Chapter 9 Everly
I throw out the purple sundress on a Tuesday.
It's not a dramatic decision. I don't burn it or tear it up or have some kind of emotional breakdown over a piece of clothing.
I just look at it hanging in my closet—that cheerful lavender cotton, those little embroidered flowers along the hem, the way it practically glows against Brittany's wall of black—and I think, that's not me anymore.
So I stuff it in a trash bag along with the yellow cardigan and two of my brighter t-shirts, and I leave the bag outside the donation bin near the dining hall, and that's that.
Brittany notices, of course. She notices everything, even when she's pretending not to.
"You're wearing my jeans," she says when I come back from my morning shower, toweling off my hair.
"You said I could borrow them."
"I said you could borrow them once. That was three days ago." She's lying on her bed with a textbook propped on her stomach, not actually reading it. "Also, is that my shirt?"
It's a faded black thing with a barely-visible band logo I don't recognize, soft from a thousand washes. I found it in the pile of clothes she leaves on her desk chair, the one she claims is her "secondary closet."
"You have like fifteen of these."
"Twelve. And that one's my favorite."
"I'll give it back after class."
She makes a disgusted sound but doesn't actually argue. That's how I know she doesn't really mind. Brittany's protests are performative—if she actually cared, she'd have hexed me by now. Probably with something that makes my hair fall out. She's mentioned that spell more than once.
I check myself in the mirror before I leave.
Black jeans, black shirt, the charcoal blazer I bought my first day here.
My pink tennis shoes are still the only shoes I own, which ruins the effect somewhat, but I can't afford new ones and I'm not about to ask my parents for money to buy boots because I've decided to dress like I'm attending my own funeral.
The girl in the mirror looks tired. Paler than she used to be. There are shadows under her eyes that won't go away no matter how much sleep she gets, and when she turns her head, the shadows in the corners of the room turn with her.
That's new. That's been happening since the Mors demonstration, since the spell went in, and I still don't know what it means.
"You look like you're auditioning for my life," Brittany says from her bed.
"Is that a compliment?"
"It's an observation." She turns a page in her textbook without looking at it. "The goth thing suits you better than the Lisa Frank explosion, I'll give you that. But you should probably figure out why you're doing it before you commit."
"Maybe I just like black."
"Maybe." Her eyes meet mine in the mirror. "Or maybe you're trying to disappear. Blend in. Stop being the girl everyone stares at."
I don't answer. She's not wrong.
The shadow magic sits inside me like a second heartbeat.
It's hard to describe to someone who hasn't felt it—this cold, heavy presence behind my ribs that wasn't there before.
It doesn't hurt, exactly. It's more like pressure, like carrying something dense in my chest that shifts when I move.
Sometimes I forget it's there for hours at a time.
Then I'll walk past a dark corner and feel it reach, feel the shadows lean toward me like plants toward sunlight, and I remember.
I'm not normal anymore. I don't know if I ever was.
The other students have noticed something's different, even if they don't know the details of what happened at the Mors demonstration.
Word travels fast at Nyxhaven—not the truth, necessarily, but some version of it.
The Grey girl did something weird during a shadow magic class.
The Grey girl freaked out the Mors students.
The Grey girl is even more of a freak than we thought.
They give me a wider berth in the hallways now.
Not out of respect—out of fear. I catch people watching me from the corners of their eyes, tracking my movements, flinching when I get too close.
A Tempest girl changes direction when she sees me coming.
A Sanguis boy drops his books when I accidentally brush past him in the library.
I should probably be upset about it. Instead, I feel something closer to relief. If they're scared of me, at least they're not pretending to be my friend while they figure out how to destroy me.
Felix hasn't approached me since I confronted him in the library. He's still there, hovering at the edges of my vision—I catch glimpses of his auburn hair across the dining hall, hear the soft shuffle of his cards in the library stacks—but he keeps his distance now. Watching. Waiting.
Ren continues to look through me like I'm made of glass. We pass each other in the hallway outside Magical History, and his warm brown eyes slide over me without stopping, without acknowledging. It shouldn't sting anymore. It does anyway.
And Callum. Callum is everywhere, suddenly, in ways he wasn't before.
I see him in the quad between classes. In the back of Professor Robertson's lectures.
Standing at the window of the Administration building when I walk past, pale face framed by glass and shadow.
He doesn't speak to me. Doesn't approach.
Just watches, with those ice-blue eyes that give nothing away.
I'm being studied. I can feel it. All four of them circling like sharks who've scented blood, waiting for something—the next absorption, the next breakdown, the next piece of evidence for whatever file they're building on me.
Fine. Let them watch. I've got my own research to do.
The library becomes my sanctuary.
Every night after dinner, I claim the same table on the third floor—tucked in a corner, surrounded by shelves of books that don't scream or bite, with a clear view of anyone approaching.
I spread out my notes, my textbooks, the cracked sphere that still pulses with its four impossible colors, and I dig.
The official records are useless. Everything about grimoires was removed in 1927, and what's left is sanitized to the point of meaninglessness—vague references to "unified magic practitioners" who were "integrated into the four-discipline system" after the Schism.
No names. No details. No explanation of what happened to them.
But there are other sources. Old newspapers in the archive section, their pages yellowed and brittle. Academic journals from the early twentieth century, before someone decided to scrub the history clean. Letters and diaries from Nyxhaven alumni, donated to the library and apparently forgotten.
I piece together fragments. A woman named Helena Grimoire who published passionate arguments for magical equality in 1925.
A sorority called the Grimoire Girls, headquartered in a building called Concordia Hall, which accepted students who could channel all four disciplines.
References to something called "the capacity problem" and debates about whether unified magic was a gift or a threat.
Then, in 1926, the Schism. The four fraternities formally separated. The Grimoire Girls sorority was "dissolved." Concordia Hall was "condemned."
And after that—nothing. An entire category of mage, erased from the record like they never existed.
I keep digging. There has to be more. There has to be something that explains what I am and why everyone's so afraid of it.
The shadows curl around my ankles as I work, keeping me company in the dark.
The weather turns strange on Thursday.
I notice it first in Professor Parker's class—she's lecturing about atmospheric magic and its relationship to emotional states when the sky outside the window goes from grey to green in the space of a breath. Thunder rumbles, distant but growing. The pressure in the room drops so fast my ears pop.
"Interesting," Parker says, glancing at the window. "It seems we have a live demonstration. Can anyone identify the magical signature?"
A Tempest student raises her hand. "Storm casting. Someone's pulling a lot of atmospheric energy."
"Correct. And based on the speed of formation and the intensity of the pressure drop, I'd estimate it's someone quite powerful.
Perhaps even—" She pauses, tilts her head like she's listening to something the rest of us can't hear.
"Ah. Yes. Class dismissed early today. I'd recommend staying indoors until this passes. "
The students scatter. I hang back, watching the clouds through the window—dark and roiling, shot through with flashes of green and purple lightning that doesn't look natural.
The cold thing in my chest stirs, and I feel something else stir with it.
Something new. A prickle at the back of my neck, a hum in my teeth, a sense of electricity building in the air.
I know who's doing this. I've felt his storms before.
The quad is empty when I step outside.
Everyone else has taken Parker's advice and fled indoors, leaving the wide stone courtyard abandoned beneath the churning sky. Rain hasn't started yet, but it's coming—I can smell it, ozone and wet earth and something sharper underneath, something that tastes like burning.
Atlas is standing in the center of the quad.
He's not casting, exactly. He's just standing, feet planted, head tilted back, arms loose at his sides while the sky tears itself apart above him.
Lightning arcs between the clouds in sheets and forks, illuminating his white-blond hair, the hard line of his jaw, the way his whole body is tight with something I can't name.
He's not causing the storm. He is the storm. His emotions made manifest in wind and thunder and the electricity that crackles through the air thick enough to taste.
I should go inside. I should turn around, walk back to Bellamy Hall, let him work through whatever this is alone. That's the smart choice. The safe choice.
Instead, I walk toward him.
"Atlas."