Just as the world started fading into a rather comforting shade of black, someone grabbed me. Cold fingers locked onto my shoulders, hauling me back from the edge like I was about to miss my stop on the afterlife express. I forced my eyes open and, through the fog, recognised the face looming above me.

  Professor Grey.

  How sweet!

  The one person I’d been searching for all morning — and he finally shows up like a tax bill. Just in time to stop me from dying.

  Not exactly the reunion I had in mind.

  Still, thrilled to see him. Absolutely over the moon.

  He’s going to save me.

  Right?

  Please?

  “Again,” he said flatly, sounding like I’d just interrupted him mid-apocalypse, “you’re distracting me from important work.”

  The look he gave me suggested I now owed him several lifetimes’ worth of inconvenience.

  Green threads of magic spun between his fingers, wrapping around me with a chill that dulled the pain. He hoisted me up with all the care of a man lifting a sack of potatoes and marched straight into the portal he casually created.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  When I came to properly, I was staring at stone arches and enormous windows. My head was spinning, my limbs felt useless, but I was undeniably alive, tucked into a bed under a warm blanket. So... the Academy infirmary? Or the local equivalent of “you didn’t quite die, congrats” ward.

  Heavy footsteps approached. I looked up to find Professor Grey standing over me, arms crossed, wearing the exact expression of a man who’d just discovered his biggest problem hadn’t died after all.

  And yes — still hot.

  The kind of hot that could probably disrupt hormonal cycles within a three-mile radius.

  No wonder Elvira secretly pines for him.

  Honestly?

  I get it.

  “Well, Orlova,” he said crisply, “care to explain why you were discovered outside the Academy gates, actively dying?”

  I tried to speak. Nothing came out.

  He didn’t wait.

  “And you didn’t bother telling Professor Vail that you’re an outworlder — admitted here on my authority? Or do you simply enjoy flirting with death?”

  I lay there in stunned silence, fury simmering nicely beneath the shock.

  So he forgot to add me to the student lists. He neglected to give me a student badge. Or at least some kind of document that said, “Please don’t kill me, I actually belong here.”

  And now he was lecturing me?

  This was the same man who had, technically speaking, killed me. Then resurrected me with a delightful condition attached: wander too far and — surprise — instant death.

  “Well?”

  His voice dropped several degrees as he stepped closer and placed a hand over my solar plexus.

  A strange sensation followed — not pressure on my skin, but on something beneath it, like he was nudging my very soul back into place and bolting it down like a loose floorboard.

  “Hold still,” he muttered. “Just reinforcing the soul-to-body connection. Wouldn’t want it slipping out again next time you sneeze near the gates.”