The air outside was cooler than it should have been for late afternoon. The clouds had thickened, dragging shadows across the stone path that curved around Hawthorne High's outer field. The chill settled in Elora's skin like damp fingers.
"End of day one," Jessi declared, raising her arms like she'd just crossed a finish line. "You survived. And no one bled. That's a win."
Elora gave a weak smile. "It was… intense."
"'Intense' is our default setting. You'll get used to it. Eventually." Jessi pulled her backpack higher on her shoulder, then froze. "Crap. I left my notebook. Bio class. I had a full list of field observation notes and doodles of Ms. Rickett turning into a moth demon. I need that."
Elora laughed quietly. "Go get it. I'll wait here."
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
Jessi gave her a nod and darted back up the steps toward the main doors, her boots thudding rhythmically. Elora crossed her arms and turned to the open field stretching beyond the stone wall. The trees were distant here, but she still felt them breathing.
A breeze swept past her ear, soft and strange.
Elora...
She turned.
No one was there.
She narrowed her eyes. Wind. Just wind.
But then it came again. Not louder—but closer. A whisper against her skin.
Clove-born...
Her heart lurched.
"Who's there?" she called.
Only the rustling leaves replied.
Elora stepped off the paved path, turning slowly in a circle, eyes darting between the tree-line and the empty yard. The voice had no direction. It folded into the wind, becoming part of the air itself.
She took another step.
Then another.
The voice came again, curling like smoke in her mind.
Come back to me...
She spun, disoriented now. The world seemed slightly tilted. The school behind her faded into the periphery. The edges of her vision buzzed faintly—like she was slipping into something old and unseen.
And then—
Wham.
Her body collided with something solid. Hard chest. Warm.
Pain spiked in her nose.
"Gah—!" Elora stumbled back, hands to her face.
"Oh—damn. Are you okay?" A smooth voice, steady and low, with the slightest ripple of concern.
Elora blinked through watery eyes and pain, and for a moment, forgot everything—because the boy standing in front of her didn't look real.
He was tall, effortlessly composed, with platinum-blonde hair that looked like moonlight spun into silk. His hazel eyes—piercing and watchful—met hers briefly, before flicking away like she'd burned him.
"I—I'm fine," she mumbled, still holding her nose. "I think."
His brows creased. "You sure? That looked like a pretty direct hit."
The ache pulsed behind her eyes, but it was nothing compared to the strange electricity that lingered in the space between them. Like something had cracked open inside her. Elora stared at him, her thoughts scrambled.
He was beautiful in a quiet, magnetic way. Untouchable. Inevitable. The kind of person people orbit without realizing.
But then he looked away again—too quickly.
And stepped back.
"Alright, well…" he cleared his throat. "Sorry. Really. Take care."
And before Elora could form another word, he turned and walked away, the wind tousling his white-blonde hair like it loved him.
She stood there, blinking at the space he'd left.
What… was that?
Her nose still throbbed.
But something deeper hurt more.
He looked at me like I was something strange.
"Was it my strange eyes" Elora muttered
People had called her weird before. Whispered about her at school. Back in the city, kids had pointed, teachers had stared—but she'd never felt small because of it. Never once thought it was something to be ashamed of.
Until now.
Until him.
And she hated that it mattered.
She hated how heavy her chest felt.
Why did it feel like I disappointed him?
"El!"
Jessi's voice snapped her out of the spiral. She turned to see her friend jogging back across the pavement, notebook in hand.
"You won't believe it," Jessi said breathlessly. "I swear I saw someone—like, vaguely familiar—heading down the side hall. Super tall. Pale. Like he was photoshopped into reality. I didn't get a good look, but it gave me major déjà vu."
Elora swallowed. "Blonde?"
"Yeah! Like ridiculously blonde. You saw him?"
"Sort of."
Jessi tilted her head. "And?"
Elora shook her head. "It was nothing."
But the ache in her chest remained.
She forced a smile. "Let's just go."
------------------------
Elora and Jessi walked the rest of the way home in silence, a strange tension hanging between them—not from awkwardness, but from something unseen, humming beneath the ground and behind the trees. The wind kept shifting direction, carrying with it whispers Elora didn't understand, and Jessi occasionally glanced sideways at her like she wanted to ask something but couldn't figure out what.
The encounter still sat heavy in Elora's chest.
She couldn't stop thinking about him—the platinum-haired boy with the voice like velvet smoke and eyes like storm-lit honey. Every movement of his had been careful, held back, as though he was constantly fighting something inside himself.
He didn't even tell me his name.
Not that he needed to. She felt it. Something in her bones told her she'd just met someone who mattered. Someone the world would not let her forget.
And still, he'd looked at her like she was… off.
Like something was wrong with her.
Why must her eyes always be that darn problem
She replayed it all in her head—his hesitation, the way he looked away like her eyes made him uncomfortable.
And why did that make her heart ache?
She was used to people seeing her as odd, unsettling, a little too quiet and a little too... alive. She'd lived her whole life on the edge of whispers, the outskirts of normal. But not once had it made her feel lesser.
Until him.
Until the boy with the storm-eyes turned away like he couldn't bear to look for too long.
Back at the house, Mira was in the garden—barefoot in the soil, fingers buried to the wrists in the roots of something leafy and blue-veined. Elora paused at the edge of the garden path, watching her.
Mira moved like she belonged to the earth. Her limbs were slow but strong, her focus unbreakable. She whispered softly to the plant in a language Elora didn't know but somehow recognized in her marrow.
She didn't interrupt.
She just stood there until Mira finally looked up.
"You've been touched," Mira said without a trace of surprise.
Elora blinked. "What?"
Mira rose, wiping her hands on a cloth that looked older than the house. "Something brushed against your spirit today. Something—or someone"
Elora opened her mouth, then closed it again.
"I..... what are you talking about?" she admitted. "I don't even know what happened."
Mira didn't press her. She simply nodded, her eyes calculating behind her ageless face.
Jessi, still behind Elora, cleared her throat. "I'll, uh… give you guys some space."
"You can stay," Elora said, but Jessi shook her head.
"I need to go sketch this weird tree root I saw behind the science building. It had veins. Like… actual veins." She made a dramatic gagging noise and trotted off down the path.
Elora turned back to Mira.
"He was just a boy," she said. "But something… changed."
"Platinum hair?" Mira asked without even blinking.
Elora narrowed her eyes. "You know him?"
"I know the Knights. All of them. Always watching. Always walking the edge."
"That's the surname you warned me against"
Mira stepped closer, her gaze now piercing. "Yes by all means. Come in darling"
That chilled Elora in a way the breeze couldn't.
That night, Elora lay in bed beneath an old quilt that smelled like dried herbs and dust, staring at the ceiling. The attic room creaked occasionally, as though remembering footsteps long gone.
But she couldn't sleep.
She kept thinking about him and Mira's warnings.
About the way her chest had fluttered and her skin had prickled when their eyes met. The way the world felt louder around him.
And the way he left her standing there, confused and suddenly—painfully—self-aware.
Why did it matter so much what he thought?
Why did I want him to see me differently?
And even deeper, beneath the ache and insecurity, was something more dangerous:
Why did it feel like I already knew him?
She dreamed of roots that night. Not ordinary roots—but massive, vein-like tendrils moving through the soil like serpents, pulsing with life and memory. They formed tunnels beneath Hawthorne, paths of secrets and blood.
And in the center of it all—under the massive Hawthorne Tree—stood two figures: one with emerald eyes and hair like shadow, and the other with eyes like firelight and a blade in hand.
Elora woke with tears in her eyes and dirt on her fingers.
The next morning, she sat on the porch with a mug of hot rosemary tea, her mind fogged and spinning.
Jessi plopped down beside her in mismatched pajamas and a coat two sizes too big.
"I'm just gonna say it," Jessi announced. "Something definitely happened yesterday."
Elora gave a non-committal shrug. "I bumped into someone."
"You collided," Jessi corrected. "And then you acted like you saw God and he didn't like your shoes."
Elora snorted. "It wasn't that dramatic."
"It was," Jessi insisted. "You've been all moody and poetic since. I should know. I invented moody and poetic."
Elora swirled her tea. "He looked at me like I was strange."
"You are strange and your eyes are too rare and beautiful"
"Not in a good way."
Jessi tilted her head. "So what if he did? That doesn't define you. Besides… sometimes people look away because they're scared of what they see. Doesn't mean what they saw was bad."
Elora didn't reply.