The morning dawned clear and cold, the storm scrubbed from the sky, leaving behind a brittle blue that did nothing to warm the stone of Nightfall.
Lia's first class was Introduction to Magical Theory and Ethics—a required course for all first years, taught in a vast, chilly auditorium that smelled of dust and old parchment. She found a seat near the back, in the section unofficially reserved for the scholarship students. Chloe waved tentatively from a few rows ahead, and Lia gave her a small, tight smile in return. The mouse was back in place.
Her body ached with a deep, familiar fatigue. Sleep had been a fractious thing, full of half-remembered dreams of silver-grey eyes and the sound of rain. More than once, she'd jolted awake, her hand flying to the temple Kane had touched, the phantom sensation lingering like a brand. It was ridiculous. It was infuriating.
The professor, a severe-looking woman with iron-grey hair pulled into a bun so tight it stretched the skin of her forehead, began droning about the Four Pillars of Magical Restraint and the Paris Accords of 1921. Lia let the words wash over her, her focus inward. She needed a plan. The encounter at the mixer had been a warning shot. Kane Wolfe was aware of her. That made everything harder, riskier.
Her primary objective was the Restricted Archives. Elena's notes mentioned a specific text, "On the Nature of Shadow and Substance: A Treatise," by an obscure author named Alistair Croft. It had been cited in relation to her "independent study," the one the academy had deemed the precursor to her "accident." The official record was sanitized, useless. That book was Lia's first real thread.
But gaining access required either faculty permission (impossible) or a student pass with elevated privileges. Only prefects, certain club presidents, and the Student Council executive had those. Her gaze drifted, almost against her will, to the front of the auditorium. He was there, of course. Kane sat in the front row, not taking notes, not even appearing to listen. He simply existed, a still, powerful presence that seemed to warp the gravity of the room around him. Elara sat beside him, her posture perfect, occasionally leaning in to whisper something that never earned more than a fractional tilt of his head in response.
The Student Council President. The one with the highest level of access.
A cold knot tightened in Lia's stomach. Approaching him was out of the question. It would be like a field mouse voluntarily walking into a wolf's den after being warned off. There had to be another way.
The class ended with a reading assignment that would have taken a normal student a week. Lia filed out with the crowd, keeping her head down. Her next class wasn't for two hours. It was time for reconnaissance.
She made her way to the main library, a towering structure of stained glass and flying buttresses connected to the Great Hall by a covered stone cloister. Inside, the air was hushed and smelled of leather, paper, and ozone—the particular scent of old magic clinging to old books. The main floor was a vast, open space with long oak tables under green-shaded lamps. Students studied in quiet clusters. Staircases spiraled up to multi-level galleries, their railings intricate ironwork.
Lia approached the central circulation desk, a massive fortification of dark wood presided over by a librarian who looked as ancient and forbidding as the building itself. His nameplate read: M. Grendel.
"Can I help you?" His voice was a dry rustle, like pages turning.
"I'm looking for the section on applied thaumaturgy," Lia said, pitching her voice to sound hesitant and academic.
Grendel peered at her over half-moon spectacles, his eyes a watery, intelligent blue. They took in her clothes, her posture, and seemed to categorize her instantly. "Third gallery, west stack. Signage will guide you. Your student card will grant you borrowing privileges for the open collections only."
"Thank you." She turned to go.
"Miss," he called after her, his tone casual but his eyes sharp. "The lower levels and the Restricted Archives are not accessible to general students. The wards are… quite active. It would be unwise to test them."
A chill that had nothing to do with the library's temperature slid down Lia's spine. He hadn't asked if she was looking for them. He'd told her she couldn't go there. It was a warning, delivered with the polite finality of a man who had seen countless students try.
"I understand," she said, ducking her head.
She spent an hour in the west stack, pulling random books on magical theory, pretending to read while mapping the library in her mind. She noted the location of the staff-only doors, the patterns of the librarians' movements, the placement of the silent, watchful gargoyle carvings that seemed to follow one with their stone eyes. Security was subtle but omnipresent.
Frustration began to simmer beneath her calm exterior. She was so close. The answers were here, buried beneath layers of privilege and magical protection. And she was stuck on the outside, in her itchy wool sweater and her too-big blazer.
She needed to move. To do something physical before the trapped feeling choked her.
Her feet took her, almost of their own volition, away from the central campus buildings, following a path Elena had once sketched on the back of a postcard. It led to the old gymnasium and athletic fields, a complex of newer (by Nightfall's standards), more functional buildings nestled against the northern cliffs. The air here smelled of damp grass, cold earth, and the sharp, clean scent of pine from the woods beyond the perimeter wall.
The main gym was locked, but a smaller, side door to a storage annex was slightly ajar. Lia slipped inside. The space was dim, lit only by high, dusty windows. It was a glorified shed filled with the detritus of sports: stacked mats, medicine balls, coiled climbing ropes smelling of hemp and sweat. And in a far corner, partially hidden by a canvas tarp, a heavy bag hung from a sturdy beam.
Lia stood still for a moment, listening. The only sounds were the distant shouts from the rugby pitch and the scuttling of something small in the walls. She was alone.
She shrugged off her blazer, letting it fall to the sawdust-covered floor. Then, slowly, deliberately, she began to remove the mouse's costume. The thick glasses went into the blazer pocket. The oversized sweater followed. Underneath, she wore a simple, faded black tank top and leggings. The cold air of the shed raised goosebumps on her arms, but it was a clean, honest cold.
She walked to the bag, rolling her shoulders, feeling the familiar pull and release of well-trained muscle. For the first time since arriving at Nightfall, her body felt like her own. No hiding, no slouching, no binding.
She started slow, a simple one-two combination, her fists thudding against the heavy leather with satisfying, solid thwacks. The rhythm steadied her mind, pushing back the frustration, the fear, the memory of Kane's assessing gaze. Jab, cross, hook. Breathe. Move. Her body flowed into the work, sweat beginning to prickle at her hairline and between her shoulder blades.
She lost herself in it. The world narrowed to the bag, the impact, the burn in her muscles. She picked up speed, adding knees, elbows, spinning back fists. The bag swayed violently on its chain, the sound of her strikes echoing in the cavernous space. This was her language. This was the truth her disguise concealed. Power, control, precision.
She was so focused that she didn't hear the soft scrape of the door opening wider.
"Well, well."
The voice, male and laced with a smug, familiar malice, cut through her concentration like a knife.
Lia froze, one fist poised mid-strike. She turned, her breath coming in controlled puffs of vapor in the cold air.
Corbin stood in the doorway, flanked by his two lackeys from the mixer. His fox-like face was split in a nasty grin. He'd changed out of his velvet jacket into athletic wear, but the entitled sneer was the same.
"Look what we found," he drawled, stepping fully into the shed. His eyes raked over her, taking in the tank top, the defined arms, the sweat-slicked skin of her throat and collarbones. The look was a violation, stripping away the protective layer of her frumpy clothes. "The little mouse has teeth. And quite a… form, when she's not hiding under a sack."
His friends chuckled, moving to flank her. The shed, which had felt like a sanctuary moments before, now felt like a trap.
"I'm just working out," Lia said, forcing her voice to remain level. She reached for her sweater on the floor.
"Don't stop on our account," Corbin said, taking a step closer. He kicked her blazer aside. "We're impressed. Really. Who knew the charity case could throw a punch? Maybe you're not entirely useless."
Lia's mind raced. Fighting was out of the question. It would expose everything. But letting them corner her here, in this isolated place… The options were all bad.
"Kane said to leave me alone," she said, the words tasting bitter. Using his name as a shield felt like a defeat.
Corbin's grin didn't falter. "Kane's not here. And he got what he wanted last night—to look like the big man in front of everyone. He's moved on. You're back to being invisible. Which means you're fair game." He reached out, not for her, but to tap the heavy bag, making it swing. "So, how about a demonstration? Show us what you've got. Maybe we'll even give you a tip or two."
One of the other boys, a bulky redhead, snickered. "Yeah. A private lesson."
The threat in the air thickened, turning physical. Lia's muscles coiled, every instinct screaming to fight. She calculated distances, vulnerabilities. Corbin was the leader, but the redhead was the real physical threat.
"I don't want any trouble," she said, taking a subtle step back, aligning herself with the beam holding the bag.
"Too late," Corbin said, his smile fading into something colder. "You're trouble just by breathing our air. Time to learn the price of that."
He lunged, not with a punch, but to grab her arm.
That was his mistake.
Lia's training took over. She didn't think. She moved. She sidestepped the grab, her movement fluid and faster than he anticipated. As his momentum carried him forward, she drove her elbow backward in a short, brutal arc. It connected with the redhead's solar plexus as he moved in from the side. The air left his lungs in a shocked whoosh, and he doubled over, crashing into a stack of mats.
Corbin whirled, surprise and fury on his face. "You bitch!"
He came at her in earnest now, a wild haymaker. It was sloppy, fueled by anger. Lia ducked under it, coming up inside his guard. She didn't hit him. Instead, she planted her foot behind his ankle and shoved his chest, using his own force against him. He stumbled backward, arms pinwheeling, and landed hard on his backside in the sawdust, his head snapping back to crack against the leg of a weight bench.
He lay there, dazed, a trickle of blood welling from a cut on his scalp.
The third boy stared, frozen, looking from his gasping friend to his bleeding leader to Lia.
Lia stood poised, her body humming with adrenaline, her breath steady. The mouse was gone. In her place stood something feral and dangerous, her eyes hard, her stance that of a fighter. Sweat gleamed on the defined lines of her arms and the exposed strip of her midriff where her tank top had ridden up.
The silence was broken by the sound of slow, deliberate applause.
It came from the doorway, where the light from outside was blocked by a tall, broad-shouldered silhouette.
Kane Wolfe leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest. He wasn't smiling. His winter-sky eyes were alive with an intense, focused interest that was far more unsettling than any anger. He took in the scene: Corbin bleeding on the floor, the redhead groaning, the third boy paralyzed with fear, and Lia, standing in the center of it all like a dark avenger, her true shape unhidden for the first time.
"It seems the mouse," he said, his voice a low, thoughtful rumble that filled the quiet shed, "is a cat after all." His gaze traveled over her, from the sweat-dampened ends of her mousy brown hair, down the line of her throat, over the revealed curves and muscles her fighting stance accentuated, to her bare feet planted firmly on the ground. The appraisal was thorough, devoid of the leering quality of Corbin's look, but somehow infinitely more penetrating. "And a surprisingly lethal one."