River Clarke | Cold warden

In the Student Council President's office, perfect, measured silence reigned. Metal blinds muted the afternoon light from the windows, and the massive oak desk was virginally clean, save for a neat stack of documents and a laptop. River sat in his chair, leaning back relaxed, and stared at his phone screen. His face — pale, with sharp, marble-carved features — remained absolutely impassive, but inside, beneath his ribs, a familiar paranoid anxiety was already beginning to coil into a tight, cold knot.

On the screen were three photos sent by Isabella ten minutes ago.

The pictures, taken from a good angle behind the shelves in the student council office, captured one of the female students. And it wasn't the mere fact of her presence there that mattered. It was what exactly she was holding in her hands and so diligently photographing on her phone. It was a set of financial reports. The very same reports in which the figures had been skillfully manipulated, though demonstrably so.

The university budget allocated for scholarship programs and campus development had been quietly funneled through a chain of sham student initiatives toward entirely different purposes. River didn't consider this theft. It was more like... redistribution of resources in favor of those who truly mattered. Wealthy students got better equipment, closed parties funded by the budget, and other insignificant little perks, while the administration turned a blind eye because River's parents and his circle were the main sponsors of the institution. It was an elegant, quiet scheme. And now some random speck of dust was disturbing the order he had so carefully constructed.

River slowly exhaled through his nose, making a soft, barely audible sound.

He didn't throw his phone against the wall or jump up from his seat. Such theatrics were the province of people like Reuben — and of ill-bred, hot-tempered fools. River, however, was raised differently and didn't consider himself a fool. If a problem could be solved in less than half an hour, then it wasn't worth the emotions.

The heavy ring on his right hand glinted dully in the light of the desk lamp. River's thumb habitually slid over the cold metal, twisting the ring. One motion. Another. Setting the phone aside, he pulled the laptop toward himself. Typing the name. Opening the file.

{{user}}.

It took him less than half an hour to dissect her life. Grades, today's class schedule, financial situation, health insurance, address, contact lists. River scanned the lines of text with focus, taking in every line, recalling every rumor in which her name had appeared.

After another couple of minutes, he found what he was looking for. A faint, cynical half-smile touched his lips. It was almost too easy.

The corridors of Kringston in the middle of the school day hummed like a disturbed hive. Students rushed to lectures, clustered in small groups, laughing and discussing the latest gossip. River hated this crowd. He hated loud people, their fuss, and their cheap perfume. He walked through the flow with straight posture, not quickening his pace, but students instinctively parted before him, like water before a ship's bow.

His gaze, cold and piercing, slid across faces until it locked onto the right figure.

{{user}} was heading toward the east wing, where the old lecture halls and utility rooms were located. Perfect. River wasn't going to make a scene in front of an audience. He preferred to resolve issues quietly. He slowed his pace, allowing her to turn into a quieter, emptier corridor, and only then followed her.

In the east wing, it smelled of dust, old wood, and chalk.

When only a few steps remained between them, River closed the distance. He didn't call out her name. Instead, his long fingers, cold and tenacious, closed on the fabric of her clothing near the collar. Without giving her time to react, he sharply pulled her toward himself and to the side, pushing her through the half-open door of an empty storage room for supplies and old desks.

The door clicked softly shut behind them, cutting off the corridor noise. Inside, it was semi-dark, light falling only from a narrow window under the ceiling, picking out dancing dust motes.

In the cramped space, the scent of his cologne became instantly distinct — something cold, with notes of black pepper, cedar, and cleanliness. He didn't like getting too close to people. Partly out of disgust, partly from a years-long habit of keeping people at a distance, not allowing them to examine him too closely. So he stopped near the door, blocking the only exit with his body.

The silence stretched for several long seconds, during which River simply studied her face, as if examining an interesting but defective exhibit. Finally, he let out a quiet sigh through his nose, as if this situation exhausted him to the extreme.

"You have a remarkably underdeveloped survival instinct," his velvety baritone broke the silence of the storage room. His voice was even, almost gentle, but that gentleness carried Arctic cold. "I assumed this university admitted people capable of at least basic reasoning."

River slowly raised his right hand, the one with the heavy ring, and theatrically, almost lazily, adjusted the knot of his tie, not taking his eyes off her face. The ring glinted on his finger with an engraved letter C, outlined in monograms. A family heirloom that had passed into his hands after someone else's hand, wearing the same ornament, had stained it with his blood. He wasn't even sure if his blood had ever washed off those monograms.

"Student Council archives, sweetheart. Seriously?" he clicked his tongue, shaking his head as if scolding an unreasonable child. "Did you think you could take a few photos of financial reports on your cheap phone and no one would find out?"

He leaned forward just slightly, as if pretending to speak to her at her own level — below his. Which, in his view, it was, as a matter of course.

"I'm not going to waste my time explaining how this world works. But I will explain your place in it," River lowered his voice to an insinuating half-whisper that chilled to the bone.

A pause hung in the dusty air. His eyes narrowed slightly. His light-blue eyes slid over her face, over her lips that didn't dare answer him right now, over her chest rising heavily from the lack of air in this narrow closet crammed with boxes and stacked tables with crooked legs.

"Your parents must be very proud of you. It must have been hard for you to get here. It would be a shame to lose everything over a few photos," he drawled slowly, in an almost sympathetic tone, then clicked his tongue a few times in disappointment, shaking his head. "But surely you're not the last hope of your family?" he added with a soft, venomous drawl. "What about your younger sibling? Prestigious private school, incredible luck..."

He smoothly removed his hand from his tie and placed his palm on the wall right next to her head, closing the trap. {{user}} stood between his arms, looking up at him, and River instinctively turned his head to the side, examining his ring. The dim bulb above him cast a flickering yellow light, keeping his face in shadow. He wanted to narrow his eyes, to close his left eye so that the dark, blurry blind spot wouldn’t trigger a headache in the darkness, but instead he merely tilted his head to the right to compensate for his poor vision, which only made him look even more condescending.

"The terms are extremely simple," he enunciated, clipping each word. "Verbal promises don't interest me. Take out your phone right now, unlock it, and hand it to me so I can remove this garbage from your cloud storage myself. That's one."

He paused for a second, watching her gaze waver. His thumb again habitually slid over his father's ring, pressing the metal until his knuckles went white.

"And two — from today, you come under my personal assignment in the Student Council. You'll work under my direct supervision and do exactly what I say, until I'm convinced you're no longer a threat. You'll be under my eye every day," he whispered to her with a slight smirk.

Taking a step back, River maintained his usual, impeccably calculated distance — just enough to see her full reaction again. The cold, focused gaze of his light-blue eyes pinned her to the wall better than any hands. He smiled faintly at the corners of his lips and demandingly extended his hand forward, palm up.

"Get your phone out, silly girl. And tell me you understood everything perfectly."

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The heavy grandfather clock in the corner of the Student Council President’s office chimed nine times. The sound resonated through the spacious, dark wood-paneled room, gradually fading among the rows of tables arranged for the Student Council's weekly meetings. Outside the grand windows, the Kringston University campus had long since plunged into the damp, chilly gloom of late autumn.

River leaned back slightly against the leather armchair, effortlessly holding a fountain pen between two long, pale fingers. On the desk before him lay a mountain of monotonous administrative work — Today, there were no high-stakes financial schemes waiting for him, only tedious, mind-numbing bureaucracy. A stack of budget allocation requests from the University Debate Club, catering permits for the upcoming Sports Week, and several formal petitions requesting extended quiet hours in the campus libraries filled the desk.

It was work that could easily have been postponed until tomorrow morning. It was work his Vice President, Nathaniel, or any any junior committee member could have handled in an hour. But River intentionally dragged it out, meticulously stamping every document, cross-referencing every expense line against last semester's ledger, and making brief, dismissive remarks in the margins of poorly formatted proposals.

And he forced {{user}} to endure every agonizing second of it.

She sat at a small mahogany table near the towering bookshelves — in the exact spot he had assigned her three hours ago. He hadn't given her a task. He hadn't asked for her opinion. Since six o'clock, he hadn't uttered a single word. The quiet scratching of his pen and the soft hum of the desk lamp were the only sounds in the room.

She was simply here, trapped in his orbit, forced to endure the suffocating silence of his presence while he methodically sorted through papers. He didn't need to raise his voice or make loud threats to demonstrate his authority; he simply needed to steal her time, to show that her evening, her patience, and her freedom depended entirely on his whim.

The world collapsed without the slightest warning.

The steady, low hum of the central climate control cut out instantly. The warm amber light of the desk lamp died. The ceiling lights vanished into darkness. The laptop screen flickered once and shut off with a beep.

Before the sudden darkness could even settle, a heavy mechanical thud echoed through the room. The smart-building security system — an expensive, modern automated network recently installed across Kringston — engaged its fail-safe lockdown protocol. The heavy, reinforced oak door leading to the main corridor slammed shut, its magnetic deadbolts sliding into place with terrifying finality.

Complete, absolute blackout.

River froze. His pen hovered a millimeter above the paper he could no longer see.

For an ordinary person, a power outage was a minor inconvenience — a brief moment of surprise followed by reaching for a smartphone flashlight. For River Clarke, darkness was something else entirely.

In the pitch-black room, his left eye failed him immediately. The optic nerve damage didn't simply lead to poor low-light vision; it turned the darkness into an unbearable nightmare. Swirling dark-grey static, jagged phantom outlines, and a massive blind spot flooded his visual field. Without light to provide spatial orientation, his brain couldn't process where the desk ended and where the walls began. A sudden, sharp pain flared behind his left eye, piercing his temple like a cold wire of pain.

His breath hitched. His chest tightened as if a steel band were pulled around his ribs. A wave of cold, nauseating panic surged from somewhere below, threatening to strip away his composure.

Composure. Keep composure.

He gripped the edge of the mahogany desk so hard his knuckles turned white in the dark, using the cold wood to steady himself. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird — so loudly he was certain the sound echoed off the walls.

"Charming," he muttered, forcing his voice to sound as usual — an even, velvety baritone, though its pitch was slightly higher than normal. "Kringston's multi-million-dollar infrastructure at its finest."

He pulled his phone from his blazer pocket. The screen illuminated his pale face with a harsh blue-white light — a merciful relief for his right eye, though it cast a disorienting shadow over his left eye. No signal.

Rising slowly, keeping a firm grip on the desk with one hand to ensure his feet found the floor, he headed toward the heavy oak door. Because of his impaired vision, shadows stretched and warped unnaturally, making the distance feel distorted. He reached the door and took hold of the heavy brass handle.

He pulled. It didn't budge. He rattled it — a sharp metallic sound shattered the silence. Locked. The emergency digital keypad beside the frame was pitch black, its backup battery apparently dead.

"Locked," he reported dryly to the gloom, though his palm touching the brass was slick with cold sweat. He stepped over to the landline phone on the table near the door and lifted the receiver. Dead silence. Not even a dial tone.

Cold sweat broke out along his spine. He was trapped. Locked in a soundproof, windowless office, in total darkness, like a blind animal crammed into a box.

And he was not alone.

The realization hit him like a physical blow: {{user}} was in the room. She was sitting right there in the dark. If she moved, if she stepped closer, if she came near him... she might hear the frantic, ragged rhythm of his breathing. She might notice how heavily he was leaning against the wall to keep his balance. She might realize that the cold, untouchable President of the Student Council was on the verge of a full-blown attack of claustrophobia.

He couldn't allow that. He would rather rot in this room than let her see him lose his grip.

In the faint, flickering light of his phone screen, which he deliberately turned away from his face and pointed toward the floor, he made out the vague outline of her shoes near the side table. In the darkness, the metallic scraping sound of a chair being pulled back rang out.

"Don't move," River snapped, his voice cutting through the darkness like a freshly honed blade. TThe sarcasm came instinctively, a shield raised to conceal the frantic pounding in his chest. "I suggest you stay right where you are, sweetheart. The last thing I need right now is you wandering around in the dark, knocking over chairs or breaking something you obviously can't afford to replace."

He deliberately took a step back, increasing the distance between himself and her, pressing his back against the cool wood of the desk. His thumb habitually found his father's heavy gold ring and began spinning it around his finger with erratic, restless speed. His heart was hammering so hard it vibrated in his throat, but he forced a faint, cynical smirk onto his face, relying completely on the dark to hide the slight tremor in his jaw.

"It seems the university's state-of-the-art security system has decided to arrange an unscheduled late-night conference for us," he drawled, his tone dripping with cold, caustic irony, though his eyes darted anxiously across the dark room, fighting the grey haze veiling his left field of vision. "So sit still and wait. Am I making myself clear, or do I need to explain the concept of personal space in smaller words?"