Chapter 3 #2
Because after last night, my pulse still won’t fully settle. Every time my concentration slips, it finds him instead.
So I keep playing, running the same passage over and over until my fingers ache, as if I can give my hands one thing to learn and stop my body from remembering another.
By the time I make it back to the dorm, my hands are still humming. Toeing off my shoes, I sling my bag onto the desk beside his and look out the window. The last of the afternoon light is gone. Rain streaks the glass, turning the courtyard beyond into something blurred and dark.
Rain. Just like last night.
My vision fractures so fast it makes my heart slam hard against my ribs. I drag in a sharp breath and brace one hand on the desk while the other flies to my chest.
I still can’t make it add up. The chase. The invitation. The way he looked at me across the canteen. If all he wants is somebody to play the Noctis at a party, then why does any of this feel wrong?
I glance toward the window again.
Damaris still isn’t back.
I tap my multi-slate and send him a quick message.
You okay?
He doesn’t answer.
Maybe he’s still in class. Engineering seems to keep stranger hours than the Music Department, and after one day here, I’ve already learned that Damaris is perfectly capable of losing track of time when something catches his attention.
He’s fine, I tell myself, staring at the unanswered message. He’s an adult and more than capable of making his own decisions.
I pull my score folder toward me and reach for the stack of orientation material Halvern gave us this morning, spreading it across the desk as if I’m actually going to do something useful with it.
Class schedules. Practice expectations. Department guidelines. Housing rules.
I make it through maybe half a page before realizing I’ve read the same paragraph three times. My eyes keep dragging back to the window, to the rain streaking the glass, to the sound of his voice carrying across the canteen.
The worst part is that my body seems to remember the order before my mind can reject it.
Don’t make me come collect you.
I shove the packet aside, sending it sliding across the desk, and stare after it for a second.
Tomorrow. Eight.
The words have followed me all afternoon, no matter how often I tell myself I’m not going.
I’m not. Absolutely not.
And yet every time I think I’ve finally stopped thinking about him, something pulls me right back to that table.
For one wild second, I wonder if it would be easier to just ask him what the hell he wants from me. Then I remember the way he looked at me across the canteen, talking past Damaris with the certainty of someone who’d already decided I was coming.
I’ve never been good at walking straight into trouble. I’ve always been better at staying in the shadows.
The memory of his gaze flashes through my head again, and the heat comes back with it.
Was he flirting with me, or just toying with me? And if so… why me?
I should be doing homework.
Instead, I reach for the one thing I promised myself I wouldn’t look at again today.
A second later, the photo appears in muted gold and shadow, a crowded bar with a woman near the back, half-turned away from the camera. Her face is too blurred to make out, but a thin flash of silver at her throat catches the light sharply enough to pull my eye every time.
Ma wore that pendant until she gave it to Sola on her eighteenth birthday. After that, it rarely left my sister’s throat.
My gaze lingers on the silver glint at her neck. No matter how many times I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything, the same thought slips in before I can stop it.
What if it’s really her?
The question hurts enough that I look away for a second before forcing myself back to the image.
It isn’t proof. I know that. The pendant isn’t rare. Someone else could own one. But every time I look at the photo, my thoughts end up in the same place.
Sola.
Even now, after all this time, I still don’t know if she left on her own or if something happened to her. I don’t know if she came to Sero because she wanted to. I don’t know if she ran. I don’t know if she was taken.
I don’t even know if she’s alive and choosing not to come home, or if she can’t.
Ma and Pa still call her missing. They still talk about her like she might walk back through the door if they leave enough space for it.
I never showed them the photo. I couldn’t. One blurred figure in the back of a bar isn’t enough to hand them hope they might have to lose twice.
Maybe it isn’t even her. Maybe I’m wrong.
But when Caervast Conservatory offered me a full scholarship placement on Sero, housing included, I knew before I finished reading the letter that I was going.
My parents cried. To them, it was a miracle.
To me, it was the first real chance I’d had to find my sister.
My multi-slate dings with a string of messages from Damaris.
I’ve been waiting for you for ten years
I’m in the canteen. Where the hell are you?
If you don’t get down here soon, I’m eating your food too, boo
“Drama queen,” I mutter. But some of the tightness in my chest eases anyway.
I shove myself upright, push my feet back into my shoes, and head for the door.
The corridor outside is quieter than it should be at this hour, the usual sounds of doors opening and voices carrying through the dorm somehow absent.
Stepping into it, I hesitate. For no reason I can name, a shiver skids up my arms, the fine hairs at the back of my neck lifting as a familiar unease stirs somewhere deep in my chest.
The feeling is gone almost immediately.
Still, I stand there for another second with my hand wrapped around the handle, listening.
Nothing. No footsteps echo through the corridor, no voices drift from behind closed doors, and no movement breaks the stillness.
Just the strange feeling that if I turn around fast enough, I might catch something looking back.
Light, get a grip.
It’s an old building, I remind myself. The heating is inconsistent and the stone forever holds onto the cold. That’s all.
Even so, I find myself glancing down both ends of the corridor before pulling the door shut behind me and heading for the canteen.