You will switch to days. Immediately. You will never again be on campus at night,” he ordered imperiously.

Ildaria stared at him nonplussed for a moment, anger building slowly inside her, and then she burst out, “Are you kidding me? First you pulled me out of school in Montana and dragged me up here to Canada, making me miss my finals there and have to take those classes over again, and now you’re going to drag me out of my night courses and make me take day classes?” Scowling, she informed him, “I won’t be able to get into day courses now. The summer term will be lost and I’ll have to start again in the fall. Which means paying for them all over again, again. Do you know how expensive these courses are? Not to mention the extra blood I’ll need to consume if I attend day classes. I’m trying to save money to get my own place and stop being a burden to Marguerite and Julius. I’ll never be able to swing that if I keep having to pay for courses I don’t get to finish and extra blood to attend day classes . . . which with my luck, I again probably won’t get to finish anyway. I need those courses to get my degree.”

Lucian’s eyes narrowed. “I pulled you from university in Montana because you were playing vigilante down there,” he reminded her icily. “You were utilizing your abilities in front of mortals and drawing attention to yourself, and by extension, our people. Which is against our laws. My choice was to either move you or execute you. Would you have preferred execution?”