The hum of the fluorescent lights was the first thing to offend me—too bright, too white, too ordinary for the fourth period of the day. My heels clicked down the narrow aisle between lab benches like punctuation marks, sharp and deliberate, cutting through the usual blur of chatter. Every few desks, a phone glowed, and I caught my own reflection in half a dozen front-facing cameras. Not me exactly—just her, the human internet’s idea of Princess Cassandra Firebrand, consort of Eversea, professional trophy wife to their favorite foreign fairy tale.

Bree Halden’s name was all over the trending feed again. Her so-called “Leadership Panel” had clipped itself into bite-sized chaos—soundbites about initiative, modern monarchy, the importance of relatable royalty. The comments underneath made my stomach twist. “Eversea’s princesses ghosted their people for summer scandals.” “Too pretty to lead, too royal to care.”

I wanted to delete the internet one smug post at a time. Instead, I opened a fresh note on my tablet and typed containment strategy: start today.

Mira didn’t need to see any of it. She had real wars to fight—solar councils, duchies, worlds that wanted to devour her alive. This, the petty mortal echo chamber, was my battlefield. I could handle rumor control. I could play queen of optics while she got to be eighteen for a change.

The door opened and the entire room seemed to exhale.

Mira breezed in like she owned sunlight. I could smell the roasted sugar of her coffee before I saw her—shirt half untucked, hair sliding over her shoulders, green eyes brighter than the fluorescents dared to be. A dozen conversations stuttered mid-word. One kid actually dropped his pen. Mira pretended not to notice, humming under her breath as she scanned for me.

I didn’t move. I just watched the wave of attention bend around her the way light bends through glass. No crown, no glamour, but every mortal in this classroom felt it. Half awe, half static.

She spotted me, grin curling like trouble. “Saved me a seat?”

“Always.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “But you realize you can’t outshine the fluorescents every period, right?”

Her smile widened as she slid onto the stool beside mine, brushing my knee with hers. “Occupational hazard.”

The lights overhead buzzed louder, almost resentful.

I closed my tablet, thumb hovering over the last hateful headline. Not now. Mira needed calm, not crisis management. I could feel her energy vibrating through the shared airspace, wild and untamed even in this sterile lab. She was pretending to be human again, pretending this was normal.

I’d make sure it stayed that way—at least until the bell rang.

Let them stare, I thought, catching the faint smirk on Mira’s mouth as she reached for her coffee. Let them believe we’re just two girls in physics class.

Because while she handled worlds, I handled this one. And no one—not Bree, not the internet, not even the laws of thermodynamics—was going to touch her peace today.

Professor Doyen burst through the door like a small storm given tenure—chalk dust blooming from his lab coat, hair standing at an angle that suggested either genius or lightning exposure. A half-empty coffee mug balanced dangerously in one hand, the other clutching a stack of papers that immediately slid to the floor like they’d given up on gravity.

“Today,” he announced, without bending to pick them up, “we explore electric potential. Partners, ground yourselves emotionally first.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the room. Mira didn’t miss a beat. “Too late.”

“Premature discharge, sir,” I added before I could stop myself.

Half the class snorted. The other half tried not to.

Doyen looked at me with the expression of a man whose soul had been quietly replaced by administrative paperwork. “Excellent. We’ll add maturity to the list of concepts still under investigation.”

He turned back to the board, muttering equations as he went, chalk squeaking like it was begging for mercy.

I leaned on one elbow, feeling the hum of the room settle—laughter thinning into that nervous quiet that always followed Mira’s presence. The air felt charged, literally and not; maybe it was the storm system building outside, maybe just the way her body heat seemed to alter the space between us. She smelled faintly of roasted coffee and something warm, like sugar left too long near a flame.

Professor Doyen scrawled V = U/q across the board in capital letters, the chalk smearing white against gray. “Potential difference,” he said, “isn’t about the quantity of charge but about where you stand.”

Mira’s knee brushed mine under the desk, deliberate or accidental, I couldn’t tell.

Tell that to my nervous system, I thought, as the tiny hairs on my arms rose in defiance of every safety lecture this man had ever given.

Doyen started calling out names with the detached rhythm of someone who’d learned long ago not to expect cooperation from teenagers. “By rows, please. Partners are whoever you’re sitting beside. Fate has already chosen your suffering.”

There was a rustle of groans and shuffling stools. Of course fate, sadistic little thing, had arranged it so Mira and I shared a bench.

Not that I minded.

“Excellent,” Doyen said, scanning the room like a disappointed shepherd. “Eversea’s finest, try not to melt the probes.”

Mira smirked at me. “No promises.”

Behind us, Kael took her seat in the back corner—black notebook, tablet open, posture so precise it could slice glass. Officially, she was the exchange student from Eversea’s security program. Unofficially, she was our shield with a sidearm and a resting expression that made most students decide she didn’t speak common. I could feel her gaze flicking to the windows, the vents, the door. Even here, she was a weapon pretending to take notes.

“Michael Sandalwood and Ashlyn Dannon,” Doyen continued. “Try to avoid combusting. Nate Ashborne…” He paused, scanning for an available partner, found none, and sighed. “Work solo. The world needs case studies in resilience.”

Nate slumped dramatically. “You’re condemning me to failure, sir.”

“Then you’ll have company.”

The class laughed. Mira’s shoulders shook, her laughter soft but alive, the kind that reminded me why I was doing all this—why I’d promised myself to handle the small fires so she could handle the big ones. She needed normalcy, or the closest thing we could fake.

I passed her the electrode lead, our fingers brushing for half a heartbeat too long. Warm. Real. Dangerous.

“Ready, Firefly?” I whispered.

She grinned, eyes bright with static. “Always.”

And just like that, the room hummed with energy that had nothing to do with physics.

The lab smelled faintly of ozone and pencil shavings. Doyen clapped his hands once, chalk dust erupting like smoke. “All right, scholars of entropy—let’s map some electric fields. Paper, probes, power supply, the illusion of discipline. Begin.”

Mira slid the conductive paper toward me, her sleeve brushing mine. Her hand was steady; mine was not. I pretended to check the voltage dial, mostly to avoid staring at the way her hair caught the overhead light. She plugged in the leads with surgical precision, humming under her breath—a low, unbothered tune that probably qualified as treason against lab safety.

A sharp snap! split the air. A tiny blue spark leapt between the probes.

The class gasped. Mira blinked down at it like she’d expected applause.

“Proof of attraction,” she said.

I arched a brow. “More like poor insulation.”

Doyen, without glancing up from his clipboard, said dryly, “Both of you record your potential difference before I have to file a report.”

A few students laughed; most pretended not to, their phones conveniently angled just-so. Seventeen camera lenses waited for the next viral clip of “Eversea’s royal experiment.”

Mira leaned closer, her voice a quiet spark meant only for me. “I already feel it.”

Heat flushed the back of my neck. She smelled like sugar and danger—coffee and ozone and something I didn’t have a mortal word for. I could hear the soft click of Nate’s pen behind us, feel half the room’s curiosity orbiting our table, but none of it mattered.

“Focus,” I whispered, though my pulse didn’t listen. “We’re supposed to be observing fields, not generating one.”

Her grin was wicked. “Can’t help physics, Princess. We’re charged.”

I groaned softly, trying not to smile. “If you flirt through the lab report again, I’m reporting you.”

“On what grounds?” she murmured, voice just above the hum of the current. “Mutual induction?”

The spark hissed again, brighter this time. My stomach did the same.

Somewhere behind us, Doyen sighed—probably praying for tenure renewal in another galaxy.

If Mira leaned one inch closer, my heart was going to violate Coulomb’s Law. I was ninety percent sure that whatever charge existed between us didn’t follow any of Doyen’s carefully diagrammed field lines—it just burned, reckless and beautiful.

She was bent over the conductive paper, hair falling forward, the copper strands catching on the static field. Her focus was pure mischief wrapped in intelligence, lips twitching in that way that always made me forget equations entirely.

“Electric field lines radiate from positive charges,” she murmured, the words low and deliberate, like she was reciting poetry instead of physics.

I bit back a smile. “Then stop standing so close to me, Your High Voltage.”

Her laugh was quiet, almost secret. “Oh, but we’re just measuring potential difference.”

“Keep talking like that,” I warned softly, “and I’m about to arc.”

From two benches over, someone whispered, “They flirt like it’s extra credit.”

They weren’t wrong.

Before I could tell her to behave, Nate Ashborne’s voice cut across the lab, smooth and far too confident. “So that’s what royalty education looks like—sparks.”

I didn’t even look up. “Nate, if you touch our circuit, I’ll ground you in front of witnesses.”

Doyen, still scribbling attendance on the board, didn’t miss a beat. “Excellent application of safety protocol, Princess Firebrand.”

Mira smirked, hiding her grin behind the probe lead. Nate wasn’t done, of course—he never was.

“Hey, come on,” he said, swaggering over under the pretense of checking the voltage supply. “I’m just saying, some of us are willing to help share the load.”

“Meaning?” I asked, tone perfectly even but sharp enough to cut through his charm.

He leaned against the desk beside us, flashing the kind of smile that had probably gotten him everything he’d ever wanted—except us. “You two have all this chemistry, right? The school’s practically obsessed. I’m just saying maybe the formula’s missing one variable.”

Mira’s head tilted. “A variable that thinks he can divide by zero?”

Nate blinked, uncertain if that was an insult. “I mean—why not try expanding the system? You know, throuple dynamics are super modern.”

The entire lab went quiet. Even Doyen paused mid-equation, sensing incoming catastrophe.

I set down my stylus slowly, savoring the silence before I spoke. “Nate, if I wanted an experiment that ended in catastrophic explosion, I’d short-circuit the power supply.”

Mira added sweetly, “Besides, we’re already at maximum potential.”

He chuckled nervously, glancing between us. “You’re saying that like it’s a no—”

“It’s a no,” we said in perfect unison.

The class erupted in laughter. Kael didn’t even look up from her notebook, though I caught the faintest curve of her mouth—her version of applause. Doyen sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “As entertaining as your highnesses are, perhaps we could redirect this current back to the experiment before someone discovers a new form of plasma.”

Mira turned back to me, biting her lip to hide a grin. The spark between us felt alive again, sharper now that we’d sent Nate scurrying back to his desk.

I dipped my pen, logging the next data point. “Potential difference: measurable. Resistance: nonexistent.”

She looked up, eyes bright with mischief. “So… equal charge?”

“Mutual attraction,” I corrected.

And as her fingers brushed mine again, the circuit closed perfectly—no lab manual required.

The room settled into the low, mechanical hum of productivity. The fans droned overhead, mingling with the quiet scratch of pencils and the occasional clink of metal leads. Static still hung in the air—soft, invisible threads that buzzed across my skin.

Mira’s knee pressed lightly against mine beneath the table. Not an accident this time. The smallest point of contact, deliberate and grounding. Her version of thank you.

I didn’t look at her, just shifted the conductive paper slightly closer so our arms brushed again. We didn’t need words for this kind of language; we’d spent a year building it—glances, touches, the small geometry of trust.

Outside the windows, clouds had begun to gather, the glass dimming with the suggestion of storm. Inside, the air smelled faintly of chalk and ozone, a mix that somehow belonged to her now.

She can handle monarchs, I thought. Solar votes, noble daggers, veiled threats dressed as diplomacy.

And I can handle gossip. Hashtags. Nate’s ego. Every petty war fought under fluorescent lights instead of candlelit courts.

Division of labor.

Mira shifted again, the lightest bump of her knee against mine—a pulse, not a question. Her breathing had steadied, the tension gone from her shoulders. For the first time since morning, she looked… okay.

I leaned in just enough to murmur, “Field’s stable.”

Her smile was quiet, barely visible, but it hit me like sunlight anyway. “Good. I hate uncontrolled variables.”

“Guess that makes me the constant,” I said.

Her gaze flicked toward me, soft and unguarded. “Always.”

The hum of the vents filled the silence that followed, the rest of the world dissolving into the background. For one rare, ordinary moment, it was just us—two girls, one circuit, and a calm that didn’t need magic to hold.

Professor Doyen’s voice cut through the hum of equipment. “Heat,” he declared, tapping the board like it had personally offended him, “flows from hot to cold until equilibrium is achieved.”

Someone snorted near the back. Mira didn’t even look up from the data sheet. “So we’re a closed system, then?” she murmured, too innocent.

I glanced at her, lips twitching. “Speak for yourself, I’m still expanding.”

Laughter rippled through the room. Even Kael, pretending to take notes in the corner, smirked—her version of falling off her chair. Doyen exhaled the long-suffering sigh of a man too old to argue with royalty.

“Excellent,” he said dryly. “Now, if our Highnesses would kindly allow the rest of us to reach equilibrium before the bell.”

The last ten minutes blurred into heat maps and low-level chaos. When the dismissal tone finally chimed, half the class moved like they’d survived a small war.

Mira gathered her notebook with practiced precision—pages squared, pen tucked, chaos tamed. Her sleeve brushed mine, and I caught the faint scent of sugar and ozone again. Still sparking, just quietly now.

We stepped into the hall together, swept into the familiar tide of students and gossip. The corridor buzzed like a living circuit, phones out, whispers already spinning.

“Did you hear?” one junior said too loudly. “Bree said the Eversea princesses are skipping the charity fair. Guess crowns come with egos.”

I felt Mira stiffen beside me, that tiny pause like pressure before a storm. But she didn’t turn. Didn’t even flinch. She was half-busy stealing the last of my mocha, straw between her lips, pretending the world wasn’t biting at her heels.

I looped my arm through hers, guiding her toward the stairs. My voice was sugar-dipped steel. “I’ll schedule a meeting with Destiny,” I said—our code for handling PR flare-ups. “You focus on not burning out.”

She gave a quiet, tired laugh, and the tension bled out of her shoulders.

As we turned the corner, I let my thoughts settle where they always did: She saved kingdoms. I can handle a high school.

It wasn’t heroism. It was balance. She fought the wars no one else could see. I fought the whispers. And between us, somehow, the world stayed upright.