Chapter 6 Everly
The library at Nyxhaven is four floors of old wood and older magic, with stacks that go back so far they disappear into shadow and a card catalog that rearranges itself when you're not looking. I've been here every night for a week, and I still haven't found anything useful.
The cracked sphere sits on the table beside me, pulsing faintly with four colors that twine together and refuse to separate at all.
Shadow and lightning and blood-red and chaos-purple, all swirling together behind fractured glass like they're fighting for space.
Warrick said it was my responsibility to fix it.
She didn't say how. Nobody will tell me how.
I flip through another book—Diagnostic Methods for Magical Affinity, Third Edition—and find the same thing I've found in every other book.
Testing spheres are designed to isolate a single discipline.
If the sphere cracks, the student's magic is too weak to register.
If the sphere cycles between disciplines before settling, the student has latent potential in multiple areas but will eventually declare for one.
Nothing about a sphere that cycles all four continuously without stopping. Nothing about glass that shatters from the inside. Nothing about colors that won't stop moving even now, three weeks later, sitting on a library table under fluorescent lights.
I check the index. Multi-discipline manifestation, see: Undifferentiated Magic.
I flip to that section and find a paragraph about students whose magic never develops a clear affinity—weak, unfocused, usually wash out by sophomore year.
That's not me. My magic isn't weak. It's too much, too everything, and no one will tell me what that means.
There's a cross-reference at the bottom of the page: For historical cases of unified magical expression, see: Grimoire Phenomenon (RESTRICTED).
I go to the card catalog. Search for "Grimoire Phenomenon.
" The little drawer spits out a single card with a call number that leads me to a section on the fourth floor I've never been to before.
The stacks are dustier up here, the lights dimmer.
I find the shelf, run my finger along the spines until I hit the right number.
The book is gone. In its place is a gap just wide enough, and a small placard that reads: Removed by Administrative Order, 1927.
I check the neighboring books. The Unified Arts: A History—removed, 1927.
Concordia Hall and Its Legacy—removed, 1927.
The Schism: Causes and Consequences—this one's still here, but when I flip through it, there are pages missing.
Whole chapters torn out, the ragged edges still visible in the binding, carelessly yet clearly sending a message.
One year after the Schism that Brittany mentioned. One year after the four disciplines formally separated.
Someone went through this library almost a hundred years ago and pulled every book that might explain what I am.
I sit back down at my table, staring at the cracked sphere, and try not to scream.
The next morning, I decide to be normal.
Not hiding-in-my-room normal. Real normal. Everly Grey normal—the version of me that makes friends everywhere she goes, that walks into rooms and warms them up, that has never met a stranger she couldn't charm into a smile or a laugh or, at the very least, a grunt of acknowledgement.
That version of me has to still exist. She's just been buried under weeks of storms and sabotage and fraternity presidents who look at her like she's a bomb about to go off. If I can just find her again, dig her out from under all this bullshit, maybe things will start to make sense.
I put on my nicest clothes—the charcoal blazer over a clean white shirt, black jeans, the most Nyxhaven-appropriate outfit I own. I brush my long dark hair until it shines. I practice smiling in the mirror until it doesn't look like a grimace.
Magical History. Professor Robertson's 8 AM drone-fest. I get there early, pick a seat in the middle of the room instead of the back, and wait.
A girl comes in—Mors, silver blazer, dark hair in a neat braid. She's in my Elemental Studies class too; I've seen her taking notes, frowning at Parker's sensory assignments like they personally offend her. She seems serious. Studious. The kind of person who might appreciate a study partner.
"Hey," I say as she passes my row. "I'm Everly. I think we have Parker together?"
She looks at me. At the empty seats surrounding me. At the sphere-shaped bulge in my bag where I've been carrying the cracked thing everywhere because I'm afraid to leave it alone.
"I know who you are," she says, and keeps walking.
She sits three rows back. A minute later, two more students come in and sit on either side of her, forming a little cluster that very pointedly does not include me.
Okay. Fine. Not everyone's going to be friendly. That's normal. That's college. I'll try again.
Dining hall. Lunch. I load up my tray with whatever's available—some kind of pasta, a bread roll, an apple that might be enchanted to stay fresh forever or might just be half wax—and scan the room for an opening.
There's a table near the windows with a few empty seats. A mix of students, no clear fraternity affiliation, just people eating and talking. Normal. Approachable.
I walk over. "Hey, mind if I sit here?"
The conversation stops. Four faces turn toward me with varying degrees of pity and discomfort.
"Actually," one of them says—a guy in a green sweater, not quite meeting my eyes—"we were just leaving."
They weren't. Their trays are still full of food, some of it completely untouched. But they pick them up anyway, gathering their things thoroughly and pointedly, and relocate to a table on the other side of the room.
I sit down alone at the table they abandoned, eat my pasta, and pretend I don't hear the whispers.
Library again. Afternoon. I'm at my usual table with the sphere and a stack of increasingly useless books when I notice a kid a few tables over struggling with what looks like an Elemental Studies worksheet.
Tumult, based on the purple in his jacket—young, probably a first-year like me, brow furrowed in concentration.
This is the kind of thing I'm good at. I've tutored classmates since middle school. I'm patient, I explain things well, I make people feel less stupid about not understanding the first time around.
I gather my courage and walk over.
"Hey. That's Parker's sensory mapping assignment, right? I just finished mine—I could help you with the temperature gradient section if you want. It's tricky."
He looks up at me. For a second, I think it might work. His expression is open, almost grateful.
Then someone at the next table coughs loudly and says, not quite under their breath, "Careful, she might absorb you."
The kid's face closes off. "I'm good," he says. "Thanks."
I go back to my table. I don't try again.
The common room on the second floor of Bellamy Hall has a study group that meets on Wednesday nights.
I know because I've seen the flyers—"All Disciplines Welcome, Collaborative Learning Environment, Snacks Provided.
" It sounds like exactly the kind of thing I would have joined in my old life.
The kind of thing I would have organized in my old life.
I show up at seven with my notes and my best smile.
There are six people already there, spread across the couches and armchairs, textbooks open on the coffee table. They look up when I walk in.
"Hi," I say. "I saw the flyer. Is there still room?"
Silence. The kind of silence that has weight.
"We're actually full," says a girl with glasses and a Tempest pin on her collar. "Sorry."
There are two empty armchairs. I can count.
"Right," I say. "Okay. Maybe next time."
"Maybe," she says, in a tone that means never.
I walk back to my room with my notes clutched against my chest, and I don't cry, because I'm Everly Grey and I don't give up that easily.
But I'm starting to understand why Brittany said scholarship kids are lucky to survive.
The note is waiting when I get back.
Slipped under the door, folded once, my name written on the outside in handwriting I don't recognize. I pick it up and unfold it.
Two words.
Go home.
I stare at it for a long time. The paper is plain, no crest, no identifying marks. It could be from anyone. A student. A professor. The administration itself, for all I know.
Go home.
I don't have a home to go to. My family can't even hear the word magic without their eyes glazing over.
If I leave Nyxhaven, I leave the only place that might be able to explain what I am—and I go back to being the girl who moves objects when she's upset and feels storms coming before the sky changes and knows, has always known, that something inside her is different.
But sitting here in this room, holding this note, I'm not sure I can stay either.
The tears start before I can stop them. Not dramatic sobbing—just slow, steady leaking, like my body has finally given up trying to hold anything in and has decided that crying is no longer optional.
I sit down on my bed with the note still in my hand and I cry, quiet and ugly, until I've given myself the hiccups.
I’m still crying when Brittany finds me.
She doesn't say anything at first. Just drops her bag by the door, takes in the scene—me on the bed, blotchy and disgusting, the note crumpled in my fist—and goes to rummage under her bed.
She comes up with a bag of sour gummy worms, a bag of salt and vinegar chips, and a bottle of something that's definitely not allowed in the dorms. She sets all three on my bed and sits down on hers, across from me.
"Fourth one this week," I manage, waving the note. "Someone shoved one in my bag during Theory."
"I know. I saw it fall out."
"You didn't say anything."
"You didn't need me to tell you people suck. You already knew." She cracks open the chips. "Eat something. You look like shit."
I grab a handful of gummy worms. They're stale. I eat them anyway.
"This is stupid," I say, once I can talk without hiccupping. "I've never—I don't—" I gesture vaguely at my own tear-streaked face. "I don't do this. I'm the one who makes friends. I'm the one who fits in everywhere. That's my whole thing."
"Your thing doesn't work here."
"I noticed that somewhere between trying to make friends and making none at all."
Brittany's quiet for a minute, crunching through chips. Herbert emerges from under her bed, picks his way delicately across the floor, and climbs up onto my mattress. He settles near my knee, eight legs tucked under him, beady eyes fixed on my face.
"He keeps doing that," I say.
"He's concerned."
"About what?"
"Your currently fragile mental state." She takes a swig from the bottle and holds it out to me. "The fraternities do this to everyone who doesn't fit in, you know. It's not personal."
"It feels pretty fucking personal."
"That's the point. They push until you break or leave. Either way, problem solved." She shrugs. "You're more of a problem than most, so they're pushing harder. That's all."
I take the bottle from her, put my lips to its mouth, and cautiously drink. It burns going down and tastes like bad decisions, but the warmth in my belly is soothing somehow. "How did you survive it?"
Brittany doesn't answer right away. She's looking at the wall, at her band posters, at anything except me.
"Who says that I did?"
The question hangs there. I think about her academic probation. Her failing Sanguis magic. The way she keeps everyone at arm's length, including me, especially me, like getting close to people is a risk she's decided not to take.
"Brittany—"
"Don't." She takes the bottle back. "I'm not doing the heart-to-heart thing.
I'm just saying, this place breaks people.
Some of us it breaks all at once, like they're trying to do to you.
Some of us it breaks slow, over years, until we don't even remember what we were like before.
" She takes another drink. "The ones who survive are the ones who find something to hold onto.
A person, a goal, a grudge. Something that matters more than the breaking. "
"What's yours?"
"Wouldn't you like to know." But there's no bite in it. She almost sounds tired. "What's yours going to be?"
I look down at the cracked sphere in my bag, still pulsing with its four impossible colors. At the note in my hand, two words designed to make me disappear.
"Figuring out what I am," I say. "They're scared of me. All of them. I want to know why."
"That's something." Brittany puts on her doom metal—quieter than usual, almost background noise. "Good enough for now."
Later, after the chips are gone and the whiskey has settled into a warm blur behind my eyes, I check my schedule for tomorrow.
Elemental Studies with Parker. The assignment: attend a Mors practical demonstration, observe the sensory experience of death magic, write a two-page reflection on temperature shifts and ambient energy changes.
Great. A room full of necromancers, and me with my cracked sphere and my apparent ability to absorb anything that comes near me.
I pull out my notebook. The sphere. My useless research notes from the library. I don't have answers yet, but I have questions, and questions are somewhere to start.
Go home, the note said.
I smooth out the paper, fold it neatly, and tuck it into my notebook as a bookmark. A reminder.
They want me gone. All of them: the fraternities, the students, maybe even the administration. They look at me and see a problem to be solved, a bomb to be defused, something that doesn't fit and never will.
But I'm still here. Crying into contraband snacks in my dorm room, sure. Failing to make a single friend, absolutely. Running out of leads and out of hope and out of every coping mechanism I've ever relied on.
Still here, though.
That has to count for something.