My first day at the Academy. Girls cried into their mothers’ arms while I stood alone, straightening my uniform with shaking hands. Mother and Father were at the lab with Aria. Teaching her the secretsI’d spend years trying to reconstruct from shadows.Always the lab. Always with Aria.As if proximity to their perfect child could erase the inconvenience of having another.
The garden. I was twelve. Blood slicked down my leg, soaking through the shredded stockings Mother loved. I screamed until my throat cracked. Nobody came. No one bothered to look. It was Helena, our housekeeper, who found me. She cleaned the wound while the others stayed behind sealed doors, conducting “critical research.”
The scar is still there. Proof that even bleeding wasn’t enough to matter.
My sixteenth birthday. I bought myself a vanilla cake with buttercream, decorated by a bakery lady who looked at me with such pity it curdled in my gut. I lit a single candle and watched it melt into the frosting, devouring the delicate sugar roses as if rot had bloomed beneath the surface.Six hoursI sat there, whispering excuses, one after another, clinging to any reason they hadn’t come.
The next morning, Aria found me and launched into a two-hour rant about Dom, never once noticing the tear tracks on my cheeks, or asking why my eyes were swollen. I threw the cake up between classes. It tasted of ash and failure.
Luka. Kissing me behind the library, his lips still warm when he whispered, “Is Aria seeing anyone?”I’d heard it before. Different names, same question. Boys who kissed me while chasing her ghost. That night, I scrubbed my mouth raw, trying to erase a kiss that was never mine.
My bracelet pulses with magic, heat flaring as papers whip across the room. I don’t stop it. The storm inside me is decades deep and rising, built from years of being the second draft of someone else’s life.
Father’s birthday. I’d made him a card by hand, practiced the words until they bled on my tongue. But he spent the evening with Aria, Mother, and the Darkmoor family. It never left my pocket. Justsat there, crushed and forgotten, until I lit the match and watched it curl to ash in the sink.
“Lower your voice, Luna.”
“Sit straighter, Luna.”
“Be more ladylike, Luna.”
Always correction. Never affection.
While Aria could slam doors, skip dinners, throw tantrums, and they called it spirit. Fire. Strength. I learned to shrink, to polish myself into the perfect daughter, sculpted from silence and sharp edges. But it was never enough.Iwas never enough.
The journal bites into my palm, knuckles bleached bone-white. I knew everything about Dom—his favorite drinks, his cruel habits, every gnarled fracture—because Aria never shut up about him. Her heartbreaks consumed all the air in the room. But when Thomas broke me at seventeen, she didn’t notice. Never saw the hollowness in my eyes, the skipped meals, the way I recoiled every time he passed me in the halls. She was too busy dissecting her own wounds to see her sister bleeding out beside her.
The memory that haunts me most is the one that repeats itself the quietest—lying awake at night, whispering into the wall, pretending Aria could hear me. Pretending she cared. I invented conversations we’d never have. Imagined a version of her slipping into my room, crawling beneath the blankets like sisters do in the stories. But nothing ever crossed that wall except her voice, soft with affection, murmuring to Dom over her AetherLink, living a life I was never part of.
And now she dares accuse me of betrayal? She, who inherited everything—our parents’ love, their legacy, even their last words. And still, it isn’t enough. She has to tear it all down, burn through every thread they abandoned, while I choke on dust and echo, desperate to be seen.
My magic lashes out again, and this time I let it. Glass fractures. Paper scatters. Years of silence split at the seams. I am done beinginvisible. I won’t play the good daughter, the quiet sister, the flawless silhouette behind someone else’s flame. It’s my turn now.
I pull out the AetherLink, my thumb hovering above Alexander’s name. For a moment, I hesitate. A part of me—small, foolish—had still hoped . . . but no. That fantasy died the second Aria walked away.
I had crafted the perfect answer. I would continue the work she never wanted. I would carry the legacy, and preserve our parents’ brilliance while she pursued whatever freedom she craved. We could have helped each other, fixed our broken relationship, become the sisters we should have been.
But Aria chose conspiracy theories instead, risking everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve built—from the trust Alexander placed in me, to the way he looks at me, not as an obligation but as potential. I willnotlet her destroy that, not when someone finally sees me.
The call connects on the first ring.
“Luna.” Alexander’s voice flows warm and thick, steeped in concern. The way he says my name—like I matter, as if I’m worth his time—steadies my resolve. “Is everything alright?”
“No,” I say quietly, curling my fingers tighter around the journals. “Nothing is fine. And I think . . . I think I need to tell you something.”
The pause that follows is delicate, but thrumming with tension. I picture him in his office. Shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, city light catching on the angular lines of his face, those impossibly steady hands undoing the knot of his tie. The way he watches me during lab demonstrations, gaze unreadable but present, always present.
I tell myself not to think about him this way. Not to linger on how his voice wraps around my name, or how that brief touch on my shoulder last week still burns beneath my skin. Vivienne’s words from tea still echo in my head. Her perfectly crafted warning wrapped in social pleasantries. She never directly accused me ofanything, but her meaning was crystal clear—my “little infatuation” with her husband needed to end.
But how do I forget the only man who’s ever looked at me and seen something worth keeping? When his praise makes me feel more alive than I have in years? When every accidental brush of his fingers against mine sends electricity racing through my veins?
“Come to my office.” The words slide through the line, and I bite my lip.
“At this hour?” I keep my tone neutral, composed, though my heart stumbles in my chest. Across the room, the clock glows a sickly amber, its digits trembling before they lurch into 21:00. I draw myself straighter. “I wouldn’t want to disturb you—”
“Luna.” There’s an edge to it this time. “I’m more concerned about you right now. The security orbs registered some damage to the windows in the east side office. Are you hurt?”
Heat floods my cheeks. Of course he knows. Alexander Darkmoor is aware of everything that happens in his domain. “Oh god, I-I’m so sorry. I lost control for a moment. My magic just . . . I promise I’ll cover the repair costs. It won’t happen again—”
