Astrid
The conductor’s voice pulled me out of a sleep I hadn’t really fallen into. "Moonshade Academy, next stop."
I hadn’t slept, not really. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her, that last look she gave me through the crack in the floor, the light going out of her all at once. I wiped my face quickly before anyone could see I’d been crying, smoothing my hair back with hands that still didn’t feel steady.
Then I looked out the window and forgot, just for a second, why I was even here.
The train slowed as it passed through iron gates taller than any building I’d ever seen, the academy crest worked into the metal in gold. Beyond it, the school rose up like something out of a story, towers and stone walls, training arenas stretched out across green fields, a forest pressing in dark and endless at the edges of it all. Students crowded the windows around me, pointing, gasping, already talking about which dorm they’d been placed in.
I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life.
For one breath, I let myself just look at it. Then I remembered why I was sitting on this train wearing a dead woman’s warning folded up in my pocket, and the beauty of it all turned into something closer to dread.
The station was chaos when I stepped off, packed with students and their families. Everywhere I looked there was money. Designer luggage stacked on carts. Servants trailing behind with armfuls of bags. Parents fussing over their children’s collars, offering last bits of advice before letting them go. I stood there with my one worn satchel against my hip and felt, for the first time, exactly how out of place I was.
I found the registration line and joined it, keeping my eyes down. The girl in front of me was complaining loudly to her friend, something about how scholarship students shouldn’t even be allowed to attend a school like this, how it lowered the standard. I said nothing. I’d learned a long time ago that silence cost less than pride.
When it was my turn, I handed my papers across the desk. The registrar studied them for a long moment, her eyes flicking up to my face and back down again.
"First year?"
I nodded.
She slid a key across the desk, along with a folded uniform, a schedule, and a campus map. "Orientation starts in an hour," she said, already looking past me to the next student in line.
I’d barely turned to leave when a cheer went up outside, loud enough to shake the windows. Students abandoned the line entirely, rushing toward the courtyard, and someone shouted over the noise.
"The Ashwood twins are here!"
I went still.
Ashwood. My mother’s voice came back to me, the note crumpled in my satchel. The Lycan King’s sons. My stepbrothers, if that word even meant anything to people like them.
My fingers tightened around the strap of my bag until my knuckles ached.
I told myself to walk away. I told myself I had no reason to look. But my feet carried me toward the courtyard anyway, curiosity winning out over every warning I’d given myself, and I stayed at the back of the crowd where no one would notice me.
Two black cars pulled up in front of the academy steps, and the doors opened.
The first twin stepped out and the whole courtyard seemed to quiet. He was calm, expressionless, his gaze sweeping over the crowd like he was already bored of it. Students actually lowered their heads as he passed. I didn’t know his name yet, but I understood instantly that whatever he wanted, people gave him.
Then the second one climbed out, grinning, waving at the crowd like he’d been born for exactly this kind of attention. Girls around me started screaming.
"They’re even more handsome than last year," someone whispered beside me, breathless.
I wasn’t thinking about how handsome they were. I was staring at their faces, searching for something I didn’t want to find. A jaw. A set of eyes. Anything that might tell me whether the man who killed my mother had passed himself down into these two boys standing thirty feet away from me.
I didn’t get an answer before I made myself turn and slip back into the crowd, putting bodies between us before either of them could look my way.
I had no intention of ever getting close enough to find out.
My dorm room was small, but it was clean, and after everything that had happened, clean felt like more than I deserved. I set my satchel on the bed and let myself breathe for the first time all day.
The peace didn’t last long. A few minutes later the door burst open and a girl came in dragging three suitcases behind her, already talking before she’d even gotten the door shut.
"Okay, so the elevator on this side of the building is broken, which is completely typical, and I had to carry all of this up two flights of stairs, and I swear if my roommate turns out to be one of those silent judgmental types I might actually—" She stopped, looked up, and grinned like she’d just remembered I existed. "Hi! I’m Ivy."
Despite everything, I felt the corner of my mouth pull up. "Astrid."
Ivy dropped onto her bed and kept talking, filling the room with more energy than I’d had in weeks, rattling off everything she knew about the academy, the professors, the food in the dining hall. I let it wash over me, grateful for the noise, grateful for something that wasn’t silence and grief.
Then she said, casually, like it was nothing at all, "You’ll probably see the Ashwood twins a lot, by the way. They’re basically the kings of this place."
I forced a smile and nodded along, letting her think I was just another starstruck first year.
Inside, one thought kept circling, sharp as a blade.
I’ll never let them find out who I am.