Page 14

“Earth to Elle.” Lydia waved a hand in front of my face, dragging me back to the present. Her gaze was laced with concern, though the corner of her mouth twitched with curiosity.

I blinked. “Sorry. Today’s just been... strange.”

I leaned in toward the center of the table, letting the quiet comfort of our circle pull me in.

Bethany raised an eyebrow, her copper hair catching the light. “You okay? You looked like you were halfway across Mystral.”

I offered a faint smile. “Just distracted. Disappearances, weird behavior—students vanishing like smoke. Hard not to let it get in your head.”

Lydia leaned closer, voice dropping. “And what about Samael? Did you see him?”

I nodded, glancing down instinctively.

“She more than saw him,” Leander chimed in, nudging my side with a smug grin. “They shared tea leaves in Divination.”

Lydia’s jaw dropped. “You what ? Elvana! Spill. Now.”

My cheeks warmed, and I tried to play it off. “It wasn’t a big deal. We just... read each other’s tea leaves.”

Bethany’s grin was wicked. “Your face says otherwise. Did the dark prince of brooding give you butterflies?”

“It wasn’t like that,” I said quickly—but Samael’s voice, low and unreadable, still echoed in my memory. “We got paired up. We talked. That’s all.”

“‘Talked,’” Lydia repeated, unconvinced. “What, about proper posture while lurking ominously in doorways?”

I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help the smile tugging at my lips. “His leaves showed a serpent.”

Bethany nearly choked on her pumpkin soup. “A serpent ? Could you be any more ominous, Elle?”

Lydia leaned in, eyes shining. “That’s basically a magical red flag. Did he flinch? Gasp? Stare into your soul?”

“What did yours show?” Bethany added, already halfway across the table in anticipation.

I hesitated, fingers brushing the rim of my teacup as if the answer still lingered there. “An hourglass,” I said softly. “With a key. And a line cutting through the middle.”

Leander raised an eyebrow. “Time, secrets, and a crossroads. That’s… subtle.”

Bethany grinned. “Or dramatic. Which fits.”

I shook my head, but the smile tugged at my lips anyway. “Samael said it meant I’m at a turning point.”

Lydia’s voice dropped. “And he would know.”

Before I could respond, a hush fell over the Great Hall. Headmistress Grimrose stood at the podium, her silver hair gleaming in the enchanted candlelight. Her usually unsympathetic face was solemn.

"Students of Drakestone," her voice resonated through the hall without the aid of magic, "I regret to inform you that one of our own, Liam Musette, has indeed not been accounted for since yesterday evening."

Murmurs rippled across the tables.

"While there is no cause for undue alarm," she continued, though her furrowed brow suggested otherwise, "we ask that all students adhere strictly to an 8:00 pm curfew until further notice.

No one is to enter the Saturnine Woods under any circumstances.

Faculty will be conducting thorough searches of the grounds for any traces of both Melanie and Liam. "

I exchanged worried glances with my friends. I never would have imagined my first week at Drakestone to be quite so grim.

"Additionally," she added, "Professor Magnus Coldwell will be leading an advanced combat training in his Magical Combat lessons.

These lessons are usually reserved for your third year at Drakestone, but I feel all students will benefit from these lessons, whether they have already learned them or not. "

At the mention of Professor Coldwell, I felt a strange prickle at the back of my neck. The Magical Combat professor was brilliant, certainly, but there was something in his eyes that always made me uneasy—like looking into a well so deep you couldn’t see the bottom.

"That's all for now," Headmistress Grimrose concluded. "Fourth-years, please ensure your houses return promptly to their dormitories after dinner."

As conversation resumed around us, noticeably subdued, I found myself looking toward Samael again. He was watching the Headmistress with an unreadable expression, his fingers absently tracing the rim of his goblet.

“Two disappearances in one month,” Lydia whispered, her eyes scanning the room like the walls might be listening. “That can’t be coincidence.”

“What if it’s not?” I murmured, keeping my voice low. “It’s obvious someone took Melanie. What if that same someone took Liam too?”

“Both vanished without a trace. No witnesses. No signs.”

Leander’s usual lightness was gone—his voice quieter, more grounded.

I nodded, the weight of it pressing harder now that we’d all said it aloud. “Did they have anything in common? Besides being students here?”

Leander frowned, thinking. “Melanie was in Ancient Enchantments with me. She had a talent for warding spells—especially protection amulets.”

“Liam’s in my Potions class,” Bethany said, her voice softer than usual. “Thornbriar said he had a gift. Called him fearless with volatile brews.”

A chill crept beneath my skin. “So… both were gifted. Highly skilled in their specialties.”

Silence fell over the table like a dropped veil.

Lydia’s voice barely broke it. “We need to be careful. All of us.”

As students began to rise around us, Leander stood, his expression unusually serious. “We should get back to the dorms. Something tells me curfew’s not going to be optional tonight.”

As we rose from our seats, I noticed Samael and his group doing the same. Vivienne clung to his arm, speaking intently into his ear, but his attention seemed elsewhere. His eyes were dark with an emotion I couldn’t quite decipher.

"Elle?" Lydia touched my arm. "Coming?"

"Yes, sorry." I tore my gaze away and followed my friends toward the exit.

The air in my room seemed cooler than usual. After shrugging on my dark crimson hoodie, I pulled my Divination tome from my satchel. There had to be a reason behind the hourglass in my cup today.

I settled onto my bed, flipping through the worn pages until I found the section on hourglasses.

The text described them as symbols of time running out, of moments slipping away like sand between fingers.

A shiver ran down my spine as I recalled Samael’s words: An hourglass—passage of time, or maybe something slipping away.

What time was running out ? And why had he paired it with a key and a crossroads?

A soft knock interrupted my thoughts. I closed the book and padded to the door, expecting Lydia or Bethany with some new gossip about the disappearances.

Instead, I found Vivienne Devereux, her perfect posture and immaculate appearance somehow making me feel disheveled despite being in my own room.

“We need to talk,” Vivienne said, her voice cool as cut stone. She didn’t wait for an invitation—just swept past me into the room, leaving a trail of expensive perfume and audacity behind her.

“Please, come in,” I muttered, shutting the door with more force than necessary.

She took in my space with thinly veiled disdain—her eyes flicking from the crystals on my windowsill to the star charts above my bed, finally landing on the half-finished sleeping potion still steaming on my desk.

“Quaint,” she said, dragging a manicured finger along my bookshelf as though testing for dust.

“What do you want, Vivienne?” I crossed my arms. “Or are we skipping the usual fake pleasantries today?”

She turned, brown eyes sharp enough to cut. “Stay away from Samael.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Her tone didn’t waver. “Whatever fantasy you’re entertaining about him—it’s not real. Samael has… complications. Things someone like you couldn’t possibly understand.”

“Someone like me,” I echoed, heat rising behind my words.

Her smile was all teeth. “A scholarship student with a mysterious family tree and no real alliances? Don’t pretend you don’t know how people talk.”

My hands curled into fists at my sides. “You don’t know anything about my family.”

“I know enough.” She stepped closer, crowding the space between us. “Samael belongs with people who understand what it means to carry bloodline and legacy. The kind of responsibility that doesn’t end when class does.”

“People like you, I assume?” I said, the edge in my voice impossible to mask.

Vivienne’s laugh was sharp and brittle. “Our families have been aligned for generations. Some bonds go deeper than a convenient pairing in Divination class.”

I thought of the way Samael had barely acknowledged her at dinner—how his eyes had sought mine across the hall. But doubt crept in. What did I really know about him? About his world?

“If you’re so confident in your… bond,” I said slowly, “then why are you here, warning me off?”

For a heartbeat, her mask slipped. Her eyes—usually so polished, so perfectly practiced—flashed with something raw. Obsession. Fear. Something she couldn’t fully bury.

“Because protecting what’s mine sometimes requires keeping distractions in their place,” she said tightly, each word wound like wire. It was the closest thing to vulnerability I’d ever heard from her—and it burned cold.

Her gaze flicked to the window, then snapped back to me, sharpened like a blade.

“You’d do well to remember where you stand, Vale.”

Her eyes lingered on mine; a flicker of defiance shadowed by a hint of regret swirling within them. She hesitated for a moment, her lips parting as if she had something more to say, but then she turned on her heel.

Her footsteps echoed softly against the wooden floor as she made her way toward the dimly lit hall, leaving me alone in the room, surrounded by the silence and my own tangled thoughts.

I retrieved the divination tome from my bed, turning it over in my hands as I processed Vivienne’s warning. The weight of her words hung in the air like the lingering scent of her perfume. Absentmindedly pacing my bedroom, I ran my fingers through my hair.