The last days of March came and went. April brought with it the warm promise of summer, and a new wave of anxiety that rippled throughout Drayton’s student body. In the days leading up to final exams, Lennon became increasingly reclusive, locking herself away in her dorm to study and train. Preparations for her persuasion course with Alec proved particularly challenging. Comprised of both written and combat portions, the final exam would take place over a four-hour class period that culminated with a pass-or-fail sparring match. Unless you scored almost perfectly on the written portion of the exam, it was almost impossible to pass the class if you lost your spar.

The night before the final, Lennon stayed up to study. She was dead tired, and her notes blurred and doubled as she scanned through them. She closed her eyes, tempted by sleep, and when she opened them again—what felt like mere moments later—it was not to her textbook, or her cluttered desk, but to the wan and dappled light of the moon, filtering down through the branches of the magnolia trees.

Lennon wasn’t in her bedroom anymore. She was standing in the middle of the Twenty-Fifth Square. She had no recollection of how she’d found her way there. The last thing she remembered was resting her head on her desk, letting the tide drag her out to the deep sea of dreams.

Two feet from her, grinning at her through the thickening fog, was Ian.

“Why am I out here, and what the hell do you want?” Lennon asked, in a white huff of steam. It was cold, and she had on nothing but a thin T-shirt and shorts, which offered little reprieve from the cold. “Wait, did you persuade me to come here?”

“You want to know what I like about you, Lennon?” Ian began to walk around her in a slow circle that became something of a spiral, drawing nearer with each completed revolution. “You don’t know when to leave well enough alone.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Kneel,” he said, and Lennon broke to her knees there, in the middle of the square. Ian’s will was nothing if not demanding. His strength had more than doubled since the last time she’d contended with him. She realized, with a wave of horror, that he had been holding back during their spar. “What do you want?”

“I want your total compliance,” he said, with a smile. “And I know how to get it.”

Ian forced her to her feet and walked her, slowly, to the chapel. To anyone else, they might’ve appeared like two lovers taking an evening stroll. Every time she tried to break pace, or speak, or lock eyes with one of the students she passed, she was overcome with a wave of nauseating pain that spread from her brain stem down her spine and into her legs. She might’ve limped to ease the pain, favoring one leg or the other, but Ian maintained control of her limbs, kept her gait steady.

They entered the chapel through a door off a small apse and took a flight of winding, rickety stairs up to the clock tower, the tallest structure on Drayton’s campus. At the top of the stairway, they stepped through a battered door and into a cramped octagonal space, all raw wood and cobwebs, moonlight shafting in through slits in the planks. There were beer cans and cigarette butts strewn about the floor, the leavings of parties past. On the far wall was a shuttered window, which Ian opened to the night. Lennon expected to see a stunning view of Savannah—the city lights, the estuary lapsing out to sea—but as it was, there was only an ocean of black treetops as far as the eye could see.

Ian walked her to the window, forced her to climb up onto the sill. She stood there, one hand braced against the splintered wall, clutching the wood with numb toes. He allowed her to tilt her head so she could take in the sickening drop more than five stories below.

“No need to be afraid. You won’t die from a height like this,” said Ian. “That is, unless you land wrong. Try to aim for the hedges and you’ll be all right. Probably.”

Ian loosened her tongue, so that she was able to get a few words out. “What do you want from me? An apology?”

“I want to see you fly,” he said. “On my call, you jump.”

Lennon gripped the sill with her toes so tightly they went white and bloodless, then blue after that. She felt a wet warmth in her shorts and realized—with horror and humiliation in equal parts—that she had wet herself. “Ian, please. I’m sorry—”

“Begging now, are we?” he asked, and he sidled up close to her so that she could feel his breath, hot at her ear. “That’s a good look for you, Lennon. I’d like to see more of that in the future, after we’re done with this. You know, if you’re up for it.”

Lennon’s legs began to tremble beneath her as she stared down at the sickening drop. The thin strip of bushes. The cobblestones.

And then, in the silence, a shrill bell ringing.

Lennon and Ian turned to see, in place of the stairway door, a golden elevator. She leapt down from the sill and lunged for it but only made it a few strides before Ian recovered himself and pursued her.

By some miracle she made it to the doors, which parted open for her, and burst into the cabin. She turned to the control panel and frantically pressed the infinity button just as Ian took his first step inside. He was going to kill her if he got his hands on her—she could see it in his eyes and feel him in her mind, his will like a severing knife, a scythe cleaving through the wheat field of her thoughts. If she didn’t save herself—didn’t act now—she would die under the force of his will.

It was either her life or Ian’s.

Lennon threw out a hand, mashed the Door Close button.

The doors clamped shut on Ian with the sickening crunch of breaking bones. He cut a dry and withering cry, his rib cage crushed between the elevator doors. The two of them locked eyes for just a moment, and Ian stretched out his hand, as though he wanted her to take it, pull him out from between the clamped doors. She thought for a moment he was going to beg, or apologize, even. But all he did was point at her and say: “You’re nothing.”

Lennon nodded. To herself, then to him.

And the cabin plunged into free fall, tearing Ian in two.