Sneaking out of East Wing after midnight should have been impossible with Ashwick’s security system, but Julian’s note had included detailed instructions that suggested he’d done this before. Multiple times. I slipped through the maintenance corridor he’d described, past the laundry room and out through a service door that his note claimed would be “temporarily malfunctioning.”
The October air was sharp against my skin as I made my way across the moonlit campus toward the stables. My phone buzzed with a text from Julian: Running fashionably late, darling. Don’t let the horses eat you.
Typical Julian—dramatic even in his text messages.
The stables sat at the edge of campus, a beautiful stone building that housed Ashwick’s collection of championship horses. During the day, it was home to
