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Fidget peeps from the witchling’s hair and immediately tucks himself deeper, like he’s not sold on the place. I agree, but I’m glad he’s developing into what I think will be a familiar rather than the pet I thought he’d be. Our girl needs a companion who can meld with her magic, and somehow, I found one without meaning to. I guess the damn Fates could be part of that, or maybe whoever is meddling with the stag and Calyx, but either way, it’s a good thing.
Turning to look at the hall again, I see it’s narrow and lined with old murals—student work, I think, not the bland, administration-approved decorations they had at Silvergate. These are layered; paint built up over years with new hands adding to the narrative. There’s a massive serpent wound around a crescent moon that stretches across two walls; a collage of pressed, midnight-black leaves and flowers trapped under cracked glass; and further down, a mural of a woman with antlers and eyes like storm clouds. Her face has been touched up in different styles as if every class took a turn.
It’s not conventionally pretty, but it’s not supposed to be; it’s raw and unfiltered by people trying to suppress creativity.
I finally notice a teacher waiting in the middle of the corridor. She’s a short, wide-shouldered woman with the bulk you only get from labor, or maybe combat. Her hair is silver-threaded and twisted into impressive locs, but her mouth is set in a line between amused and over it. She gives Tier a curt nod, then bulldozes through the crowd to approach Fiadh and Revelin. I tilt my head, looking at the mosquito curiously to see if he knows what this chick is. If I had to guess, it’d be a hybrid, but I’m not sure and I absolutely will not ask. That kind of shit is rude as fuck.
“Welcome, Prince Revelin,” she says, her voice carrying like a crash in a bar. She shakes his hand and then does the same to our mate with the same firm grip. It’s not just a courtesy; she’s making a point, and I approve of it. “You must be his friends that are all over social media, according to the children. My name is Huldra Stonewhisper; I run the arts and culture program here. We’re very excited to have you at our school—please don’t mind the crowds. Our staff is thin, and hallway management is the least of our worries.”
“They’re fine. I work in a bar, so this is nothing compared to drunk supes,” Fiadh says with a shrug, and Huldra cracks the ghost of a smile. “But also… we’re not really concerned with schools being… a school when the Prince visits. After all, it’s what they’re meant to be.”
“Thank you.” Huldra dips her chin and leads us into the heart of the school. The doors all painted different colors, and most of them scuffed to bare wood at the handle level. Kids cluster in groups, some playing at not watching us and some openly staring. Every student wears the same hand-stitched school crest—a crescent moon pierced by thorns—on their jackets, but I notice older ones sporting it on what I’m certain are tattoos.
That’s probably less about this place and more a symbol of a gang, I bet. It’s been co-opted.
We end up at the library first. It’s a small, triangular room, crammed with shelves, and the air still scented from last night’s mop. Half the books are missing; the other half are so well-read that the covers are shiny and cracked. There’s an ancient-looking wooden card catalogue, battered and covered in graffiti—names, spells, poetry, even a couple of dicks drawn in ballpoint. The catalogue drawers have several different styles of handwriting on the labels, so you know the school never had a real budget for a librarian.
Tier’s eyes flick from the battered window to the odd hatch behind the desk. That’s weird to me as well, but in this school, there’s probably a reason it’s there. Our vamp is more interested in the people hanging out, which is also fair. I see a girl perched on a step stool, cross-legged, reading a Faerie murder mystery and a kid in the stacks buried nose-deep in a reference book. No one stops reading, even when the prince walks in, and I rate that higher than anything I’ve seen so far.
Huldra points out the oldest book—an illuminated text in a case, the glass cracked and taped—and gives us a one-sentence history lesson about the founder. Apparently, she was a famous Midnight rebel who got exiled from Silvergate for blowing up a statue. Sassy perks up at that, tugging Rev’s sleeve as she gives him a look. I chuckle, sensing a stop at a bookstore on the way to the portal.
If our girl loves anything besides family, it’s women who make good fucking trouble.
We shuffle onward, and the crowd shifts with us. In the science room, the tables are all patched with duct tape, and the teacher’s desk is littered with bits of feather, wire, ooze, and bone. A student with translucent skin is at the front, stirring a beaker full of something pink and luminous. The kid’s hands shake a little, but the experiment looks like it’s working, and Huldra says, “Well done, Syrax,” before ushering us along.
There’s a brief stop in the gym—a long, echoey room that’s clearly used for everything from basketball to fencing to, if you recognize the scars in the flooring, low-stakes knife fights. The climbing ropes are worn and spliced, but every knot is perfect, and a banner on the wall declares Stronger Together with the school logo in spray paint. That’s the work of the gang, I bet, and I shake my head as we head out quickly.
It’s not like I can judge; that kid was me at that age, recruiting for my dickhead uncle, after all.
The music room is last, and unlike the former academy, we’ve arrived pretty much in a timely manner. We step into a low-ceilinged rectangle with walls covered in posters and hand-scrawled lyrics. It’s too small for a lecture, but perfect for a band room, I think. There are three guitars, all of different sizes, a drum kit that’s two-thirds homemade, and a piano with three missing keys, plus a shelf of battered songbooks. There’s also a boy, maybe fifteen, sitting on a stool. His arms are scaly and greenish-black up to the elbow, and he cradles a lute with the casual desperation of someone who’s never owned anything nicer.
Seeing us, he freezes, and then starts strumming again as if maybe we’ll disappear if he just keeps playing. He’s bad at hiding the stare he gives the prince from under his lashes, so Revelin doesn’t play it cool.
Instead, he crouches next to the kid. “What are you working on?”
Voice cracking, but steady, the student says, “It’s my own. Not for class. Just… music.”
“Can I hear it?” the prince asks, and the poor boy’s fingers go slack.
The look on Rev’s face is full of joy that I don’t see when he’s doing the press-filled concert stuff, and it’s fucking amazing.
At first, the lute player hesitates, but after a few moments of lip chewing, he plays. It’s rough; I’m not gonna lie. The chords jar, the tempo lurches, and one string buzzes in a way that’s more pain than music, but then it finds a rhythm. Amazingly, once the kid gets going; he’s actually… good. There’s a cleverness to how he plays, a refusal to smooth the rough edges that even I find appealing.
Revelin listens all the way through, and when the kid finishes, he says, “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all tour.”
The boy’s scales turn a brighter green, but he says nothing, just stares at the floor. I see him swipe at his eye when he thinks no one’s looking, but the prince is just beaming at him happily. And when I look over, Sassy is leaning on the doorframe. The blue at her wrists is shining, and even though her mouth is set in a hard line, it means she’s thinking very hard about something she won’t say out loud. She gives the kid a brief nod of acknowledgment, and for a second, I see her as the rest of the world should—not a target, not a pawn, but a queen in the making.
If you asked me what she enjoyed best about Midnight, it won’t be the ballrooms, or the dinners, or the dry recitations of lineage. It’ll be the face of a kid who could barely look Revelin in the eye but still played his song, and the teacher who shook her hand like it meant something. She’ll remember shopkeepers or taverns in Harvest who were kind and helpful. That’s what she’ll carry rather than all the bad shit, because I think deep down, she’s got more optimism than she’d ever admit. Sassy truly wants people to be basically good, but knows they usually are not.
After that, Rev just picks up one of their old guitars and sits on a stool as he waits for the kid to finish and run out like his feet are on fire.
He’s really going laid-back with this concert, and it’s kind of cool.
The students pour in, settling into clusters. There’s the moth girl in the front row, notebook open, pencil working fast and hard, the goblin twins sharing a seat, and a knot of seniors in the back with their arms crossed. More and more pack in, until finally the door is closed, and the room is full of a low hum of chatter.
Tier does a quick visual sweep once the kids are in, hands behind his back, and I’m right with him, scanning every door and every shadow. These aren’t kids who throw bombs; if you want to survive here, you learn to save your best shots for when they matter, but I keep my senses open, anyway. At the far end, staff work overtime pretending they aren’t watching, but nobody grades papers with both eyes up, and I see at least one phone out, thumb already on record.
Once Huldra calms them, Rev takes the stage like he owns it, but here, he dials it down. He sits on the stool casually, guitar in his lap, and just talks for a minute, his voice low enough that the noise has to hush to catch it. He opens with a song I’ve heard a hundred times, but this version is stripped so bare it’s nearly unrecognizable—just voice and acoustic guitar. It’s not slick and packaged like his albums, but that’s the point.
