I adjusted the strap of my bag higher on my shoulder for what felt like the hundredth time that morning, fingers aching from the weight of textbooks that probably cost more than my old school’s yearly budget. The polished marble beneath my shoes gleamed so brightly it almost reflected my face back at me, and every corridor in Lexwer Prep looked exactly the same—towering arches, antique portraits with judgmental eyes, cold ivy creeping through stone walls older than my entire hometown. Germany suddenly felt very far away.

Back home, my school had peeling paint, crooked radiators, and teachers who smelled like cigarettes and cheap coffee. Here, the halls smelled faintly of expensive perfume and old money.

I hated it already.

Not because it was beautiful. It was. Painfully so. But because I didn’t belong here.

Everyone at Lexwer walked around like they owned the world before they’d even graduated. Girls draped in designer scarves, boys wearing watches worth more than my mother made in a year, conversations filled with ski trips to Switzerland and summer estates in Monaco. I’d heard one girl complain for twenty minutes because her father bought her the wrong horse.

Meanwhile, my mother still worked double shifts. I tightened my jaw.

The scholarship letter had called me “exceptional.” Lexwer’s charity case of the year.

Lucky me.

After surviving the orientation—which felt less like welcoming students and more like a warning not to embarrass the school—I’d finally escaped with a stack of papers tucked beneath my arm. Schedule. Dorm key. Rules. Maps that somehow made the castle more confusing instead of less.

My accent alone had already earned stares. German, sharp around the edges compared to the polished British voices surrounding me.

I was exhausted.

When I finally found my locker, relief lasted exactly three seconds.

Two students stood directly in front of it, practically attached at the mouth.

I stopped short.

Of course.

The girl giggled obnoxiously into the boy’s blazer while he trapped her between himself and the lockers like they were in some romance film nobody asked to watch. Neither noticed me standing there struggling under enough books to fracture a spine.

At my old school, I would’ve shoved them aside without hesitation.

Move or get moved.

But here?

One wrong move and I’d become “that scholarship girl” before lunch.

So instead, swallowing my irritation, I turned to leave.

“Move.”

The voice cut through the hallway cleanly.

Not loud.

Not angry.

Just commanding enough that people listened automatically.

The couple immediately separated, startled, and hurried off down the corridor without argument. I glanced sideways.

The boy opening the locker beside mine was tall enough to make everyone else look compressed. Broad shoulders stretched beneath the dark Lexwer blazer, posture perfectly straight despite the loosened tie hanging slightly undone at his throat. Dark brown hair fell messily over his forehead in a way that looked intentional despite clearly not being so, and his sharp features carried the kind of effortless attractiveness that belonged on magazine covers. Callum St. Quentin.

Even I knew that name already.

Everyone did.

Head boy. Tennis captain. Debate prodigy. Future heir to a billion-pound empire.

Perfect.

He slid a textbook into his locker before finally glancing at me.

Dark eyes flicked briefly to the stack in my arms. “You were standing there for nearly a minute,” he said smoothly, British accent crisp and expensive. “Most people would’ve said something.”