The gym smells like old sweat and citrus disinfectant, somehow colder inside than the autumn air outside. The lights overhead hum with that harsh, unblinking brightness unique to Ravenrest Academy’s decades-old fixtures—buzzing faintly above the polished maple floor, indifferent to the pedigreed bloodlines that pay to walk across it.

I adjust the hem of my uniform skirt and glance at my reflection in the long, wall-mounted mirror near the mats. Glamour intact: green eyes, not starlit; ginger-red hair muted into something ordinary instead of the fire it aches to be; ears rounded, human. No trace of the girl who shattered a chandelier just last night.

No trace of the girl who stole a piece of history.

A shard of something ancient still hidden in her locker.

A bracelet that still feels like a wound.

I yank my ponytail higher. Tighter.

Smile.

Fake, of course. But that’s the game, isn’t it?

“Quinveil, let’s go,” Cassie snaps from across the mat, voice sharp enough to cut.

She doesn’t even look at me when she says it—too busy fixing Emily’s elbow placement and redrawing the chalk lines on the gym floor like straight edges could hold the world together. Precision is her religion.

And I? I’m the heresy.

I fall into step with the line of girls moving through warm-ups. Counted stretches. Toes pointed. Hands up.

Routine helps.

It gives me something to count, something to fixate on besides the ache behind my ribs. Something other than the way my magic presses against my skin like it wants to be seen.

We shift into prep lifts—Cassie’s clipped rhythm counting us through. Dip, catch, brace, toss. My muscles obey. My breath stays steady.

But my mind won’t stop flashing.

The tome. The shard. The bracelet. The chandelier.

I grind my teeth, forcing my focus onto form. Cassie doesn’t allow mistakes.

Neither do I.

“Five-six-seven-eight,” she counts.

I tumble into the pass clean, land solid. Good. Again.

“Again,” she barks, louder this time.

My pulse spikes, glamour humming under my skin like a second heartbeat.

Don’t burn.

Don’t break.

Don’t let them see it.

I hit the routine again—faster, tighter, sharper than necessary. My heel slips on the landing, the tiniest falter.

But she sees. Of course she sees.

Cassie’s head snaps toward me like a wolf scenting weakness. Honey-blonde hair swings forward, and those icy blue eyes lock on me with surgical precision.

“Do it again, Quinveil. And this time, try not to trip over your own ego.”

The room stills. A few girls glance between us, waiting to see if I’ll snap.

My jaw locks. “Thanks for the coaching tip, Fairborn,” I mutter. “Truly life-changing.”

“Good,” she says, unbothered. “Then maybe you’ll stop wasting my time.”

I run the pass again—flawless this time, pointedly so. Executed with enough bite that I know she felt the edge of it.

I don’t need her approval.

But gods, I crave her reaction.

Cassie calls for a full run-through, and the squad snaps into place like a drill team on invisible leashes.

I’m already vibrating under my skin, magic coiled in my joints like a storm with nowhere to break. Every move feels like it leaves sparks behind, even though I know it’s just in my head. Has to be.

“One, two, three—mask,” I whisper under my breath.

We launch into formation. Feet slicing polished wood. Voices tight, sharp, timed.

Cassie’s commands crack like a whip. “Lift. Hit. Arms sharp, backs tight. Don’t embarrass me.”

Mid-motion, her icy gaze slams into mine—steady, unblinking, cold fire. The impact lands like a fist to the ribs, some strange spark threading between us before I can look away.

It’s nothing. Has to be.

But it lingers, humming under my skin like a secret neither of us asked for.

My shoulder hits perfect extension as I snap into formation, but someone beside me hesitates on the toss, and the line wobbles. Not enough to collapse, but enough to break the rhythm.

Cassie doesn’t yell. She doesn’t need to.

She steps onto the mat like a storm crossing still water—measured, unstoppable. Her gaze sweeps the formation, cold and precise, skimming over everyone but locking on me like a blade pressed to skin.

“Let me be extremely clear,” she says, voice carrying in the hush. “If one of you screws up, all of you pay for it. I don’t care if it’s a missed beat or a dropped wrist—or someone tripping over their own ego. Excellence isn’t optional.”

The gym is dead quiet.

Heat skims my spine—part humiliation, part something far more dangerous. My glamour holds, steady and seamless, but I feel it thrum under the strain, pressing back against my skin like it wants to answer her.

I could say something. I want to. Gods, do I want to. But I don’t. Not yet.

Instead, I bite the inside of my cheek, breathe through my nose, and go again.

This time, I give them precision wrapped in spite—every motion a sharpened edge, every tumble a dare. A performance meant for her alone.

Cassie says nothing.

But she watches.

And that silence—her silence—sinks in deeper than any command.

It feels like a win. Even if I’ll never admit it.

The final routine lands in the heavy thud of sneakers on polished wood, followed by a collective exhale.

Cassie claps twice. “Water. Two minutes.”

The squad scatters instantly. I head for my bag in the corner, muscles tight, lungs dragging air like it costs something. Sweat clings to my back, cooling against the gym’s overworked AC. My hands still twitch—half from exertion, half from the magic clawing against its cage.

“Quinveil.”

Her voice hooks me before I can stop.

I turn just in time to catch the water bottle she tosses—no warning, no ceremony. It lands solid in my palm, still chilled from her lunch cooler.

She doesn’t wait for thanks.

“Try not to die before midterms,” she mutters, brushing past.

The corner of my mouth lifts, uninvited. “Is that concern I hear?”

She doesn’t break stride. Just tosses the reply over her shoulder like it costs her nothing.

“It’s strategy. You’re half the project grade.”

My laugh comes too quick, too sharp, but she’s already gone. Fine. She doesn’t need to see the flush creeping up my neck, or the way I clutch the bottle like it’s tethered me to something.

It’s not kindness.

It’s not softness.

But it’s attention.

And gods help me, I’ll take it.

Cooldown stretches end with Cassie clapping once—sharp, final. “Dismissed.”

The gym scatters like a broken formation—voices rising, shoes squeaking, laughter spilling toward lockers, phones, weekend plans.

I move slower.

Not from soreness. From something else.

My body still hums from the last routine, every muscle pulled taut like a bowstring that never loosed. The burn feels good—proof I can hold myself together by force if I have to.

And I always have to.

I trail behind the others into the side hall, the hum of the overheads deepening in the shift toward the locker room. The fluorescents here flicker less, but the sound presses into my skull, a constant buzz that makes my jaw clench.

I stop at the same locker as always—second column, third from the end. Not because it’s better. Because it’s mine. Familiar numbers under my fingers, the quick twist of the combination, the click of the latch. Little rituals. Little anchors.

The borrowed water bottle thuds onto the metal shelf.

Steam curls from the tiled corner where the showers run—a lazy, coiling exhale that makes the whole locker room feel like it’s holding its breath. Someone left one on. Or maybe no one ever turned it off. Doesn’t matter.

Shoes off. Uniform peeled in practiced layers. Folded without thought. My fingers linger too long on seams—press, fold, smooth, repeat—until I catch myself and force them still.

Even here, I don’t drop the glamour. My skin hums with the effort of holding it after hours in this human masquerade, a second heartbeat just beneath the surface.

The mirrors are too clean. Too honest. They show too much. And Cassie Fairborn is somewhere in this room.

Not that I’m looking.

Towel tight, I pad barefoot toward the hiss and curl of steam.

Most of the squad is gone—hair dryers whining, perfume blooming faintly in the air. Voices scatter like static. Cassie’s cuts through, clipped and efficient, already assigning tomorrow’s prep like she’s head coach instead of captain. I tune her out. I try to.

I take the farthest stall. The one with the broken dial—always too hot before it fades to tolerable.

The spray hits skin like memory.

And then like temptation.

The heat drags at me, hungry, like it recognizes the shape of fire inside and wants it freed. Steam thickens around me, curling closer, until the edges of the world blur. My glamour holds, but it ripples faintly, as if the Veil itself is pressing against me, whispering mine.

Palms flat to tile. Eyes shut.

The fire inside doesn’t roar here. It simmers. Listens.

Heartbeat syncing to water.

Inhale, count to eight.

Exhale, count to four.

Again. Again.

My fingers twitch against slick porcelain. Not weakness. Need. The need to stop pretending. To stop holding back. To scorch the world until there’s no mask left. To be wholly, recklessly mine.

But not here.

Not yet.

I stay until my fingers prune and the locker room thins into silence, broken only by the slow tick of the clock above the door.

By the time I’m dressed again, the air is empty.

Cassie’s gone.

The thought should be relief. Instead, it lingers on my skin like steam, like the phantom of her gaze even though I never caught it.

I lace my boots—double knots pulled sharp. Towel shoved deep in my bag, uniform folded neat enough to look untouched. Glamour thrums steady along my skin. Pretend. Pretend. Pretend.

Cassie’s gone.

Good.

Or not.

I haven’t decided.

Backpack over one shoulder, thumb pressed to the cracked Ravenrest ID scanner. The late-afternoon hallway greets me with its harsher buzz, fluorescent lights stinging at the edges of my hearing. The air tastes of old polish and paper dust.

The weight tugging at my shoulder isn’t books or laptop. It’s the tome. The shard. Their presence like a pulse I can’t ignore, a constant reminder that I stole something ancient and fed it to my locker.

So I go to the one place in this building that doesn’t demand applause. Doesn’t demand a mask.

The library.

The Ravenrest library smells of ambition and mildew—paper and polish and fear. My boots echo too loud on marble tile, each step deliberate, like a dare.

I pass the open reading bays, where afternoon light stretches shadows over bowed heads, earbuds tucked beneath perfect hair. Overachievers. Burnt-out ghosts.

And then I see it.

The glass-walled study room at the back.

Private. Reserved.

Occupied.

Cassie Fairborn.

Of course.

She’s perched at the far end of the table like a general in her war tent. Laptop open. Folders stacked in color-coded towers. Posture sharp enough to cut. Her blazer still crisp, her honey-blonde hair smooth—untouched by sweat, untouched by steam. Untouched by anything that might make her human.

I hate her.

I hate how composed she is.

I hate how my magic hums louder when she’s near, like it knows her name and is waiting for me to say it.

Her eyes lift once. Just once.

Blue, glacial, assessing. Not even aimed at me—just a sweep across the room that happens to catch mine.

It should mean nothing.

It should.

But my pulse stutters anyway, my skin prickling like she dragged her gaze across me on purpose. My magic answers, traitor-fast, pressing at the edges of my glamour as if begging her to notice.

I snap my eyes away, grip tightening on the strap of my bag.

Why. The hell. Am I like this.

She doesn’t look again. Doesn’t need to.

And I’m left burning under fluorescent lights, furious with myself for wanting her to.

The door scanner blinks when I tap my student ID. A soft click, and I’m inside.

She doesn’t look up. Pen moving in neat, surgical strokes over a printout—annotating like she’s rewriting the laws of reality in the margins.

I drop my bag into the chair opposite her, let the legs scrape against the tile just to hear it. The glass wall behind her catches a faint reflection—me, all glamour-smoothed lines, green eyes instead of starlit brown. For a second, it makes my teeth ache.

Cassie flinches at the chair noise.

Small win.

“You’re late,” she says, still not looking at me.

I stretch my arms over the backrest like I’ve got all day. “You’re surprised?”

Her eyes flick up—icy, quick, cutting. Not annoyed. Not amused. Measuring. Always measuring.

“You do realize this counts for thirty percent of our grade, right?” Clipped enough to cut steel.

“Oh no,” I murmur, mock horror dripping. “Thirty whole percent? Guess I’ll have to take it seriously now.”

She closes her folder with a snap sharp enough to echo. “Try not tripping over your own ego long enough to read the assignment.”

My mouth quirks before I can stop it. “Careful, Fairborn. Sounds dangerously close to a compliment.”

Her jaw flexes, but she doesn’t rise to it. Instead: “Do you even know what we’re writing about?”

I fish out the crumpled project sheet—coffee-stained, sure, but still functional—and read with theatrical flair:

The Formation of Dominveil’s City-State Model and Its Impact on Modern Governance.

I let it hang between us like a curse.

Cassie exhales sharply through her nose. “If you tank this for me, I swear to god—”

“I won’t,” I cut in.

Her eyes sharpen. The interruption lands harder than I meant it to.

“I won’t tank it,” I say again, softer. Firmer. “Might even surprise you.”

Her chair tips back slightly, like she’s testing how far she can lean before gravity takes her. Not relaxed. Coiled. “I doubt that.”

Not as sharp as it could’ve been. Almost like she doesn’t.

The glow of her laptop sharpens the lines of her jaw as she starts typing again, each keystroke deliberate. Precise. Obsessive. And my idiot brain won’t stop tracking the curve of her fingers over the keys. My magic stirs at the edges of my skin, humming hotter, and I want to sink into the chair and scream at myself—

Why. The hell. Am I like this.

I drag my eyes back to the textbook, flipping it open like it might save me. From Fragmentation to Flourish – The Rise of Unified Dominveil. The title alone makes me want to burn the whole chapter. I’ve seen the real version, the one that doesn’t dress conquest in polite words.

Cassie frowns, pen tapping against the page. “This doesn’t make sense.”

I look up. “Which part?”

She points at the paragraph. “It says the Border Compacts were ratified voluntarily by the founding sectors. But three chapters ago it literally called them conflict zones.”

“They were,” I say before my brain can stop my mouth.

Her head tilts sharply, predator-quick. “Excuse me?”

I close the book. Slowly. Deliberately.

Her eyes are knives now, cutting past the banter. “What are you basing that on? Because I’ve combed the curriculum all week, and there’s nothing here about forced compliance. Just trade partnerships and administrative restructuring.”

I shrug, fingers tapping a restless rhythm against the spine of the book. My glamour thrums, my magic pressing up like it wants out, like it wants her to notice.

Cassie studies me in silence. Not background noise anymore. An anomaly.

Heat curls low in my stomach. I hate this. I hate her. I hate that I don’t.

“You talk like someone who’s been there,” she says finally.

The words shouldn’t land like that. They shouldn’t scrape bone. But they do.

We stare. Neither of us blinking. Her posture still perfect, arms crossed, but her gaze won’t let go. Like she’s trying to solve me, piece by jagged piece.

I should lie. I should laugh it off.

Instead, my hand drifts into my bag. Slow. Careful. Fingers closing over leather that weighs more than it should. The tome.

And gods help me—some traitorous, hungry part of me wants her to see it.

If I’m doing this… I’m doing it real.

When I set it down on the table, the impact isn’t loud, but it lands. The air shifts—denser, charged, like the Veil itself is holding its breath. The light from the glass wall bends just slightly inward, a ripple you’d miss if you weren’t looking.

Cassie stills. Entirely. Her gaze drops to the cover.

It doesn’t look like anything in Ravenrest’s sanitized shelves. Worn leather soft at the edges, metallic threads glinting in impossible light, symbols etched into the binding that shimmer as if they’re alive.

Her voice comes softer than I expect, which makes it cut deeper. “What the hell is that?”

My palm rests on the cover. The Veil hums faint against my skin, alive, aware.

“What the Board doesn’t want you to read.”

She doesn’t argue. She just watches. Fingers twitch once, almost reaching—then her gaze flicks toward the door, calculating escape routes even as her curiosity keeps her rooted.

I thumb to the page I marked. A massacre renamed a treaty. A rebellion redacted into “strategic realignment.” I turn the book toward her and push it across the table.

Cassie hesitates. For a heartbeat I think she’ll shove it back, pretend it isn’t there. Then she reaches out, slow, deliberate. Her fingers hover before grazing the cover like it might burn.

Like she knows it’s fire.

She reads.

Eyes darting line to line, scanning phrases that have no business surviving Ravenrest’s curriculum. Her lips part just slightly.

“This can’t be real,” she whispers.

“But it is.”

No dramatics. No victory. Just truth. Raw, ugly, unmovable.

Cassie snatches her hand back like the page bit her. And for the first time since I’ve known her, she looks scared.

Not of me.

Of the cracks spiderwebbing through the world she thought she understood.

The library presses in—too quiet, dusk dripping through tall windows until it feels like we’re sunk beneath something deep.

“If this is true…” Her voice splinters the silence, fragile as glass. “Someone could kill you for having it.”

“Someone already wants to,” I murmur. “This just gives them a better reason.”

Her lashes lower, then lift. Deliberate. Her fingers tighten around a cheap black pen, clinging like it’s an anchor.

“Why are you showing me this?”

Not a demand. Not a trap. An opening.

I could tell her the truth:

Because I trust you.

Because I’m tired of carrying fire no one else sees.

Because you make me want to.

Instead, I give her the truth that matters now.

“Because you asked for something real. This is it.”

She closes the book carefully, like it might splinter wrong under her hands. They’re trembling.

I wait for the reflex—mockery, dismissal, retreat. But it doesn’t come. Her gaze lingers on the cover, fingers brushing the leather like she’s still deciding if it’s a weapon or an invitation.

When her eyes lift to mine, it’s worse than I’m ready for.

Not contempt. Not suspicion.

Curiosity sharpened into a blade.

And gods help me, something magnetic under it—something that wants to understand me.

Cassie Fairborn doesn’t understand people. She dissects them. Categorizes them. Cuts them until they fit her order.

But she doesn’t know what to do with me now.

“I still don’t trust you,” she says finally. Her voice is careful, too careful.

“Good,” I shoot back, heat curling in my chest. “I don’t trust me either.”

And that’s the problem.

Because if she ever does… it’ll cost us both more than we’re ready to pay.

She watches me longer than she should. Longer than’s appropriate for two girls allegedly working on an essay. The silence between us isn’t empty anymore—it’s crowded.

Her gaze drags over me like she’s mapping where I’ll crack first. My skin prickles, not from fear. From awareness.

I tilt my head, not smiling. “You look like you want to say something.”

Her throat works around a swallow. Just once. Then she stands, smooth and deliberate, bag sliding over her shoulder.

At the door, she doesn’t look back when she says, “You’re not who I thought you were.”

It lands sharper than I want it to. My reply snaps out before I can think.

“You neither.”

She pauses. A beat.

“This doesn’t mean I trust you.”

“Good,” I breathe, quieter now. “I’d be disappointed if you did.”

And then she’s gone.

The room exhales in her absence. Shadows stretch over the tome, its Veil-threaded markings glinting faintly, alive in the dark.

I brush my fingers along the page’s edge. It doesn’t bite. But it could.

I close the book. Not because I fear it—because I fear what it’ll cost me to share it.

Bag slung, boots heavy, I step into the corridor. The overhead buzz fills my ears.

For the first time in my life, someone saw past the mask.

And it terrifies me more than anything else ever has.