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THIRTY-NINE

FREYA

They say the truth sets you free, that it gives you something you want to hear. But what if the truth is a wound from which you can never heal?

I never met Adeline. Never even knew she existed until September. Yet, somehow, I knew her story. I knew her pain. I had walked the same road and stood in the same shadows. And now, here I am, trapped in her footsteps, surrounded by the same people who hurt her, even loving one of them. And none of it makes me feel any better.

We hold fragments of the truth, but no one knows what truly drove her to do it. Do we ever understand every story? What hides behind the quiet smile of a person who whispers, “I’m okay” ? Do we really see? Or do we just pretend to? We parade ourselves as righteous, as enlightened, but the truth is that we are not. We only want to be. Our hearts are filled with misplaced hate, and we hate things that were never meant to be hated in the first place. We curse the rain, resent the sun, scorn the rivers and the trees. We hate life, our parents, people, anything. A storm of hate within such small beings, all because we long to be bigger than we are.

Suddenly, her pain became mine. Mine became his. And he held me close because he understood. He knew I was someone who lived with pain, someone who had learned to crave it. He knew that if he didn’t stop me, I might end up like her.

We are all Adeline Ravenshaw. We have all been bullied. We have all been hated. We have all hidden from the truth, concealed secrets, and wanted something or someone forbidden. We are all victims of people who only know part of the story, people who think others don’t bleed. But we do. And we know. Words cut. People wound.

He knew. That’s why he turned ‘Slut’ into ‘Soul.’ Because once, he was a bully too.

I shoved him. “Don’t touch me,” I snapped, but my voice cracked. It was barely a whisper when I spoke again. “Is this why you wanted to own me?”

He stood frozen, eyes searching mine, his hand reaching out.

“Lucius, I fell in love with you knowing this was toxic. I knew from the start that this would hurt. But you were like pain itself,” I exhaled, my voice trembling. “I wanted you, even knowing it would destroy me. Because you made me feel alive.”

I pulled my hand away. “All the stolen moments, the secrets we kept, they only taught me one thing. Maybe I was never real to you. Maybe I was just the ghost of what you wished you had with her.”

“What?” His eyes widened. “What are you talking about, Freya?”

“Was I?” My voice barely a breath now, a tear slipping down my cheek. “Was I just a memory of her that you couldn’t have?”

“Fuck no.” He stepped closer. “You’re not a memory. You’re my whole fucking life.”

I tried to push him away, but he caught me, refusing to let go. “I was eighteen when I met Adeline. Reckless. Stupid. Yes, I wanted her. Yes, she was beautiful. And yes, of course, I wished she was mine.” He cradled my face between his hands, his eyes piercing into mine. “But she never was. You are.”

He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “All the girls I’ve been with, all the moments I could have had, they were just passing dots in my life. But you?” His voice softened. “The moment I saw you, the moment you smiled, I knew. I wanted something more. Something that didn’t belong to anyone but me.”

“And yes, that makes me selfish. But how could I let you slip through my fingers? How could I let you go when you came into my life like a falling star and lit up the night I had been trapped in?” He kissed the tip of my nose, his gaze locked onto mine.

“All those memories before you?” He shook his head. “They’re just memories. You are the life I wanted. The soul I was searching for.”

Tears streamed down my face, and he caught them, one by one, as they fell. “You fell for my darkness, but I fell for your light. And I won’t lose you. I will never lose you.”

“What if we don’t have a choice?” I choked out.

“Then I’ll tear down walls. Burn worlds. Do whatever the fuck it takes to find you again.” A small, broken laugh escaped him. “And I need you to know—this isn’t just obsession. It’s not just about making you mine. This is me.” He pressed his lips against mine, whispering against them, “A completely shattered man who fell in love with the only person who taught him how to take the worst parts of himself and make them into something better.”

“You are my lesson learned, Freya Sinclaire.” He kissed me again. “And the thing about lessons? No matter how hard you try to forget, they stay with you.”

This time, I didn’t push him away. I kissed him back, pulling him closer. Maybe this moment, this place, this bed was always meant to be. Maybe the ghosts that haunted us only ever wanted to bring us together. And even when the world tried to pull us apart, neither could resist of what we had.

And so, we lay there, two broken souls, letting everything crash down around us. And he was right. I needed this. I needed him to hold me. I needed to break, to let the tears come. So I did. I cried. I grieved. I shoved him away, only to pull him back again.

That’s what pain does. It makes you push the ones you love, and then reach for them the moment they step away. And they hold you because they know. Because even when you tell yourself it will get better, a part of you isn’t sure it ever will.

It all comes down to how much you can carry, and how much your heart can endure. And after a while, even the words “I’m okay” lose their meaning.

But I will be. Someday.

Three days had passed, yet time did nothing to fix us. Instead, it only deepened the grief, carving new wounds where old ones barely had time to heal. Stella had so much more life ahead of her, yet she chose to give it up for the truth.

And now, that truth stood before us.

Inside the empty room of the House of Corvus , we faced the white wall covered in photographs, red threads connecting them like veins, scribbled notes detailing every link, every hidden thread. This was how she had pieced it all together. This was what she had died for. The truth Adeline never lived to see, the truth that had finally let her rest.

Ava, Blue, and I stood together, our fingers intertwined, staring at what was left of Stella’s work. Nikolai Antonov stood by the door, leaning against the frame. He gave us the key to everything. Someone who had stayed in the background all along, but to Stella, he was a main character in the story. Even the people who were not the main characters were important to her, and even if they were aside, they had their own story. Stella knew it.

And then, there were the others. The ones we had trusted. The ones who had betrayed us. They all stood taped on the wall.

Adeline’s academy portrait smiled at us from the center of the web, she was in her uniform, her expression frozen in a time before the dark swallowed her whole. Above her picture: Lucius. Then Cassius. Then Luna. All are connected by the same red thread.

To the left: Jack Blackthorn, Hector Cruz Smith, Victor Aracelis. Their names intertwined in a tangle of red lines converging in Adeline’s picture. To the right: Rosalind, Oscar, Blue, Ava, Stella, and me. And above it all, an unanswered question, A and O, were not known.

The notes told the story no one else had dared to speak aloud:

October 29th — Hector, Jack, and Victor assaulted Adeline.

October 31st — Hector showed her the video. A threat, a demand: give him more, or he would expose her to everyone.

November 1st — The first letter arrived. Someone was watching her. She told Jack. But he didn’t help her.

November 2nd — A leaked photo. Her name scrawled across Corvus’s bathroom stalls, added to the list of “easy girls.”

November 3rd — Luna confessed her love. Adeline couldn’t return it.

November 5th — She discovered Lucius had been watching her. He tried to reach out, but no matter how kind she was, she never saw him as anything more than a friend.

November 7th — Victor Aracelis wanted more. And once again, she was forced to give pieces of herself away. This time, she did it for Jack. This time, Cassius saw. She thought it would finally end.

November 8th — Cassius pretended nothing had happened.

November 12th — She returned to babysitting Oscar, Hector’s eight-year-old son.

November 15th — Luna begged her to run away together. There was still time, still hope. But Adeline couldn’t promise something she knew she couldn’t keep.

November 18th — She sought help. A therapist. Someone. Anyone. But all she received were empty promises. That night, she learned she was pregnant.

November 21st — The night she died.

4:45 AM — Cassius visited. He knew about his father but admitted he was too afraid to do anything.

5:00 PM — Luna begged her again. “Leave with me.” Adeline refused.

6:00 PM — She texted Jack. “I’m pregnant.”

7:00 PM — After her last class, Jack followed her to the room. Told her to get rid of it. The argument escalated. Little Oscar interrupted.

10:23 PM — Adeline died.

11:10 PM — Hector took the tape and fled her room.

Midnight — Lucius found her body.

On November 21st, Adeline died. And with her, she took a piece of us all.

Stella found a letter Adeline had written before she died. That was how she knew Adeline had taken her own life. And that was how she knew exactly where to find the tape in Hector’s room. She understood then that the disks Lucius and I had found weren’t just about Adeline. They held the stories of many others, tools used to control, destroy, and silence.

Blackthorn Academy had promised greatness, a future unchained from the past. Instead, it buried lives, hid truths, and stripped away hope. It was supposed to believe in its students, not take their beliefs away.

Stella had searched tirelessly but found nothing on A and O—no trace of the mastermind behind this twisted game, the one who toyed with human lives. Yet A and O knew our secrets. Knew all of us. It had all started with Adeline, but was Stella getting too close? Was that why she died?

We had no choice but to finish what she started.

Moving closer, we began removing the photographs, stacking them into a neat pile. One by one, we unwound the red thread from the wall, wrapping it around our fingers before placing it atop the pictures. Then Blue picked up a photograph of Stella. As she turned it over, her breath caught.

“Guys,” she whispered, lifting it into the air for us to see.

Scrawled across the back in jagged ink:

Signed with a tic-tac-toe symbol. A and O.

A warning. A threat.

We exchanged looks, understanding without words. If we wanted to survive, we had to stay silent. But if we wanted justice—we would have to catch whoever did this, in silence.

Stella’s funeral was held in the private Blackthorn cemetery near Lake Loch. Though not far from the academy, it was distant enough for her to rest in the place she had once called home.

Every student was there, dressed in black, each holding a white dahlia, just a small attempt to cleanse the red of the one she clutched the day she died. But the three of us carried white roses instead, her favorite flower.

Four men were meant to carry her coffin, but Ava insisted we do it ourselves as if guiding her to rest would bring her peace, and perhaps, give us the chance to say goodbye. It was too heavy for just the three of us, so we asked Oscar, Cassius, and Lucius to join.

Cassius stood on the right, with Blue behind him, and Oscar at the end. On the left, Ava led, followed by me, with Lucius behind.

Today, of all days, the sun was the brightest. No rain. No clouds to match our grief. We hid our tears behind sunglasses as we carried her from the small church at the cemetery’s entrance. Even the white horses pulling her to her final resting place seemed at peace, slowly galloping in place. On top of the white coffin lay a wreath of white roses, six golden handles gleaming at the sides, cold beneath our fingers.

The grave was only two minutes away, yet those two minutes stretched into a never-ending goodbye.

The weight of her coffin should have been heavy, yet I hardly felt it. It was as if she made it easier for us. But deep down, I knew it was adrenaline, the last reserve of strength we had left to give her.

As we reached the burial site, we lowered her onto the iron bars that would guide her into the ground. Ava collapsed, her body folding over the coffin, her hands clawing at the sealed lid as if she could pry it open for one last hug.

“Let me see her, I have to see her,” she cried, but Cass pulled her up, holding her.

My fingers brushed against Lucius’s. I wanted to turn, to fall into his arms, but there were too many people. Too much to lose. But he didn’t hesitate. Without a word, he took my hand, pulling me into him. I turned, burying myself in his chest.

Goodbyes are hardest when you never get the chance to say them.

Before the coffin was lowered, Ava stepped forward, holding a folded piece of paper. Her voice trembled, but she forced herself to speak.

“Stella was many things,” she began, a small smile between tears breaking through. “A friend, a sister, a daughter. But there were so many more things she wanted to be.”

She inhaled sharply, fighting back tears. “She wanted to be a software developer, a smart-ass mathematician, maybe even a detective one day. She wanted a life full of memories. She wanted happiness. She wanted to be someone who changed the world.” Her voice cracked. “And maybe she didn’t change the whole world… but she changed Blackthorn.”

She swallowed, clearing her throat. “She died because she refused to let silence win. She fought for those whose voices were stolen, for those who never got the chance to live.” Ava’s grip tightened on the paper. “And as her last wish, I’m giving you the voice of someone everyone knew, but no one ever truly heard. A girl Stella never gave up on.”

Ava stepped aside. The screen flickered to life.

Adeline appeared, her voice clear and unwavering. “Hi, this is Adeline Ravenshaw…”

The same video Lucius and I had watched. The same video the world would now see. The video would change everything.

Lucius pulled me to the side, his hand firm around mine. “I will never let you go. Never.” He tightened his grip. “No matter what happens next, I’m by your side.”

It was us now.

Murmurs spread through the crowd. Eyes darted, searching, accusing. Blackthorn. Hector. Some professors moved quickly, restraining them, ensuring they wouldn’t escape what was coming.

Then, I saw my grandmother pushing through the crowd. She had been called, too.

Lucius released my hand, whispering, “It’s okay.”

She reached me, her arms wrapping around me, pulling me into her warmth. “Freya, darling, I am so sorry.”

My face pressed against her chest, but I barely heard her. The only thing ringing in my ears was Lucius’s parting words:

“See you soon, Little Star.”