"You're wearing my jeans," she says when I come back from my morning shower, toweling off my hair.
"You said I could borrow them."
"I said you could borrow themonce. That was three days ago." She's lying on her bed with a textbook propped on her stomach, not actually reading it. "Also, is that my shirt?"
It's a faded black thing with a barely-visible band logo I don't recognize, soft from a thousand washes. I found it in the pile of clothes she leaves on her desk chair, the one she claims is her "secondary closet."
"You have like fifteen of these."
"Twelve. And that one's my favorite."
"I'll give it back after class."
She makes a disgusted sound but doesn't actually argue. That's how I know she doesn't really mind. Brittany's protests are performative—if she actually cared, she'd have hexed me bynow. Probably with something that makes my hair fall out. She's mentioned that spell more than once.
I check myself in the mirror before I leave. Black jeans, black shirt, the charcoal blazer I bought my first day here. My pink tennis shoes are still the only shoes I own, which ruins the effect somewhat, but I can't afford new ones and I'm not about to ask my parents for money to buy boots because I've decided to dress like I'm attending my own funeral.
The girl in the mirror looks tired. Paler than she used to be. There are shadows under her eyes that won't go away no matter how much sleep she gets, and when she turns her head, the shadows in the corners of the room turn with her.
That's new. That's been happening since the Mors demonstration, since the spell wentin, and I still don't know what it means.
"You look like you're auditioning for my life," Brittany says from her bed.
"Is that a compliment?"
"It's an observation." She turns a page in her textbook without looking at it. "The goth thing suits you better than the Lisa Frank explosion, I'll give you that. But you should probably figure out why you're doing it before you commit."
"Maybe I just like black."
"Maybe." Her eyes meet mine in the mirror. "Or maybe you're trying to disappear. Blend in. Stop being the girl everyone stares at."
I don't answer. She's not wrong.
The shadow magic sits inside me like a second heartbeat.
It's hard to describe to someone who hasn't felt it—this cold, heavy presence behind my ribs that wasn't there before. It doesn't hurt, exactly. It's more like pressure, like carrying something dense in my chest that shifts when I move. Sometimes I forget it's there for hours at a time. Then I'll walk past a dark corner and feel itreach, feel the shadows lean toward me like plants toward sunlight, and I remember.
I'm not normal anymore. I don't know if I ever was.
The other students have noticed something's different, even if they don't know the details of what happened at the Mors demonstration. Word travels fast at Nyxhaven—not the truth, necessarily, but some version of it.The Grey girl did something weird during a shadow magic class. The Grey girl freaked out the Mors students. The Grey girl is even more of a freak than we thought.
They give me a wider berth in the hallways now. Not out of respect—out of fear. I catch people watching me from the corners of their eyes, tracking my movements, flinching when I get too close. A Tempest girl changes direction when she sees me coming. A Sanguis boy drops his books when I accidentally brush past him in the library.
I should probably be upset about it. Instead, I feel something closer to relief. If they're scared of me, at least they're not pretending to be my friend while they figure out how to destroy me.
Felix hasn't approached me since I confronted him in the library. He's still there, hovering at the edges of my vision—I catch glimpses of his auburn hair across the dining hall, hear thesoft shuffle of his cards in the library stacks—but he keeps his distance now. Watching. Waiting.
Ren continues to look through me like I'm made of glass. We pass each other in the hallway outside Magical History, and his warm brown eyes slide over me without stopping, without acknowledging. It shouldn't sting anymore. It does anyway.
And Callum. Callum is everywhere, suddenly, in ways he wasn't before. I see him in the quad between classes. In the back of Professor Robertson's lectures. Standing at the window of the Administration building when I walk past, pale face framed by glass and shadow. He doesn't speak to me. Doesn't approach. Just watches, with those ice-blue eyes that give nothing away.
I'm being studied. I can feel it. All four of them circling like sharks who've scented blood, waiting for something—the next absorption, the next breakdown, the next piece of evidence for whatever file they're building on me.
Fine. Let them watch. I've got my own research to do.
The library becomes my sanctuary.
Every night after dinner, I claim the same table on the third floor—tucked in a corner, surrounded by shelves of books that don't scream or bite, with a clear view of anyone approaching. I spread out my notes, my textbooks, the cracked sphere that still pulses with its four impossible colors, and I dig.
