Astrid
We were back in her room at the brothel, coins spread across the sheets, my mother laughing as she stacked them into neat little towers.
"When we have enough," she said, not looking up, "I’m taking you everywhere."
She reached for the map tacked to the wall behind her, tracing one finger across it like she’d memorized every line a hundred times over. "The Crystal Coast. The capital. Moonshade Academy, if you ever wanted to see it properly instead of scrubbing someone else’s floor." Her finger stopped on a corner of the map I didn’t recognize. "The royal gardens. I hear they smell like something out of a dream."
"We’ll never afford all that," I said, laughing.
She grinned, wicked and warm all at once. "Then I’ll steal from richer men."
We both laughed, and for one perfect stretch of time, nothing hurt. Nothing was coming for either of us.
Then the room changed.
I was reaching for her, my hand stretched across the space between us, but every time I got close enough to touch her, he was already there first, a shadow with a crown, standing between us like he’d always been standing there. I opened my mouth to scream at him, to warn her, to do anything at all, and no sound came out. Nothing. My voice had disappeared entirely, and all I could do was watch her face fall the second she understood what I already knew.
I woke up gasping, the sheets tangled around my legs, sweat cooling fast against my skin in the dark.
It wasn’t real. None of it had happened that way. But grief didn’t seem to care what had actually occurred, only that I’d lived and she hadn’t, and some deep, stupid part of me had apparently decided that made it my fault.
I lay there until my heart stopped slamming, then gave up on sleep entirely and slipped out of bed.
The apartment was silent, moonlight slanting across the marble floor as I padded toward the kitchen. I flipped on the light and immediately regretted it.
Dirty plates stacked in the sink. Glasses scattered across the counter. A pan sitting there with something burnt and crusted onto the bottom of it, clearly abandoned mid-disaster.
"Animals," I muttered, already reaching for the tap.
It had nothing to do with being anyone’s maid. I simply couldn’t stand looking at a mess this bad without doing something about it, some old habit from years of scrubbing floors that no amount of trauma seemed able to override.
"Morning."
I jumped hard enough to nearly drop a glass.
Reed stood in the doorway, already dressed, a mug of coffee in one hand and his phone in the other, scrolling through something with the kind of calm that made it clear he’d been awake for a while. Neither of us had expected company this early.
"...Morning," I managed, turning back to the sink.
He didn’t say anything else for a moment, just leaned against the counter and watched me work through the last of the dishes.
"You didn’t have to do those," he said eventually.
"I know," I said, and left it at that.
Neither of us pushed for more. It wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly. Just quiet, two people who didn’t know what to say to each other yet, sharing a kitchen at an hour too early for anything more complicated than silence.
Exactly one hour later, the peace shattered.
A door slammed open somewhere down the hall, followed by a crash that sounded suspiciously like a lamp hitting the floor.
"Where’s my uniform?!"
I closed my eyes. Reed didn’t even glance up from his coffee, apparently used to this particular disaster.
Xander came skidding into the kitchen half-dressed, hair a mess, patting down every surface like his blazer might materialize out of thin air. "I swear someone moved my clothes. I hung them up right here last night, I remember doing it—"
"Did you check under the couch?" I asked flatly.
He stopped. "...Why would they be under the—"
He checked anyway.
Silence.
"...Found them."
Reed sighed into his mug without looking up. "Like every Monday."
I had to bite the inside of my cheek hard to keep from laughing outright.
The walk to school did nothing to help my mood settle. The three of us leaving the apartment together drew eyes immediately, whispers trailing us across the courtyard like a wake behind a ship.
"They’re living together already?"
"Look who’s walking with the princes now."
"She’s unbelievable."
I kept my eyes forward and ignored all of it, until I spotted Selene standing near the fountain, perfectly still, watching our approach with a smile that hadn’t changed at all. Only her eyes gave anything away, sharp and cold enough that I was fairly sure she was already planning something.
Ivy came sprinting over before I could think too hard about it. "You’re alive!"
"Barely," I said, and she pulled me into a hug tight enough to rival Reed’s grip on his coffee mug.
"Okay, tell me everything. Did they snore? Did they kick you out in the middle of the night? Did they make you cook for them?"
"One lost his uniform," I said. "One drank coffee in complete silence. That’s genuinely all that happened."
Ivy blinked, visibly disappointed. "...That’s somehow worse than what I imagined."
History class started normally enough, until the professor began reading out group topics one by one.
"Group Seven," he announced eventually. "Reed Ashwood. Xander Ashwood. Astrid."
He glanced down at his notes. "Your topic is the Lost Lycan Bloodlines."
My smile dropped for exactly one second before I caught it and smoothed it back over, hoping nobody had noticed.
Reed’s eyes flicked toward me anyway, just briefly, like he’d caught something even if he didn’t know what it meant yet.
Back at the apartment that evening, the silence stretched long enough to feel deliberate before Reed finally spoke, setting his notebook down on the table between us.
"We should divide the work," he said, already sketching out sections on a blank page. "I’ll take the political history. Xander can cover the territorial disputes, and—"
"I’ll handle the research," I said, cutting in before he could finish.
Both of them looked at me.
I kept my face as calm as I could manage, even though underneath it my heart was pounding hard enough that I was half convinced they could hear it. If this project really meant digging into forgotten bloodlines, I couldn’t risk either of them stumbling onto something that led anywhere close to me.
I had to control it. All of it, from the very first page to the last.
Reed didn’t answer right away. He just studied me for a long moment, something unreadable behind his eyes, before he finally nodded and went back to his notes. "You seem very interested in this topic."
I replied almost immediately, "History is my best subject."
"Fine by me," Xander said with a shrug, already losing interest and reaching for the remote. "Less work for me."
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, and hoped it hadn’t been loud enough for either of them to notice.
Reed looked back down at his notebook.
"Tomorrow," he said. "We’ll begin in the restricted archives."
I froze. The restricted archives. The one place in the academy most likely to contain records I never wanted anyone to read.