Someone was knocking very insistently on her door. Jaya opened her eyes, which felt glued shut, and squinted in the bluish darkness at the clock on her nightstand. It was four in the morning.

“What the hell?” she muttered to herself as she rolled out of bed and padded to the door in her thin nightdress. Surely Amma would understand the need for foul language at a time like this.

Grey stood on the other side, backlit by the light in the hallway. He wore a tight white T-shirt and plaid pajama pants. His hair was mussed; he looked like a big bear who’d just finished hibernating. Sexy was the word that popped into Jaya’s mind as she took in his well-defined pecs, those enormous biceps that strained against his shirt. Naturally, she banished the word from her mind instantly.

“Grey?” she said instead, rubbing her eyes with her fists. Her voice was a croak. “Is everything okay? It’s four a.m.”

“I know.” He paused, his eyes taking in the silk of her nightdress before he cleared his throat and looked away. Jaya felt an answering warmth seep through her. “Can I come in?”

“Oh. Yes.” She waved him in, and he lumbered over to her window. “Look!” he said when she shut the door and just stood there, still sleep-dazed. His voice shimmered with a barely suppressed energy. “You have to see this.”

Jaya pulled herself forward, wrapping her arms around herself. It was freezing. “What do you want me to see so bad—oh. Oh my.”

The world had turned a soft, glowing white. Heavy curtains of snow were falling from the sky, the flakes thick and white and fluffy. The school grounds were already covered; the tree boughs bent and dipped. Jaya’s windowsill had racked up a thick layer of snow, like cake frosting.

It had been a week since they’d picked up the necklace at Silas’s. While Jaya had fully intended to devolve their interactions to mere acquaintance level, somehow she’d found herself unable to. She’d made rationalizations and justifications for her weakness—now that Caterina had Daph’s text confession, surely she’d focus her energies on that and not on Jaya; she was just being kind to Grey because he was taking the news from Silas so hard; what was she supposed to do, admonish him like a stray dog when he walked with her after class?

And yet, through the mist of excuses, Jaya knew the truth. The more she saw of Grey—the real Grey, the one who made jokes and sarcastic comments and spoke about his fears of the curse—the more she liked him. Truly, truly liked him. And she hadn’t been brave enough yet to contemplate the implications of that for her, as a Rao heiress, or for her parents, back home.