Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
LUCA
It had been three weeks since Bastion snapped.
Three weeks since he told her she was a mistake.
That her kiss wrecked everything.
That she forced her way into our lives — and our room — and we never asked for it.
Three weeks since she started disappearing.
At first, we told ourselves it was a relief.
No more perfume clouding the air.
No more humming while she folded things that didn’t need folding.
No more unsolicited sweetness in a house built on bone.
But the silence?
It wasn’t quiet.
It was suffocating .
It started with the food.
The deliveries stopped.
No fruit platters stacked with sugared citrus and perfectly sliced grapes.
No cheese boards with prosciutto roses or those ridiculous brie wheels she always sent two of — one with honey, one without.
No cinnamon croissants or pistachio cannoli. No lemon tarts. No almond glaze. Nothing .
She’d been sending them without asking.
Every day.
Quiet little offerings nobody thanked her for.
Now?
Every Crow in the house was in withdrawal.
Rome pushed his tray away with a dramatic sigh. “I’m gonna die in this fucking academy without one of her raspberry pastries.”
Kingston muttered, “I miss the cannoli.”
Cameron shook his head. “You know she used to send extra boards on Thursdays? That was for us.”
“She’s still in the dorm,” someone said. “Right?”
No one answered.
Because technically… yes.
But really?
No .
She came back late. After midnight. Always gone before six.
Sometimes, her bed wasn’t even touched.
Her bathroom shelf was empty.
No perfumes. No expensive rosewood shampoo.
Nothing pink. Nothing soft.
Not even her damn lip gloss was left behind.
And the worst part?
The rumors .
I heard them whispered behind textbooks and lockers, sliding between dorm halls and library tables like venom.
“She’s been sleeping in the library. ”
“I heard she keeps her jacket under the philosophy section.”
“You think she’s really staying there all night? Alone ?”
Bastion heard them too.
I could see it in the way his jaw clenched tighter every day.
But he didn’t say anything.
Neither did I.
Because if we said something…
It made it real .
And what hit hardest — worse than the empty dorm, worse than the vanished food, worse than the missing perfume —
Was picturing her curled up under flickering library lights, spine pressed to a cold stone wall, because she thought we didn’t want her.
Because she believed Bastion when he told her she ruined everything.
And I hated that I noticed. That I even listened to what others were saying. But most of all…. I hated how much I missed noticing her.