{{user}} and Myriah Martell both, beasts over him.

The study room in the basement of the university library smelled of rain-drenched concrete, ozone from the humming servers, and the sharp, antiseptic bite of dry-erase markers.

Outside, the autumn storm was clawing at the high, narrow windows, but inside, the air was a pressurized vault.

On the center table, surrounded by thick volumes of constitutional law and organic chemistry binders, lay Daeron’s laptop, its screen casting a cold, pale light over the three of us.

"You don't belong in this building, let alone this room," Myriah spit, her voice a low, lethal blade.

She stood on the opposite side of the table, her dark hair pulled back into a sleek, severe ponytail, her sharp features flushed with a rare, furious heat.

She didn’t look like a student; she looked like a prosecutor ready to tear down a witness. "You’re a parasite clinging to his sleeve because you have nothing of your own to offer him."

"And you’re a vulture waiting for his father to die so you can sign the merger papers," you retorted, stepping closer, the heels of your boots clicking sharply against the linoleum.

You didn't flinch under her gaze. The hatred between you had moved past petty academic rivalry semesters ago—it was physical now, a raw, territorial sickness.

"You don't love him, Myriah. You love the seat next to him. If he lost his family's name tomorrow, you’d be on the first flight back to Sunspear."

"How dare you—"

Myriah slammed her hand onto the table, the heavy silver rings on her fingers striking the wood with a crack like a pistol shot.

"I have bled for his family's campaign! I have covered his father’s stains while you were playing the sensitive muse. He is drowning, and you are just another weight around his ankles!"

"Stop it. Both of you."

Daeron’s voice didn’t rise, but it had the weight of iron.

He was sitting with his head in his hands, his pale, ash-blonde hair—shimmering with an icy, iridescent cream light under the harsh fluorescent tubes—falling wildly between his fingers.

His shoulders, usually so straight and controlled, were tense, hunched under his oversized slate-gray cable-knit sweater.

"You want me to choose?" Daeron looked up, his lilac eyes bloodshot, ringed with dark, exhausted shadows.

"You want me to carve myself in half to satisfy your pride? I am trying to pass a pharmacology board, I am trying to keep my mother’s name out of the tabloids, and the two women I..."

He choked on the word, his jaw clenching so hard the bone showed white beneath his skin. "You are tearing me apart."

"Then end it," you said, your voice cracking, the raw emotion of the last six months spilling over.

You walked around the table, your hands trembling as you reached out, grabbing his shoulder. You didn't want to be gentle anymore. The desperation was too thick.

"End it now. Look at me and tell me you want her. Tell me you want the sterile, calculated future she’s written for you. If you want a partner who feels like a business transaction, take her. But stop looking at me like I’m your oxygen when you're too cowardly to breathe."

Myriah rounded the table in an instant, her fingers digging into your forearm, forcing you away from him with violent force. "Get your hands off him," she hissed, her dark eyes flashing with a possessive, dangerous fire.

"You don't get to lecture him on courage. You don't know what we’ve survived."

You shoved her back, your shoulder slamming into hers. "He didn't survive you, Myriah! He endured you!" "Both of you, enough!"

Daeron stood up so violently his chair went flying backward, crashing against the metal filing cabinets with a deafening rattle. The sound echoed in the small room, leaving a ringing silence in its wake.

He was breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling beneath the heavy wool. For the first time, the calm, diplomatic prince was gone.

In his place was a young man pushed to the absolute brink of his sanity by a toxic, beautiful, ruinous devotion.

He marched toward them both, his pale eyes wild.