I walk a couple of paces behind Bryce, trying not to get in the way of any of the vampires charging down the corridors on their way to lessons. I'm not sure if the ones who hit me as they pass are doing it on purpose, or if they're just eager to get to class. I hope the latter, but I know what vampires are like.
And I shouldn't blame them. I did exactly what they blame me for. I'm lucky to even be alive, never mind attending classes with them.
"This was a bad idea," I mutter to myself.
"You're only realising that now?" Bryce demands.
"Your leader is the one who has been encouraging me to do something with my life and stop living as a prisoner," I snap. Ah, right. I can blame this whole situation on Ashryn and not on myself. That's the better way to go with things.
"She's not our leader."
"But she speaks for him, doesn't she? I heard the two of them are as thick as thieves."
He growls. "You won't speak of such things."
"I mean, technically, Ashryn was a hunter. Doesn't that make her more like me than you?" I shouldn't be saying any of this. Not when I know it'll wind him up.
"She helped bring down the guild."
"You realise none of us were there by choice, right?" Why am I revealing this to him? All it'll do is give him ammunition to use against me in the future. "For me, I was seven. A little older than some, younger than others. Your Ashryn was my age too, though I believe she was just found. Not me, though. I was sold. My Dad walked me up to the front door of the guild and walked away with a bag of coins. Rhetorically. I don't know how much he was paid for me."
Bryce remains silent, no doubt made uncomfortable by my words.
"He thought I was freaky. He didn't like it when I knew about things that would happen before they did." I shrug. "I guess it is kind of creepy. But I was a child. I didn't know not to say things."
His silence is far louder than I thought possible. Does that mean I can keep speaking? Or should I stop before I end up telling him too much?
"I saw the fall of the guild," I whisper the words I've never told anyone.
Bryce finally stops walking and turns, grabbing hold of my arm and dragging me into an empty classroom. Is this a victory?
"What are you talking about?"
"Seeing the destruction of the guild?" I shrug. "I don't know. I saw it in a dream a few times. At first, I didn't know what it was, but as events started to unfold, it became clearer. I never told anyone about it. Everyone thinks I'm this good little hunter, the poster girl of the guild. But I'm not. I saw it would fall and I did nothing."
"What could you have done?" he demands.
"Told them it was Ashryn who'd lead the enemy to the door? That would probably have done the trick. Though they worked it out anyway, I had nothing to do with that."
"You can't talk about things like that here," he hisses.
"Things as in the guild, or things as in being able to see the future? I'm pretty sure that's a normal thing in a school full of supernaturals."
"That doesn't mean you can go around telling people things about your past. People have tried very hard to keep your presence here a secret."
"Pfft. And they've done that how? By spelling a room so people can't enter and making it obvious an enemy lives there? Or giving me a guard who walks around acting as if I'm the scum of the earth?" I demand.
"As far as I'm concerned, you are the scum of the earth," he mutters.
My eyes blaze with fire, and I jab a finger at his chest, not hard enough to hurt by any stretch of the imagination. "No. I'm not. Have I done some bad things? Yes. But there's one thing you seem to forget. I had to do those things."
"You should have refused." Hatred burns in his eyes.
I step back and cross my arms over my chest. "Really? I should have refused to do the things adults were telling me? Maybe if I'd arrived at the guild when I was fifteen. But at seven? What were you doing then?"
Bryce frowns.
"Exactly. You were probably playing video games, or with toy trains. You got a childhood. I didn't. So when you're thinking about all of those bad things I did, remember that it was worse people who made me do them."
"You could have stopped once you realised..."
"I've stopped now," I point out. "And I did what I could, when I could. It wasn't much, but I did save lives." I almost got caught a couple of times too, but I leave that bit out. It's irrelevant. I'm not trying to make him feel sorry for him. I'm trying to get my point across.
He doesn't say anything, though I can tell from the way he's standing that he's mostly just annoyed I'm right. He doesn't want to feel anything other than hatred towards me.
"So, some things are going to change," I say, hands on my hips. "I get that nothing can be done about the room. Everyone wants the vampires in the dorms to be safe from my stakes, and me safe from being chomped on in the night, either because I'm human, or because I'm a hunter. But we can do something about how you're acting around me."
"How I'm acting?" He raises his eyebrow.
"Yes. How you're acting. Now the way I see it, we have three ways to play it. You can be my old friend, my brother, or my boyfriend. Your call." I pause. "Brother may be pushing it, given you're a vampire and I'm a human, but I think we can pull it off if you prefer."
"And what if I don't want to be any of those?" he asks.
"Then we're going to have a problem," I answer honestly. "Because I'm not going around with even more of a target on my back. Most people probably have at least an idea about who I am. I'd rather not advertise that." Maybe I'm being callous, but this could mean life or death for me, and if there's one thing being an ex-vampire hunter has taught me, it's not to let anything kill me.
"Fine. What do you want?"
"To turn up to my first lesson with someone that doesn't look like a guard," I repeat.
"Okay, but only because this is my job. Don't expect me to actually like you."
"I wouldn't expect you to. If it helps, I don't particularly like you either."
"Good, we're in agreement."
"There's a first time for everything," I quip.
The warning bell sounds, signally it's time for us to get to our class.
Bryce sighs and uncrosses his arms. "Friends. We've known each other for a long time."
"Good. I can work with that. Do I get to call you a cute nickname?" I wonder how serious he's being about this. Will he stick to it or not?
"Do whatever you want, Lily. I don't care."
I chuckle. I'll make him care. But not right now. I have other things to do first. Like, survive my first class full of vampires.
Thirty to one is not good odds in a fight. Let's hope lessons are different.