“They really were,” Jaya answered quickly, nearly forgetting her manners and asking if Dr. Waverly could show them to their rooms already. She had so much to plan. If this were a fairy tale, she might be cackling while bent over a bubbling cauldron. Except, obviously, she was the heroine in this one.

“Excellent,” Dr. Waverly said, gesturing toward an open, wood-paneled archway. “Then I can take you both up to your dorms. Of course, with Isha being a sophomore and you being a senior, you will be in different wings.” She smiled apologetically. “I did speak to the Maharaja about it.”

“Yes, he told us,” Jaya said as they wound around the large hall. Across from them, a fireplace soared to the ceiling. She could’ve easily walked in with her arms spread wide and had room to spare on either side.

“That is so cool,” Isha said, following her gaze. “How much snow do you get here?”

“It’s not uncommon for us to get close to thirty inches in December and then again in the spring,” Dr. Waverly said, smiling a little. “We encourage students to take advantage of the shopping trip in late October to go into Aspen and buy winter gear. It gives you a chance to get to know your cohorts better off campus as well.”

Jaya had no interest in shopping or getting to know her cohorts, though of course Dr. Waverly couldn’t have known that. No one did. Jaya’s only interest was Grey Emerson.

One thing she’d come to realize—sabotage wasn’t always cloak-and-dagger. It wasn’t always dead-of-night escapades, or masked people swathed in midnight and stars. Sometimes it looked like this: ageless mountains that kept watch and saw all. An elite boarding school 8,800 miles away from home. And somewhere deep inside, an unsuspecting aristocrat.

Grey

Grey sat back against the rough granite on Mount Sama and looked down at the tiny town of St. Rosetta, shops and small buildings dotting it like thorny burrs. In the distance, he could make out the bigger neighboring town of Aspen. In a couple of months, everything would be covered in a heavy coat of snow. Grey liked the snow; he felt perfectly hidden in its thick, cold folds.

The wind whipped around him, nine thousand feet in the air, and Grey closed his eyes, reveling in the chill. Thursday was the beginning of a new school year—his last. Summer was already melting into fall, and soon he’d turn eighteen. He swallowed, trying to distract himself from the thought. Eighteen meant… complications. Complications he didn’t want to think about right then.