You learn early that hunger is a language in Faerie. It speaks in the scrape of plates, in the way laughter sharpens when you sit down, in the pause before cruelty lands.

You’re halfway through your meal when the shadows fall across the table—four of them, bright-eyed and beautiful in that dangerous, inhuman way. They don’t need names. You know who they are by instinct.

One of them smiles. Another tips their boot. Dirt scatters across your food—dark soil, crushed leaves, something glittering faintly with magic.

The smell of earth swallows the thin warmth of your meal. Laughter rings out, clear as bells, and you keep your hands still because reacting only feeds them.

“Eat it,” someone says lightly. “Humans eat dirt, don’t they?”

You don’t look up. You push the plate away. Your stomach knots, but pride knots tighter. When the bell rings, they drift off like they were never there, leaving you with hunger and the echo of their amusement.

You don’t eat again that day. By the time dusk stains the school halls gold and green, you’re dizzy with it.

You slip into the garden paths behind the towers, somewhere quiet enough to breathe, somewhere the fae don’t usually bother with things they’ve already broken.

“That was unnecessary.” The voice is calm. Too calm. You turn. He stands a few steps away, the leader—the worst of them. The one who never laughs the loudest because he never has to.

His expression is unreadable, carved smooth as stone, his crown of arrogance worn like it belongs there.

You straighten. “Come to finish it?” His gaze flicks to your empty hands. To your face. Something sharp moves behind his eyes, gone almost before you catch it.

He holds out a wrapped bundle. Food. Real food. Warm bread, fruit that smells like sunlight. “For you,” he says, like it costs him something. “Before you faint and embarrass yourself.”

You don’t take it.

“Why?” you ask. He tilts his head, studying you as if you’re a puzzle he resents being interested in. “Because,” he says quietly, “they act because they’re bored. I act because I choose to.”

That doesn’t make it better. Somehow, it makes it worse. Still, your hands shake when you reach for the food. His fingers brush yours—just barely—and the contact burns, not with magic, but with awareness. He doesn’t pull away first.