Coach David stands and pulls out his earbuds. “You okay on your own, Silby? I gotta hit the head.”

Gross. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

After he leaves, I stare at the map, my eyes growing heavy as I trace the pattern of ravens. The lines blur, and then I feel someone touching my hair. I turn quickly to find that I’m no longer in detention but in the wood, my eyes level with a chest covered in black armor, threaded through with gold. My gaze shifts upward, and I meet a pair of dark eyes—Shy, I think, though this isn’t him. It’s someone slightly older, different, but he feels so much like Shy that my heart squeezes with recognition. I know this man.

One of his arms tightens around my waist while the fingers of his other hand skim over my cheek, then he leans forward to kiss me. The press of his mouth to mine ignites a liquid fire in the bottom of my stomach. It fills my veins like my blood and burns hotter as his tongue slips inside my mouth. It’s then I realize that I’m holding onto him too, and my fingers tighten against his armor, which is not metal at all but strange and flexible. I pull him closer, our bodies aligning in a familiar way, and I want to lose myself in him, but he breaks it off too soon.

He stares down at me, and we hold on to each other.

“Come,” he says, touching my cheek once more before stepping away. “Charon waits.”

I hold out my hand to take his offered one, and for a moment, I think I see a thread form between them, gold and silver spooling from our palms.

“Silby,” Coach David says, jarring me awake. “Pack your stuff up. Detention’s over.”

I sit for a moment, dazed by the dream.

Every touch and every emotion was so real—I could still feel them—each soft caress and press of his lips and the acute desire that had not ceased even now that I was awake, all inspired by the hands of the man who felt like Shy but wasn’t.

With a few minutes to spare before art, I deposit my books at my locker and start across campus, hoping for the third time today to retrace my steps and investigate the places I marked on my map. On the way, I try to shake the strange dream from detention, but it swirls around me like a thick cloud, only confusing me more.

As I move slowly past buildings, I watch my feet, searching for a gold gleam in the tangled grass. I’m not even close to Hollingsworth when I hear my name—or at least half of it.

“Miss Silby!”

Is there a rule against using first names here?