Day One

Isadora:

I woke to a knock.

Not the slow, menacing kind reserved for ghosts or serial killers. No, this knock was chipper. Two quick taps followed by a hopeful pause, as if the person on the other side were smiling.

The horror.

I dragged myself out of bed like a reluctant spirit summoned for a séance, black silk robe trailing behind me like a funeral shroud. The floorboards beneath my feet creaked in protest—they hated mornings too.

I cracked the door open.

She stood there like a sunbeam that had wandered into the wrong novel.

“Good morning! You must be Isadora! I’m Loralie, your student aide for the week!” Her voice was made of honey and tragedy. Bright, golden tragedy.

She was tiny—barely to my shoulder—with a halo of golden curls that looked like they belonged in a shampoo commercial for naiads. Her eyes were ocean blue and wide with innocence. Optimism shimmered off her in waves, practically singing hymns to the sun gods. Her skin was sun-kissed, her cheeks perpetually pink. It was as if summer had incarnated itself and decided to torment me.

I stared at her for a full five seconds. She didn’t wilt. She only smiled wider.

“I’ll give you ten seconds to walk away and pretend this never happened,” I said, voice flat.

Instead, she bounced. Bounced. “We don’t want to be late! First impressions and all.”

Wonderful.

I shut the door slowly, resisting the urge to hiss through the crack like an offended cat. Dressing felt like donning armor. White blouse, silver and black tartan skirt, black boots, and the silver chain that once belonged to my mother. It may or may not have been enchanted to strangle anyone who touched it uninvited. She never confirmed. The ambiguity gave it personality.

When I emerged, Loralie clapped her hands. “You look amazing! So elegant. Like a gothic fairytale!”

“Careful,” I said. “People in fairytales rarely make it past chapter three.”

She laughed, apparently unaware I wasn’t joking.

She led me through the winding halls of Ashwyck like a peppy tour guide with a death wish, narrating every cursed portrait and haunted corner with the cheerful oblivion of someone who thought darkness was just misunderstood.

“That tapestry’s from the Witch War of 1602. Still bleeds if you touch it!”

“Don’t pet the hallway gargoyles—they bite.”

“Oh, and avoid the west wing after sunset. Someone got hexed into a desk last week. It still has him trapped in one of the drawers.”

I walked in silence, letting her words float around me like fog. It wasn’t that I disliked her. It was that she was everything I wasn’t—light, laughter, glitter. I was shadows and silence. I’d spent eighteen years perfecting the art of being overlooked. Loralie sparkled like a cursed jewel.

She paused before a classroom door. “This is Intro to Magical Theory. I think it’s your first class?”

“I’m aware.”

She beamed. “You’ll do great.”

“You don’t know that.”

“True,” she chirped. “But I like your vibe.”

She skipped off, her golden curls bouncing behind her like sunshine on a leash.

After class...

Loralie was waiting outside the door like a loyal spaniel, holding two steaming mugs of something warm. She handed me one.

“It’s batwing cocoa. Decaf.” She winked. “I figured you’d hate chamomile.”

I blinked. “Thanks?”

She looped her arm through mine like we were old friends and not mortal opposites forced into proximity by cruel administrative fate.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“Madam Meera says I’m a walking magic error.”

“Oh! Neat!”

I stared at her.

She giggled, completely unbothered. “Come on, we’ll be late for Cryptobotany! Professor Thorne gets cranky when we don’t bow to her mandrakes.”

Cryptobotany.

Finally, something familiar. Something with thorns.

The Cryptobotany greenhouse loomed ahead like a sleeping beast.

Iron-framed and glass-walled, its panes were fogged from within, blurring the twisting silhouettes of carnivorous flora and venomous vines. Moss crept along the stone base, and a mushroom cluster near the door had bloomed into the distinct shape of a skull.

Charming.

Loralie babbled beside me, voice bright and breathless. “Did you know one of the corpse lilies once ate a squirrel? Professor Thorne said she had to bribe it with bloodroot extract for a week.”

“I hope she failed,” I muttered.

The air inside the greenhouse was thick and damp, clinging to my skin like whispered curses. The scent of moss, spice, and subtle decay enveloped us as we stepped in. Students lined up behind tables, each covered in vines, soil, and what looked like a sleeping mandrake the size of a terrier.

At the head of the room stood Professor Thorne. She was tall and sharp as a blade, her robes woven with thread that shimmered like wet steel. A thorned vine coiled lazily around one arm, its black flowers pulsing gently.

“Today,” she said, her voice a velvet rasp, “we discuss poison.”

Loralie made a soft, terrified squeak. I smiled.

“We begin with belladonna,” Professor Thorne continued. “Beloved of witches, mistresses of shadow, and the occasional ambitious herbalist. One touch won’t kill you. Two might. Three ensures your soul is eaten by the roots.”

No one laughed. She wasn’t joking.

She gestured to the rows of trays at each station. “These are your specimens. I want them potted and charmed. Fail to charm them, and they’ll try to charm you. And they’re flirtatious.”

I approached my station. The seedling before me twitched, its leaves curling like suspicious cats.

The other students hesitated—donning gloves, whispering weak enchantments, nervously fumbling with protective sigils.

Amateurs.

I pulled on my black garden gloves—dragonhide, reinforced with runes for venom resistance—and began to hum.

It was a low, old melody. The kind that made nightshade bloom and nettles uncoil. A song that only worked if you meant it.

The belladonna stilled. Its leaves uncurled, its stem straightened.

I selected a pot carved with elder runes of safety, filled it with shadowsoil—enchanted dirt blessed during the new moon. The plant practically sighed as I lowered it in.

Loralie, meanwhile, had managed to get her seedling stuck in her curls. Again.

“I think it likes me,” she whispered, trying to untangle it. “I’m just...not good with knots.”

“Everything likes you, Loralie,” I said. “Even things with a body count.”

Professor Thorne moved between tables, pausing occasionally to scowl or sigh. She reached my station and stopped.

The belladonna was thriving, its petals rich and purple, leaves relaxed and swaying.

“You’ve handled this before,” she said.

“My mother made me grow one before she let me have a cat.”

Her lips twitched. Approval? Or indigestion?

Without a word, she reached into her robes and pulled out a small obsidian pot. Inside was a rare variant of belladonna—violet-black petals, roots coiled protectively in the soil like a sleeping serpent.

“She was rescued from a cursed battlefield. Survives best with those who don’t flinch.”

“Is that an offer?”

“It’s a test. Keep her alive. Don’t poison anyone. We’ll talk advanced placement.”

I accepted the pot. The plant trembled once in my hands, then settled, as if recognizing something.

Loralie clapped her hands beside me. “That’s such an honor! Professor Thorne never gives out take-home plants!”

“Maybe she likes me,” I said dryly.

Or maybe she saw the same thing Madam Meera did.

Something stirring beneath my skin. Something old. Something waiting.

Class ended in a blur of wilted leaves, bandaged fingers, and panicked chanting. Students stumbled out nursing scratches and wounded pride.

I walked beside Loralie, cradling my belladonna like a secret.

The fog outside had thickened. Ashwyck’s grounds blurred at the edges, like reality had begun to fray. Shadows moved where they shouldn’t. The school whispered.

“You’re really good at that,” Loralie said, trying to match my pace. “Like, scary good.”

“I’m not trying to be scary.”

She glanced up at me, serious for once. “I didn’t say that was a bad thing.”

We reached the fork where she’d leave for her dorm. She hesitated.

“You know,” she said, “you’re not as bad as you make yourself out to be.”

“Give it time.”

She smiled again, that maddening, blinding smile. “See you at lunch, Isadora.”

I watched her disappear into the fog like some golden hallucination conjured by a cursed mirror. My fingers tightened around the obsidian pot.

I was born of monsters. A girl with no prophecy, no power. A shadow in a world of flame.

But something was changing. Ashwyck was changing me. Or maybe it was revealing what had always been hidden under my skin.

Maybe here, I could bloom too.

Even if it meant growing thorns.