Reichenbach Academy had never been so quiet.
By noon, every tower window glowed with faint amber wardlight.
The lockdown protocol.
Hallways sealed themselves with soft clicks. Dorm parents paced in tight, anxious loops, checking doors twice, sometimes three times. Students huddled in clusters, blankets around their shoulders, whispering theories.
Most of them were wrong.
All of them were frightened.
Some called their parents to pick them up. Others didn't have parents who answered the phone. Some, if not most, didn't have parents who cared.
Students were often dropped off at Reichenbach, so their parents could pretend they didn't have children at all, leaving them to defend themselves.
Classes were canceled within the hour.
Principal Maren, Headmistress and professional liar, gathered the dazed crowd into the quad. Her posture was crisp as ever, gown immaculate, the air around her humming faintly with authority she hadn't earned.
"I understand that there is some concern about the actions that have taken place at the Masquerade. However, I can assure you all that it was nothing more than a prank delivered by the seniors," she announced, voice calm, rehearsed, polished within an inch of its life.
The room murmured.
Students looked at their scraped arms, their bruises, the cuts from flying glass. And then looked at each other's pale faces.
"Nothing more," Maren repeated.
Bullshit, Thorn thought from where she leaned against the infirmary doorway, Xavier next to her, pale but steady, one arm wrapped around his ribs.
She lifted her blood pouch absently.
The pink tab caught the sunlight.
And Maren stopped mid-sentence.
The Headmistress's gaze snapped toward Thorn like a whip. Clinical, disdainful, and calculating. Not an ounce of remorse or trust in her eyes.
Thorn raised her hand in a lazy little wave, deliberately slow, deliberately mocking, letting the pouch dangle between her fingers like a threat.
Maren's jaw clenched barely, but Thorn caught it.
Everyone caught the tension, even if they didn't understand it. A shift in the air, a tightening, like the whole corridor leaned an inch to the side.
Xavier's elbow brushed Thorn's.
"Stop antagonizing her," he whispered.
"I'm not antagonizing her," Thorn murmured as she lifted the pouch another inch towards her lips.
"I'm just existing."
And Maren's eyes narrowed, razor-thin and furious. Because for the first time in years, Thorn Evangeline Rosales was no longer a quiet liability.
She was a variable.
She was a problem that needed to be addressed.
Teachers exchanged tight glances over her head, and the older students, the ones who'd seen too much, simply nodded silently and went back to pretending they believed a lie.
But then Alarie, slipping through the small dispersing crowd like a shadow pretending to be a girl, brushed past Thorn.
"Psst."
Thorn turned instinctively, catching the faintest trace of dark-roast coffee and something colder beneath it, like frost on metal.
A touch at her side. Quick. Deliberate.
Something thin and cold slid into Thorn's palm.
A folded note.
Alarie was already gone by the time Thorn looked up, absorbed back into the hall as if she'd never been there at all.
Meet me at the lake after dusk. Both of you.
The handwriting was needle-sharp, and Thorn already knew who had handed her this note. The same teacher who wrote 'great job' on all of her assignments freshman year, with a colorful little smiley-face sticker in the corner.
Other students complained that it was too childlike, but Thorn secretly appreciated it, even if she would never admit it out loud.
Xavier caught the movement and arched a brow, but Thorn only shook her head, tucking it into her sleeve with the smoothness of someone who'd been hiding dangerous things for years.
"Who was that?"
He asked as he pushed himself off the wall.
"Our fairy godmother." Thorn huffed. She turned to slide back into the infirmary, and the nurse's attention flicked over to her immediately.
"Ms. Rosales, please try to finish that serving within the hour," the nurse said, clipboard tucked tight against her chest. "It's essential to get your vitals up. You're still significantly deficient in several nutrients."
Xavier paused in the doorway. "That's what? Her third pouch today? Is that much blood even safe for a hybrid?"
Thorn shot him a glare. "Xavier."
"What?" he pressed. "It's a fair question. If you're not getting the nourishment you need—"
"Drop it, Thorpe," she snapped. "It has nothing to do with you."
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His jaw tightened, frustration flickering behind his eyes as he shook his head.
"You really do make everything complicated."
"And you make everything dramatic," Thorn shot back, lifting the pouch again.
But neither of them missed the way his gaze lingered on her. He was clearly worried, his eyes sharp and entirely unconvinced. But he knew better than to push Thorn into talking about things she clearly didn't want to.
They were released from the infirmary hours later, the sun had set a long time ago, and Thorn was feeling slightly better, well enough that the nurses couldn't justify keeping her any longer.
When they left the infirmary, they hadn't spoken. Not since Thorn snapped at him over the pouches.
Both of them were too stubborn to apologize, so they walked to the lake silently.
Fog crept across the water like a living veil.
The Lake at Reichenbach was always quiet at night, but tonight it felt inhabited by something else. Something that watched, that was patient, and listened closely.
Alarie was already there, kneeling at the edge of the water with her cloak trailing in the mud. Her thick, curly hair hung loose, strands catching on the mist like spider silk.
"You came," she murmured without turning.
"You made it feel like it was urgent," Xavier replied.
"It is."
Alarie finally faced them, eyes dark as the lake behind her.
"The attack on the Great Hall wasn't random, and I know you two already know that. The Choir was trying to activate the First Anchor beneath the ballroom floor." Her jaw tightened. "And Thorn, if you hadn't destabilized it..." She shook her head, not wanting to think about the implications of what could have happened if Thorn hadn't shown up to the dance.
Thorn's stomach twisted. "I barely held it together."
"Which is exactly why they'll come for you next," Alarie said flatly. "They know what you are now. Or, at the very least, they know enough to have a real reason to fear you."
Xavier stepped closer to Thorn on instinct, jaw tightening.
Thorn ignored the rush of heat in her chest and folded her arms over her chest. How could they know what she was when she didn't even know?
"Is that why we're here? Do you think this is the next anchor they'll try to stabilize?"
Alarie dipped her hand into the lake. Ripples spread outward, but instead of fading, they moved in slow, deliberate rings, as if the water were thinking just like the basin in the chapel.
"The Lake," she said. "The oldest and most powerful of the anchors. If they end up activating this one…" She paused, letting the gravity settle. "The Resonance will no longer just affect sound and structure. It will feed on memory. On identity. The music will take from you until you don't remember what's yours."
Thorn sucked in a sharp breath. "That's why Xavier's drawings reacted."
"And why the musicians' masks flickered," Xavier added. "They were… absorbing something."
"Memory," Alarie confirmed. "Pieces of everyone in the room."
Thorn clenched her hands into fists. "I can't do what I did again. Not for a while, not like that." She forced the admission out. "We're going to have to figure out some other way to take them down."
Alarie nodded. "You bought us time. But not much."
"How long?" Xavier asked.
"Until the Choir tries again?" Alarie looked out over the black surface of the lake.
"The next full moon," Thorn said confidently. It made too much sense; any good spellcaster would know that the full moon intensifies their magic.
Thorn and Xavier exchanged a look, one filled with a dread too heavy to name.
"I have no doubt that you two will figure out what needs to be done," Alarie said quietly. "I can try to keep the other faculty at bay, but… they're concerned."
Xavier's brow furrowed. He glanced from Thorn to Alarie, unease settling in his chest.
"Concerned about the musicians?" he asked.
"About me," Thorn said softly.
Alarie's mouth flattened into a thin line before she nodded once.
Xavier blinked. "What?"
"I showed too much," Thorn continued, her voice steady even as something brittle threaded through it. "Too much power. They might decide I'm more dangerous than I'm worth."
"That's insane," Xavier snapped. He stepped forward without thinking. "You saved half the fucking senior class."
"That's not the point," Thorn shot back. "Reichenbach doesn't care about people. It cares about optics."
She turned on him fully now, eyes sharp.
"That's why your father sent you here, isn't it? To clean up his mess. To protect the family image."
Xavier stiffened. "Yeah," he said, jaw tightening. "Actually, it is." Then, quieter but no less pointed, "What I don't get is why your parents would send you to a place that values its reputation more than your safety."
Thorn's glare flared.
"Because—" She stopped herself, breath cutting short. "You know what? That doesn't matter."
She turned away, pacing a step, then another.
"What matters is the lake. The anchors. What the Choir is doing. What they're going to do next." Her voice cracked just slightly before she forced it back into place. "Danny matters. A hell of a lot more than this."
The air went tight.
Even Alarie shifted, clearly sensing she was standing too close to something fragile. She looked between them once more, eyes lingering on Thorn.
"Good luck," she said gently.
Then she stepped back, and the fog swallowed her whole.
The silence she left behind was thick and humming.
Thorn exhaled slowly, the tension draining from her shoulders in a way that made Xavier's chest ache.
She looked at him sidelong.
"Are you always this irritating?"
He snorted. "Only around you."
She narrowed her eyes. "Why?"
Xavier opened his mouth, then shut it again. He scrubbed a hand over his face, letting out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh but didn't quite make it.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I guess you just… make it easy."
Her expression faltered for half a second. Not softened, just caught off guard.
"Lucky me," Thorn muttered.
But she didn't move away.
And neither did he.
The lake lapped quietly at the shore, each ripple sending pale moonlight across the water. Xavier crouched to sketch the movement in the damp soil; his fingers trembled slightly, but the lines were steady, deliberate.
Thorn stood beside him, watching their reflections distort in the ripple. Two blurred silhouettes, dark and wavering.
The silence between them wasn't awkward. It wasn't empty, either. It pressed in around them, dense and weighted.
For just a moment, a single violin note drifted through the fog. So faint it could have been imagined. Thorn's shoulders tensed. Xavier paused mid-line.
Neither of them moved until the sound dissolved back into the mist.
Xavier finally exhaled, the breath coming out thin in the cold night air. He straightened slowly from his crouch, brushing damp earth from his fingers, rubbing his hands together as if the chill had only just reached him.
"Look, Thorn…" he said, then hesitated, the words catching. He tried again, quieter. "I'm sorry."
She didn't turn, but she didn't tell him to stop either. So, he took that as permission to continue.
"I shouldn't have pushed," he went on, gaze fixed somewhere over the water instead of on her. "Back in the infirmary. Or… just now." His jaw tightened, then loosened again. "I know you don't like people digging. I didn't mean to corner you."
The fog drifted between them, listening.
Xavier swallowed. "I just... when something feels wrong, I don't really know how to ignore it. And you've had a lot of things feel wrong lately."
The lake continued its quiet breathing.
Thorn let out a quiet sigh, eyes still fixed on the lake. The fog drifted lazily across the water's surface, swallowing the moonlight and giving it back warped and fractured. "You're bad at apologies," she said. Not cruel. Just honest.
"I know," he admitted. "I'm better at noticing things and then saying the wrong part out loud."
She huffed once, the ghost of a laugh. "That tracks."
Xavier hesitated, then went on anyway. "It's just that… you act like you don't care."
That got her to turn.
Her brows lifted slightly, expression sharpening. "Yeah, well," she said lightly, "I'm very good at acting."
"Not with me," he replied, too quickly to have rehearsed it. Xavier met Thorn's gaze without flinching, something steady and intent settling in his eyes.
"You don't hide things the way you think you do. Not the important ones."
Thorn looked away again, jaw tightening.
"I could tell something's wrong," he continued, softer now. "The number of pouches. The way you were holding yourself, how standing up took effort. I shouldn't have pushed, I know that. I just—" He ran a hand through his hair, frustration flashing across his face. "I shouldn't have stuck my nose somewhere it didn't belong."
The words fell into the space between them and stayed there.
Silence stretched, unbroken, filled only by the quiet lap of water against stone and the distant whisper of fog shifting along the shore. Thorn stared out across the lake, jaw tight, eyes unfocused. Not avoiding him, exactly, but gathering herself.
Then she spoke quietly, almost as if the words surprised her too.
"Walk me to my dorm?"
Xavier blinked.
The request hit him sideways, simple on the surface, but heavy with everything underneath it. His shoulders straightened a fraction, surprise flickering across his face before he caught it.
"O—oh," he said, a little too quickly, eyes widening just enough to give him away. Then he nodded, earnest and immediate. "Yeah. Yeah, of course. I can do that."
He stepped closer, careful not to rush her, and together they turned away from the lake. They walked together in silence. It had been a long day filled with tension and recovery, and by the looks of it, Xavier could tell Thorn was running on empty.
He wanted to say something helpful, but he didn't know how.
The North Wing rose ahead of them, its dark windows watching without warmth. Xavier slowed as they reached the steps, taking one at a time to stay side by side with Thorn. He stopped just short of the door like there was an invisible line he didn't quite have the right to cross.
"You should get some sleep," he said, because it was safe. Because it wasn't everything else he was thinking. "You look… exhausted."
Thorn let out a short breath through her nose. Not a laugh. Not quite irritation either.
"Yeah," she said. "Turns out being attacked does weird things to your sleep schedule."
He winced, half a smile flickering and dying just as fast. "Fair."
They stood there, neither of them moving. The silence wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't hostile either; it was just heavy.
Thorn reached for the door, then hesitated.
"…Thanks," she said, still not looking at him. "For walking me."
Xavier's shoulders shifted, like the words had landed somewhere unexpected. "Yeah," he replied, a little too quickly. Then, quieter, "Sure."
She finally glanced back at him. Her expression was guarded, tired, unreadable, with all sharp edges and fractures she hadn't bothered hiding.
"Night, Thorpe."
"Night, Rosales."
She slipped inside, pulling the door shut behind her with a soft, deliberate click.
Thorn's dorm was dark except for a thin wash of silver moonlight spilling through the window. Pippa was out; the candle she'd forgotten to blow out had burned itself down to a crooked stub, wax slumped in hard-dried rivers over the holder.
The journal lay open on her desk.
Same page. Same ink. Same burned sigil.
She hadn't touched it since before the Masquerade. Since the Resonance had skimmed across the paper like a fingertip brushing skin. Not quite alive… but no longer inert.
Reichenbach slept under the fog outside. Too still, too quiet. Even the sirens in the East wing had gone silent. Thorn sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the journal without really seeing it. The quiet pressed against her ears until it wasn't quiet at all.
Another faint vibration. A single note beneath the bones of the building.
The page rippled once, and then again.
The burned sigil glowed faintly gold, then faded back to soot-black.
Thorn let out a long breath. "You're still here."
No answer.
But the air vibrated back, soft as a whisper of agreement.
She stood and crossed to the window, pushing it open to let in the damp night air. The grounds were pale under the moon, fog rolling like ghosts at the roots of the towers.
Then, a violin string plucked a note in the distance.
Painfully out of tune. Too sharp, like a novice player who hasn't landed finger placement just yet.
Her jaw tightened, a spark of defiance igniting under her ribs.
"Fine," she muttered. "If you want a song…"
She crossed the room, snatched her violin from its stand, and set the polished dark, vingate wood under her chin. Her fingers settled on the fingerboard, shaking at first, but when the bow touched the string.
The Resonance settled.
Like an exhale.
Like something ancient leaning in to listen.
Thorn played the song she heard in her bones, the one the Choir had twisted, the one the Academy had forgotten.
Correct and in tune. Not fighting the Resonance but guiding it. Showing it how it could sound with care and practice.
The air around her warmed, the journal page flattening as though soothed. The Resonance wasn't attacking.
It was responding.
It was listening to her. Even the wards glimmered, changing from amber to the light purple that indicated the Academy was safe.
It was pleased.
When she finished the final suspended note, Thorn lowered the bow slowly, breath trembling.
In the silence that followed, the walls did not vibrate with threat. They hummed contentedly with something that felt almost like trust.
Thorn closed her eyes.
"Okay," she whispered to the dark.