Chapter 1 Nobody

I have one rule for today.

Don't let them see that I'm terrified.

That's it. That's the whole plan. Eighteen years of absolutely nothing... no magic, no spark, not so much as a single accidental sneeze that set something on fire, and I've somehow convinced myself that Northveil Academy is where that changes. That this is the place where whatever's been sleeping inside me finally decides to wake up and announce itself and justify every year my father called me a late bloomer instead of what everyone else in our Vermont community was quietly thinking.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Millhaven with a book open in front of me that I stopped actually reading twenty minutes ago, running this rule on a loop, when my phone vibrates on the table.

Petra. One week til Northveil!! Are you excited or are you lying to yourself again?

I smile without meaning to. Excited, I type back. Definitely not lying.

She sends back a row of fire emojis and I put my phone face down and look out the window at the grey October morning and breathe.

The coffee shop smells like cinnamon and burnt milk. It's the warmest thing about Millhaven so far. I've been in this corner long enough that the girl behind the counter has started glancing at me with the specific look of someone calculating how long a single coffee buys you, and I'm about to get up and order something I don't want when the bell above the door jangles and cold air rushes in and four boys walk through it.

One of them has the kind of presence that makes a room quietly rearrange itself without anyone announcing it.

It isn't just his height... a heavy wave of cold winter rain, dark leather, and pure, unfiltered arrogance washes over the smell of coffee, so sharp and distinct that my whole body goes instantly still.

Tall. Dark jacket. Jaw like it was put there specifically to cause problems. He moves like he's never once had to excuse himself for taking up space, easy and unhurried, already scanning the shop the way someone does when they're used to having their pick of everything in it.

His eyes land on my table.

Then on me.

They don't just glance... they lock onto my face with a dark, startling intensity that makes the breath freeze in my chest. For two full seconds, his stride stutters, his grey eyes sweeping over my messy dark curls, my collarbone, my mouth, before his expression hardens into something controlled and unreadable.

I raise my eyebrows slightly and go back to my book.

"You're in my seat."

I look up again. He's standing in front of my table now, hands in his pockets, looking at me with this expression that sits somewhere between bored and mildly inconvenienced, like I'm a wet umbrella someone left in the wrong spot.

Except he is standing too close... far too close for a stranger in an empty shop. His broad frame blocks out the morning light from the window, leaning in just enough that I can feel the intense, unnatural heat radiating off his dark jacket, pressing against my skin like a physical touch.

I glance around the shop slowly and deliberately and count. Six empty tables. At least.

"There are six empty tables," I point out.

"And yet," he says, "you're at my particular table."

I stare at him. "Are you actually serious right now?"

The broad-shouldered one behind him makes a noise that starts as a laugh and gets hastily converted into a cough. The tall one doesn't react.

"You're new," he says, looking me over once in that same assessing way, quick and thorough, like he's calculating something and not particularly impressed with the result.

"Transfer," I confirm. "Northveil."

Something moves across his face. "Ember House?"

I don't answer that. Partly because yes, and partly because I'd like to know how he guessed, and guessed right just like that, before I decide how much that information costs me.

He smiles, and it's the kind of smile that doesn't reach anywhere. "Figured."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I ask.

"Means you look like someone who hasn't woken up yet." He pulls out the chair across from me and drops into it without being invited, his friends spreading through the shop behind him like this was always the plan.

He leans across the small wooden tabletop, his long fingers gripping the edge, bringing his face dangerously close to mine. Up close, his grey eyes aren't bored at all... they are blazing, dark, and focused on my mouth with a heavy, possessive focus that makes my stomach turn over in a violent, breathless flutter.

"Northveil's going to eat you alive, new girl."

My face goes warm. I genuinely hate that it does.

"You don't know anything about me," I reply.

"I know Ember House," he says, utterly unbothered, already signalling to the girl behind the counter like this is his personal living room. "Placeholder kids. Might develop something useful, might not."

He pauses, and then he says it. Casually. Like it costs him nothing.

"No offence. But most of you don't actually belong here."

The shop goes very quiet, or maybe that's just the inside of my skull.

Most of you don't actually belong here.

I hear the whole Vermont community in those seven words... the careful silences at gatherings when I walked into a room... the way my dad's friends stopped mid-sentence when I came close... the birthday where my neighbour's daughter set the kitchen curtains on fire by accident and everyone cheered like it was the best thing they'd ever seen, and I stood there holding a paper plate with cake on it, twelve years old and already learning to make my face say nothing.

I have spent six years knowing what everyone thought. I moved to a new state and enrolled in the most competitive supernatural school in the country specifically so I could stop hearing it.

I've been here only eleven minutes.

"That was entirely offensive," I reply, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel, which is a minor miracle.

He shrugs.

I start gathering my things because I am two seconds from saying something I absolutely cannot take back and I promised myself, I really genuinely promised myself, not to combust before my fresh start even properly starts.

"Running already?" he murmurs, not even glancing at me.

Ugh.

I stop.

Turn back around.

"What is your actual problem with me?" The voice stays level. Barely. "You don't know me. You've never met me before in your life. I was sitting here minding my own business and you walked in and decided to be horrible to a complete stranger for no reason. Why?"

He looks at me then, fully, and for one single second something flickers behind those grey eyes that I can't quite read, and suddenly, it closes off.

Then, his whole posture shifts. He takes one step closer... so close that his coat sleeve brushes against my bare arm, and a sharp, electric jolt shoots straight up my shoulder. His gaze drops to my lips, his chest rising and falling in a sudden, ragged breath, his hands uncurling from his pockets as if every muscle in his body is fighting an overwhelming urge to reach out and touch my face.

"Not horrible," he says evenly, though his voice has dropped an octave, rough and thick. "Honest. There's a difference. Girls who don't know what they are don't last at Northveil. You'll figure that out quickly, or you won't figure out anything at all."

My throat tightens. I refuse to let it show anywhere on my face.

"Wow." I tilt my head slightly. "Is that the pep talk you give everyone or am I just special?"

The broad-shouldered one makes that cough-laugh sound again, louder this time.

The tall one's jaw shifts, just slightly, his pulse visibly thrumming in his throat.

"Rhydan," the broad-shouldered one says carefully, a note of warning underneath it.

Rhydan. Okay. Noted.

He holds my gaze for one more moment, then moves, unhurried, picks up his bag, and I realize he was never going to order anything.

He came over here specifically for this.

He pauses at the edge of my table, his hand hovering over the back of my chair for a beat longer than necessary. His fingers almost touch my arm... close enough that I can feel the scorching heat of his palm through my shirt... before he forces his hand into a tight fist at his side.

"Good luck," he says, and it sounds like the complete opposite of that, and then he's gone.

At the door, the bell jangles. He stops at the threshold. He turns his head back, his grey eyes finding mine across the quiet shop one last time... dark, stormy, and completely undone, his gaze lingering on my mouth for three long seconds before he forces himself out into the cold.

The coffee shop feels weirdly loud again.

I sit back down because my legs aren't entirely reliable right now, and I stare at my cold coffee and breathe slowly through my nose and tell myself it doesn't matter. He's a stranger. He doesn't know me. Nobody in this whole town knows me yet.

That's the point. That's why I came.

My phone vibrates. Petra again.

ALSO just met someone horrible, she's typed. Tell me your first day experience was worse.

I almost laugh out loud. I pick up my coffee. I type back, Mine told me I don't belong here, before I even unpacked.

Four seconds. And she texts back, I NEED his name and his schedule.

I put my phone face down and look at the door where Rhydan and his friends disappeared and I make a second promise, right there in the warmth of the cinnamon and burnt milk, sitting in somebody's claimed seat in a town I moved to alone.

He's going to watch me prove every single word of that wrong.

Whatever it costs.

I just need my magic to cooperate.

I look down at my hands.

Nothing. Not even a flicker.

Right. Well... One problem at a time.