The whispers were easy to ignore at first.
Or so Riley told herself.
She walked the academy halls with her chin lifted and her steps measured, as though dignity could serve as armor. Every turn of her wrist, every breath she took, she measured carefully, weaving poise into a shield. She greeted when politeness demanded it, answered questions with clipped precision, and offered nothing more. To all appearances, she was untouchable.
But she could feel it.
The tension curled around her like smoke — insidious, slow, and suffocating. She felt it between one step and the next, in the sudden hush that clung to corners, in the subtle shift of air behind her back, in the way the sunlight bent differently around a gathering of students, as if even the light itself whispered caution.
It wasn't loud. That was the cruelest part.
It was a quiet violence, bred in lowered voices and sideward glances, in the sharpening of words stripped of volume but weighted with venom.
"She's always hanging around Sweinz, isn't she?"
"I wonder what she's offering to be so well-guarded."
"Nothing special. Just some common low-ranking noble with no macht."
"Her face is not something special either."
"She is too proud of hanging around powerful people that she may forget her own level. Pathetic."
The whispers never struck in daylight's center. They hunted in thresholds, in shadowed corners, in empty stretches of corridor where she walked alone. Always careful. Always calculated. Not once when Ace was beside her, and certainly not when Riel's tall figure crossed the hall. Around him, the noise collapsed with suspicious speed, retreating like guilty children caught in mischief.
The culprits needed no unmasking. Selanne Elowen and her navy-accented shadows made little effort to hide. Their uniforms were immaculate, every fold pressed to precision. Their laughter was soft, elegant, the kind that stung worse than any shout. They would linger just long enough when Riley passed, their voices trailing into deliberate hushes, silences more damning than words.
Nothing one could report. Nothing instructors would ever notice. But sharp enough to sink under the skin.
Riley told herself not to care. She repeated it like a prayer: Ignore it. Ignore it. You've survived worse. Her focus had to be on her studies, her mock exams, her study projects. Selanne would grow tired eventually.
But a deeper voice — one Riley did not want to hear — whispered otherwise. This kind of malice did not burn itself out. It fed on silence, thrived on restraint. It was patient. And patient cruelty had a way of outlasting even the strongest defenses.
Ace was the first to sense it.
"You're walking faster these days," he remarked one morning as they cut across the east courtyard. The crisp wind tugged his blond hair into disarray, tossing it over his forehead in wiry strands, but his grin remained in place. His tone, however, carried something quieter — suspicion.
Riley fixed her gaze on the cobbled stones, pretending not to notice the way the sunlight caught on the edges of his hair, turning gold to fire. "Am I?"
"Mm." Ace slowed his pace deliberately until she nearly walked ahead of him. "Like you're trying to outrun someone."
She forced a laugh. "Or maybe I'm just trying to keep up with you."
The joke came out lighter than she felt. She could almost hear the rattle of her heartbeat in the wind. Ace studied her for a heartbeat, blue-green eyes narrowing slightly, the corners of his lips twitching in unspoken question. Then he shrugged, letting it go — or pretending to.
That was Ace. He would not pry unless invited. It was his kindness. His flaw.
And maybe Riley preferred it that way. If he pressed, she wasn't sure she'd know how to keep the truth contained. She wasn't ready to share the whispers, the careful plotting, the feeling of eyes that never blinked at her back.
But the whispers didn't stop.
---
It was a week later when the first bite drew blood.
Riley lingered in the mixed wing after class, arms burdened with borrowed texts. The archive chamber smelled of dust and cedar, its shelves towering like silent judges. Sunlight streamed through the high windows in sharp, pale beams, dust motes floating lazily in their wake. She replaced the books one by one, savoring the momentary quiet, letting the rhythm of order soothe the tension coiling inside her chest.
When she stepped back into the corridor, the hush felt different. Thin. Expectant.
Her footsteps echoed in the long marble hall. The sunlight was broken into pale slats by narrow windows, painting her path with fractured silver light. The chill in the air, though the day had been warm, made her shiver faintly. She adjusted her grip on her satchel, fingers brushing the smooth leather, while thoughts leaped ahead to the assignments waiting in her dorm.
Then her foot slipped.
Not clumsily. Not naturally.
Too smoothly, too suddenly, as though the floor had shifted beneath her.
The polished tiles shimmered faintly — not water, not reflection, but something worse. A false sheen crawling across the surface like oil, glimmering threads woven in unnatural patterns. Did some artifact's magic tangle here? A slip-trap, subtle but deadly.
She realized it a heartbeat too late.
Her balance pitched backward.
The corridor reeled. Ceiling and floor spun. Light fractured into jagged shards across the walls. Panic surged, clawing at her throat, her satchel writhing in her hands as if trying to escape too. Her pulse thundered, drowning thought.
Not here. Not like this.
Then something struck her waist — cold, firm, inhuman.
Not hands.
A shadow.
It coiled around her like a living ribbon, smooth, unyielding, drawing her upright before the marble could crack her skull.
Her breath burst out in a choked gasp. Hands trembled violently, clutching at air, at nothing. The shadow released her only when another touch replaced it.
A hand. Warm. Solid.
Riel.
He stood too close, closer than propriety allowed, his grip firm against her side. His eyes, sharp and pale as winter steel, flicked once to her face, then down to the floor where the trap was already dissolving. The sheen bled away like frost in morning light, vanishing before proof could be gathered.
"You almost fell," he said at last, voice low, even. But the edge in it sliced clean through her composure.
Riley exhaled, ragged. She hadn't realized how hard her heart was hammering until the silence pressed against it. "I—didn't see it. But... thank you."
Her words shook. She told herself it was adrenaline, not the way his shadow had brushed against her, not the steadiness in his gaze that pinned her where she stood.
Grasping for normalcy, she forced a smile. "By the way, this is the mixed wing. What brings you here?"
Riel did not answer immediately. His gaze lingered on the last trace of glimmer retreating into the marble. His expression revealed nothing, but the weight in his silence pressed down on her shoulders.
Finally, with a faint shrug, he said, "Nothing. Escaping the suffocation of the thriver wing, perhaps."
The words were too flat to convince. His shoulders carried too much weight for something so casual. But Riley, still trembling, chose not to press.
"Then I'll leave you to your... stroll," she murmured, adjusting her satchel with shaking hands.
She turned quickly, almost fleeing, but the awareness of his eyes burned against her back long after she left the corridor.
He hadn't believed it was an accident. She knew it.
---
That night, Riley lay awake staring at her ceiling. The moonlight through her window fell across her blanket in fractured silver lines, but her mind refused stillness. Every quiet creak of the academy, every distant whisper of wind against stone seemed amplified, echoing the trap, the fall, the shadow.
The moment replayed endlessly: the shimmer on the marble, the sudden slip, the coil of shadow catching her, Riel's cool voice.
Someone had set that trap. Not a random spell. Not a careless accident. Someone had crafted it to snap at her feet.
And Selanne's laughter — soft, brittle, perfect — echoed in her skull with painful clarity.
Ignoring it wouldn't save her.
For the first time, Riley admitted the truth: the whispers were not just whispers.
They had teeth.
And sooner or later, they would bite.