The gym smelled like old sweat, rubber mats, and citrus disinfectant trying too hard to pretend it had won the war. It had not, because nothing ever really beat sweat in a gym. It just got layered over until the whole room became a chemical crime scene with pom-poms. The air-conditioning was overcorrecting hard enough to raise goosebumps along my arms, which was almost impressive considering the late-Infernalight heat still pressing against the windows outside like a living thing. Summer had not loosened its teeth from Dominveil yet. The sky beyond the high glass panes was too bright, too white-blue, and too humid at the edges, with heat shimmering above the courtyard stones while Ravenrest Heights Academy made us all freeze under fluorescent lights and pretend competitive cheer was a normal extracurricular instead of ritualized public suffering with better uniforms.

I stood near the wall-length mirror by the mats and checked myself for the fifth time in three minutes. Green eyes instead of starlit brown. Ginger hair instead of fire-bright red-gold. Rounded ears tucked under a high ponytail. Human teeth. Human skin. No glow threading through my fingers, no dangerous little pulse of light beneath my nails, no sign that last night I had screamed hard enough to shatter a chandelier and crack a mirror across Mother’s private study. There was no sign that I had stolen from her either, which was probably the more immediate concern, considering stolen court artifacts seemed like the sort of thing Ravenrest’s student handbook had failed to adequately address.

The bracelet was not with me, which was the first thing my body kept noticing because apparently my nervous system was a traitor with sentimental priorities. I had made that decision on purpose. It was at home, hidden in my room, wrapped in a soft sock at the back of my drawer like a crime or a keepsake or a wound I did not know how to dress. The tiny gold band engraved with my name and that flame glyph had felt too personal to carry into school. Too breakable. Too much like proof that Mother had once held something small and mine with care. Naturally, because I was a person known for sound emotional judgment, I had brought the forbidden history tome and the ink-black shard instead.

They were currently hidden in my locker in the girls’ locker room, beneath my emergency hoodie and a paperback I had never read but kept around because humans trusted clutter. The tome was too old, too heavy, too aware. The shard had a pulse when it wanted attention, which was most of the time, because apparently ancient objects were as subtle as court nobles and half as polite. Mother knew I had them, of course. Mother knew when a servant breathed wrong in the west corridor. She knew when a candle burned two minutes past the hour. She knew when my expression changed by one degree in a room full of people pretending not to look. The fact that she had not taken them back should have comforted me, but instead it sat under my ribs like a hook, like she was waiting, like she had placed me on a board I could not see and was letting me move because watching me choose wrong would teach some awful lesson she would later call survival.

I yanked my ponytail tighter until my scalp stung. The pain was clean, understandable, and useful. I smoothed the hem of my practice skirt, then adjusted it again because the pleats were sitting wrong, then again because my hands needed something to do that was not burst into flame.

“Mira?”

Emily’s voice pulled me away from the mirror. She stood a few feet away with one sneaker half-tied and both hands clutching her water bottle, small and springy and sophomore-anxious in the way of someone who could throw herself backward into the air but still apologized when she took up space. Her gaze kept flicking toward the center mat, where half the squad had gathered in loose knots.

“Is Cassie in a mood?” she asked.

“Cassie is a mood,” I said, and Emily made a tiny distressed sound that reminded me I was technically vice-captain and therefore responsible for morale, not just cryptic menace delivery. “She’s focused. Keep your elbows locked on the prep sequence and do not anticipate the dip. You anticipate when you get nervous.”

Emily’s shoulders loosened by maybe two percent. “I do?”

“Yes.” I crouched and tapped the side of her untied shoe. “You also forget your laces exist when you are panicking, and I refuse to explain to Coach Lennox how our flyer took herself out before the first count.”

Emily flushed and dropped to tie it. “Thanks.”

“Do not thank me yet. I’m still going to make you do the catch drill until your arms hate me.”

“That’s fair.”

“It is generous, actually.”

She laughed, quick and relieved, before jogging toward Harper and Lila near the mats. I watched her plant her feet when she stopped. Better. Not perfect, but better. Bree Halden hovered near the back line with both hands wrapped around her water bottle, standing a half step behind the others like she was trying to be present without becoming noticeable. She was a sophomore too, wiry and toned in the way cheer built girls before they realized it had done it, with chestnut-brown hair clipped neatly away from her face and hazel eyes that darted toward Cassie, then me, then the floor. Bree had made the squad on clean technique and quiet obedience, which meant she almost never drew Cassie’s wrath and almost never drew mine either. At Ravenrest, disappearing was a skill. Bree had apparently practiced.

“Bree,” I called, and she startled like I had thrown something. “You’re drifting behind the count on the arm sequence. Not enough for Coach to catch from the bleachers, but enough to make the back line look tired.”

Her cheeks went pink. “Sorry.”

“Do not apologize. Fix it.” I softened it by half a degree because she looked like a strong breeze might make her resign from existence. “Watch Lila’s shoulders and match her timing. Not her face. Her face is a public health hazard.”

“Hey,” Lila said from the mat.

Bree smiled down at her shoes, small and brief, then moved closer to the line.

This was the part people forgot when they looked at me and Cassie like we were just two pretty girls with sharp smiles and matching control issues. Cheer was not decorative. It was timing, strength, memory, balance, and trust. It was bodies moving as one machine, and every weak point mattered. A nervous flyer could break an ankle. A distracted base could break someone else’s neck. A bad captain could make everyone afraid. A bad vice-captain could let the fear spread because she was too busy sulking under fluorescent lights about the stolen magical contraband in her locker, which was only a hypothetical concern if one was feeling generous and bad at evidence.

“Quinveil.”

Cassie’s voice cut across the gym with surgical precision, and my spine noticed before the rest of me did. She stood near the center line, clipboard tucked against her hip, honey-blonde hair pulled into a sleek high ponytail that somehow made her look more terrifying instead of less. Her practice uniform was immaculate, because of course it was. Cassie could crawl through a hedge maze during a thunderstorm and come out looking like she had personally approved the weather.

The first thing that reached me was perfume. Expensive. Artificial. Frosted citrus polished until it had no right to exist in nature, layered with something floral and cold and deliberately pretty. It hit my nose too sharply, the way rich girls’ perfumes always did, all bright edges and money and denial. Under it, quieter and infuriatingly real, came the scent I had started noticing against my will: frosted citrus again, but softer, with white camellia and chilled vanilla musk beneath it. Not sprayed on. Not chosen. Hers. My attention caught on it like fabric on a nail, and I hated that. I hated that I could tell the difference. I hated that some treacherous part of me wanted to lean closer just to be sure.

Cassie’s eyes narrowed like she could hear my thoughts and found them poorly formatted. “Are you planning to join practice today, or are you supervising the mirror?”

A couple of girls near the mats went very still. The squad had a sixth sense for when Cassie and I were about to start circling each other. It was probably a survival adaptation.

I smiled sweetly. “I was checking the floor spacing, actually. You’re welcome.”

“The floor spacing is fine.”

“Harper’s line is drifting three inches left on the diagonal. Emily is anticipating the dip. Tessa is favoring her right ankle, which you would have noticed if you were not emotionally attached to that clipboard, and Bree is late on the back-line arms because she’s watching the floor instead of Lila’s shoulders.”

Bree went red enough that I almost felt bad. Almost.

Tessa, halfway through stretching, looked up with betrayal all over her face. “I am not favoring my ankle.”

“You rotated it twice during attendance,” I said without looking away from Cassie.

Tessa muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “witch,” which was funny for several reasons and safe for exactly none of them. Cassie’s mouth did not move, but her eyes did. They flicked to Tessa’s ankle, then Emily’s shoulders, then Harper’s position near the chalk line, then Bree standing too far back with her water bottle clutched like a shield. One sweep. Clean. Exact. She saw it all because of course she did.

“Congratulations,” Cassie said, turning her attention back to me. “You can count to three inches.”

“Four on a good day.”

Lila made a strangled noise behind her hand. Harper elbowed her.

Cassie’s gaze snapped sideways. “Something funny?”

“No,” Harper said too fast.

Lila, who had never met a survival instinct she could not misplace, mumbled, “Just wondering if you two want us to practice or give you privacy for the divorce hearing.”

The room went quiet just long enough for every girl in it to understand that Lila had chosen violence before stretching. My face heated so fast I felt my glamour tighten in response, not visibly and not enough for anyone human to notice, but under my skin the illusion pulled snug like a seam strained by sudden movement.

Cassie went utterly still. It was not a dramatic stillness. Cassie did not do dramatic unless it came with a witness list and a seating chart. This was worse. This was a freeze so precise it made the room regret having sound.

“Run laps,” she said.

Lila’s eyes widened. “I was kidding.”

“Everyone,” Cassie said, voice smooth as ice over deep water. “Five laps. Since apparently we have enough breath for commentary.”

A collective groan rose and died the instant Cassie lifted one brow. The squad started moving, sneakers squeaking against polished maple as they peeled into a grudging loop around the mat. I should have been irritated, and I was, but I was also still warm around the ears in a way that had nothing to do with magic, which made me want to peel off my own skin and start over with better design choices.

Cassie stepped closer as the others jogged. Her perfume hit first again, bright and false, and under it that real scent waited like a secret I had no right to know.

“You are not helping,” she said quietly.

“I diagnosed four problems before warm-ups.”

“You also encouraged insubordination.”

“I existed while someone else made a joke.”

“You smiled.”

“I have a face. It does things.”

“Control it.”

The words slid under my ribs before I could stop them. Control it. Mother’s voice had said it a thousand ways, with disappointment, with steel, with that awful, polished calm that made every failure sound like a choice I had made to inconvenience her. My hands curled before I could stop them, and Cassie’s gaze dropped briefly to my fingers before I forced them open again.

“I am controlling it,” I said.

Something shifted in her expression. Not softness. Cassie did not do softness, and if she ever did, I assumed she would file a complaint against herself. But her eyes paused on me for half a second too long, like she had seen the sentence land somewhere deeper than she meant it to.

“Then act like my vice-captain,” she said, the pause vanishing under the clean snap of command. “Not my opposition.”

I tilted my head. “Those are not mutually exclusive.”

Her mouth almost twitched, which was not a smile, exactly, but was close enough to be dangerous.

“Positions,” she called.

The squad scrambled back to the mat, lap-flushed and breathless. I clapped twice, sharper than necessary, because I needed the sound to go somewhere outside my body.

“Hydrate after warm-ups,” I said, moving into the center before Cassie could accuse me of merely decorating the room. “Tessa, ankle wrap before stunts. Do not argue. Harper, shift your diagonal right. Emily, eyes on the count, not the ceiling. Bree, you are in the formation, not haunting it. Step up. The ceiling is not going to catch any of you unless Ravenrest has started charging tuition to ghosts.”

A few girls laughed. Tessa rolled her eyes but went for the wrap. Bree stepped forward quickly, then seemed to realize she had moved too fast and tried to make herself smaller again. It was a strange thing to watch someone strong enough to hold another girl in the air behave like her own shadow had more right to the floor.

Cassie watched me while pretending to review the clipboard, which was the problem with her. She never just looked. She assessed. Measured. Filed things away. Every glance felt like a hand finding the hinge of a locked door.

I moved through the warm-up lines, correcting posture and timing with quick touches and quicker words. A shoulder squared here. A chin lifted there. Two fingers tapped against Harper’s elbow.

“Do not collapse inward. You are not a regret.”

Harper snorted. “Noted.”

“Emily, bend with the group. Anticipating makes everyone chase you.”

“I know, I know.”

“You know and yet I am still speaking.”

She fixed it, and routine settled over me with an almost dangerous relief. My body knew what to do here. Count, mark, correct, reset. The gym floor had rules. Gravity had rules. Form had rules. People liked to pretend cheer was all glitter and teeth, but at least a stunt told you immediately when you had failed. It did not keep your baby bracelet in a drawer for seventeen years and then stare at you like you were ungrateful for finding it.

“Five, six, seven, eight,” Cassie called, and the first sequence snapped into place. Arms high. Bodies low. Dip, catch, brace. Sneakers squeaked against polished wood. Breath came in timed bursts. The squad’s voices rose together, bright and practiced, echoing off the rafters until the whole gym seemed to vibrate with it.

I counted under my breath, not because I needed to, but because numbers were hooks and I needed hooks. One, two, hit. Three, four, turn. Five, six, smile. Seven, eight, mask.

On the second lift, Emily’s shoulders crept high.

“Down,” I said, already there. “Trust the bases.”

“I am.”

“You are attempting to levitate through anxiety. Different sport.”

Her laugh came out shaky, but her shoulders dropped.

Cassie’s count did not falter. “Again from the prep.”

A tiny ripple went through the squad. No one groaned this time. They just reset because Cassie had that effect on people. She made resistance feel like a waste of oxygen. We went again, better and cleaner but still not perfect, and when Cassie ordered another repeat, the word struck sparks off the back of my skull.

The study flashed behind my eyes. Mother’s desk. The chandelier. My voice breaking around words I had not planned to say. I do not want to survive you. Glass splitting apart above me like a frozen constellation. Guards entering too late to see what my magic had done. Mother raising one hand and making the whole world stop with two clipped words: stand down.

My foot landed half a beat too hard, and the floor gave a faint squeal beneath my sneaker. Not magic. Just rubber. Just friction. Just my body being dramatic because apparently my bones had decided subtlety was for people with stable family lives.

Cassie’s head turned because of course she saw.

“Quinveil,” she said.

I smiled before she could continue. “Yes, Captain?”

Her eyes sharpened at the title. She liked authority. She hated when I made it sound like a dare.

“Your landing is heavy.”

“It is called commitment.”

“It is called sloppy.”

A few of the girls exchanged looks.

“You want clean, or you want alive?” I asked, pulse kicking. “Because I can give you both, but I charge extra.”

Cassie stepped closer, clipboard lowered now. “I want you to stop performing irritation and fix your form.”

There it was. The pressure point. Not the insult, exactly. The accuracy. My form was fine. My control was not. I could feel the magic sitting beneath my skin, hot and restless, agitated by fluorescent lights and sweat and the remembered sound of shattering glass. My glamour hummed in time with my heartbeat, a tight little song only I could hear. The mirrors along the wall reflected a girl with green eyes and ginger hair and a sharp mouth, but I could feel the truth underneath like fire under paper.

Cassie did not know what she was looking at. She had seen my hand glow once, a flicker, a deniable thing. Weird light. Stress. Reflection. Anything human brains could grab and shove into a safe box. But sometimes she looked at me like she knew there was a box, and worse, like she wanted to open it.

“Fine,” I said, resetting before the silence could sharpen any further.

This time I moved like spite had bones. The pass unfolded cleanly. Roundoff, back handspring, tuck. My body snapped through each motion with brutal precision, and I landed soft, knees bent exactly enough, arms high, smile bright enough to pass for school spirit if nobody looked at my eyes.

The squad actually clapped. Not loudly, because they were not suicidal, but enough. Cassie’s expression did not change, which was how I knew she was annoyed.

“Better,” she said.

“Careful,” I said, breathless. “That sounded dangerously close to praise.”

“Do not get attached.”

“Too late. I’m naming the moment.”

“Mira,” she warned.

Not Quinveil. Mira. My stomach did something complicated and inconvenient, and the room seemed to notice. Lila made a tiny squeaking noise and immediately pretended to cough. Harper stared at the floor with the intensity of a girl praying not to be assigned more laps. Tessa’s mouth twitched. Bree looked between us with wide hazel eyes, clearly unsure whether she had missed a rule in the handbook about what to do when the captain and vice-captain started generating their own weather.

Cassie’s eyes stayed on mine for half a second too long before she turned away and called, “Full run-through. From the top. If anyone drops count, we start again.”

Everyone groaned this time.

I clapped my hands once. “You heard her. From the top. Emily, stay with the count through the prep, not after. Harper, find your mark. Bree, stop apologizing with your shoulders. Tessa, ankle?”

“Wrapped,” Tessa said, lifting her foot.

“Miracle of obedience.”

“Do not call it that,” she muttered.

I moved into place before anyone could see my hands shake.

The full routine always changed the room. Warm-ups were pieces. Drills were mechanics. The full run turned us into something else: a machine made of muscle, memory, fear, and bright fake smiles. Cassie stood at the front with her count like a weapon. I stood inside the formation, feeling every weak line around me.

Music cracked through the speakers, too loud, bass rattling under my feet. My senses hated it immediately. Too much sound. Too much light. Too much synthetic citrus layered over floor polish and sweat and Cassie’s perfume and Cassie under the perfume, real and cool and impossible not to find. I told myself to move, so I moved.

The squad hit the first formation. Arms up. Step, turn, drop. My body knew the sequence before my mind caught up. I caught Emily’s eye before the lift and nodded once. She swallowed, then nodded back.

Good.

Cassie’s count cut through the music. “One, two, three, four.”

The toss went up, perfect for half a heartbeat before Harper’s grip slipped. Not much. Barely anything. Enough. Emily’s body tilted off center, the bases shifted late, and a breath of panic passed through the group, tiny and lethal.

I moved before thought. My hands caught Emily’s waist as she came down wrong. I took her full weight easily, redirected her momentum into my body, and set her on her feet before the wobble could become a fall. To anyone else, it probably looked quick. Lucky, maybe. Good reflexes. A vice-captain doing what she was supposed to do. To me, it felt like catching a dropped jacket, and that was the problem. I was not as strong as a full fae. Mother had made sure I knew that. Court trainers had made sure. Every sparring match, every controlled exercise, every carefully worded lesson about my human blood and my limits. But human limits were not mine either. Compared to the boys swaggering through Ravenrest hallways with protein shakes and fragile confidence, I was a loaded weapon in a pleated skirt. I hid that almost as carefully as my ears.

Emily clutched my arms, shaking. “I’m sorry.”

“Do not apologize while vertical,” I said, keeping my voice light because her eyes had gone wide and wet. “Vertical is winning.”

A few nervous laughs scattered through the formation as Cassie crossed the floor. She did not run, because Cassie Fairborn did not run unless the building was on fire, and even then she would probably walk briskly to prove a point. But she crossed fast, eyes flicking over Emily, Harper, me, the bases. Her gaze caught on the way I was holding Emily upright without strain, one arm still around her waist, not even breathing hard from the catch.

I let go too late.

Cassie saw. Her face gave away nothing.

“Are you hurt?” she asked Emily.

Emily shook her head. “No. Mira caught me.”

Cassie looked at me again.

I smiled like I had not just made a mistake by making something difficult look easy. “Heroism looks good on me.”

“Humility would be a refreshing accessory.”

“I’m allergic.”

Cassie’s eyes narrowed by the smallest possible degree, not at the joke but at my body, my hands, my breathing. Cataloguing. The question sat there between us, invisible to everyone else, because she wanted to know how I had done that and she was too smart to ask in front of the squad.

“Harper,” she said without looking away from me, “your grip broke because your thumb was wrong. Fix it before you put someone on the floor.”

Harper went pale. “Yes, Cassie.”

“Emily, you anticipated the dip again.”

“I know.”

“Mira,” Cassie said, and the room held still around my name.

I lifted my brows. “Yes?”

Her gaze lingered one last second on my face, like she was waiting for some crack in the explanation to show itself. “Stop catching people like you are trying to win a martyrdom scholarship.”

“That is very hurtful. I already submitted my application.”

“I will reject it personally.”

“Abuse of power.”

“Consider it leadership.”

The squad’s tension broke into cautious laughter.

Cassie’s mouth tightened, but not quite in annoyance. “Water. Three minutes. Then we reset the lift sequence until nobody nearly dies.”

“Your compassion is inspiring.”

“Your sarcasm is dehydrated.”

She tossed me the water bottle with no warning and no ceremony, just a clean arc through the cold gym air. I caught it one-handed against my chest. It was her bottle, not one from the communal crate. Hers. Still cold from the insulated sleeve. Pale blue, expensive, the cap twisted exactly closed.

My fingers wrapped around it.

Cassie looked away first.

“Drink,” she said. “Before you melt the floor.”

My pulse stopped for only a second, but a second was enough. The comment should have been nothing. A joke. A captain snapping at an overheated teammate after a difficult stunt. But her eyes flicked once toward my hands, then toward the faint dull spot on the polished floor where my sneaker had hit too hard during the pass. There was no scorch mark. There could have been.

“What, worried about maintenance fees?” I asked, because sarcasm was cheaper than panic and less likely to glow.

Cassie’s gaze came back to mine. “I’m worried you’ll make Coach Lennox fill out paperwork, and she gets vindictive when forced to spell your name correctly.”

“Quinveil is not hard to spell.”

“She dislikes unnecessary letters.”

“I have never been unnecessary in my life.”

“No,” Cassie said, too quietly for most of the squad to hear. “That is not your problem.”

The words slid between us and stayed there. Not kind. Not cruel. Something else. I hated something else.

I twisted open the bottle and drank because my throat had forgotten what water was. It tasted faintly of lemon and mint, probably because Cassie could not even hydrate without aesthetic tyranny. The cold shocked down my throat and settled hard in my stomach.

When I handed it back, she did not take it.

“Keep it until we are done.”

“It has your initials on it.”

“I know.”

“I could contaminate it with my ego.”

“I’ll risk it.”

Across the mat, Tessa whispered, “This is painful.”

Lila whispered back, “Practice has become foreplay for the whole team, and frankly, I did not consent to the emotional labor.”

Harper slapped a hand over Lila’s mouth, but a laugh burst out of me before I could stop it.

Cassie turned her head slowly. The entire squad discovered the ceiling, the floor, their shoelaces, and several personal relationships with God.

“You know,” Tessa said, apparently deciding that if Lila had already opened the gates of hell, someone might as well walk through them, “you two could just make out already and save the rest of us a lot of tension.”

Bree made a tiny horrified noise. Emily whispered, “Oh my god, Tessa.”

My body reacted before my brain could produce anything useful. Heat shot up my neck, sharp enough that the glamour cinched tight around my ears, and my fingers clamped so hard around Cassie’s water bottle that the plastic gave a faint, complaining creak. I loosened my grip instantly, but not before Cassie’s gaze dropped to my hand and snapped back to my face with the same terrible precision she brought to everything else.

“Absolutely not,” I said, too fast and too sharp.

Cassie’s chin lifted. “No one asked you to provide a rebuttal.”

“I am preemptively defending my dignity.”

“Bold strategy, considering the evidence.”

The squad made a sound halfway between laughter and fear, which was probably the correct response to standing too close to whatever Cassie and I were doing. Tessa’s grin widened, but Cassie’s expression became serene in the way oceans were serene right before swallowing ships.

“Interesting,” Cassie said. “Since everyone has enough energy to narrate, we will reset from the lift sequence and run it until I stop hearing opinions.”

Tessa’s mouth opened, then closed again. Lila, still half-smothered by Harper’s hand, mumbled, “Worth it.”

“It will not be,” Cassie said.

She was right.

We ran the lift sequence until my legs turned to static and the squad stopped looking amused. I corrected Harper’s grip twice, adjusted Emily’s timing, repositioned Bree when she tried to fade behind the back line again, and snapped at the bases when their arms went soft. Cassie called counts, I fixed bodies, and the squad moved between us like they were trapped in the weather pattern caused by two colliding fronts. It worked, which was the worst part. Cassie’s precision gave the room shape. My attention kept it human. She saw flaws like numbers on a page, I saw the half-second before someone lost nerve, the tiny hitch before a mistake, the way fear traveled through shoulders before it reached hands, and together we made the squad better, which was a disgusting concept I chose to ignore for my own health.

By the final run, the routine landed clean. No wobbles. No broken timing. No panicked flyers. The last formation hit with a satisfying thud of sneakers, hands sharp, smiles bright, the whole squad holding the final pose while the music cut. Cassie let the silence hang for one breath before clapping once.

“Acceptable.”

Everyone groaned.

I dropped my arms and stared at her. “Acceptable?”

Cassie capped her pen and looked at me over the clipboard. “Did you need a parade?”

“Actually, yes. I have specifications.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“I want tasteful banners. Minimal brass. No horses unless they are emotionally prepared.”

Emily giggled. Harper bent over with her hands on her knees, laughing through exhaustion. Even Bree smiled, though she tried to hide it by looking into her water bottle as if the punchline had fallen in.

Cassie’s eyes lingered on me again, and for one strange second, the sharpness between us shifted. Not softened. Never that. But adjusted, like a blade turning flat against skin instead of cutting.

“Cooldowns,” she said, looking away before I could decide what the shift meant. “No one leaves without stretching. I catch anyone skipping, tomorrow becomes conditioning.”

The threat worked because it always did. We moved into cooldown stretches, the gym settling into a looser noise of breath, water bottles, and sneakers sliding against polished wood. The far door squeaked as someone from volleyball peeked in and immediately retreated from the emotional climate. I knelt near Tessa and checked the ankle wrap.

“Too tight?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

She sighed and loosened it. “You’re annoying.”

“I am preserving your future ability to walk. Gratitude is traditional.”

“Thank you, your highness.”

The title hit wrong. Not because she knew. She did not. Humans used it as a joke. Ravenrest girls called each other queen, princess, your highness whenever someone acted dramatic or rich or both. But my skin still tightened around the words. Your highness. Mother’s study flashed again. The bracelet. Mira. Flame glyph. A name engraved too carefully to be casual.

Cassie’s gaze found me across the room, because of course it did. I looked down first and pretended to inspect the wrap.

Practice ended with Cassie clapping twice, sharp and final. “Dismissed. Emily, Harper, Lila, ten minutes early tomorrow. Tessa, ice the ankle. Bree, stay on count even when you think no one is watching. Mira, do not disappear.”

My head snapped up. “Excuse me?”

“The project,” she said, like I was slow and she was suffering nobly through it. “Study room four. Library. After you change.”

The squad scattered around us, a wave of chatter and relief heading toward the locker room. Bree lingered just long enough to give Cassie a quick nod, then ducked after Emily like she was grateful to escape without becoming part of whatever argument came next.

I stood. “Is that a request or a royal decree?”

Cassie’s eyes flicked over me, not down my body, which would have been less dangerous, but over the sweat at my hairline, the flush in my cheeks, the water bottle still in my hand, the easy posture I had forced back over too much strength and too many secrets.

“A scheduled meeting,” she said. “Try not to make it dramatic.”

“I never make anything dramatic.”

Three girls laughed as they passed.

Cassie did not even look at them. “You once turned a student council sign-up table into a competitive ranking system with color-coded loyalty tiers.”

“That was administrative innovation.”

“It was the second day of school.”

“Exactly. Early intervention matters.”

Cassie’s mouth did that almost thing again. Almost smile. Almost murder. Hard to tell with her.

“Study room four,” she repeated.

“I heard you.”

“Did you understand me?”

“I’m choosing not to answer because my reply would be considered disrespectful in most cultures.”

“Excellent. Progress.”

She turned and walked toward the locker room, ponytail swinging, clipboard tucked under one arm like an extension of her skeleton. I watched her go for one second too long before I looked down at the bottle in my hand. Cassandra F. was printed in small white letters near the base, and I hated that I noticed. I hated that I turned the bottle so my thumb covered the name before anyone else could see me looking.

The side hall to the locker room was colder than the gym. The fluorescent lights buzzed in a lower pitch here, not louder exactly, but closer to the inside of my skull. The walls were painted slate gray and wine red, glossy enough to reflect blurred versions of us as we moved: human girls with damp hair and tired legs and too much expensive deodorant, plus one glamoured half-fae with her captain’s water bottle pressed to her ribs like a cursed artifact. Normal, if the definition of normal had been beaten senseless and left in a decorative hallway.

I stopped at my locker, second column, third from the end, the same one I always used because it was far enough from the mirrors to avoid constant reflection and close enough to the showers that I could escape conversation if needed. Familiar numbers turned beneath my fingers. Right. Left. Right. Click. Little rituals kept the world from fraying.

The locker opened with a metallic groan, and I saw the emergency hoodie exactly where I had left it, rumpled over the things I could not let anyone else notice. That was all the attention I let myself give them. If I thought too long about the book, the shard, or the bracelet waiting at home, I would lose the thread of the room, and the room had Cassie in it.

Cassie’s bottle went onto the shelf while I stripped off practice piece by piece with the mechanical precision of someone defusing herself. Shoes off. Socks peeled down. Skirt folded. Top tugged over my head. Each item had a place. Each seam had to line up. Press, fold, smooth. Press, fold, smooth.

“Are you coming tomorrow?” Emily asked from two lockers down, her voice muffled as she pulled a sweatshirt over her head.

“Early practice?”

“Cassie told us to.”

“Then yes. Someone has to make sure she does not turn you into synchronized corpses.”

Emily smiled. “You two work well together.”

I stared at her.

She immediately looked alarmed. “I mean as captains. Co-captains. Captain and vice-captain. Whatever. Not, like, emotionally.”

“Emily.”

“I’m going to stop talking.”

“Excellent choice.”

She fled toward the sinks, and I turned back to my locker only to find Cassie’s reflection in the mirror across the aisle. She was not looking at me, technically. She was standing at her own locker in a sports bra and practice shorts, hair loosened from its ponytail, face still composed in that infuriating way that made sweat look like an intentional styling choice. Her gaze was angled toward the open door of her locker, but the mirror caught enough of her eyes for me to know she was aware of me.

The locker room was not quiet. It never was after practice. Hair dryers whined. Showers hissed. Someone complained about homework. Someone else debated whether Coach Lennox had a secret vendetta against knees. Perfume bloomed thickly in the humid air, layered over shampoo, sweat, deodorant, damp towels, and the metallic tang of old pipes. Bree moved through it almost silently, changing with her shoulders turned inward, folding each piece of her uniform with careful little motions like she was afraid of doing even that too loudly.

Cassie’s artificial perfume sharpened through it all, and then that real scent beneath it found me again. Frosted citrus. White camellia. Chilled vanilla musk.

I shoved my towel under one arm and closed my locker too hard.

Cassie’s eyes flicked to me in the mirror. “Problem?”

“No.”

“Convincing.”

“Do you practice being unbearable, or is it natural talent?”

“Leadership requires consistency.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?”

Her gaze dipped briefly to my hands, then to the locker shelf where her bottle sat. “You should be more careful.”

“With what?”

“People falling on you.”

“I caught her.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is literally the answer.”

“You caught her too easily.”

The words were quiet enough that the nearest girls, busy arguing over shampoo, did not hear. I did. My body did too. It went still in the practiced way of prey pretending the woods had not noticed it.

“Would you rather I dropped her?” I asked, turning slowly enough to make it look like annoyance instead of alarm.

Cassie’s face did not shift, but her eyes sharpened. “Do not be deliberately obtuse.”

“Then stop asking questions you do not want answered.”

That landed. Not loudly. Not visibly. But it landed. Her gaze held mine in the mirror, blue and cold and far too awake. For a second, the locker room blurred around us: steam, voices, fluorescent buzz, the squeak of a locker hinge. All of it thinned beneath the pressure of her attention.

Then Tessa called from the sinks, “If you two are fighting again, please do it at a volume the rest of us can follow.”

Lila added, “Or get a room with better acoustics.”

Bree dropped her hairbrush.

The locker room erupted into laughter. I did not laugh. Cassie did not laugh. Which made it worse. My skin went too hot, too fast, the glamour tightening against the rise of heat while the mirror showed green eyes, a human face, ginger hair escaping my ponytail in damp wisps. Normal. Normal. Normal.

Cassie’s expression turned glacial.

“Tessa,” she said.

Tessa froze with a hairbrush in one hand. “Yes?”

“Tomorrow you are leading jumps.”

Tessa’s mouth fell open. “That is cruel.”

“Leadership requires consistency,” I said under my breath.

Cassie looked at me, I looked at her, and the locker room laughed again, louder this time. For one breath the sound was almost easy. Almost normal. Girls teasing after practice. Captains bickering. Nothing glowing under skin. Nothing sharp-edged and impossible pressing from inside my chest every time Cassie Fairborn saw too much. Then Cassie looked away first, which did not feel like victory so much as the room tilting in a direction I had not approved.

The showers at Ravenrest were communal in the way expensive schools always pretended was character-building instead of simply inconvenient. Slate-gray tile, wine-red trim, stainless steel showerheads in two long rows, partial dividers that suggested privacy without actually committing to the concept. Steam had already started softening the edges of the room by the time I stepped under the nearest spray and kept my eyes on the wall with the focus of someone who definitely had no interest in where anyone else was standing.

The water hit hot enough to sting, and my glamour tightened around the heat. I kept my ears rounded, my eyes green, my hair ginger-dark beneath the spray. I kept every inch of myself acceptable because there was no such thing as alone in a place like Ravenrest, not with girls laughing three showerheads down, Bree apologizing to someone because her shampoo bottle had rolled under the bench, and Cassie Fairborn stepping under the spray across the aisle like the universe had decided subtlety was beneath it.

I did not look.

Looking would have been idiotic.

Looking would have meant something.

So I stared at the tile until the grout lines blurred, which was unfortunately its own kind of looking because now I was extremely aware of everything I was not looking at. Cassie’s perfume thinned under the water, artificial citrus and polish washing away just enough for the real scent beneath to sharpen. Frosted citrus. White camellia. Chilled vanilla musk. It threaded through steam and shampoo and heat, impossible and clean, and my magic stirred under my skin like a cat lifting its head at a sound only it could hear.

I pressed my palms flat to the tile.

“Are you always this quiet after practice?” Cassie asked.

Her voice came from across the aisle, close enough to cut through the shower noise without being loud. Most of the squad had shifted toward the far end, still laughing over Tessa’s punishment, leaving a pocket of steam and water around us that felt much more private than it had any right to be.

“I assumed you preferred silence,” I said. “You seem like someone who has opinions about breathing volume.”

“I have opinions about evasions.”

“Then it must be exhausting being you.”

“Less exhausting than being whatever you’re pretending to be.”

The water kept running over my shoulders. I felt each drop too clearly, every hot line of it sliding over glamoured skin while my body tried to decide whether the correct response was fury, panic, or something with no name and therefore no jurisdiction.

I glanced at her despite myself.

Cassie stood beneath the spray with her hair slicked back, one hand braced against the tile, water tracking down her face in clean lines. She looked less untouchable like this and more dangerous, which felt unfair. People should not become sharper when stripped of blazer armor and perfect hair. There should be rules.

“What am I pretending to be?” I asked.

Her gaze did not drop. That was somehow worse. “Normal.”

The word hit the tile between us and spread through the steam.

I laughed once, short and ugly. “That’s rich coming from Ravenrest’s patron saint of controlled damage.”

Her mouth tightened. “You think I don’t know what you do?”

“I think you know everything and understand almost none of it.”

“I understand that Emily fell wrong and you caught her like she weighed nothing.”

“She’s tiny.”

“She is a trained flyer with momentum.”

“Adrenaline is adorable.”

“Adrenaline does not make you look bored.”

The laugh almost came again, but it got stuck somewhere behind my teeth. Cassie was too close to the truth, not the full truth, not the impossible parts, but close enough to make the walls feel thin. I could lie to most people by letting them finish the lie for me. Cassie kept refusing to do the work. She kept standing there with those icy eyes, waiting for the part of me that could not lie to trip over the silence.

“I wasn’t bored,” I said.

“No,” she said, and the water softened her voice without making it gentle. “You were scared after.”

I hated her for seeing that. I hated her more because she was wrong by exactly one degree, which made the truth itch.

“Maybe I was scared because my captain keeps threatening the entire squad with conditioning every time someone develops a personality.”

“Mira.”

There it was again. My name, not my surname, not clipped like a correction but shaped like she meant to pin me with it. I gripped the tile harder, and heat flashed under my palms before I smothered it down.

Cassie’s eyes flicked to my hands.

I pulled them away from the wall and crossed my arms, which was a spectacularly stupid thing to do in a communal shower while already trying not to be aware of my own skin. Cassie noticed that too. Of course she did. Her attention moved like a blade, never hurried, never dull.

“You are impossible,” I said.

“And you are avoiding the question.”

“There was no question.”

“There was an observation.”

“Then observe quieter.”

One of the girls at the far end laughed at something Lila said, and the sound bounced off tile, bright and oblivious. Cassie did not look away from me. Neither did I. Steam curled between us, turning the fluorescent lights soft and strange, and for one dangerous second the whole room seemed to narrow to her eyes, my pulse, and the effort of keeping every forbidden part of myself tucked beneath human skin.

Cassie finally reached for the wall dispenser and pushed shampoo into her palm with unnecessary precision. “Study room four. Fifteen minutes after you stop pretending the shower is a battlefield.”

“It is a battlefield. The water pressure is political.”

“Then surrender efficiently.”

“I don’t surrender.”

Her gaze returned to mine, and something almost amused moved beneath the frost. “I noticed.”

I should have had an answer. I always had an answer. Something sharp, something easy, something that turned the moment sideways before it could touch me. Instead, my brain supplied the image of her stepping closer in the steam, and my entire body responded with a burst of heat so abrupt that the glamour prickled along my ears.

Absolutely not.

I turned back into the spray before my face could betray me any worse. “You are wasting your fifteen minutes.”

“I’m excellent at budgeting time.”

“You’re excellent at making people wish time were over.”

“Study room four, Quinveil.”

The surname helped. It put a wall back where one had started to crack. I held onto it like dignity.

“Fine, Fairborn.”

She shut off her shower first and stepped away, taking her real scent with her until the air became merely soap, steam, and the sour bite of my own nerves. I stayed under the water longer than I needed, not because I wanted to think about Mother, the book, the shard, or anything waiting in my locker, but because my skin still remembered Cassie’s eyes and I needed the heat inside me to settle into something I could carry without setting off alarms.

By the time I returned to the lockers, most of the squad had thinned into hallway chatter and hair-dryer whine. Bree was still near the sinks, carefully smoothing her chestnut hair with both hands and watching Cassie from the corner of her eye like she was studying a language she wanted badly to speak. She looked away when she caught me noticing and busied herself with the zipper on her bag.

Cassie was already dressed in her Ravenrest uniform, blazer crisp, skirt perfect, hair twisted into a neat low ponytail that looked effortless in the way only labor could produce. Slate gray and wine red should have made everyone look slightly severe. On Cassie, the colors looked like they had volunteered.

She glanced up from her phone as I passed in my towel. Not in a way anyone could accuse. Not openly. Nothing so simple. Just a pause, a fractional delay at the wet hair against my neck, the towel clutched high, the bare feet on tile, the glamoured version of me still holding itself together under steam and cold light.

My grip tightened.

Cassie’s expression shuttered. “Study room four. Twelve minutes.”

“I thought I had fifteen.”

“You wasted three glaring at tile.”

“My relationship with tile is private.”

“Your relationship with punctuality is nonexistent.”

“My vanity is efficient.”

“Your locker organization suggests otherwise.”

I stopped because Cassie’s eyes had moved to my locker. Not open. Closed. Innocent. Metal. Entirely too close to everything I could not let her see yet.

“Are you spying on my locker now?” I asked lightly.

“I am observing a pattern of delay.”

“That sounds like spying with a thesaurus.”

“It sounds like you are late already.”

“Obsessed.”

Her eyes cut to mine. “Do not make me regret reserving the room.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it” rose by reflex, bright and easy and false enough to catch behind my teeth. I swallowed the hitch, tilted my head, and let the almost-lie become something safer. “Dreams are private, Fairborn.” 

Something flickered across her face, too quick and too interesting to name, before she turned toward the door. “Eleven minutes.”

The locker room door swung shut behind her, and the air felt different without her in it. Less sharp. Less charged. Easier to breathe and somehow worse for it.

I dressed quickly because she had gotten under my skin and I refused to give her the satisfaction of being right about vanity. Uniform blouse. Skirt. Socks. Boots. Blazer. Tie loosened because the top button felt like a hand at my throat. Hair towel-dried and twisted into something that could pass for intentional if viewed from a respectful distance. The mirror showed Mira Quinveil, human, pretty, slightly flushed, green-eyed, ginger-haired, normal enough to survive a hallway, and I stared just long enough to make sure the mask did not blink first.

When I opened my locker, I did not let myself hesitate. Practice uniform on the shelf. Deodorant. Spare hair ties. Cassie’s water bottle, which I had somehow forgotten to return because apparently my brain had chosen humiliation as a long-term residence. Then the emergency hoodie. Under that, the weight of the book.

I slid the tome into my backpack between my history textbook and binder, tucked the hoodie around it so the shape would not show, and touched the front pocket where the shard sat wrapped in its sock. It pulsed once against my fingertips, faint enough that I could pretend I had imagined it if denial were a sport and I had not already overqualified.

“Not now,” I whispered.

The empty locker room did not answer, which was good because if objects started talking back, I was going home and becoming someone else’s problem.

The zipper closed cleanly. I checked it once, not three times, because Cassie was waiting and because if I started treating the bag like an altar I might never leave the locker room. The weight pulled against my shoulder when I lifted it. I grabbed Cassie’s bottle from the shelf and shoved it into the side pocket, telling myself I was returning borrowed property like a normal person and not carrying an excuse to keep something of hers in reach for eleven more minutes.

The hallway outside the locker room was almost empty. Late-afternoon light poured through the narrow windows, harsh and golden, turning dust motes into tiny floating sparks. The air beyond the gym corridor felt warmer already, the school’s AC losing its grip near the older parts of the building. Outside, Infernalight pressed itself against the glass, humid and relentless. Students moved in loose clusters toward dorms, cars, clubs, dinner, lives that probably did not involve hiding ancient books under trig worksheets or walking into study rooms with girls who noticed too much.

My boots clicked against the floor, and each step counted itself. One, two, three, mask. Four, five, six, do not glow. Seven, eight, do not turn back.

I passed the trophy cases near the athletics wing, where silver cups and framed photos showed cheer squads from years ago frozen mid-jump, all bright smiles and impossible hair. Ravenrest loved preserving victories in glass. It loved anything polished enough to hide the cost. My reflection moved beside the trophies as I walked, backpack slung over one shoulder, chin lifted, mouth set in a line that could pass for confidence if nobody knew how to read tension. Green eyes. Ginger hair. Human girl.

Ahead, somewhere beyond the next corridor and the old marble stairs, Cassie Fairborn was waiting in study room four with her color-coded folders, dangerous questions, and eyes sharp enough to notice the first crack in any story.

I should have turned around. I should have gone home, put the book back, buried the shard, left the bracelet hidden in its sock, and pretended Mother’s silence was mercy instead of a trap. I should have remembered that humans were not supposed to see behind the curtain, and Cassandra Fairborn was the worst possible human to hand even one loose thread. But Cassie had asked for something real, and I was so tired of being the only real thing in my life no one was allowed to name.

So I adjusted the strap digging into my shoulder, squared my posture, and walked toward the library with forbidden history in my backpack.