Chapter 004

Mirelle's POV

The school doctors arrived faster than I thought

anyone could move, cutting through the crowd with the kind of calm that only came from having done this before.

They worked over him without wasted motion — pressing fingers to his throat, murmuring numbers to each other I didn't understand,

forcing something down his throat that made his back arch off the grass.

When they finally lifted him onto a stretcher, none of their faces matched the reassurance in their voices.

One of them pulled me aside, gripping my elbow gently enough that it somehow felt worse than if he'd grabbed me hard.

"Ancient bloodroot," he said, low, like the words themselves were dangerous.

"Banned in every kingdom on this continent for exactly this reason. Another two minutes and we wouldn't have gotten to him in time."

"Will he live?" My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.

"He'll live." A pause, weighted. "Whoever made that coffee wasn't trying to hurt him, though. You understand that, don't you?"

I understood it perfectly.

I just wished I didn't.

Headmistress Selene arrived within minutes of the alarm going out, and the entire plaza seemed to straighten under the weight of her

presence before she'd said a single word. She ordered an investigation on the spot — questioned the boy's friends first, then anyone who'd been standing near the stone slab that morning.

One by one, students shook their heads. No, they hadn't seen who handed me the cup.

No, they didn't recognize the girl with blonde hair.

A few admitted, almost sheepishly, that they hadn't really been looking at me at all — just at

the boy on the ground, or at each other, trading whispers about whatever version of the story sounded most interesting.

By the time the sun was fully up, nobody had a name to give Selene.

No one had seen where the cup came from before it landed in my hands. Or maybe they were all lying with the exact excuse.

It was as if the poison had simply appeared out of nowhere, and the girl who'd delivered it had walked straight back out of the story unnoticed, exactly the way she'd planned it.

Selene dismissed us back to class like nothing unusual had happened, which was somehow the most unsettling part of the entire morning.

***

By evening, the whole academy had rewritten the story a dozen different ways, and every version somehow ended with my name at the center of it.

"She's cursed," I heard a girl say behind me, not even bothering to whisper properly. "Wherever she goes, something goes wrong right after. Ask anyone."

"I heard the dark magic they think she used to enroll is finally waking up inside her," another added. "Maybe it's trying to kill anyone who gets close."

"Or maybe she poisoned him herself," a boy muttered, just loud enough to carry. "Sympathy's a good look on someone who wants everyone watching her instead of asking questions."

I kept my spine straight and my face blank, the same way I always did, even as the words dug in deeper than I wanted to admit.

We were summoned to the courtyard as the sky bled orange into violet, hundreds of students shoulder to shoulder in the cooling air. Selene climbed the dais, and this time her voice cracked across the crowd like something meant to cut through fear rather than command respect.

"We do not yet know who poisoned one of our own students this morning," she said, and the courtyard went dead silent.

"But this academy does not pause for fear. Tradition does not care what frightens you. Congratulations on surviving your second day, freshmen. Tonight, you find out if you can survive this — and I promise you, the dark does not care whose father sits on which throne."

Somewhere behind me, someone made a small, unhappy sound. I didn't blame them.

Chloe found me before the words had even finished landing, hair yanked into a severe ponytail, Bianca a step behind her like a shadow with opinions of her own.

She shoved her handbag into my arms without slowing down.

"Chloe, I really don't think — "

"Don't give me that look." Her eyes cut into me, cold enough to freeze the rest of my protest in my throat.

"Someone tried to poison you this morning and you're still standing here whining about a handbag. If anything happens to it tonight, I promise the poison will look like mercy."

I swallowed the retort sitting on my tongue. Not because she scared me. Because I knew precisely what she was capable of proving.

"Stay out of our way tonight," Bianca added, sugar-sweet and razor-edged. "Some of us would rather not die next to the girl someone's actively trying to kill."

Ahead of us, the tree line had changed since morning — thicker somehow, darker at the edges, like the forest itself had been waiting for the sun to go down before showing its real shape.

The same massive gate groaned upward on chains thick as my wrist, and this time what lay beyond it didn't look like an obstacle course at all.

Mist curled low across the ground. Somewhere deep in the trees, something made a sound that wasn't quite a howl and wasn't quite anything I had a name for.

"Your trial begins," Selene said, "now."

The horn split the night air, sharper and colder than it had that morning, and every student around me surged forward into the dark like the

fear itself had turned into fuel. I caught a glimpse of eyes flashing gold and violet in the tree line before the mist swallowed them whole.

I blinked, and the courtyard was empty.

Just me, Chloe's bag clutched against my chest, and a forest that had apparently decided the daylight version of this trial hadn't been frightening enough.

Well. This definitely wasn't a prank.

Somewhere behind those trees was whoever had put bloodroot in a cup meant for my hands, and somewhere ahead of me was a trial designed to test exactly how badly I wanted to survive both.

I dropped the bag where I stood — Chloe could scream about it later — and I ran into the dark like my life actually depended on it.

.