Chapter 3: Stacy Then, Leslie Now

Stacy POV

"Trust me, honey. This is the safest option. You can't go back there." Grandpa's voice was low, deliberate — gentle in a way that made it impossible not to believe him.

I hadn't known him long. A handful of days, maybe. But one thing I already knew: he wouldn't lie to me. He wasn't like Dad. He wasn't like Pearl.

"Don't worry. I trust this person completely."

I nodded, swallowing hard enough that I was sure he heard it.

"Welcome, old friend. This is my granddaughter, Stacy. Stacy, meet Nigel — a colleague from years back."

I bowed my head, and when I lifted it, Nigel was already staring at me like he'd seen a ghost.

"Aren't you the Alpha's daughter?" His smile was warm. Too warm. "What brings you here?"

Something clicked into place. This was it — my one window before the world caught up to me. If Dad knew where I was, he'd drag me home before I could blink, to do nothing but work as his new maidservant. I didn't have my invitation letter. That wasn't going to stop me.

My mouth moved before my mind caught up.

"I want you to turn me into someone else." The words came out steady, and I hated how much I meant them. "I've heard witches can do anything. Turn me into someone else. This hair", I pulled a curl of brunette between my fingers "blonde. These eyes, hazel."

"Well then, your highness." Nigel's smile didn't waver. "I'm sorry, but I can't."

"It wasn't a request."

He turned to Grandpa, eyebrows raised, silently asking is she serious. Grandpa only nodded — slow, grim, like he already regretted what he was agreeing to.

"Uhm. Sure, then." Nigel's voice cracked on the words, his eyes searching my face for any flicker of doubt.

He didn't find one.

"What you're asking costs more than you think, your highness. It would require a sacrifice."

My whole body went still. "What sacrifice."

"Your Alpha blood. Your powers." He paused, letting that land, then delivered the rest like a blade. "And your voice."

Something cold dropped through my stomach. Without my blood — without my powers — what was I? A girl. Just a girl, the way Pearl always said I was.

"It's alright if you don't want to," Grandpa said softly, reaching for my hand. But my voice beat him to it, and it came out harder than I felt.

"Do it."

"You'd have to live without them for five years." A girl stepped out from behind Nigel — younger than me, dark-eyed, unreadable.

"I said do it."

The girl smiled at that, like she'd been waiting for exactly those words. She crossed to me and took both my hands in hers. Her touch was warm, grounding, wrong in how comforting it felt from a stranger.

"Risel," she said. "Witch, like my father."

"Why so desperate for this, your highness?" Nigel had already turned to the cauldron, pulling jars from a shelf like he'd known this was coming.

"She wants Shawl Academy," Grandpa said — before I could stop him, before I even knew if I wanted him to.

Risel's head snapped up. "I'm going there too."

"Wait." Grandpa frowned. "I thought the invitation only went to royals."

That set both of them laughing, low and knowing, like he'd told a joke only witches understood.

"Who said anything about invitations?" Nigel didn't look up from the potion. "I'm a witch. Nothing's off the table."

Heat crawled up my neck. Like the rules that had governed my whole life and the pack were nothing to them. A joke.

"Could you do the same for Stacy?" Grandpa said next, and I turned on him, stunned — but he wasn't wrong. If I was about to erase myself, better to erase the trail too.

"I thought you said she was invited," Nigel said.

"She is. But she won't be, once this is done."

Nigel plucked a strand of hair from my scalp without asking and dropped it into the cauldron. The liquid inside hissed, turned the color of old blood.

"There's one condition." He didn't look up. "Your voice won't be destroyed. It'll be bottled — kept safe with your old self, here, with me. After five years, you come back for it."

"Thank you," I said, and took the small glass bottle from Risel's outstretched palm. I didn't let myself think past the moment. I swallowed the potion in one motion.

That was when it started.

My skull tore — that's the only phrase for it — like my head was trying to unscrew itself from my spine. I heard myself scream before I registered the sound as mine. My skin rippled, peeled back at the edges, and my hair, strand by brunette strand, lifted off my head and streamed into the waiting bottle like smoke pulled through a keyhole.

I thought that was the worst of it.

I was wrong.

The second wave hit and my knees buckled, my shoulders cracking like something inside me was rearranging itself without my permission. Tears streamed down a face that no longer felt like mine. I didn't know if I was dying. Some small, distant part of me wondered if I'd asked for exactly that.

Then — silence. My breath. My heartbeat. Nothing else.

I stood. The room stared back at me like I was a stranger who'd wandered in off the street.

"Who are you now, your highness?" Risel asked, smiling like she already knew the answer would be beautiful.

The name rose up out of somewhere that didn't feel like memory. "Leslie. Leslie Cooper."

"Well, Leslie." Grandpa's voice was gentle again, like nothing had happened, like I hadn't just watched pieces of myself get poured into glass. "It's nearly dawn. Let's get you home."

I nodded and followed him out, numb, hollow, new.

I doubled back minutes later — just to collect the invitation letter Nigel had conjured that I left behind. That was all. That was the only reason.

But through the doorway, I saw Nigel again. Handing the bottle — my bottle, the one with my hair coiled inside it, the one holding my voice — to a figure wrapped head to toe in linen, face hidden, hands gloved.

I froze in the shadow of the frame.

Whoever they were, Nigel didn't hesitate before he gave them what was left of me.

What was he doing?