“Other than feeling like I have a guillotine hanging over my head, I’m... okay.”
“Yeah. I figured.” Mel looked at the floor, then back up. “I have a date with Andrew after the Talent Show, but if you need me—if anything goes wrong—I’ll be there. No hesitation.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to. But I’m telling you anyway. You come first.”
Riya smiled. “Thanks. I’m excited for you.”
Mel grinned. “Good things are coming, RiRi.”
Before Riya could reply, Andrew appeared at the other end of the hallway and waved. His copper hair was tied back in a ponytail, matching Mel’s black one. Riyawondered if that was intentional.
For a moment, Mel and Andrew simply stared at each other, mirroring each other’s goofy smiles. Neither seemed to mind the crowded hallway. It was almost... sweet, in a way.
But as Riya watched them, something in her chest pulled tight. They only had seven months left. After graduation, everything would shift—new cities, new schools, new lives. She used to think holding on through all that was pointless. Mel would hold on anyway. Because it mattered.
And Kian, despite the odds, was holding on, too.
Riya swung her backpack onto her shoulders. “All right, lovebirds. I’m heading out. Lots to do.”
The blush on Mel’s pink cheeks deepened. “S-see ya, RiRi. Good luck with Talent Show prep.”
“See ya, Riya,” said Andrew.
Riya threw a casual wave, before she plucked the petunia off her locker and, on a whim, tucked it behind her ear.
Then she headed home. For the last quiet before the storm.
Later, Riya slid into the kitchen chair beside Sirah khala, who was typing furiously on her laptop, blue-light glasses slipping down her nose.
“Any luck?” Riya asked.
Sirah khala sighed, removed her glasses, and rubbed thebridge of her nose. “I’ve reached out to everyone I know who’s even remotely versed in peri magic—nothing yet.”
The words settled like lead. Riya had expected it; hearing it still stung.
“So there’s no other way.”
The late-afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows, casting golden patterns across the wooden floor, while the air carried the faint scent of cardamom from the chai someone must have made earlier.
“I didn’t say that.” Her khala studied her. “Tell me again. Are you certain you never knew Kian before all this?”
There was something probing in her expression, as if she were trying to solve a puzzle that refused to fit.
“I... don’t know.” Riya said. She’d asked herself the same question more than once lately.
“It doesn’t sit right.” Sirah khala crossed her arms. “Like I said before, love magic doesn’t create feelings out of nothing; it amplifies what’s already there. Like when you cast that spell on those little shits in middle schoo—”
“Sirah khala!”
“I mean, those little boys,” she corrected smoothly. “You amplified their guilt. But if there’d been none, nothing would have happened.”
Riya opened her mouth to argue but stopped herself. Because the truth was she’d felt it, hovering at the edges of memory ever since Kian had told her that story under the stars. Ever since her memories of the Incident hadcaught on the edge of something, something she felt she was missing.
She hadn’t seen the boy’s face. But he’d seen hers.
If Kian really had feelings for her all along—if the curse had only amplified what was already there—
