Chapter one
Ivy dropped her tray onto the table hard enough to rattle my spoon.
“You look like shit.”
I blinked.
The cafeteria snapped back into focus in pieces—stone walls, long tables scarred by years of careless knives, the smell of soup and coffee. Sound followed a heartbeat later: laughter, chairs scraping, someone shouting,“Throw me an apple!”
A dozen conversations faltered and resumed around us.
“Good afternoon,” I said. My voice sounded thin. Like it had been used somewhere else and returned slightly frayed.
“It is not a good afternoon,” Ivy said. “It’s ayou disappeared and came back wrongafternoon. Different category.”
She leaned back in her chair, eyes flicking past me—over my shoulder, across the room—tracking movement.
“Also,” she added, quieter, “everyone is staring.”
I gripped my spoon like it might keep me tethered. The soup in my bowl had gone lukewarm, a thin film forming on the surface—food meant to be fuel, not comfort.
“I don’t see them,” I said.
Ivy’s mouth twitched. “Your eyes might not. The rest of you does.”
I forced myself to look up. Not at faces. Just bodies.
There was space around our table that hadn’t been there before. A careful radius people pretended wasn’t intentional.
A group of girls near the windows went silent when I glanced their way. A boy at the end of the closest table stared openly until Ivy turned her head and he remembered manners existed.
I couldn’t even blame them.
I’d been gone.
Long enough for people to notice. Long enough for absence to turn into speculation. Frosthaven didn’t forget when you disappeared. It just waited to see what you came back as.
I’d come back thinner, quieter, moving like the ground might give way under my feet. Then I’d vanished again—into a building most students weren’t allowed to enter.
People noticed patterns. People filled in blanks.
Rumors didn’t need much encouragement.
“You’re shaking,” Ivy said.
“I’m not.”
“You are.” She took my wrist without asking. Her grip was warm, practical, steady. “Lumi.”
The contact sent a strange tightness through my chest. Not fear. Just overload. Too much sensation in a body that had learned to go very still.
I eased my hand free. “I’m fine.”
Ivy narrowed her eyes. “Hmmmm. Don’t believe you.”
Across the cafeteria, near the doors, James stood with his back to the wall like it belonged to him.
He was pretending to scroll through his phone. He wasn’t fooling anyone. Not me, and definitely not the people who kept glancing at him and then choosing different exits like they’d suddenly remembered somewhere else they needed to be.
