Chapter 35: Chapter 35: An Accidental Chill

Chapter 35: An Accidental Chill

The door to an unused classroom on the fourth floor opened with a soft click.

Audra stepped inside and found Cyrus standing near the windows.

The windows were cracked open, but not wide enough to let much air through. A thin line of hot September wind slipped into the room and barely moved the curtain. Cyrus had arrived before her, his bag set on one of the desks, his posture loose in that same sleepy way he carried through most school days.

Audra placed the notebook she had brought on the nearest desk.

When Cyrus turned toward her, she went straight to the question she had left him with yesterday.

"Did you think about what I said? Are you willing to try for the improvement award?"

"I thought it over," Cyrus said. "I will be in your care for a while, then."

Audra’s expression did not change much. She only shook her head a little, as if the effort meant nothing.

"That is not a burden," she said.

Cyrus accepted that answer without arguing.

For him, the calculation had already become clear. Malcolm had agreed to let him leave The Full Moon Lounge earlier on school nights. Weekends, at least for now, could become actual rest days again. After tutoring, the remaining time would belong to him.

The thought alone made the world look a little kinder.

Audra opened her notebook and slid into a seat. "Then your schedule should be more normal from now on, right?"

"More normal than before."

"That is good. We can use this classroom for tutoring during lunch and after school."

"That works for me."

Audra waited until he sat across from her, then took out her phone. "We should add each other too. It will be easier to confirm weekend study times."

Cyrus took out his phone.

Audra’s fingers did not stop, but her eyes caught the details at once. The model was old. The case was worn around the corners. The screen had a small scratch near the top edge, the kind that would bother someone who could afford to replace it.

It confirmed what she had already guessed.

Cyrus was short on money.

He did not seem embarrassed by the phone. He scanned her contact code, saved the number, and put the device away without checking whether she had noticed.

Audra watched him for one extra second.

He still showed no sign of being flustered. No awkward smile, no stiffness, no careful glance at her face after their contact information had been exchanged. For him, adding her number seemed to be nothing more than a practical step.

The empty classroom settled around them.

Only two people sat in the middle of the room. Audra’s voice filled the silence as she began explaining the first set of problems, followed by the light scrape of pencil against paper.

Few students passed through this part of the fourth floor. Most rooms here were club rooms, storage rooms, or classrooms waiting for some future use. That made the place private enough for tutoring, but not private enough to feel improper.

At least, that was how Audra had judged it.

Halfway through a problem, she paused for a breath.

The room felt cooler.

Not dramatically. Not enough to make her reach for a sweater or accuse the old building’s ventilation of acting up. It was only a faint drop in temperature, the kind that made the skin at the back of her hand register something before the mind could explain it.

Cyrus rose at almost the same time.

"I should open the window more," he said.

He walked over and pushed the window fully open.

Hot air rushed in from outside, carrying the dry smell of sun-warmed brick and cut grass. The warmer air filled the room quickly, thinning out the slight chill and sweeping away the faint scent of Audra’s perfume that had lingered between the desks.

Audra looked at him with mild confusion.

Cyrus had already returned to his seat.

Nothing about him seemed unusual. He picked up his pencil again and waited for her to continue.

Audra lowered her eyes to the paper and resumed the explanation.

If there had been something strange about the room, it disappeared before she could decide whether it mattered.

Afternoon classes continued in the usual order.

Daphne Whitlock’s lecture came after lunch, and her voice carried through the classroom with its usual calm precision. She wore a fitted black teacher’s dress with a slim belt, her gold-rimmed glasses catching the light whenever she turned toward the board.

She did not only lecture. She asked questions too.

Students chosen by her often looked grateful for the first second, because hearing Daphne say their name in that clear, pleasant voice felt like being noticed by someone from a different world. Then they looked at the board, saw the difficult passage she wanted analyzed, and remembered that beauty did not make homework easier.

Cyrus sat in his corner, appearing attentive.

In truth, only part of his mind remained on the lesson.

Several times, he felt as if Daphne’s attention had crossed him. It could have been coincidence. Teachers looked around classrooms all the time. A student who sat in the back and listened quietly was not worth special notice.

Still, Cyrus had trouble dismissing it completely.

His thoughts kept circling back to Room 405.

He had almost exposed something during lunch.

The Frostborn body did not merely prefer cold. If left alone long enough, it slowly nudged the surrounding air toward a temperature that felt comfortable. Most of the time, Cyrus could avoid trouble without thinking about it. In his apartment, the coolness belonged to him. At the lounge, cold drinks and ice covered small slips. In classrooms, open windows, crowded bodies, and bad air conditioning made the matter too subtle to notice.

Room 405 had been different.

He had waited there before Audra arrived. The windows had only been open a little. Then the two of them had sat near the center of the room, away from the direct flow of air. By the time he noticed, Audra might already have felt the change.

That did not mean she understood anything.

The human world knew little about Frostborn. Most people treated them as old stories, rare-blood rumors, or pretty illustrations in strange books. A slight chill in an empty classroom would not immediately make an ordinary student think of a hidden male Frostborn sitting across from her.

At least, Cyrus hoped not.

Species and appearance were both things he did not want exposed.

People in the human world gave beautiful faces a level of attention he still found unreasonable. Rare things drew even worse attention. If those two facts about him ever ended up online at the same time, his peaceful life would be finished before he could eat through even half of St. Alder’s cafeteria menu.

He had been lucky so far.

The longer he lived here, the more he understood how difficult that luck would be to repeat.

Unless he chose a shortcut.

For example, he could find a rich older woman and let her take care of him.

With a Frostborn face, that path probably existed. Cyrus was realistic enough to admit it. A handsome face had value in the human world, even when the owner hid it badly under bangs and old clothes.

Unfortunately, rumors about rich women were not reassuring.

Designer heels sharp enough to qualify as weapons, private tastes that sounded like warning labels, expensive rooms where the rules were written by whoever paid the bills, all of it sounded like a different style of cage with better bedding.

If he had a choice, he would rather earn his own future.

That was harder, but at least the key might stay in his hand.

Cyrus lowered his eyes to his notebook and let out a quiet breath.

Since things had already reached this point, he might as well study.

When he looked up again, his attention met Daphne’s from across the room.

For a brief moment, the teacher’s gaze rested on him.

Cyrus looked away first.

Near the front, Audra also turned back at nearly the same time.

Cyrus caught the motion from the corner of his eye.

Her expression gave nothing away.

After school, Room 405 became theirs again.

The afternoon sunlight had softened by then, turning the classroom desks a dull gold. Cyrus had opened the windows wider this time before Audra arrived. Warm air moved through the room in a slow current, carrying distant sounds from the campus below.

Audra sat across from him and graded the problems she had prepared.

Her red pen moved steadily across the page. When she reached the last problem, she set the pen down and gave a measured nod.

"You did well this time," she said. "You are understanding the material faster than I expected."

"That is because you explain it well."

Audra looked at him.

The compliment had been returned too calmly to feel like flattery. Cyrus said it the way he would state that a drink was cold or that a hallway had too many people in it. There was no performance in it, which made it harder to dismiss.

Her eyes held on him for a moment longer.

Cyrus wondered whether that was approval.

Because he had done the problems correctly?

Audra’s attention was direct, but he did not shrink from it. His face remained half-hidden by his hair, his posture relaxed, the pencil still resting between his fingers.

The tutoring session ended soon after.

They packed their things, exchanged the usual brief farewell, and left the classroom separately.

Audra did not rush. A long game required patience, and she had never been someone who needed to win in a single move.

At the school gate, she waited only a short while before a black sedan pulled smoothly to the curb.

The driver stepped out and opened the rear door for her.

"Thank you, Mr. Fowler," Audra said.

"You do not need to thank me every time, Miss Audra."

Mr. Fowler’s hair had begun to silver at the temples, but his posture remained straight, his uniform neat, his manner professional without becoming stiff. He had worked for the Sloane family long enough that even his formality carried familiarity.

Audra entered the car, and the door closed with a muted sound.

The moment she sat inside, something about her shifted. At school, she was composed, restrained, and distant in the way people expected from the girl everyone admired. In the back seat of the family car, with the city sliding past the tinted window, that composure took on another layer.

She looked less like a student and more like someone born to be attended.

That was not entirely wrong.

The car drove through Grayhaven and eventually turned through the gates of the Sloane estate.

The house sat on broad grounds, set back from the road with enough space to make the city feel farther away than it really was. When the car stopped near the entrance, Audra stepped out and found several household staff members gathered by the front steps.

The welcome was formal enough to make her sigh.

"I told Mrs. Fowler we did not need to do this every time."

Mrs. Fowler, who stood nearest the entrance, smiled with no sign of guilt. "Every now and then, a proper welcome is good for the household."

Mr. Fowler had already circled around from the driver’s side. When his eyes met Mrs. Fowler’s, the warmth between them softened his professional expression.

Audra noticed, as she always did, and pretended not to.

The staff dispersed back to their work once she entered. Mrs. Fowler followed her upstairs, hands folded neatly in front of her.

"Your grandfather called today," Mrs. Fowler said. "You were still at school at the time."

Audra slowed.

"Grandfather finally remembered he has a granddaughter?" she asked, her eyes brightening with playful mischief. "I thought he had wandered off chasing Frostborn and been turned into an ice sculpture."

Mrs. Fowler only smiled. "He asked that you call him back when you had time."

"I will call him now."

Audra went to her room, changed out of her school clothes into a long dress, and took out her phone.

The call rang several times before connecting.

A strong, cheerful laugh came through the speaker before Audra could speak twice.

"My dear girl," Warren Sloane said, sounding much too pleased with himself. "You make it sound as if I would ever forget you."

"You disappear whenever rare-blood research gets interesting," Audra said. "That is not an unfair accusation."

His laugh deepened.

Audra sat by the window and looked out over the estate grounds. "Then tell me, Grandfather. Did you find the Frostborn this time?"

"I found what I was looking for," Warren Sloane said. His satisfaction was impossible to miss. "This trip was worth every day."

Audra’s fingers tightened slightly around the phone.

On the other end of the line, her grandfather’s voice lowered with genuine wonder.

"The Frostborn really are a remarkable people."