"You know." His voice is flat. "You told me to."
I don't confirm or deny. I don't need to.
"The pressure continues," I say instead. "Atlas, keep her off-balance. Storms, electrical interference, whatever you can do without causing permanent damage. Felix, you've already been running your experiments—keep it up. And Ren—"
"I know what you want me to do."
"Good."
The room is quiet for a moment. Shadows curl in the corners, thick and dark and familiar. I watch them without meaning to—the way they move, the way they breathe, the way they've always felt more like home than anywhere else.
"Callum." Felix's voice cuts through the silence. "What aren't you telling us?"
I meet his eyes. Hold them.
"Nothing you need to know."
He doesn't believe me. I can see it in the tilt of his head, the way his cards have gone still for just a moment before resuming their endless shuffle. Felix has always been too perceptive for his own good.
But he doesn't push. None of them do.
They leave one by one—Atlas first, still crackling with restrained lightning, then Felix with his cards and his knowing smile, and finally Ren, who pauses at the door and looks back at me with those quiet brown eyes.
"She's not what you think she is," he says.
"What do you think she is?"
A long pause. The shadows in the room lean toward him, toward me, toward the space between us.
"Scared," he says finally. "Just like the rest of us."
He closes the door behind him.
I stay in the study for a long time after they're gone.
The fire has burned down to embers. The shadows have grown thick enough to swallow the furniture, pooling around my feet like dark water. I should go back to my room. Should review notes for tomorrow's lecture. Should do any of the hundred things that need doing, the endless list of obligations that keeps my hours structured and my mind occupied.
Instead, I pull out my phone. Open the student directory. Find her file.
Everly Grey. Eighteen. Undeclared discipline. Scholarship student, first in her family to attend Nyxhaven, no known magical lineage on record.
The photo is from orientation—the one they make everyone take, posed in front of the main building with its Gothic arches and climbing ivy. She's wearing a purple sundress and pink tennis shoes, and she's smiling like she doesn't know what's coming.
She doesn't smile like that anymore. I've noticed.
I stare at the photo for longer than I should. Then I close the app, pocket the phone, and straighten my cuffs.
The shadows welcome me as I walk back to my room. They always do.
Chapter 9: Everly
I throw out the purple sundress on a Tuesday.
It's not a dramatic decision. I don't burn it or tear it up or have some kind of emotional breakdown over a piece of clothing. I just look at it hanging in my closet—that cheerful lavender cotton, those little embroidered flowers along the hem, the way it practically glows against Brittany's wall of black—and I think,that's not me anymore.
So I stuff it in a trash bag along with the yellow cardigan and two of my brighter t-shirts, and I leave the bag outside the donation bin near the dining hall, and that's that.
Brittany notices, of course. She notices everything, even when she's pretending not to.
