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Damaris still isn’t back.

I tap my multi-slate and send him a quick message.

You okay?

He doesn’t answer.

Maybe he’s still in class. Engineering seems to keep stranger hours than the Music Department, and after one day here, I’ve already learned that Damaris is perfectly capable of losing track of time when something catches his attention.

He’s fine, I tell myself, staring at the unanswered message. He’s an adult and more than capable of making his own decisions.

I pull my score folder toward me and reach for the stack of orientation material Halvern gave us this morning, spreading it across the desk as if I’m actually going to do something useful with it.

Class schedules. Practice expectations. Department guidelines. Housing rules.

I make it through maybe half a page before realizing I’ve read the same paragraph three times. My eyes keep dragging back to the window, to the rain streaking the glass, to the sound of his voice carrying across the canteen.

The worst part is that my body seems to remember the order before my mind can reject it.

Don’t make me come collect you.

I shove the packet aside, sending it sliding across the desk, and stare after it for a second.

Tomorrow. Eight.

The words have followed me all afternoon, no matter how often I tell myself I’m not going.

I’m not. Absolutely not.

And yet every time I think I’ve finally stopped thinking about him, something pulls me right back to that table.

For one wild second, I wonder if it would be easier to just ask him what the hell he wants from me. Then I remember the way he looked at me across the canteen, talking past Damaris with the certainty of someone who’d already decided I was coming.

I’ve never been good at walking straight into trouble. I’ve always been better at staying in the shadows.

The memory of his gaze flashes through my head again, and the heat comes back with it.

Was he flirting with me, or just toying with me? And if so… why me?

I should be doing homework.

Instead, I reach for the one thing I promised myself I wouldn’t look at again today.

A second later, the photo appears in muted gold and shadow, a crowded bar with a woman near the back, half-turned away from the camera. Her face is too blurred to make out, but a thin flash of silver at her throat catches the light sharply enough to pull my eye every time.

Ma wore that pendant until she gave it to Sola on her eighteenth birthday. After that, it rarely left my sister’s throat.

My gaze lingers on the silver glint at her neck. No matter how many times I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything, the same thought slips in before I can stop it.

What if it’s really her?

The question hurts enough that I look away for a second before forcing myself back to the image.

It isn’t proof. I know that. The pendant isn’t rare. Someone else could own one. But every time I look at the photo, my thoughts end up in the same place.

Sola.

Even now, after all this time, I still don’t know if she left on her own or if something happened to her. I don’t know if she came to Sero because she wanted to. I don’t know if she ran. I don’t know if she was taken.