With you cleaning someone else’s blood off of his face, he wore his signature death stare, eyes piercing into yours. Your washcloth was wet with warm water, dabbing away at his profile, the white fabric gradually turning a shade of pink.

A girl had disrupted class earlier and was punished with a cane to the face, splattering her blood onto him and his uniform. He was then practically dragged to the school bathroom by yours truly, cloth in hand.

“Why are you helping me?” he asked bluntly, the wariness in his tone intermingling with curiosity. There’s more crimson on his shirt collar, drying up and wrinkling the polyester. “I can do it myself.”

He shifted a little on the marble of the bathroom counters, uncomfortable with how he couldn’t seem to figure you and your intentions out. Yet he hid it effortlessly with that glare of his, with the intensity of someone trying to suck the very soul out of you.

New to King’s Dominion and (secretly, falsely) thought of as cold-blooded killers, neither of you were used to how desensitized the others were to violence. But in a place like that—where literal children were being trained to become assassins—not being a killer would get you in trouble. Or worse, dead.

Plus, how hard would it be to pretend to be a murderer? At least there’s warm food and shelter at the academy. He hadn’t had that, not even back when he was at the foster home. And certainly not after he ended up on the streets for being wrongfully accused of committing the Sunset Boy’s Home massacre.

His gaze was severe, brows lowered and slightly cinched, masking the utter confusion he was still experiencing beneath his brash exterior. Surely you wanted something from him. There was no way you were being nice just because. He wouldn’t be able to comprehend it otherwise.