Chapter 7: Siren Up

Leslie POV

"Why the long face, Leslie? You should be happy, or—" Risel met me at the door of the detention room, arms already crossed in mock scolding, though her eyes were bright with real curiosity.

"I have to ask." I fell into step beside her, grateful for the ordinary rhythm of walking, of not being watched. "How long have you actually been at this school? Isn't this your first day too?"

"It is, sweetie." She laughed, easy and warm. "I came for orientation last week, though. You didn't."

"That explains a lot." I exhaled, some of the tightness in my chest finally loosening. "Would you mind showing me around campus? I feel like I've been dropped into the deep end without a map."

"Well, let's start with our room, shall we?"

Sylvester passed us just then, unhurried, hands in his pockets like he had all the time in the world. He caught my eye and let one corner of his mouth curl up — a smirk, a wink, gone again before Risel so much as glanced over. My pulse betrayed me instantly, jumping before I could stop it.

Risel, mercifully, missed the whole exchange. She flicked her wand once, lazy and practiced, and the world folded sideways around us.

When it unfolded again, we were standing in a room so beautiful it stole the air straight out of my lungs — ceilings that arched like something out of a cathedral, a fireplace already lit though no one had touched it, four-poster beds draped in fabric so fine it looked spun from moonlight.

"Wait." I turned in a slow circle, jaw slack. "Don't tell me this is our—"

"Welcome to our room, dear." She flicked her wand again, and my suitcases sprang open on their own, clothes lifting themselves into drawers like obedient little ghosts. "This is how royals live."

I watched, half in awe and half in creeping unease, because none of this had ever been my life — not really, not for six years of scrubbing floors in a house that used to be mine. I was borrowing all of it, the same way I was borrowing this name, this face, this room. One thread pulled loose and the whole illusion would come apart in my hands.

That thought was exactly what made the words tumble out before I could soften them.

"I need your help. I'm not sure, but — I think Giselle might already know who I am. Could you cast something on her? A spell, anything?"

Risel's gaze went cold. Ice cold, the warmth draining out of it so fast it startled me.

"Wait." Her voice had dropped an octave, careful in the way people get careful right before they panic. "Did you just say Giselle might know who you are?"

"Relax, Risel. You're a witch, aren't you?" I said it like a joke, but my hands were already shaking. "You can just — fix it. Right?"

"I am." She dragged both palms down her face. "But mind-erasing isn't something you just do, Les. I haven't reached that level. I'm three hundred years old and I'm still considered young in witch terms."

"Wait." My jaw actually dropped. "Did you say three hundred?"

"Three hundred in witch years is seventeen in yours. So, yes. We're age-mates." She started pacing, quick, tight circles that ate up the space between the beds, and something about watching her — someone who was supposed to have all the answers — come apart at the seams made my own panic spike harder.

"So there's nothing else?" I caught her hands to stop the pacing, or maybe to stop my own. "No other option at all?"

"There might be." She didn't look thrilled about it. "But it means trusting a species neither of us has any business trusting."

"What do you mean?" My voice came out low, threaded through with dread I didn't fully understand yet.

"Sirens." She said the word like it left a bad taste behind. "Their song can pull almost anything out of a person — memories, secrets, the truth buried under a hundred lies. But they're cunning. Their help never comes free, and it never comes clean."

"No way, Risel. I've heard they're unpredictable at the best of times."

"Then you play dumb for now." She squeezed my hands once, grounding both of us. "Giselle isn't certain. You know her better than anyone else here — was she bluffing, or did she actually sound sure?"

I turned the memory over again, the smirk, the you know, Stacy, the way she'd walked off without waiting for an answer, like she already had all the time in the world to ruin me. Risel was right. She hadn't sounded certain. She'd sounded like she was enjoying the not-knowing, dangling it over me just to watch me flinch.

"And besides," I added, quieter, mostly to myself, "I'm not even the Alpha's daughter anymore. Why should I care what she thinks she knows? I'm not here for her. I'm here for Mum."

"Right." Risel exhaled and twirled her wand once more, brisk and businesslike, like she was physically shaking the fear off. "Let's go over the school rules instead. Better use of a bad mood."

The garden she led us to smelled like crushed mint and something floral I couldn't name, ancient stone tablets rising out of the hedges with the Academy's rules etched into them in looping, glowing script. I barely read a word of it.

That was when I saw them.

"What's going on over there, Risel?" I nodded toward the bench at the garden's edge, where two figures sat close enough that their outlines blurred into one.

"Oh — that's just the act, between couples." She said it lightly, distracted, still scanning the tablets. "Where their lips meet, and they, you know. Get into it. Lips, tongue, the whole—"

"Wait." Something cold dropped straight through my stomach. "Did you say couples?"

I don't know why it hit the way it did — sharp and sudden, a bruise I didn't remember getting. Heartbreak, I realized distantly. That was the word for this feeling. Heartbreak, over a boy I'd known for less than a day.

"Oh, right." Risel's voice trailed after me as I turned and walked, too fast, back toward the dorm. "That's Sylvester, isn't it."

I didn't answer until we were back in our room, until she'd caught up and taken my hands and was studying my face like she could read the truth off it whether I gave it to her or not.

"What is it, Les? You didn't know they were a couple?"

"Oh — no. I'm just surprised, that's all." I made myself smile, made my voice light, made every part of my face lie for me even as the sting sat lodged behind my ribs, dull and stubborn and entirely unwelcome. I had no right to this feeling. I told myself that twice and didn't believe it either time.

"Are you sure?" Risel's eyes narrowed, unconvinced.

"I'm sure." I nodded, too quickly. "You know what — it's late. I should get some sleep."

She let it go, though I caught the doubt lingering in her expression as she crossed to her own bed. I lay awake long after her breathing evened out, staring at a ceiling too beautiful to belong to a girl like me, turning the ache over and over until it lost all its edges and just became something dull and constant, easy to carry because I had no other choice.

***

The wolf field was empty before dawn, mist still clinging low to the grass, and I threw myself into the run like it could outpace everything I didn't want to feel.

A warrior's true strength comes from her speed.

My mother's voice, worn soft with time but never faded, rose up unbidden with every stride. I could still see her exactly as she'd said it — kneeling in front of me, brushing hair from my face, patient in a way the world had never let her be with anyone else.

"Mum, if you can hear me," I whispered to no one, "I'm going to make you proud."

Then it happened. My ears popped free from where they'd been hiding for days since I was Leslie, sharp and sudden, and adrenaline flooded my veins like something remembering itself.

"Hey, baby girl." The words landed in my ear without permission, and I spun on the grass to find Sylvester standing over me, that same infuriating smirk in place.

"Oh — hi." I scrambled up too fast, brushing grass from my knees, anything to keep my hands busy and my eyes off his face.

"So, since we're teammates now—" The word landed like a blow. Teammates. With Giselle's boyfriend. Could this semester possibly get any longer. "I figured we should do something together. Training, maybe. Get to know each other."

"I'm so sorry, I have to go." I was already moving before I finished the sentence, desperate for distance, for air that didn't smell like him.

That was when my eyes caught hers.

A face half-hidden behind a hedge at the field's edge — pink scales climbing faintly along her hairline, gills fanned delicate as lace where ears should have been, hair so perfect it looked painted on rather than grown. Watching me. Not glancing. Watching, the way a predator watches something it's already decided to have.

And then it hit me, all at once, cold and certain: the hallway on my first day. The garden, not hours ago. Detention, somewhere in the shadows past the lava's glow. She'd been there every single time. Every single time, and I'd never once noticed.

The moment she realized I'd finally seen her, she bolted.

I didn't think. I ran after her, fury and fear tangled together so tightly I couldn't have told you which one was driving my legs, weaving between hedges and startled students until I finally caught the trailing edge of her sleeve and hauled her around to face me.

My voice came out far louder, far angrier, than I meant it to.

"What the hell, siren?"