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Jeune regarded Lark coolly through her wire-rimmed glasses. She held out her hand; her nails were painted with dark red varnish. She wore a cream woolen sweater, a beige tweed skirt, and lace-up canvas shoes. As though she were on her way to a garden party. “It’s nice to meet you,” she told Lark.

Lark thought of the golden ratio. Herself and her brothers.

Her trio of friendship with Alastair and Camille before everything changed.

She tried to feel hopeful that Damson would unfold her friendship with this new girl and make room for Lark.

But as the weeks passed, Jeune only ever treated her with stilted politeness.

When the three of them walked together, Jeune and Damson would always go quickly, not leaving space at their side for Lark. She felt like she was always rushing to keep pace with them, fighting desperately not to be swept aside or left behind.

And often she would see Damson and Jeune whispering coyly together. Whatever they were saying, they always fell silent as soon as Lark approached.

She was snared with inescapable anxiety, countless worries she couldn’t name.

Damson was her best friend; she had kissed Lark, claimed her.

Lark told herself nothing was wrong, everything was mended.

But as the deadline for their curatorship application drew closer, Damson was never in her rooms when Lark went to speak with her about it.

She had completed her part of the essay and wanted Damson to read the final version before they turned it in.

Finally, she gathered up all their notes and slipped them inside a folder, tying it closed with a scrap of ribbon.

She found Damson in one of the library corrals.

She and Jeune were sharing a desk, a cut apple on a napkin between them as they worked on an essay.

Lark noticed the papers, remembering how Damson had told her she didn’t need any help.

Swallowing down a quaver of hurt, Lark produced the folder.

Damson took it from her, but she didn’t smile. She toyed with the ribbon, her eyes downcast. “Lark, I’ve been meaning to tell you Headmistress Blanche spoke to me the other day. She said there’s been a change of rules about the application. We can’t submit together after all.”

Lark stared at her, helpless. “But the deadline is next week.”

Damson untied the ribbon. It fell to the floor, ignored, as she began to flip through the folder. She pulled out several sheafs of papers, setting them aside, then gave the rest back to Lark. “Here. I’ve taken my notes. All you’ll have to do is rework your part.”

Lark clutched the folder. Her hands were shaking. “But, Damson, I’ve been counting on you, on your half of the research.” Her throat was tight. Despairingly, she realized she was about to cry.

Jeune picked up a slice of apple, bit into it with a crunch . She chewed it slowly, swallowed, and wiped her fingers on the napkin. “Gods, Lacrimosa, don’t be such a baby. You’re always making a fuss about how you’re such an expert on Caedmon—”

“No, I don’t,” Lark protested, but Jeune ignored her, going on.

“—so it shouldn’t be any trouble for you to write it on your own. You already have most of the notes.”

Jeune dismissively indicated the folder in Lark’s hands.

Damson went back to her essay, attention fixed on the handwritten lines.

Lark picked up the discarded ribbon from the floor, clutching it tightly in her fist. She hurried out of the library before Jeune—or Damson—could see the tears that had filled her eyes.

She spent the rest of the week in her room.

She hardly slept. She woke early, before first light, going down to the refectory for breakfast before anyone else arrived.

She worked past sunset, until midnight, sitting raw-eyed in the lamplit gloom, a mug of black coffee turned cold on the desk beside her.

Her world devolved into the ache of fatigue, crumpled notepaper, ink on her fingers, the way her hands shook.

Without Damson’s notes, all Lark had was her plan for the exhibition in Verse.

She put together the proposal, interspersed with details about her own connection to Caedmon and his artwork of the local gods, once again using sketches from the book Alastair had given her.

On the day the application was due, she delivered it to Headmistress Blanche, went back to her dorm, and fell soundly asleep.

Lark’s dreams were full of bonfire sparks, walls hung with golden frames, an endless mural.

A velvet-covered altar in a cave beside the sea.

The next morning, she was awoken by a persistent knocking at her door.

She emerged, groggily, and was told by an unfamiliar second-year student that the headmistress wanted to see her immediately.

Lark pulled on fresh clothes and hurried to the commons building, up to the faculty offices on the topmost floor.

She was breathless by the time she stepped inside.

Headmistress Blanche stood with her back to Lark, her face toward the window. Below were the school gardens, neat rows of vegetable beds, the ornate greenhouse where they grew summer produce. “I am putting you on academic probation,” she said to Lark, not turning, “for plagiarism.”

That night, Lark found Damson and Jeune in the gardens, sitting outside the greenhouse with a bottle of wine they had inveigled one of the older city boys to buy them.

Lark felt something bitter curdle in the pit of her stomach when she remembered the time it had been her and Damson with the stolen wine, sitting together beside the river on a spread-out blanket.

Moonlight dragged her shadow across the ground as she approached them. She had tried to explain herself to the headmistress, tried to argue. But no matter what she said, it only seemed to make things worse. There had been multiple, collaborating reports that Lark had plagiarized her application.

And as soon as Damson looked at her, Lark knew .

Lark went cold. Perspiration beaded over her cheeks in an icy sheen, tracked down her spine. All her carefully rehearsed words fell away, and all she could say was “Why?”

“Why are you accusing me?” Damson took a sip from the wine, swallowing delicately before she blotted her mouth on her wrist. “Headmistress Blanche already knew everything about what you had done before she even called me to her office. All I did was tell her the truth when she asked.”

“It isn’t the truth, though! You stole my work, then said I took it from you!”

“I didn’t steal anything, Lacrimosa.” Damson folded her arms. She sighed, as though Lark’s very presence made her weary. “You’re not the only one allowed to write about bonfires and altars, praying to Therion. The whole of Verse honors him. He isn’t your personal god.”

Lark started to cry, hating herself, hating that she couldn’t stop.

Jeune got to her feet and moved toward Lark, her mouth twisted in disgust. Her eyes were narrowed, all accusation.

“You should be ashamed of yourself, acting this way. How can you be so cruel, when Damson worked so hard all this time with none of the support you had?”

Damson nodded in agreement. She was like a sheathed blade that had just been drawn.

“I never wanted to say anything before, because we were friends. But it wasn’t right, the way you used being an orphan to get sympathy from everyone.

Especially when some of us are truly alone, without brothers who are devoted to giving us whatever we want. ”

“That isn’t true!” Lark stumbled back, hurt, her chest aching as though Damson had struck her. “Henry and Oberon, they never—”

Jeune made a face at the sound of her brothers’ names. Lark was sobbing, her face slicked with tears, her breath so ragged she could hardly speak. In a fractured whisper, she said to Damson, “I gave them up for you.”

“I never asked you to give them up.”

“Please,” Lark gasped, reaching toward Damson, her hand outstretched. “You have to go back and tell Headmistress Blanche the truth about me.”

Jeune watched their exchange with a bored expression, holding the wine bottle loosely in her hand. She muttered something inaudible, her mouth twisted into a scathing smile, but Lark ignored her. She could only look at Damson.

With her ribbon-tied hair and the dark stain of wine across her mouth, Damson was as beautiful, as unreachable, as a distant star.

Lark had loved her more than anyone; she had trusted her, belonged to her.

And this was where she had ended up: lying on her back like a frightened dog, her belly soft, her throat bared.

“Damson, please .”

Damson fixed Lark with a pitying look, as though their whole friendship had been little more than an embarrassing mistake.

She got to her feet, brushing the creases from her skirt as she stood.

“I’ve already told Headmistress Blanche the truth.

That you’re spoiled and insecure. That you assumed growing up in Verse meant you wouldn’t have to do any proper research.

That you were counting on my notes to finish your application. ”

Lark put her hand against her mouth. She felt as though she had fallen from a great height and had all her breath knocked out of her lungs in a single gasp.

Trembling, desperate, her whole body burned hot as a fever.

Around her, everything began to blur. Her heart pounded, her stomach was a knot, a swallowed stone.

Like the rise of a sudden wave, fury swept over her, inescapable.

She was caught up and pulled forward, her rage as unstoppable as a riptide.

Damson turned away, about to leave, but Lark couldn’t let her go.

This couldn’t be the end of everything—the past years, the future they’d dreamed of, that they were going to share.

She grabbed for Damson’s sleeve. The other girl sidestepped, pushing aside Lark’s hand, but they were tangled together.

Lark tripped, and she was falling backward, Damson beside her.

She struck the side of the glasshouse, hitting a fragile panel in the ornate frame that was already cracked.

Her arm was against it, then through it, the glass shattering like a fallen star.

Damson scrambled away from her. There was a shallow cut on Damson’s wrist, another on her cheek, where she had been nicked by the glass.

Lark cradled her arm to her chest. She felt the hot spreading thickness of blood as it seeped through her shirt, but she was so numb that it didn’t hurt—nothing hurt.

She and Damson looked at one another. Their chests were heaving; they were frozen in time. Poised like duelists in the final moment before the draw. Then, with her eyes still pinned to Lark, Damson dropped to one knee and caught up a shard of glass. She dragged it across her forearm.

Distantly, Lark heard the sound of footsteps.

Jeune, near the commons building, calling out to where the faculty staff were still in their rooms. The beam of a flashlight cast over them as a crowd of teachers approached.

Jeune, breathless, fell to her knees at Damson’s side.

“It was Lacrimosa,” she said. “Lacrimosa was the one who hurt her.”

Two days later, as Lark, with her stitched-up arm and her packed suitcase, hurried out of Marchmain toward the evening train, she passed the noticeboard. Pinned at the center was an official announcement, typed on thick, cream-colored paper, stamped with the Marchmain Academy seal.

Congratulations to the successful applicants of the Astera Gallery Curation Program.

Beneath were two names, written side by side. Damson Sinclair and Jeune Holloway.