fanfic, poetry, and original works

Andreas Morgan had dreams for his son. He would be the next Priest of Dionysus, and he would be the greatest one of all. Andreas, of course, chose the perfect wife to build the perfect son. A woman he found on the street, drunk off vodka and high off who knows what, a worshiper of the most glorious god of all. He changed her drink of choice to wine, naturally, filling his perfect son with the lovely nectar of mortals; gifted to them by the perfect god.

His son, disgracefully, was not born perfect. The vessel was perfect, the wine perfect, Andreas was perfect. His son was not; missing a foot. But Andreas had worked too hard to throw away all his work. Nina Flinn made the child’s foot and Andreas started training as soon as the child turned old enough to hold a blade. The child learned the taste of wine and hallucinogens on his twelfth birthday, revelry drowning all sense from the boy. On his sixteenth birthday, the boy finally seemed worthy of a name. Driving the dagger into his mother's chest, drunken and laughing with madness, Andreas named his perfect son; a beautiful image of the perfect god. Thrysos Morgan, named of the mad god's staff.

At nineteen, the most sober Thrysos had been in all his years, Andreas Morgan died at his hands. He did not laugh as he stabbed Andreas, he did not feel the madness of Dionysus. Blood like wine as it spilled from Andreas' chest. When he licked the blood from the dagger, Thrysos was drunk again. Dionysus looked upon him that night, and he smiled. 

He’s got a wrinkle between his eyebrows. Keefe wants to reach over and smooth it out, smile at Fitz in a way that lets him know what they’re feeling. Lets him know that after three months, Keefe loves him. And maybe they’ve fallen too quickly and much too young; they’ve done it anyway nonetheless. Keefe tucks their hands under their legs, not trusting themself not to. They’re eleven years old and they know it’s wrong to love a boy. 

But this doesn’t feel wrong. It feels more right than anything Keefe’s felt before. Love doesn’t feel like it can be wrong. How can loving Fitz be wrong? He’s beautiful. The sun causing a night sky of freckles, so faint anyone who wasn’t looking wouldn’t find them, to paint his face. How can constellation skin be cursed to care for? 

Keefe doesn’t feel wrong. Not in the least when they’re with beautiful Fitz Vacker. Fitz eventually looks up, much to Keefe’s dismay. They have to look away then, out at the pond, fish lazing around just underneath the surface. 

“What? Do I have dirt on my face?” Keefe just smiles at Fitz. It’s the wrong one. It tells Fitz nothing of what they feel; and it’s better that way. Truly. Because any other way would be wrong, wouldn’t it? “I do, don’t I? Dad’s going to kill me. Where is it?”

“You don’t have anything on your face, just a stupid little wrinkle.”

“God, not you too. Biana noticed it a few weeks ago and won’t let it go. I don’t need this slander,” Fitz says. Keefe notices a tone in his voice, much too tired and true for eleven. It’s a tone Keefe works to keep out of their own words every day. They’d give anything not to hear it from Fitz. 

They don’t say any of this. They don’t let any of it show. Keefe just throws their head back in laughter they don’t mean. Some part of it hurts, but it’s a part Keefe is willing to ignore if it means they get to see Fitz laugh along too.

It’s contained, like he’s afraid of anyone seeing. One day, Keefe swears to themself in that moment, they’ll get Fitz to laugh. Really, truly laugh without any ounce of restraint. For now, they’ll have to settle for what Fitz gives them now, small laughs and a smile covered by his hand. Keefe takes that smile, those laughs, and burns them in their brain.

…

They’re thirteen when they find out that Fitz feels the same. He doesn’t say anything, and Keefe doesn’t need him to. The brush of their hands in Keefe’s bedroom is enough. A wave of emotions crashes over them and they’re drowning, water filling their lungs and heart, and it pounds, crashing against their ribs. 

And then it’s gone. Fitz’s hand is gone (his hands are so warm, like bonfires on cold nights and Keefe misses him already). Keefe wonders how long it’s been since they’ve manifested. Foxfire’s been on break, and they can’t remember their parents even touched them. Maybe that’s a sort of blessing. Keefe doesn’t think they’d be able to handle knowing exactly what their father feels when the slap comes. Not yet. 

Midnight stars shine outside Keefe’s window, and they stare out into them. They can’t bear to look at Fitz now. They can’t trust themself not to say something, and maybe make the drowning they both live in now real. Because the water isn’t real right now, it’s there, filling Keefe’s lungs every moment with Fitz next to him. But it’s not real. No matter how many times they reach through the water, they’ll never find Fitz’s hand in the deep.

It’s only fleeting moments like this where Keefe gets a glimpse of reaching out and finding someone. It’s love all the same. It’s hands brushing at midnight, silk sheets under them but Fitz’s skin is the best thing to ever touch Keefe’s. Love that drowns Keefe, love that makes them want to drown, so long as it’s for Fitz. 

“We should probably go to sleep, right?” Fitz says. He’s tired, Keefe knows by his voice. They know everything by the inflections of Fitz’s voice, they know every turn it can make and have it mapped out in their head. They pass over those roads sometimes, when the night lays heavy on Keefe, and the water takes over every part of them.

“Probably. You can have the bed,” Keefe says. They don’t any softness float into their voice, all of the emotions they have, kept behind a concrete wall. A flood ready to spill the moment Keefe lets it. 

“It’s your room, Keefe.”

Keefe rolls their eyes and laughs, just like how they Fitz expects them. They do this every time. Fitz always ends up asleep in the bed. “Look at that window seat, Fitz. That, my friend, is a place of luxury. I only get away with it when you’re here.”

“One of these days, I’m going to test that.”

Keefe hands Fitz a wry smile. “That day isn’t today. Thank god for that, am I right?”

Fitz laughs (still restrained, but eventually) and Keefe makes a show of walking to the window seat. The cushion has been worn by years of Fitz staying the night. Keefe outgrew it last year, having to bend their knees the entire night. They always wake up aching, joints begging for Keefe to never sleep there again. They always do.

They always stare out the window for an hour and wait, turning around when Fitz’s sleeping breaths are the only sound in the room. And then Keefe falls asleep to the sight of Fitz. His hair mussed and all of Keefe’s pillow like spilled coffee. It’s the only time when Fitz looks his age, all the years forced onto him by his parents seeping away, replaced by the simple peace of sleep. 

Keefe wants to be the reason for that, someday. They want to be the reason Fitz gets to feel thirteen, like a kid. 

But Keefe wants a lot of things, and wanting doesn’t mean anything to fear. If there’s anything Keefe has learned from love, it’s fear. Fear that someone will find out that Keefe loves Fitz, hopelessly drowning in it every second they’re awake (and when fate is cruel, in their sleep as well). Fear that Fitz will find out, and he’ll hate Keefe for it. Fear that love won’t be enough and they’ll break apart anyway. 

That’s what happened to Gisela and Cassius. They loved each other (didn’t they?). And now they live in a house built from their love (isn’t it?) and feel nothing but hatred. 

(They had to love each other, even if it was a long time ago. Keefe had to believe that. They had to have some faith that love could be found, that it could mean something, that it could be real. That what they felt for Fitz could mean something, even if it was never something real.)

…

Sophie is a hammer into the glass of Keefe and Fitz. The gentle glass that let them stay together, tied by fate (their parents, but is there really a difference in the end?) to each other. Held together by the understanding that they only had each other in life. Fitz may have had Biana and Alvar, so maybe that last part was only for Keefe.

Maybe Fitz was all Keefe ever had in the end. Maybe Biana was only there because Fitz was and Alvar was only there because Keefe was. Maybe their parents never loved them and never loved each other. But in the end, at least there was Fitz. There was beautiful Fitz, and there was Keefe’s glorious drowning. 

Not anymore. Not anymore because Sophie Foster is here now. And now they’re broken. The glass is shattered. Keefe is no stranger to this feeling, the one that comes when you’ve lost part of your soul (since when did Fitz become part of Keefe’s soul? They can’t know, but he is. He is). They lost their father before. Cassius haunts Candleshade now, a violent ghost that Keefe has learned how to avoid. 

So Keefe does what they do best, they go on as usual. They laugh and joke and flirt with everyone (besides Fitz, never Fitz; he’s too good for Keefe’s meaningless words). Sophie is the main recipient of everything, even when it hurts Fitz and Dex every time. Biana too, though Keefe isn’t sure ae knows why. Keefe knows. They know everything.

They know that Maruca still looks over to them all at lunch, and Keefe doesn’t need to be an empath to read the look in her eyes. They know how Marella looks at Biana with something that’s not entirely hatred. They see how Dex messes with a bundle of wires and gears under the table during lessons, terrified of someone seeing xem.

They see this all from Fitz’s side, hands brushing for a few moments. The same wave crashes over Keefe every time and reminds him of just how much they’re loosing. Because even when Fitz’s hand brushes against Keefe’s, his other is in Sophie’s. Fitz isn’t Keefe’s anymore, and hell, maybe he never was. But then why does this feel so much like cutting off a limb? 

They join the Biana, Fitz, and Sophie in games of Bramble. They savor the feeling of Fitz’s skin when the run into each other, holds onto the hurricane of Fitz’s love. They’ve given up on the hurricane being real, being anything more than hands brushing. 

But then Sophie and Dex are killed. Keefe felt an entirely new type of hurricane, from both themself and Fitz. 

“I’m sorry,” Keefe whispers. They’re alone, Sophie and Dex’s planting having just ended. Fitz clenches his hands into fists and slips down to his knees. Keefe goes down with him. “I’m so sorry, Fitz.”

“For what,” Fitz snaps. “You didn’t kill them, did you?”

“I know,” Keefe says. But they don’t mean it. They’ve told a million lies before, and this is no difference. Keefe wanted Fitz back, they wanted Sophie to go home (they don’t, not anymore, they’d do anything to bring Sophie and Dex back). Now she’s dead and Dex too. Dex didn’t deserve this, Sophie didn’t deserve this. Fitz doesn’t deserve this.

Keefe leans against Fitz, carefully putting his arm over Fitz. 

“I shouldn’t have brought her here,” Fitz says. Keefe knows the sound of anger in his voice well, and they’d do anything to take it out of his voice now. Fitz shouldn’t feel this way about himself. “This is my fucking fault. She would’ve been safe if I’d just left her in the Forbidden Cities.”

“No,” they say quickly. “Don’t. You can’t blame yourself. Blame whoever killed Sophie, blame Alden for sending you out, blame anyone you want. Not yourself.” Fitz should blame them. They got exactly what they wanted; Fitz is theirs again. He theirs and god, it hurts so much. 

Keefe is staying at Fitz’s house when Sophie and Dex come back. They’re pretending to be asleep while drawing Fitz’s portrait on the bedsheets with their fingers. It’s the best way. No one will ever find the invisible marks in the purple satin. 

They’ve lost Fitz all over again.

…

“God, I don’t know what we’re doing, Keefe,” Fitz laughs. He’s sitting on the edge of a lake, his feet aren’t in the water. Keefe’s aren’t either. A full moon stares down on both of them, it’s craters the only eyes on them. Everyone else is asleep. They both should be, but Keefe found Fitz out here. 

They haven’t done anything like this in a while. They haven’t been friends in a while. Keefe hasn’t had anyone in a while. They missed this, being around Fitz and drowning in him. Drowning in love, drowning in Fitz’s love, drowning in the dam they’ve made to hold all that water. All that love. 

“I don’t think anyone does, Fitz. Besides Forkle. That man knows everything,” Keefe says. They offer Fitz the same wry smile they always do. Fitz looks away, his nostril flaring. 

“Fuck you, Keefe. Fuck you.”

Keefe scoffs and sits . “That’s one hell of a greeting, Fitzy. Love you too.” Keefe makes sure his love doesn’t sound genuine. This is the closest they’ll ever get to a confession, anyway. 

“You always do this. One serious conversation. One serious fucking sentence would be enough. I’m going to sleep, Keefe. Have a good night,” Fitz spits. He stands up, Keefe grabs his wrist. All that anger washes over them, sadness mixed in, desperation. 

“What do you want me to say?” 

Fitz sighs angrily. “Anything that means something, Keefe.”

Keefe opens their mouth, searching for words that Fitz can accept and not say anything at all. They close it. Fitz closes his eyes and tears his wrist back. Keefe feels empty without Fitz’s storm, even when their own rages inside of them. 

Fitz starts to walk away, and Keefe can feel the walls between them grow higher. Their glass shattered even more. Keefe pushes a drop of water over the edge of the dam Keefe’s built. 

“I’m scared, Fitz.”

He stops walking. Keefe has never been more afraid of their own words, their own emotions. They should stop, they need to stop. 

“I don’t know what’s happening, and my entire life is falling apart. And I’m losing everyone. I’m scared.”

Fitz walks back, sitting back down next to Keefe. He grabs Keefe’s hand, and Keefe nearly vomits at the anger that’s still there, the sympathy. 

“You still have me, Keefe. I’ve always been here,” Fitz says in forced softness. Keefe swallows their tears and the call of liar on their tongue. 

“I know.”

“Are you going to be there for me?” 

“Always.” It’s not a lie. Keefe doesn’t think it’s a lie, at least. They’ve been in love with Fitz for years, and they’d give anything to be the one Fitz goes to. That’s Sophie now, but Keefe will make this promise anyway. 

Fitz, Keefe finds out, kisses softly. Like he’s kissing a porcelain doll. Keefe is anything but, they’ve survived years of two hurricanes (three, if you count their father, it’s an entirely different type of storm; a worse one). It might just be fear, and Keefe understands that a million times over.

It’s late, the long reeds that line the lake brushing the back of both of their legs. Frogs and birds sing a melody and this all feels like a scene in a movie Sophie made them watch. This kiss, it’s an accident. They’re both drunk of stars and a few too many late nights, and finally let the dams leak.

(They’re not broken. At least, Keefe’s isn’t. There’s a whole hurricane inside of them, a million emotions and Keefe is kissing Fitz back with control. They want to put every goddamn emotion they’ve ever had for Fitz into this kiss, but not with Fitz kissing him like a doll. Like they’re breakable. It’s fucking laughable. Keefe’s already broken.)

Fitz pulls away, pressing his forehead against Keefe’s. 

“I don’t believe you,” Fitz whispers. 

…

Keefe misses Fitz more than anyone when he runs away. They know they have to, that there was no other choice. That it was the only choice to keep people safe, but when Sophie’s voice rings in their head, they wish to god it was Fitz.

They explain all their reasons to Sophie, and they explain it to Sophie like she was Fitz. Guilt clings onto the wind flowing over the waters they hold back, a storm building and building. But Keefe has always been good at holding it all back, concrete dams thick and high. 

Fitan takes him to the Forbidden Cities, and Keefe feels a million other storms. Every human emotion is one of the most extreme ones Keefe feels from elves. Keefe can hardly handle them. They don’t know what they’ll do if Fitan has them touch one of them to get an even better read. Keefe already feels so much, they don’t know how many more of Fitan’s lessons they can take.

They can’t go numb, they can’t. They want the storm of what they feel for Fitz. They want to drown, to gasp for air, to cough and spit out all the seaweed emotions in the morning. They want to scrape barnacles off of their skin and ignore the way it bleeds. Fitz hurts. His kisses are so soft they hurt, porcelain lips against Keefe’s broken shards. Fitz hurts and Keefe wants to revel in the pain of the storm Fitz brings. They want to open their mouth and let the rain fill their lungs, feeling Fitz’s own storm when Keefe touches Fitz. Hands brush in the hallway and Keefe drowns twice over. 

So when they lay at night, Sophie’s voice in their head, they hold on to the storm it brings. Every mention of Fitz sends a lightning bolt into the water, clouds brewing, the water threatening to spill over the edge. Keefe builds the dams higher and takes a dive into the waters. 

They’re not numb, not yet.  Even when a million storms drown them. 

…

Keefe doesn’t need to touch Fitz to feel his anger. He’s controlling it, seeing as all their friends eyes look down on the two of them. Keefe left, and Fitz is angry. Keefe spit up seaweed love and made a noose from it. They swung around and Fitz had to watch Keefe. They ran. It was the right move, but Fitz doesn’t see it as such. 

“Are you even going to say something? Defend yourself just a little bit?” Fitz spits. Even in anger, Keefe would love to draw Fitz in this moment. They’re sitting in Foxfire’s library, all around the largest circular table. Keefe and Fitz are the only two standing.

“It was the right move, Fitz.”

Fitz slams his hand against the table. “Like hell it was! You could’ve gotten hurt. You could’ve gotten us hurt! Fuck, Sophie was a mess, Keefe! You did.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand perfectly fine. You left. You didn’t think of anyone but yourself. You thought of yourself, your feelings. Maybe you thought you were protecting yourself, but you did what you always do, Keefe. You got selfish.” 

“Fitz—” Sophie starts. 

“No. I’m done here. I’ll do research on my own.” Fitz storms past the rest of them, stopping next to Keefe for a second. His words a low and for Keefe alone. “I didn’t believe you, Keefe, but I trusted you.”

He keeps on walking then, leaving with a slam of the door. Keefe sits down slowly, swallowing down salt water and kelp. It gets stuck in their throat. 

Keefe drowns for the rest of the day. They want nothing more than to lay down and let it wash over them until they’re some semblance of above water. They don’t get that chance. But when the research session ends, Biana gives Keefe an offer they wish they could refuse. They wish they had the strength to say no. 

“Do you want to stay the night? If you don’t want to go to Candleshade.” 

Keefe has a place to stay besides Candleshade. They should say no. They really need to say no. But Biana’s hand on their arm reads of nothing but sincere love, not the storm that comes from Fitz. A gentle wave on a beach, flowing over Keefe’s feet. There’s no sea water for Keefe to spit up, no seaweed emotions to choke on. Just gentle water and seashells under their feet. 

“Just for tonight,” they say. “We don’t want your parents getting any ideas, right Bee? Look at what happened to Romeo and Juliet.”

Biana rolls aer eyes, but seems to have forgotten aer hand on Keefe’s shoulder. Ae’s still worried for Keefe, that gentle love washing over their knees now. 

“I think you and Biana are on very different pages there, Keefe,” Marella laughs. “We all know who Romeo really is, Jules.” 

Dex chokes on xyr water, gripping Marella’s upper arm and shaking cer. Sophie stifles a few giggles. Even Biana and Linh laugh a bit. Only Tam and Stina stay blank faced. Keefe, they swallow lungs full of salt water. Kelp and seaweed catch in their throat, wrapping around their stomach. The barnacles that normally sit on their skin in small clusters cover them completely, locking up their muscles. 

But they can’t go doing that, so they throw on a crooked smile. They reach into their pockets, finding an old chess piece (it’s Fitz’s, Keefe would pretend they didn’t know how to play just to have Fitz teach them). They bend down on one knee in front of Marella.

“Oh, Romeo, shall thou be my betrothed, for I have waited years for a love such as ours,” Keefe says. They force a laugh into their voice. Dex laughs even harder and shakes cer even harder. Sophie breaks into full out laughter. Biana’s covering aer mouth and shakes. 

“Careful, Juliet, I don’t think my girlfriend appreciates this,” Marella laughs. Ce nods to Stina, stony faced still. Tam isn’t anymore, just a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, even as he’s fighting to keep it down. Keefe isn’t sure if they’re thankful for her seriousness or nervous about what it means. 

“Your love has always been forbidden,” Dex cackles. Sophie breaks down completely and Tam finally lets out a small snort. Biana’s shaking aer head. Ae pulls Keefe up off the ground gently, aer love closer the sand between Keefe’s toes than water. Good. Water is too emotional, too messy.

“Come on, Loverboy, I’m exhausted and you’re coming with me.” 

“Wait a second, Bi, I want to talk to him,” Stina says. She stands up and doesn’t wait for a response before pulling Keefe into Foxfire’s hallway. A million emotions come from her contact, and Keefe knows she feels a million in turn.

Keefe plays it as usual, leaning against the wall with the same smile they always have. 

“What? Mad about Marella, Paris?”

“You’re full of shit, Keefe,” she says. “I don’t need to be an Empath to see that. Or then again, maybe I do, because it looks like you’ve got everyone fooled. Maybe just entertained.” 

Keefe feels the seawater climb up their body. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My hand’s still on your shoulder.” 

Keefe looks down. Stina’s hand is resting softly on their shoulder, psoriasis splattered on her fingers. Keefe doesn’t want to drop their walls for Stina. What other choice do they have, though? Stina already knows. Of all the people Keefe thought to find out, it was never Stina. But her face is kind enough and her hand is soft on their shoulder.

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t, but you can talk to me, Keefe. Call me when you need to talk, I’ll have Biana send my Imparter number to you. I can’t make you do anything, but I’m here. If anyone gets Empath emotions, it’s me.”

Keefe looks away. “It’s not just Empath’s that feel like this. Humans do.” Stina draws her hand back and nods. She knows they have more to say, so she just waits a moment. “Fitz does.”

“Call me, Keefe. You don’t keep this shit inside,” Stina says softly. 

Biana knocks on the door of the library before sticking aer head out. “Okay, I’m actually five seconds from falling asleep, so yeah. Keefe, you still coming to Everglen?” 

“Yeah. Let’s go.” 

They see Stina nod as they walk away, hand in Biana’s. 

…

Keefe doesn’t mean to run into Fitz that night. Maybe it was unavoidable. Maybe it was the reason they agreed to go to Everglen in the first place (maybe that’s more than a maybe). Keefe, after all, might just be a boy made of maybe’s. Maybe they could’ve been better. Maybe they could’ve been something other than an Empath. Maybe they could’ve been the son their father wanted. 

But one thing that’s never a maybe is Fitz’s anger. They’re in the kitchen on the first floor, far away from everyone asleep in the house. Fitz was baking, Keefe doesn’t know what they were doing. They never do, Keefe thinks, on the late nights. 

“I see Biana still forgives too quick,” Fitz says. He doesn’t even bother to look up. Keefe doesn’t say anything, just watches Fitz roll dough into balls and place them on a cookie sheet. They’re a few feet from Keefe. “Would it be too much to apologize, Keefe? To feel fucking sorry? You said you’d be there. I lost my fucking brother and then you were gone too.”

“I’m sorry,” Keefe chokes out. The words get caught on the kelp in their throat. Fitz tenses his muscles before letting them go, like he’s stopping himself from something. 

“No, you’re not. I know what you’re apologies sound like.” 

“No, you don’t,” Keefe says quietly. They don’t know why they say it. They don’t know why. Maybe they want Fitz to see just a glimpse of how utterly fucked Keefe is. 

“Yeah and that’s an improvement. Fuck you, Keefe. Go back to Biana’s room.” 

Keefe walks closer to Fitz, sitting on the counter next to Fitz’s cookie sheet. “Maybe I want to spend time with you.”

Fitz scoffs. “I don’t care what you want right now, Keefe. You left. You don’t get to come back and act like nothing’s wrong because you want it to be normal again.” Fitz’s voice gradually gets louder. “There’s no more fucking normal, you made sure of that.”

“I don’t want it to be like it was, Fitz.” Another lie. At least before Keefe ran away, Fitz kissed them. It was dangerously soft, Keefe’s broken pieces cutting into Fitz’s soft lips. Now, Keefe’s shattered to fucking dust and Fitz is cracking. Pressure doesn’t always make diamonds. Sometimes, it just breaks you. 

“I needed you. I’ve never—I don’t need people. Maybe I trust them, talk to them. I don’t fucking need them. But I needed you. Alvar—he was my fucking brother. My older brother. He taught me everything I knew. How to deal with Alden. Fuck you, Keefe, I fucking needed you. For the first time and you left me.” Fitz finally looks up, staring Keefe dead in the eyes. Keefe drowns. “We’re not going back. We’re never going back.”

Keefe looks right back at Fitz. They toss a few drops of water over the edge of the dam they’ve built. “I was scared, Fitz. For you. For everyone. For me. I needed a way to get rid of it, at least a little bit. I’m not sorry I left, but I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Yeah, well you did, Keefe.” 

They look away, fingers gripping the edge of the counter tightly. Keefe doesn’t break eye contact with Fitz. Hoping that maybe, he’ll look through the dam and see the hurricane drowning Keefe. 

“I know.”

Fitz looks away. “That’s it? You know?” Fitz stares down at the nearly empty bowl of cookie dough. “He was my brother, Keefe. I’ve only had three people in my life. You, Biana, and Alvar. That’s it. Alvar’s fucking gone, he played me. He used me. And what did you do?”

Keefe looks down to their knees.

“Tell me what you did, Keefe. I need to hear you say it.” 

“I did what I needed to. It hurt you, and I’m sorry for that, but I won’t apologize for leaving,” Keefe says. They grab Fitz’s hand. It’s sticky from cooking spray and sugar, and Fitz doesn’t look over at Keefe.

“Fuck you,” Fitz whispers angrily. His words burn Keefe, and they’ll never forget the hatred that drowns Keefe. This time, the salt water burns their throat as it pours down their throat. He looks up to Keefe. “Fuck you.”

“I’m not leaving.” 

Fitz swallows, seawater slamming against Keefe in waves of anger. In a split second, he’s kissing Keefe. There’s no softness in this one, only Fitz’s anger. All his hate, all his hurricane emotions. It all pours into Keefe’s lungs, both of their lips getting cut on each other’s broken pieces. They’re both bleeding with bruised lips when Fitz pulls away. 

“Get out of my house, Keefe. I don’t want you here.”

“I know,” Keefe whispers. And they kiss Fitz again. He pushes Keefe back, cabinets digging into Keefe’s spine. Fitz’s hands are on Keefe’s sides, keeping them right where they are. 

These are the kisses Keefe deserves. Bruising and angry, no emotion other than the crystal in Keefe’s back and the water in their lungs. It’s drowning. It’s a seaweed noose. It’s fear. It’s anger. And hell, maybe it’s some twisted kind of love. What else could ever come from two boys as broken as they are?

…

When the Shadowflux seeps through their skin, all Keefe can think of is how it feels to drown. They’ve drowned before, a million times, but they’ve never felt it like this. Every inch of their body is on fire, and Sophie’s in their head.

Desperation burns through with the pain. A hurricane builds in his chest, a million words swirling around. They all spill out into Sophie. They’re not made for Sophie. They look around desperately for Fitz, delirium spreading over their mind. Fitz isn’t here, but Keefe yells to him in their mind.

I don’t want to leave. Not this time. I had to leave the last time but I don’t want to leave. I’m sorry. Please, don’t make me leave. Don’t let Gisela throw me away. I don’t want my legacy. I want you. 

Keefe fights against the Shadowflux as it takes over their vision. They search the throne room, knowing that Fitz isn’t there. They want Fitz to hear them. They want one last goodbye if this is it, if the price of Keefe’s legacy is blood. But Fitz isn’t here. Sophie’s the one listening and the eyes they find are Tam’s.

His read of an apology. Keefe doesn’t want to know what theirs read of, they just know that it’s gallons of water spilling over the dams. Then the Shadowflux takes over their vision, every part of Keefe fading out.

I love you, Fitz. I’m sorry. 

And then it’s all gone. 

…

They wake up a weapon. A sword in anyone’s hands if they try hard enough. Keefe’s already lost control, how could they trust themself not to hurt anyone? Dex says they’re not dangerous, that they’ll learn. Elwin’s got the same (foolish) trust in them. 

Keefe runs anyway. It’s safer. For everyone, so long as Keefe stays away. Even when they have to fight to stay drowning when the tides threaten to recede, leaving Keefe breathing fine for the first time in their life. They might have to run, but they want to keep the memories of Fitz’s hurricane.

They want to keep the feeling of Fitz and Keefe’s broken parts grinding against each other. Shattered and ground into dust. It gets stuck in Keefe’s skin, drawing blood, but they relish in the feeling. They’ll never get real love from Fitz, so they’ll take the pain.

But it fades. The waters recede. The cuts scab over. The seaweed stops coming up in the morning. Keefe’s not drowning anymore and there isn’t even enough water left for them to miss the feeling. Keefe knows he should be sad, that they should miss them all more.

They don’t. Because after years of drowning, the water’s gone and Keefe’s numb. Or maybe they’re still drowning, but they just can’t feel it. Maybe the barnacle memories are forming armor on their skin and the seaweed is forming a noose. They can’t tell which it is, and they don’t care to check.

Keefe spent years drowning. They reveled in the feeling and maybe they miss it. But can you blame them for wanting a breath of air? To remember what it feels like to breathe, truly breathe (it’s a lie; they know that, but god, for now it’s close enough)? Keefe hasn’t felt this way in years, not since they met Fitz. 

This feeling is childhood in Candleshade, before it all fell apart. Cassius was distant then, until he wasn’t and Keefe was bruised. But back then, Gisela still pretended she cared. She wiped away the aches and was there. It was a lie. Of course it was, but sometimes Keefe misses it anyway.

They miss their mom and they hate it. It was a goddamn lie and the barnacle memories are stuck on their skin, bleeding whenever Keefe rips them off. They always come back, but Keefe picks and tears and scratches but they always fucking come back.

But they’re fine. Numbness is fine, because they’re not drowning. For once, they’re not drowning. And that has to be okay. What would they do if it wasn’t? This is a blessing, it has to be. Keefe has to keep themself in check now, loosing control could get someone killed. They’re numb. They have to be. And they have to be okay with it. 

…

Tensions are thicker than the barnacles crusted on Keefe’s skin when he comes back. Keefe’s still numb but the air gets stuck in their lungs, drowning them anyway. Fitz is the worst, all anger and sadness, though Keefe knows he’s burying it down.

After all, they know a lot of things now. Sophie’s in love with Biana and thinks Biana would never feel the same. But Biana is even deeper for Sophie, and even more convinced Sophie doesn’t feel that way. Keefe swears to make them realize someday.

They know Dex always feels like xe’s watching them all through glass. And how sometimes xe feels like xyr banging on it and no one can see xem. Keefe wants to promise that Keefe sees xem, that everyone does. That none of them wanted to make xem feel like that, and they’d do anything to take that away.

That’s Linh’s angry enough to rival Fitz and just now showing bits of it. Linh, Keefe finds, chose to make herself soft. To look at the world trying to break her down and love anyway, care anyway. But they know that Linh’s angry, and sometimes it gets hard to keep it all inside. So she lets it out with all the control she had saving Atlantis. Measured. Never enough to flood anything. Keefe wants to tell her how much they admire that.

That Tam wants to save this wretched world. That he knows it’s fucked, a million times over, but no one else is doing anything. Keefe wants to tell him that he’s right, and that they’d help. Tam is right. This world is worth saving. 

Marella, Maruca, Wylie, Jensi, Stina. Keefe knows everything. All of the emotions they bottle up, the ones they don’t show. The ones they don’t show all of. They hate it. No one should know these things but goddamnit, Keefe does. They know all of it. 

And now, as they lay under the stars, they wonder if this was what Gisela wanted. Keefe would be the perfect spy, with all that’s given. They wouldn’t do that. Gisela couldn’t make them, could she? 

They’re lost in everything when anger washes over them. It’s an anger they’ve felt a million times before. A storm they’ve drowned in a million times before. Keefe opens their eyes, watching Fitz get closer. Every step lets Keefe convince themself they’re not numb anymore, drinking in the water of Fitz’s hurricane. 

Salt washes over their tongue and they know just how much they missed this. Fitz sits down quietly next to Keefe. Keefe doesn’t say anything, just takes in all they can from the hurricane next to them. For however long they’re allowed to. 

“I swore this time I wouldn’t miss you, Keefe,” Fitz spits quietly. “I did. I missed you, you asshole.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you to apologize and mean it. I need to hear this from you, Keefe.”

“Why?” 

Keefe can feel something else in the storm, something they know they’ve felt before. It’s terrifying. 

“When you apologize. Don’t lie to me.”

Keefe considers it anyway. They’re numb, but everything they learned is still there. Keep it all inside and that’s how you stay alive, especially in Candleshade. But this isn’t Candleshade and Fitz’s storm is safe enough. Keefe holds their wrist out for Fitz, who takes it without a word, fingers on their pulse.

“I’m sorry, Fitz. I-I was scared of what I could do. Of what people could make me do. So I ran. I’m sorry.”

Fitz drops Keefe’s wrist. He nods. 

“Why?” they ask softly.

Fitz’s storm is only half angry now. The other half fills Keefe with fear they didn’t know they could feel anymore. 

“I love you. Maybe I’m wrong and I hate you. I remember how you talked about the similarities between the two, but I think I love you.” Fitz looks Keefe in the eyes as he says this. Keefe can hardly breathe. 

Keefe can’t think of a word to say, or maybe they just don’t trust themself to speak now. This isn’t numbness, it’s dangerous. It’s love, Keefe knows for sure, even if Fitz doesn’t. They can’t speak now. 

So they lean forward, hand on Fitz’s cheek. 

Keefe?

Tell me to stop.

Fitz doesn’t. Keefe leans closer. Their lips ghost over Fitz’s, waiting for Fitz to tell him to stop. He never does. And so they both drown in each others storms, getting caught on each other’s broken edges. It isn’t soft, it isn’t angry. 

A million memories hang in just this hallway. Of violence and cruelty that no one deserves, let alone a child. Micheal’s—Valentine’s—blood wasn’t the only blood spilled in this hall. Valentine only bled when he wanted to. Jace bled when Valentine wanted him too. He clenches his hands into fists, stopping the memories. Jace’s eye look over the entry way, landing on the solid gold lamp, tall as Jace is. He used to think it giant when he was a child. 

He doesn’t realize he’s grabbed it until it crashes into the wall. Right through the plaster—or is it wood? Drywall? Jace doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know what he’s doing—over and over again. Dust flies everywhere, painting tumble to the floor, denting the wood and breaking the frames. When the wall is nothing more than flimsy pieces hanging to the frames, he drops the lamp. The lightbulb is long broken, the shade a few feet away in tatters. 

He’s panting, he notices halfheartedly. Alec walks next to him, placing a hand softly on his shoulder. 

“Jace?” 

He doesn’t need to ask anything else, a million questions sitting in his name alone. Are you okay? What do you need? Is there anything I can do?

“I’m making something of this place, Alec,” he says. The dust hasn’t settled yet. Jace won’t give it the chance to. “Something without him.”

Magnus steps past the pair of them, kneeling down to pick up a painting. It’s a good one, objectively, it probably cost a lot. Magnus tosses it back down to the floor. He looks back to Jace.

“Then we’ll come back later, with everything you need and a plan.”

…

They come back with everyone. Simon, Maia, Izzy, Clary, Raphael. They spend weeks destroying the house, tearing everything down. Except for the library. Jace refuses to step foot in the library. His fingers ache when he reaches for the door handle. He should let them open the door, but the piano reeks of memories. Blood may still be on the keys. 

Now, it’s midnight. Everyone long gone besides Simon and Maia. The library is the only place left to tear down. The bones of the house are the only thing left, the only walls still up. It’s a warm night, the stars looking down on them. Jace stands in what used to be the hallway to the library. It’s only wood now. No more walls left up except for the ones in front of him.

“Hey, Sunshine, it’s getting late,” Simon says softly. Jace didn’t even notice he was there. He’s to Jace’s left. Maia is on his right. 

“Or early,” Maia says.

Jace takes a disastrous step towards the library door. His fingers begin to ache again. Simon and Maia take it with him, Maia intertwining her fingers with his. The ache doesn’t lessen, but Maia and Simon make it easier to bear. Jace reaches for the doorknob, fingers shaking with an phantom ache. Simon and Maia wait for him to open the door. 

The door swings open. Jace nearly chokes on the dust the falls out. The smell of blood slips out of the dark room, whether or not it’s truly there, Jace doesn’t know. Maia squeezes his hand, Simon presses his shoulder against Jace’s. He takes a shaky breath and stares into the dark room. The ghostly shape of the piano stares back at him. The books he was never allowed to read unless he was told to laugh at him.

He steps inside slowly. Simon and Maia follow him. The dust collects in his lungs. Maia rubs circles on Jace’s hand with her thumb. There’s blood on the piano keys. Jace can feel his breathing get quicker, shallower. Simon wraps his arm around Jace’s waist and starts to hum, one of the songs he wrote for Jace and Maia, just like he always does. Jace focuses on it, on Maia’s hand, Simon’s arm. 

He lets it pulls him back. The piano keys are white, the dust can be cleaned, the books can be read. This library is Jace’s now, not Valentine’s. 

“We keep this room,” he says. His voice is shaking just a little bit, but it will never be small again in this house. Valentine isn’t here. He doesn’t have to ever be small in Wayland Manor again. 

“Are you sure, lovely?” Simon asks. 

“Yeah.” 

Jace stares at the piano, feeling the break of his fingers. He can see himself at that bench, nine years old with broken fingers. He can see Valentine holding Jace’s only remaining finger in his hand while a nine year old tries not to cry out as it breaks. Then, with broken bones, he sees himself start La Campanella again. 

“I know what to make of this house,” he says. 

…

When the new walls go up, Jace paints them a million different colors. Sky blue, emerald, pink, lilac. Clary decorates them, flowers and clouds and sunsets. Magnus and Alec help him paint the outside, a nice soft yellow that Valentine would’ve hated. But it isn’t his house anymore. Hell, it never was. It was Michael Wayland’s and now it’s Jace’s. 

Now, it’ll be a place of solace. A place where when a child sits down at the piano, their fingers won’t be broken for a wrong note. They’ll be corrected softly and encouraged. No more children will be broken down in Wayland Manor. 

No more children like Jace will be within those colorful walls. For weeks, Jace ends the day with yellow paint up to his elbows. The Manor is covered in a month. Simon and Maia are the ones to hold him when he cries. And for once, tears in Wayland Manor are happy. 

They build all the furniture by hand. And when the attic is done, a simple bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen Jace stays there. It’s odd, living in the Manor again. He makes dinner for him, Simon, and Maia in a blur. The walls still smell like new paint. 

He doesn’t fall out of it until he’s in bed with them. Simon and Maia have stuck him in the middle of their bed, Simon’s head on Jace’s chest, Maia’s leg wrapped around his. 

“How’re you doing, Sunshine?” Simon asks. 

Jace stares up at the ceiling. “I feel like I’m dreaming. For so long, this house was a nightmare. It was full of memories I didn’t want to have, things I didn’t want to experience. But it’s mine now. It doesn’t seem real yet.”

Maia props herself up on her elbows. She leans down and kisses Jace softly. “That seem real, Pretty Boy?” she asks with a smile. 

“It does.”

Maia kisses Simon’s forehead and drops back onto her stomach. 

“I love you both,” he says softly. It might just be the first time those words have been spoken in this house in Jace’s lifetime. He really has made something new here, hasn’t he?

“I love you too, Sunshine.”

“Love you too, Herondale.”

And when he wakes up in the middle of the night, sweating and panicked, they wake up with him. Maia and Simon hold him when they make sure he’s okay with it. The panic of openly crying in Wayland Manor never truly leaves Jace, not yet, but it’s faded. 

It’s faded and there’s something new here. Something without Valentine.

…

When the children arrive, Jace makes Simon and Maia promise him something. 

“If I ever hurt any of them, make me leave and never let me come back in.”

“You won’t, Jace,” Maia says. Two children, a pixie, Lizabet, and a Shadowhunter, Marie, play together in the garden, the three of them on the porch. 

“Promise me. Please. I—I don’t—I need this, please,” he says quietly. The children are laughing, Lizabet tackling Marie. Simon intertwines his fingers with Jace’s. 

“I promise, Jace. And I promise we won’t need this promise,” he says. 

And they never do. Children come and go, Jace throwing himself into being what he never had. He holds them when they cry. He reads them the books he was never allowed to touch. And when they want to learn piano, he teaches them gently. 

It’s love. It’s love when he teaches them La Campanella. It’s healing, when he comforts them, when he builds the playset in the backyard, when he loves them with everything he has. Valentine’s fingers may ghost on his in that library, and he may still see blood on the piano; but these children never will. 

He sees August when he closes his eyes, feels the blood through his fingers, August's lifeless body under him. He sees the thing that killed him running into the woods, made of too many things. He refuses to close his eyes more than a few times a minute. Dorian eventually falls back against the shower wall; the ice cold walls staving off the completely falling back into the woods. He can still hear Baz and Diana outside the bathroom door. He'll have to leave soon unless he wants Baz and Diana to worry. He forces air into his lungs, evening out his breath best he can. After a few minutes, he’s gotten them evened out enough that it’s not noticeable. He only realizes then he forgot to grab another change of clothes. He knows he can’t put the bloody velvet back on. The knees of his jeans are stained ever so slightly. He can deal with that well enough. 

He doesn’t realize how many scars, bruises, and stretch marks he’s putting on display until he sees worry on Baz and Diana’s faces when he steps out. He almost goes back into the bathroom to spit out the taste their worry leaves. He doesn’t, know if he disappeared again their worry would just grow. 

“Dorian, what happened?” Diana asks. Dorian puts on a carefree smile and saunters past both her and Baz to the chest at the end of his bed. “Answer me, Dorian. I can always go to Mr. Bowman if you don’t.”

Dorian’s stomach churns as he thinks of Professor Conners and Mr. Bowman finding August’s body. He laughs. “I think Mr. Bowman has more pressing concerns right now.” He opens his trunk and pulls out a sweatshirt and pajama pants.

“What does that mean?” Baz asks. 

Dorian swallows. He doesn’t turn to face them, just changes. He gathers his thoughts in the few moments it gives him. He has to stay calm while he tells Baz and Diana this. It’d show off how much of an effect this had on him if he doesn’t, but he can show anything while he tells them what happened. This is a game of chess, one he has to win.

He sits on the closed chest once he’s done. “August is dead.”

Diana stumbles back. “What.”

“There was something in the woods and it just, killed him. Marius tried to heal him. It didn’t work.”

“I’m going to need you to say that again,” Baz says shakily. They sit carefully on the edge of their bed, dark eyes wide as the moon. 

“He’s dead. August Becker’s dead.”

Baz falls back, staring up at the ceiling. Dorian can see the small tremors of panic course through their muscles. Diana sits on the foot of her own bed.

“You’re sure?”

“I watched him die, Diana. I felt his blood under my hands. I heard his breathing stop. I felt his body go limp under my hands. I had my hands in his gut, trying to stop the blood. He’s dead.”

“Okay, you’re sure.” A beat of silence. “What killed him?”

“I don’t know. It only saw a glimpse of it as it ran away. It was dark.” He adds the last part as an afterthought. He can feel the blood on his fingers. His breaths beg to fall out of normalcy, but he does his best to force them to say even. He can’t show anything to Baz or Diana. It would never be the same again, they’d never look at him like he was Dorian. All they’d ever see after that is an idiot who wore his weaknesses on his sleeves. He loved them too much for that. “It looked like a lion, but I swear to Great Mage Elisedd, I saw a snake.”

“Maybe a mountain lion?” Diana offers.

“I don’t know.”

He barely notices when Baz sits up. They search their school bag with shaking hands until they find their Incantations and Spells textbook. They frantically flip through the pages. When they stop, they cross the roof and shove the book into Dorian’s hands. They point at a picture. Yellow eyes stare up at Dorian.

“Did it look like that?” They look to Dorian with something he can’t name in their eyes. Dorian presses the corners of the book into his hands to keep himself from being back in the woods. The lantern eyes stare up at him. A snake curls on top of a lion.

“I think so.”

"Chimeras. It was a chimera you saw," Baz says. Diana sits up straighter.

"That doesn't make any sense. Chimeras are docile creatures, they don't attack, even when they're provoked. August could've killed a chimera's child and he would've gotten off scot free. It couldn't have been a chimera."

"I swear, that's what I saw."

Baz's hands are shaking more now. They swallow thickly and set the book on their bed. Dorian can see the cogs turning in their head. They sit down on their bed. "Unless it was being controlled."

"Chimeras are monsters of Greek myth, even if they're docile, they can't be controlled. You can't use foxes in a loyalty spell and you can't control a chimera," Dorian says. 

"You slept through the lesson, chimeras can be controlled. Second definition and all that. You can make a chimera do anything. Like making a docile creature…" Baz trails off. 

“You should tell Mr. Bowman in the morning. They need to know,” Diana says. 

“No, they don’t,” Dorian says quickly. They’ll look through August’s room and find proof Marius asked August to take Dorian into the woods. If they know he followed through, that’s blame Marius can’t shake. Dorian’s failed to protect Marius a million times over, given up just as many times. But that was the first time he ever saw Marius cry. He won’t go down for this, not if Dorian can help it.

“Of course they do! This can help them find out who killed August. You really want to keep it to yourself?” Diana asks. 

  If it keeps Marius in the clear? Yes. “If it keeps them from finding out I was in the woods? Yes. I can’t take that mark with Marius trying to get me expelled.” 

“Then write an anonymous letter. This is life and death if it happens again.”

Dorian stands up and grabs his wand off the bedside table. He points it at the pixie lights in the middle of the room and ignores Baz and Diana trying to continue the conversation. “Turn off.” He further ignores them as he climbs into bed. He knows he can’t fall asleep, not without going back to the woods, but he wants them to stop talking. He needs time to think of a way out of this. 

“We’re talking about this in the morning, Dorian,” Diana says. Dorian rolls over. He stares out the window of their dorm into the sky. It’s blank tonight, a tapestry of stars with only a sliver moon to light it. He knows Baz is right. If this happens again, it’s life or death. But with Arthur and Camille, it might be close to the same if Marius gets expelled. They might not have killed Aunt Giselle, but they never called a healer for her either. Marius doesn’t deserve that. But August didn’t deserve to die, and neither does anyone else. Dorian can sit back from a lot of things. Not this. 

If another person dies, it’s on his watch. He let it happen. Dorian has to do something to stop it. 

Nica

“You’re doing something about this, right?” xe asks. Marius came back to the dorm after Nica and Ares were asleep. They found him sitting on his bed with blood in his hair that morning. Apparently, he’d changed and washed everything except his hair. Now, Ares paces the room, Marius sits at his desk, and Nica leans forward with xyr forearms on xyr knees. 

“They’d think I had something to do with it or get in trouble for being in the woods. Either way, they’d start watching me and if I’m trying to get Dorian expelled, I can’t have that.”

“Maybe,” Ares says, her hands thrown up in the air. “And this might sound crazy, you don’t try to get Dorian expelled.” 

Marius looks away. “I can’t. Camille and Arthur are already breathing down my neck to get this done.”

Nica’s nostrils flare. Ares mutters a keep quiet. Nica stands up. 

“Somebody is dead, Marius. I don’t care about your Aunt and Uncle when people might die because you’re scared.”

“I’m not scared!” Marius snaps.

“You could’ve fooled me.”

Marius tears a hand through his hair, black strands flying everywhere. Nica almost regrets xyr outburst. But xe wasn’t wrong. Not entirely at least.

“You’re scared, I get it. But if someone dies again, it’s on you for not telling anyone. It’s on us for not telling.” 

Marius doesn’t meet any of their eyes. “Maybe I am scared, but it’s not for me,” he says quietly. Nica waits for Marius to go on. He doesn’t seem to want to.

“Keep going, we’re not convinced,” Ares says.

Marius looks away. “It’s not my place to say.”

“Then I’ll go get Mr. Bowman.”

Marius deflates and drops his forehead into his hand. “If they find out Dorian was in the woods, they’ll blame him. With—I can’t. All you need to know is that they’ll blame him for this.”

“Why? Dorian still uses a wand, he isn’t exactly cut out for murder,” Nica scoffs. “He’s as harmless as a puppy.”

Marius lifts his head up, staring at Nica with hard eyes. He’s being completely serious. Xe can’t believe it. Nica sits back down, forearms back on xyr knees.

“An expulsion is nothing to a Beauregard. He’ll do just fine so long as he keeps the name. If anyone finds out he was there and word gets to our parents, he’s ruined. Even if it’s proved he didn’t do it, that will always be there. Maybe he can come back from that, maybe he can’t. I won’t risk it.”

“And if Dorian tells?” Nica asks, taking xyr hand off xyr forehead.

“Then I hope to Great Mage Ari that he’s ready for what comes after. It’s not my problem if he brings it on himself.”

Ares sits on Marius’ desk. “So what, we just sit here and do nothing? That can’t be the right answer. There has to be something we can do here.”

Marius stands up. “No.”

“I mean, why August? He’s not the first kid to go into the woods. And why now? What’s special about this year? Why use a chi—”

“It doesn’t matter!”

“August matters! This matters. I won’t sit back.”

“Then go back to pacing, Ares.”

Ares stands up and storms to the door. 

“Where are you going?”

“Breakfast,” Ares calls behind her. She slams the door closed with a loud bang. Nica stands up.

“I won’t tell anyone. I’m trusting you here, don’t let me down. Someone’s dead, Marius, don’t forget those stakes.”

Diana

Dorian’s gone when Diana wakes up. He doesn’t know where Dorian is, and Baz is still asleep. Diana’s willing to be they don’t know either. Dorian’s velvet shirt is still sitting on the bathroom floor, right in the middle of the cobblestone. The deep red is stained faintly with copper. Any other fabric the color would be stark, but not with the velvet. Diana picks it off the ground.

“Clean the stains,” he says. The white sand-like magic flies over the bloodstains but doesn’t clean. The blood sticks to the fabric. Diana tries again; and again, the blood stays clinging to the fabric. A headache bursts behind his eyes. It comes without warning and its pounding is oddly familiar. It’s the pain of overexertion. He brushes it off. Two failed spells isn’t overexertion, that’s insane. 

Diana doesn’t want to think about how there got to be so much blood on Dorian’s clothes. How much pain August must’ve been in as he lost it all. Diana can’t believe a chimera could do this. He knows how dangerous they technically are; venom from the snake, a lion’s claw and bite. He also knows he used to play with the ones that lived in the woods behind his house. The closest they ever got to hurting him was accidentally pushing him down. He had gotten a small cut and the chimera had such a mournful look, not even Diana’s mom had gotten mad.

It had been an accident. It had to be an accident for August, right?

I had my hands in his gut, trying to stop the blood.

That was no accident. Just the thought of it makes Diana nauseous. He can hardly watch horror movies with good enough effects, he couldn’t imagine something like that. Diana leaves the shirt on the floor. He grabs a bag of chocolate covered coffee beans from his nightstand. Phones don’t work at Adrien, so he settles for notebook paper and a pen. His mom expects a letter every week and he hasn’t had the time yet. For a second, he hesitates on the lies. He hates to lie to his mom, but what would she do if she heard about an attack? 

Taking Diana out of Adrien would probably be her answer. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to go home, but it would mean leaving Dorian here alone. He’s always been good at never letting anything show; hiding behind jokes and laughs so convincing Diana didn’t ever think them fake until now. But now the cracks are showing. His puppet-like control is slipping and Diana doesn’t even think he realizes it. Dorian looked like he thought he was perfectly controlling his words, but they had shaken anyway. Diana remembers the strain in his voice when he told them August was dead; the fear in his voice when he told them he was sure. The horror as he talked of August’s blood on his hands. It just barely showed through, but it had been there all the same. 

Diana mentions nothing of August in the letter, just that he’s worried for Dorian. Baz is awake by the time he’s done. They’re groaning and stretching like a cat. Normally, Diana would wait, but this isn’t a time for waiting. He throws a pillow at Baz. It only grazes their leg but gets their attention all the same.

“We have to talk. We’re going to the letterhouse.”

“I just woke up,” Baz groans. Their voice is still ragged with sleep. 

“Get up, Baz. Remember last night?”

Baz stills. “I’ll get my shoes.”

Diana shoves the letter in his sweatpants pocket and grabs a pair of boots. His jacket is on the floor near Baz’s bed, a deep green zip-up. They put it on over the t-shirt they’ve slept in. It’s Baz’s. Baz is done by the time Diana’s dug an envelope (Diana has them premade and stamped for times like these) and shoved the letter inside. They haven’t even thrown on a jacket. Normally, Diana would joke You’d better hope we don’t run into a teacher and throw a jacket at them. 

Diana leads Baz out of their dorm. They don’t talk until they’re outside Phoenix House. The walk to the letterhouse is far away. They’ll have plenty time to talk.

“Are we really keeping this a secret, Baz? Someone’s dead, we have to do something.”

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Dorian will get in trouble for being in the woods, that brings him down to two chances.”

“Someone is dead, Baz—”

“Don’t yell, people will hear you.”

“How is Dorian the only person you can think of?”

“Because I know him and I don’t know August. Believe me, I know that sounds selfish. Dorian is alive, August isn’t.”

“And don’t tell me to stop yelling! First, I’m not. And what, does August not matter? We didn’t know him but someone did. He had friends. He had a family. He had a life. Dorian matters, sure, but so does August Becker. Don’t we owe it to him to do what we can?”

Baz clenches their jaw and looks forward. 

“See? You know I’m right, Baz!”

“You’re not!” they snap. “We don’t owe August anything and you’re stupid to think otherwise! He’s dead, Diana. We didn’t know him, and now we never will. Do you owe a stranger something big enough to hurt someone you love? You’re not thinking, Diana.” 

“We know what killed August. I don’t owe a murdered stranger anything unless I know who killed them.”

“So does Marius. Let him be the one to say something. I won’t do this to Dorian and I won’t let you do it either.”

Baz turns and starts walking back to Phoenix House. Diana watches them go. When they’ve left his line of sight, Diana continues. His mom will be worried if he doesn’t send this letter. Diana knows he has to do something. He knows Baz is wrong. They aren’t a lot of the time, but this? He didn’t know August Becker personally, but he knew about him. Everyone did. He was one of the only people who openly hated the Beauregard family. One of the maybe twenty people who’d throw a punch to the heir of the Beauregard fortune. 

Hell, Diana’s sure he’s punched August before. 

But he can’t just sit back. He’s never been able to, not for anything in his life. He has to do something no matter what. Sitting back is complacency, it’s letting the world screw you over, screw others over. Someone’s dead now. Diana did enough sitting back when he didn’t go with Dorian into the woods. How is he supposed to sit back now?

Screw Baz and all their sit back and let the work get done. Diana is doing something, whether Baz likes it or not. Whether Dorian likes it or not. 

Dorian shows up after lunch. Diana’s resolved to do something, what it is, he doesn’t know. Baz has resolved to ignore the fight and look guilty. They’ll probably apologize and Diana will forgive them in a day or two. Until then, Diana will try to figure out his next move and the two won’t talk. Diana’s at his desk, staring at the wall. Baz is on their bed with a sketchpad on their knees. Dorian breaks the silence when he bursts into the dorm, pants splattered with mud and sticks in his hair.

“Where were you, Dorian?”

He pulls off his jacket and shakes it, leaves and twigs falling off it and onto the floor. “August’s body is gone. The blood too. All trace of what happened are completely gone.”

Both Diana and Baz sit up straighter. 

“You went back to the woods?” Baz asks with disappointment in their voice.

“All of it? No evidence at all?” Diana asks. “Aren’t you supposed to preserve a crime scene?”

“I thought that too. I read it in one of the books I stole from the school library in fourth year. But everything’s gone. Mr. Bowman came back an hour after I did, that can’t be enough time to do that, right?”

“That doesn’t matter. Both of you stay out of the woods and out of whatever happened. You’ve got three chances this year, Dorian, don’t waste it on stupid things.”

“This isn’t stupid, Baz.”

“Like hell it isn’t! You’re seventeen, not a detective in some 1920’s noir. What if the chimeras come after you next? What then? If you don’t have your wand, you’re dead.”

“I always have it with me,” Dorian says. It comes out harsher than Diana thinks he meant it to. He pulls his wand out of his pocket to prove his point. Baz leaves their bed and plucks it out of Dorian’s hand, throwing it onto Diana’s desk.

“You didn’t last night.”

Diana throws Dorian’s wand back to him. 

“Because I didn’t know what was out there. Now I do. I’m looking into this, Baz, whether you like it or not. I can’t tell anyone what I saw last night, but this? I owe this to August. I’ll find out what happened.”

“And when you do? Who are you going to tell? You said it yourself, you can’t.”

“But I can,” Diana says. Both of them look to Diana like they forgot he was there. “I can help you look and when we figure it out, I’ll be the one to tell people. I’m not tied up like Dorian is.”

Baz pinches the bridge of their nose. There’s a bit of desperation in their sigh. Diana chooses to ignore it. He won’t sit back.

“And how will you explain how you found this all out? Why you were inclined to look in the first place? If either of you put a moment of thought into this it’d be clear that the best move is not to do anything.” 

“Damn the best move, at least I’m trying to help people!” Diana doesn’t mean to stand up or yell, but he ends up doing it anyway. 

“So am I!”

“Then help us, Baz. You’re the smartest one here,” Dorian says. 

“Absolutely not. I won’t be the one leading you two like lambs to the slaughter. Be your own farmer.” Baz turns and sits back on their bed. They pull their sketchbook back into their lap. Diana looks to Dorian, knowing they have the same idea. If they’re going to do this, they’ll have a better chance of figuring it out with Baz. 

“If you’re helping us, we’ll be done faster. It’ll be less dangerous if it’s quicker,” Diana says. Baz doesn’t look up.

“I’m ignoring you.”

“We can do it on your terms,” Dorian offers.

“Great, so not at all.”

“Baz, we’re doing this whether you help or not. This doesn’t depend on you.”

Dorian waits for Baz to lift their pencil and takes the sketchbook from their lap. He closes it and stares Baz in the eyes.

“I have to do this, Baz. I know you hate it, I know you think I’ll get hurt. And I might. But August is dead because I agreed to go to the woods with him. I can’t just sit back and let whoever killed him get away with it. Otherwise it might as well be me.” Diana almost falls back in shock. Of all the things he expected Dorian to say, something with meaning was the lowest on the list. He still wears the same confidence he’s known for, the same cocky look. But the words? That’s not the Dorian Beauregard he knows. Baz must be thinking the same thing, because Diana could say the same thing for what they say next.

“I’ll help.” 

Dorian stands up and picks his jacket up off the floor where he dropped it. He’s wearing a smirk like he just conned Baz. Diana rolls his eyes. Of course, to Dorian this is a game. One the he just one by being the one to get Baz to agree. So much for thinking he finally made progress. Honestly, it’s Diana’s fault for getting his hopes up. Dorian doesn’t change. There’s only one consistent thing in this world, and it’s Dorian’s ability to turn everything into a joke. A game. 

A knock on their door sends Diana back to reality. Dorian’s too busy picking sticks out of his hair to answer it, so Diana does. Mr. Bowman stands on the other side with Marius behind him. 

“I’d like to talk to Dorian.”

Diana’s gut drops to the floor with a wet smack. 

Marius

Marius has never been more thankful for his ability to lie than when Mr. Bowman sat him and Dorian in front of his desk. He’s good at keeping his lies straight, too. He can only hope Dorian can say the same. And fairies know he’ll need it. There’s twigs in his hair and mud all over him. It wouldn’t be more clear he had been in the woods if he’d said it outloud. 

Marius doesn’t look at Dorian. Even an ounce of what looks like planning, Mr. Bowman will notice. Innocent people don’t plan out stories. Guilty—at least partially so—people have to know how to look innocent. 

“What do you two know about August Becker?”

“That he’s got a good right and an absolutely horrible left. His kicks are killer though, pretty sure I’ve got a scar from one of those,” Dorian says. He’s wearing that stupid smile of his. He’s so cheery Marius almost spills right then and there to make him stop. Mr. Bowman sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. He lifts his head back up and turns his attention to Marius. Marius straightens and keeps lines up the lies he plans to say.

"What about you, Marius?"

"I've only known of him in passing. People talk, Mr. Bowman, and I've heard some of what they say. Why do you ask?”

Marius hopes to every Great Mage that Mr. Bowman doesn’t say what Marius thinks he’s going to say. Dorian’s already marked himself as suspicious, what with all the mud and sticks on him. And with already having fought August before. And with the full moon only two days away…

He doesn’t know how many people at Adrien know that Dorian’s a werewolf. If Mr. Bowman does and finds out Dorian was there, they’ll pin it all on him. Call it another unfortunate accident from a rabid beast. Marius’ lines may be drawn in the sand, but that one has been set in stone. One of the few that is. 

“Were either of you in the woods last night?”

Marius’ heart stops. He puts on a confused smile and pretends it hasn’t. He doesn’t spare Dorian a glance to make sure he is too, it’d look suspicious. 

“Mr. Bowman, it’s me we’re talking about. I wouldn’t go into the woods even if I wanted to. My shoes alone cost more than Phoenix House. What does this even have to do with August Becker?” 

Mr. Bowman turns his attention to Dorian, only raising an eyebrow. Dorian brushes at a spot of mud on his knee. 

“I tripped on my way back from lunch. A lot. Diana enjoys making a game of pushing me towards puddles of mud. Naturally, he wasn’t much better looking than I was, he just got to the bathroom first. I’d bet he even convinced my darling Baz to hold me up. He’s a crafty one.” 

It’s a horrible lie, really, but Dorian sells it. He looks Mr. Bowman in the eyes as he says it, and wears that lazy, confident look he always has on. His eyes tell nothing of a lie, either, just laughter. Maybe Marius hasn’t been giving him enough credit. Mr. Bowman almost looks like he believes Dorian. 

“Again, why do you ask? I can’t think of a reason for this inane questioning.”

Mr. Bowman looks at both of them with a look that’s equally sad and suspicious. Both a look Marius would rather not see. “Mr. Becker was found dead last night and a letter from you, Marius, was found in his dorm. It asked him to take Dorian into the woods. He was found in the woods.”

“Oh fairies,” Marius breathes. The horror isn’t hard to fake. Guilt rises up in his chest, pulling at the lies he plans to tell. The excuses he plans to make. Marius does his best to beat it back down. There isn’t time for that right now. Even if there was, August made his choices. He could’ve said no.

He did. He did but you pushed him anyway, a voice spits from the back corner of Marius’ mind. It’s true. He knows it is but he calls the voice a liar anyway. Doubt and guilt are two things he can’t have. They sow seeds that grow and cloud over every decision and word. Marius needs to be sure in his. He shoves them both down, smothering the small plants, stamping out every sprout of those dreadful plants. 

“Do you have anything else to say? Marius, this could—no, will—get you expelled if you can’t explain this. You’re lucky if expulsion is the only thing you get. Now, I’m sure this is a misunderstanding, but you have to give me something to tell the Headmaster and Professor Conners.”

Marius swallows. “That’s not my handwriting, Mr. Bowman.” Marius had used his left hand and hadn’t written it in cursive. Truly, the only marker of it was his name. It had been too long to track the history of the letter using a spell. 

“Do you have anything to prove that?”

“All of my notes for school. They’re in perfect cursive. I wouldn’t be caught dead with handwriting that bad.”

“Get one of them, Marius.”

Marius goes with the first class he thinks of. “Division of Magicks notebook seventh year, Marius Beauregard.” 

The notebook appears on the desk in front of Mr. Bowman. He flips through the pages, clearly taken aback by the fact a sixteen year old does, in fact, write in perfect cursive. Marius almost laughs at his doubt. Does Mr. Bowman know nothing of his family? He isn’t allowed to cough the wrong way, why on earth would he have bad handwriting? 

“Thank you, Marius. I’ll bring this to Professor Conners.” Mr. Bowman closes the notebook and looks to Dorian. “The letter was asking August to take you into the woods. He was seen talking to you at dinner. Did you go with him?”

Marius sits back. If Dorian picks up a shovel and starts digging, it isn’t Marius' problem. There’s something rattling around in his chest, something that makes his hands want to shake. He clenches them into fists and ignores the something. 

“Why would I trust August? He came up to ask me to but I didn’t fall for it. I’m a sucker for a pretty face but I’m not stupid. August hates my family and sees me as part of it still. I’d rather follow a rabid dog into a cage than August into the woods.”

“Can anyone prove this?”

“Baz or Diana would say the same. You could send for them if you’d like to check?”

Mr. Bowman nods. “I would. Marius, could you grab them? You can go back to your dorm afterwards.”

Marius nods and leaves the office. Mr. Bowman’s office is right outside the Common Room. He keeps his eyes forward and off the people who’ve collected there. If he doesn’t mind their attention, it won’t matter a week from now when Dorian’s the only one they remember. One of the only good parts of Dorian being who he is, is that it takes all the attention off of Marius. Seven years at school together and no one notices Marius. He’s an afterthought. As long as he’s not doing anything to bring attention to him, he won’t get any attention. 

He knows their eyes won’t follow him as he walks up the stairs, and anyone who sees him walk to Dorian’s dorm won’t give him any either. 

Baz answers the door when he knocks. The amount of worry on their face is immeasurable. 

“Mr. Bowman wants to talk to you both. He’s making Dorian was in here last night, even though August talked to him last night at dinner. Go straight to his office.”

He thinks of town, not last night. Not how it felt dangling off the roof, staring up at Marius. Not how it felt when Marius hesitated to pull him up. Only for a second, but he did. Dorian thought that was it, that he would fall and that would be it. That he’d be gone, just like that. He sits on his bed and waits for Diana and Baz to be ready not thinking of how he might not have ever seen them again. But what he really doesn’t think of, is how it didn’t scare him enough.

He was terrified, sure, but it wasn’t enough. He was scared, but some part of him thought;

What if I fell? That can’t be the worst thing. It’s not the worst thing.

Marius had pulled him up, and Dorian tried to help. But what if Marius hadn’t been there? What if Dorian was the only one on the roof? Would he have tried to get up? Would he have just, let go? He believed his blood needed to be spilled when he went up there, what if he let it happen? 

No, Dorian doesn’t think of that. He thinks of sneaking into town that night. He’s going to take Diana and Baz with him and continue not thinking of last night. He can’t let himself. The shakiness spreads if he does, so bad he can barely keep it from showing. One slip and he’s ruined. So Dorian doesn’t think of the things he said to Marius. He’ll never be able to take back those words. He’ll never get rid of the doubt he put in Marius’ head.

Maybe a better person would apologize. They’d swallow their pride and say I’m sorry. Dorian isn’t a better person then, because his pride is all he has, he can’t let go of it. He needs it intact. Pride is what keeps Dorian standing, keeps his image held up. Break that and he lets everyone see anything they want. They would tear him apart with every bit of weakness he showed, and he couldn’t have that. He holds tight to his pride, and he doesn’t think of anything.

Will Marius hate him now? He should, he does. Dorian deserves every bit of that hatred. From here on, he deserves whatever Marius does to him after everything he said on the roof. He was supposed to protect Marius. He was supposed to keep him safe, just like Aunt Giselle told him to. He doesn’t know what he’ll say to Aunt Giselle if he sees her when he’s gone.

I’m sorry I didn’t listen.

I tried.

He made it so hard.

I did what I had to.

None of it was true. None of it would garner sympathy or forgiveness; he didn’t want that anyway, he didn’t want another lie from—hell, he doesn’t even know what she is to him besides the one person in the family who never got mad at him. No matter how much he deserves everyone's anger.

“What’s up, you look stuck in another world,” Diana says. She sits down in front of Dorian. He can’t stand the concern on her face. He plasters on a crooked smile and leans forward conspiratorially.

“I’m thinking of all the ways we can get to town tonight, Ana.”

“No, you’re not,” Baz yells from the bathroom. “You do want to stay at Adrien, don’t you?”

Marius

Marius knocks on the door of August Becker. He’s an eighth year and one of the only people in this school not intimidated by Dorian. One of the only people who will do what Marius needs him to do. 

The door creaks open to a boy with long red hair tied up. He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“The hell do you want, Beauregard?”

“You hate my family, yes?” 

August snorts. “That is not what I expected you to say but of course I do. Eat the rich, am I right? Don’t answer that. What do you want?”

“Did you get my letter?”

“Yeah, I did. I don’t like your brother but I ain’t getting caught in the woods for whatever petty thing you’ve got with him. I kind of like the possibility of graduating, I’ve heard you need to do that for college.”

“He’s not my brother,” Marius says quickly.

“Damn, okay man. Still not doing it.” He starts closing the door. 

“I can pay you.”

The door stops. “How much?”

“How much do you want?” 

August opens the door again with a small smirk. “Five thousand.”

Marius splutters. “That’s half of a college tuition.”

“Exactly, Pretty Boy, pay up.”

Marius can’t focus for the rest of the day and finds himself both dreading and unable to wait for Division of Magicks and Ethics. It’s a terrifying thought because he knows he’ll be able to finally focus on something, that something being the absolute wrong thing. He’s known Lev Cohen for three days and it’s becoming a problem. A very large problem. A very large problem that needs to end.

He’ll get around to switching classes soon. He’s just been busy. He walks into Division only a few seconds before the bell rings, hoping Lev will already be sitting next to someone. He scours the room and finds all seats taken except for the seat with Lev’s messenger bag thrown on it. Right next to Lev. He has to switch classes soon. Marius walks to the seat, Lev picking up his bag and dropping it to the floor between their chairs. He turns to Marius with a crooked smile and Marius definitely doesn’t notice his dimples. Certainly not. 

“I was worried you wouldn’t show.”

“It’s school, I have to,” Marius says in what he hopes is a dry tone. Lev snorts anyway. 

“You’ve never skipped a class?”

“You have.”

“Now, if you two are done talking, I’d like to start class,” Mr. Karim says. Marius clears his throat and pulls his notebook out of his messenger bag. He drops it to the floor beside Lev’s. 

“What can I say,” Lev whispers, “Division is my least favorite class.”

“You seem to enjoy it well enough.”

He can feel Lev’s breath on his neck when he leans over. “You make it bearable.”

Lev doesn’t even need to say anything when Marius blushes. Marius can feel the smile in Lev’s posture as he shifts back into his seat. He takes his normal position and kicks his feet up on the desk, leaning back in his chair. Marius clears his throat and listens to Mr. Karim’s lesson. His notes stay blank. Marius finds he can hardly focus on anything but the way Lev mutters jokes under his breath. 

Marius will switch classes soon. Surely. 

The end of the day comes frighteningly fast. Nerves build up all through dinner, climaxing when August sits next to Dorian at dinner. He watches as a grin spreads across Dorian’s face and a scowl on Baz’s. Baz is a good judge of character. Would Dorian listen if Baz saw through August? Would they try and stop this? Of course they would, why didn’t he take that into account? Fairies, this this isn’t going to work.

But neither Baz or Dorian give Marius a second glance at dinner, even when August walks away. When he sees Marius, he gives him a sickeningly sweet smile and pulls his wallet out of his pocket. Marius hopes his parents don’t miss the money. 

Fairies, they might just kill him for that. He should’ve just found another person. What’s to say he can even trust August to follow through? His distaste in Marius was shockingly clear. He needs to study tonight, borrow notes for just about every class and get back on top. Arthur and Camille will be disappointed if his grades slip and their disappointment tastes like blood. He learned the rules to play by, and he has to follow them. 

He keeps his eyes on Baz, watching for any signs of suspicion. He can’t find any but he’s got a bad angle, what with Baz being on the same side of the table as him. Marius might have to follow Dorian into the woods. He can study after Dorian gets caught, and then he’ll be able to focus. It won’t be his first late night or all nighter. He knows the right spells to stave off exhaustion and coffee works well enough if he can’t get the handwave spells right. Yes, that’s what he’ll do. 

Marius stands up and leaves the Dining Hall quickly. If he wants to follow Dorian into the woods, it’ll be easier to follow him for less time. Even if he uses his wand for the handwave spells to hide himself, he’s never had to hide himself from a werewolf. He’ll have to keep as much distance as possible for this to work. And it has to work. Marius only has a certain number of ways to get Dorian expelled, he can’t be running through them this quickly. 

August

August wasn’t sure how much wagering on getting expelled was worth, but in the moment, half his tuition to most public schools seemed like a good idea. It got a hell of a lot harder to justify as he waited in the woods just outside Phoenix House for Beauregard to come out. He wasn’t even sure he would come out.

The possibility of this being a trick to get August is trouble wasn’t lost on him. He hadn’t trusted any Beauregard since he told his parents about Dorian in the summer after first year. After spring break, Dorian had started passing notes to August in Arts. His parents had been quick to tell him all about the Beauregard family. How they climbed over everyone to get what they wanted. How no matter how young they were, you couldn’t trust a Beauregard further than you could throw them. August had gotten in a few fights with Dorian, some of them ending up bloody, but Dorian gave better than he got.

And August, you see, wasn’t all too strong. He doesn’t know how long he stands in those woods. He almost thinks to call it quits and head back to Pegasus House. If Marius wanted his money back, August still had the letter. He could just threaten to show it to the faculty and then it was just free money. August has all but started walking when Dorian makes the spectacular decision to come running towards August. He’s…

Oh fairies, he’s dressed nice. He doesn’t think this is a date, does he? August is going to kill Marius. Did he really just get paid to take someone on a date? He hates this damn school and that damn family. Though, Dorian doesn’t look too bad. He must’ve borrowed his roommates clothes because August is sure stuck-up old French families wouldn’t approve of velvet shirts left unbuttoned down to the waistband of a black knee length skirt. August even thinks those are that kid Baz’s with the paint smudged on them. His hair is messed up in a way that makes August want to mess it up even more.

This might just be worth it, so long as August doesn’t get caught. He doesn’t have to trust Dorian to take him out, does he? No, he doesn’t think he does.

August pushes off the tree he was leaning against. 

“Ready to go, Beauregard?” 

“Depends if you are, August,” he says with a lopsided smile. It’s a smile August doesn’t trust but damn, is it beautiful. This might just end up being a nice night. He might have to make more deals with Beauregards if this turns out to be worth it.

“You say that like I haven’t been waiting out here for an hour, asshole.”

“Most people don’t call their dates ‘asshole’.”

“Tell me that when you haven’t kissed half our grade, Dorian. I think I’m allowed to call you an asshole at least a few times.”

August turns and starts walking deeper into the woods. Dorian falls in step next to him, only one or two inches taller than August. It’s infuriating. Of course the dude sharing a name with Dorian Gray gets to be pretty and tall. 

“A bit egotistical, don’t you think?”

“Says you.”

“Yes, but I wear it quite well, don’t you agree, August?”

August snorts. He’s just made it to the small clearing, halfway to the town near Adrien. “I already regret this.”

“You won’t for long. Can I?” 

“Fuck it, why not?”

August is quick to figure out why Dorian gets so many dates. He really has to make more deals with Beauregards this is what it gets him. Dorian’s arms are thrown lazily around August’s waist like he can’t be bothered to put any real effort into kissing him, but damn, does it feel like he is. There’s no feeling behind it. August thinks it’s just fine without it because he’s sure the only feelings he’s got for Dorian Beauregard aren’t anything good. He’s a pompous asshole who happens to be a good kisser. 

But then Dorian pulls away and smiles with something August can only interpret as anger. 

“You can come out now, Marius!” he shouts. 

“Oh hell no. If a person comes into this damn clearing I’m spelling your ass into hell.”

But Marius Beauregard walks out of the trees with a stone cold stare. August is never making a deal with a Beauregard again if this is what it gets him. Fuck college, he never understood murder more than right now.

“What now? You drag the entire faculty out here or something? I hate to break it to you, but you’re out here too.” Dorian doesn’t even bother to take his arms off August’s waist as he berates Marius. August does it for him.

“I’m going to kill you, I hope you know that, you little creep.”

Marius doesn’t even bother to look at August. His parents couldn’t have been more right about the Beauregard family. 

“I’ll be gone by the time Professor Conners gets here. I’m not an idiot.”

“You make that hard to believe.”

“How?”

“Let me see–”

“Both of you shut up. I don’t care about whatever stupid thing you two are fighting about but it’s not my problem. Why’d you try and make it mine?”

“Just go back to your dorm!” Marius says. 

“Excuse me? Do you think you can just dismiss me? I think you grew up with a few too many servants.”

“This doesn’t concern you.”

“You’re the one who told me to bring Dorian out here, so I’m pretty sure it does now!”

“Say that again,” Dorian says, his voice dangerously calm. August watches a fake smile grow on Marius' face.

“Did you honestly think he wanted to go on a date with you, Dorian? You can’t even muster the courage to ask Baz out but someone who hates you is fair game?” Marius laughs coldly.

“At least I’ve gone on a date. Or let myself care about my friends. How long have you been hiding Ares and Nica now?”

That’s finally when Marius looks at August. “Why are you still here?”

August laughs at the absurdity. That boy really thought August would just leave because some kid two years younger than him told him to? August shouldn’t even be surprised at this point. 

“I can’t believe you people. People don’t just do things because some rich kid told them to. How entitled do you have to be?”

“Do I need to spell you out of here or are you going to leave.”

August fights back the urge to dig his heels in and stay. Maybe throw a few spells at Marius to make him think twice about doing anything like this again. But he’s heard about Beauregard magic. Especially with Dorian being the only Beauregard to need a wand past first year since anyone can remember. He’ll leave. He won’t go easy or quiet. 

He storms up to Marius. “I hope you both get expelled.” Then he spits at Marius’ shoes and walks towards town. He doesn’t listen to Dorian and Marius yelling at each other, just walks towards town. He notices too late when the woods go quiet for everything but their yells. 

But he does notice when the yellow lights appear. He doesn’t think anything of them at first. He’s headed to town. But then there’s a faint growl from the silent woods. The hair stands up on the back on his neck and he can’t move. There’s something in the shadows, getting closer with each second but August can’t move. 

He only moves when it pounces. He runs and screams and yells but the thing is already on top of him. He kicks it, flails. Pain bursts through every part of him; the thing must be stained red at this point. They both must be. August can’t be sure he’s even screaming anymore. He grabs at the thing's hair, pulling it out in large chunks. It doesn’t do anything. 

It’s gone as quick as it came. The pain doesn’t leave. It throbs and August feels every bit of blood rush out of a million different wounds. He tries to get back to the clearing, pushing himself with legs that can barely work. Dirt sticks under his fingernails, his blood turning the dirt to mud as it covers him. 

He never should’ve come out here. Didn’t his parents warn him? You can’t trust a Beauregard.

Dorian

“You don’t get to say anything about Nica and Ares!” Marius shouts. He’s gotten closer to Dorian, face flushed red. Dorian laughs.

“Then you don’t get to say anything about Baz! You don’t know anything!”

“Like hell I don’t! The whole damn school knows you like them, nobody knows anything about Nica and Ares!”

“And that’s just the pinnacle of friendship. Great job there, Marius, I’m sure they feel great about that!” He pushes Marius back.

“You don’t know anything about them, Dorian.”

“But I know you.”

“Oh shu–”

A scream cuts Marius off. Marius stands still for a second before darting behind a bush. Dorian’s first instinct is to join him. But the screams keep going and Dorian remembers the only other person is these woods. 

August. Dorian bites down his fear and runs toward the sound. The woods are dark, almost pitch black, but Dorian doesn’t need light to see. The shapes of the woods fall into sight, one of the only good parts of lycanthropy. He sees something running away from a mangled form, something with a lion’s head and a snake. He realizes with a start what the form is. August. 

He freezes when he sees August. Chest barely moving, bloody mud all over his back. There are too many cuts. Dorian rushes to his side, falling next to him. He searches his pockets for his wand. He didn’t think he’d need it. Fairies, he was so stupid. His gut has a large puncture wound. Dorian presses down on it. Hard. August doesn’t react with anything more than a small gasp, so quiet Dorian almost missed. 

“Hang on, it’ll be okay,” Dorian whispers. “Marius!”

He listens for movement in the clearing. Nothing comes.

“Marius for fairies sake, come here!” He doesn’t care that desperation coats each of his words. August won’t die over Dorian. He hears Marius’ footsteps through the wood, getting more sure with every step. He stumbles back with a gasp when he sees August. “I can’t heal his wounds, Mar, you have to.”

“I can’t.”

“Like hell you can’t. Do it!”

Marius sits on the other side of August, breaths ragged and quick. 

“Close the cuts.” Nothing happens. Magic crawls out from Marius’ hands but nothing is mended. “Close the cuts.” Again, nothing.

“Try something else.”

“I don’t know anything else.”

“Heal what’s damaged. Use that.”

“Heal what’s damaged.”

Nothing again. The rise and fall of August’s chest gets slower again. Shallower. Blood bubbles through Dorian’s fingers. His hands will be stained. 

“Mend the wounds.”

“Mend the wounds.”

And it goes on. Dorian feeds Marius healing spell after healing spell, none of them ever working. August’s breaths get shallower and slower; then they stop entirely. Dorian takes his hands off August’s stomach.

“What are you doing?” Marius shouts. He’s frantic, eyes glassy. He didn’t even know August. “Keep pressure on the wounds!”

“There’s no point, Mar. He’s gone.”

Marius shakes his head. “Erase the damage.”

“You can’t heal him.”

“I have to,” Marius whispers. And Dorian understands. Marius told August to be out here. He’s the one who sent him away. Dorian grabs Marius’ hands and keeps hold of them when Marius fights. “Let me go! I have to heal him!”

“Marius, he’s gone. There’s no healing him,” Dorian says softly. 

“Then I’ll bring him back!” Marius tries to pull his hands back. Dorian keeps a tight hold of them. Voices float over the woods, just at the threshold of the forest. Voices Dorian knows. Professor Conners and Mr. Bowman. 

“Marius we have to go,” Dorian whispers frantically. 

“We can’t leave him here. He’ll die.”

“He’s already dead. We have to go unless you want to get caught out here.”

“I don’t care.”

“Camille and Arthur will. The teachers will find him soon but we have to go. Now.”

Marius looks at Dorian, tears in his eyes, then back to August. Dorian keeps his hold on Marius' hands, pulling him to his feet. Marius keeps his eyes on August until his mangled body is out of sight. Dorian fights back all his panic and keeps walking. He has to be sure right now. He won’t get caught and he won’t leave Marius in those woods.

They’ll find him, he promises himself. He doesn’t know if it’s true but he repeats it to Marius. He listens to the woods, to the teachers. He stays away from them even though he’s on the longer path back to Phoenix House. 

He hears Professor Conners’ soft scream when they find what’s left of August. He has to swallow back a sob. He has to be sure right now. 

Baz

“I know you’re waiting for Dorian and all but can you at least pretend you’re helping me study,” Diana says with a sigh. She flips through the pages of her Arts textbook mindlessly. “I barely even know what I’m supposed to be studying.”

“Paintings’ use in magic,” Baz says offhandedly. Diana stares at Baz blankly. She closes her textbook with a slam. 

“He’s been on dates before, Baz. It doesn’t change anything. He’s being stupid. August hates him anyway, so I’m pretty sure we’re good.”

“That is not what this is about, Diana.”

She raises her eyebrow. 

“It’s not! I’m worried about him getting…caught! Yes, that’s it, I’m worried about Dorian getting caught. Or getting in a fight.”

“Definitely.” Diana keeps staring at Baz. 

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

Baz stares at the door. It’s one, Dorian should be back soon. Baz can feel Diana’s smug smile, even when she opens her textbook. Baz keeps their eyes on the door. 

“Wait, so how are watercolors and oil paints different?”

“You’re sure he’s just being stupid?” Baz asks quickly. Diana snorts. “Don’t say that you knew it.”

“Because it’s Dorian. He wouldn’t know what was right in front of him if it punched him in the face. I’ve seen how he looks at you.”

“You can’t know for sure.”

“Yes, I can.”

Baz sighs and turns to face Diana, opening their own textbook.  The desks weren’t big enough so they’re on the floor with a bowl of forgotten popcorn. 

“Watercolors are used for spells with more layers or freeform ones, oil paints are more solid and constructive.”

“Right, thank yo–”

The door opens, Baz jumps to their feet. Dorian closes the door quickly, slumped against it. Blood is on his hands and forearms, staining his shirt and matting the velvet. The fabric sticks to his skin. 

“Great Mages, Dorian, what happened?” Baz breathes. 

“Are you okay? Where are you hurt?” Diana asks quickly.

Dorian flinches. He turns around and wearing a smile that falters more than anything they’ve ever seen on Dorian. Blood is smeared on his face, tear tracks running through it. Baz takes a step forward, holding a hand out to Dorian. He pushes it away.

“There was a little mishap, nothing I couldn’t handle.” His voice shakes. Baz tries to reach out again, he walks past them and into the bathroom. 

“Dorian, what happened?” Diana asks, standing right outside the door. Baz joins her. “Are you okay?”

"Do what?"

"I don't know what you're planning but don't do it," Ares says. "I don't want another month's worth of detention."

Marius stands up and turns around. "I didn't ask you to do that, Ares. Don't place your decisions on me."

"So you could place the blame on someone else who didn't do it? I did what I had to. As far as I'm concerned, you created the circumstances where I had to. I'll blame you all I want for something that was your fault."

Marius runs a hand through his hair. "What? Do you want an apology?"

"Maybe I do!" 

Ares sees Nica stand up.

"Then go look for someone else."

"Both of you shut up," Nica yells. Xe holds her hand out to the door. "Keep quiet. You're both being idiots! Ares, you didn't have to take the blame for it." Marius opens his mouth. "Did I say you could talk yet? No. Shut up and listen. Marius, you don't have to listen to your aunt and uncle. You're a person with your own decisions to make, we have every right to get mad at you for hurting another person."

"You don't know what they're like, Nica."

"Then leave them! File for emancipation or stay with someone else! You have fucking options, don't pretend like you don't!"

"I'm not! I know what I have to do and it's this! If I haven't made progress by fall break–" Marius stops himself from continuing and shoves the letter in his pocket– "I'm doing what I have to."

"Are you?" Ares asks. Marius sets his jaw and looks away. He doesn't answer, just walks past them and out of the dorm. Breakfast is still thirty minutes away. Ares doesn't want to know what he's planning. She turns to Nica. "Thank you."

"I didn't do it for you, Ares. You won't get anywhere with him if you're caught up in your own feelings." Xe opens xyr chest and pulls out xyr uniform for the day. Xe turns away from Ares. 

Ares hates the guy she's stuck next to. He spends all of Mrs. Pereira's lessons scribbling on his shoes or cuffs of his jeans. Who cuffs dress pants? Most infuritanly, every pop quiz, test, quiz, he's passed. And gotten a good grade. Absolutely infuriating. Luckily, today she has to distraction of Nica. Xe hasn't talked to her since this morning. It's fifth period, Ares hates it. 

Halfway through class, the guy sighs. He drops his pen and leans over. "How long are you going to stare at Nica, dude? Just talk to xem."

"What do you think you're talking about…" she blanks on his name.

"It's Lev and hypothetically, nothing. But I've had a few classes with you over the years and it's not fun anymore."

"Anymore?" Ares hisses. Mrs. Pereira looks over.

"Do your best to listen, Ms. Fray."

"It's not me, it's Lev!"

"Then the same goes for you, Mr. Cohen." Then she goes back to her lesson. Ares thinks it's over the Great Mage Acacius. The one who made the first wand if Ares remembers correctly. She leans back over to Lev.

"I mean every time you two fight me and my friends would bet on how long before people think you’re dating again. I’m really bad at it. One time I bet two weeks and you two were right back at it the next day.” He kicks his feet back up on the desk and keeps drawing stars on his pant legs. 

Ares scoffs and doesn't talk to Lev for the rest of class. Fairies, he hates this dude. What does he know about Nica and her? Nica keeps on ignoring Ares for the rest of the day. They sit next to each other at dinner, refusing to talk to each other. They leave together, and Ares finally swallows her pride.

"So. How was your day?"

"Fine. How was yours?"

"Fine." 

Silence. Ares swallows. 

"You're right. I won't be able to get anywhere with Marius if I'm only thinking of my own feelings.” Nica nods. They keep walking down the path to Phoenix House. Ares takes a chance and touches her fingers against Nica’s. Xe intertwines them. Ares hadn’t realized how much she missed Nica’s small comforts. 

“How do we help him?” xe asks. 

“I don’t know. I won’t stop trying.”

“Neither will I.”

The rest of their walk to Phoenix House is silent. But it’s a comfortable silence this time, Ares and Nica hand in hand. 

Baz

Ms. Helop paces as she teaches, something Baz doesn’t particularly appreciate. They draw in their notes and the teachers are good models for figure drawing. Baz finds it more difficult to draw a teacher if they’re walking around. Ms. Helop always walks around. Instead, Baz draws Dorian. 

He's sitting one desk in front on them, asleep. Ms. Helop hasn't noticed yet. They listen to her lesson as they draw Dorian's sleeping form. They find some sort of serenity in capturing the folds in Dorian's leather jacket.

"Does anyone know what animals can be controlled by magic? Yes, Kaitlyn."

"Deer, pigeons, and chimeras?" 

"Yes! Now can anyone tell me why these creatures can be so easily controlled by use of rituals?" Baz starts working on Dorian's hair. "No? That's okay, this is a new topic. In rituals, things only mean what we agree of them, right? Fox fur is used for mischief rituals because we see them as tricksters. Crow feathers are used in death spells because we see them as heralds. For those reasons you can use those animals as an extension of yourself for those reasons. We see deer as weak, we used pigeons as messengers.

"But what about chimeras? I want all of you to think of what you associate chimeras with." She waits a beat. Baz keeps working on Dorian's hair. "Baz, what do you associate chimeras with?"

Baz looks up. "Fire." They look back down.

"Mere?"

"Greek mythology."

"Jack?"

"Lions."

"All of that makes sense with the first defintion of a chimera. But how many of you know the second definition of the word chimera?" Baz looks up, no one has their hand raised. They go back to drawing Dorian, the last strands of hair falling into place. "Chimera is something that you want, you hope for, reach for, but in the end cannot be reached. It may have been an illusion or impossible, but it can't be reached. That is why chimeras can be used in rituals. Our magick does things that shouldn't be possible. It breaks the laws of physics, it bends the world around us. We make chimeras possible, and in turn can control the chimera’’s that walk around us. They are the most versitile animal that we can control. Due to them not havng any specific reason for their ability to be controlled besides their names second meaning, they can be taken over by any type of ritual. Wether you should take over another living being is an question you can only answer for yourself, and if you want, you can bring it up in Ethics.

"Now, remember to study for the test tomorrow. This won't be on it seeing as we just learned it but everything else is fair game."

Dorian

Dorian falls back onto his bed as soon as dinner's over. With the noise canceling earbuds it was manageable enough. The smells were a lot, but with enough time after the change, it was well enough. He had an almost impossible time hiding his exhaustion. Sleeping in class falls into the persona he's built up so he allows himself that, falling asleep in the middle of a meal doesn't. So he keeps up a smile and talks just as loud as he always does.

Baz sits down beside Dorian's head. He sees the pencil smudged on Baz's hand from drawing. Their notes are full of drawings and scribbled down words. The notes are okay, but the sketches are fantastic. Dorian doesn't know he they do it, the most he can manage is a stick figure. Dorian closes his eyes, Baz's warmth lulling him to sleep. Just before it takes him, Baz speaks.

"We have a test tomorrow, we should study," they say. Dorian groans and opens his eyes. Diana is on the foot of Dorian's bed, undoing his tie with magic. His fingers work from far away, white pain pulling the tie off.

"And take your uniform off, that isn't comfortable."

"I couldn't care less about a uniform," Dorian says. 

"Yeah but I do. Change. It'll make studying less of an annoyance." Dorian rolls his eyes and sits up. He opens the chest at the foot of his end of his bed, pulling out worn gym shorts and a t-shirt. "Dude, that's mine!"

"It is. You have the best shirts." 

He walks into the bathroom. He doesn't know why the idea of studying sits in the same sour place as falling asleep at meals. It doesn't hold the same weight logically. But it does anyway. He finishes changing and walks out, pulling on his leather jacket as he crosses the room to the door.

"What are you doing?" Baz asks. 

"I haven't studied a day in my life and I don't plan on starting now," he says lightly. His limbs are sore and heavy but he walks to the spiral staircase at the left end of the hall. Mr. Bowman–Phoenix House's Head–would give him detention and Dorian's first strike if he saw Dorian on the staircase. He walks up it anyway, careful to listen to see if he should start running up. But he makes it to the roof without any interference. 

He pulls down the trap door. There hasn't been a ladder or staircase since as long as Dorian can remember. He pulls his wand from his jacket pocket.

"Help me up." He tests the air, white platforms under his feet. He climbs the air like a ladder, white sparks turning to platforms until he's climbed onto the roof of Phoenix House. Wind spins around him, chilling the dying summer air. The campus smells like pine and grass and stone. Small hints of blood are in it, coming all the way from the cave to the small tower of Phoenix House. Something else reaches him anyway. Neutral soap and something floral. Marius. He's sitting a few feet away, staring out into the woods. 

He has half a brain to swallow his pride and go back down after the last time he talked to Marius. But he doesn't. He walks right next to Marius and sits down. He doesn't acknowledge Dorian. Dorian refuses to be the one to give in to the silence that grows thicker with each passing second.

If he’s honest, he wants to know what Marius will do. Yell, talk, push Dorian off the roof. There’s a million things that could happen, a few things he should. Draw some of Dorian’s blood for himself. After what Dorian did, he couldn’t blame Marius for doing it. He might let him. No, he would let him. An eye for an eye. Dorian can’t think of a reason why Marius wouldn’t do any of that. He can see a small scar on Marius’ wrist that brings nausea. He’s still wearing his button up, though the cuffs are unbuttoned and rolled up to his elbow. His tie has been loosened. 

Dorian can’t think of the last time he saw Marius with his appearance anything but absolutely perfect. It’s slightly worrying to see him like this, but it may also be that not many people venture up to the roof.

For a second, it’s just like all the times back before Dorian left and Marius changed. Marius will start telling stories about the constellations soon and Dorian will wrap his arm over Marius’ shoulders. He won’t say anything, just sit there and listen to Marius talk with a smile. Marius will fall asleep first and Dorian will carry him down to his room. He may get caught in the halls, but it will have been worth it in the end.

But it’s all wrong now. Dorian is scarred and bloody. He’s got an image to protect, fur under his skin, aches he can’t shake away. He’s barely who he is now, who he was then is gone. He used to be golden, unshakeable in his perfection. He tried to be who his parents wanted him to be and he was good at it. Maybe he made a few mistakes but nothing he didn’t swear to make up for. Iron is what coats him now. Rusted, breaking iron that he polishes to a shine everyday.

Marius doesn’t tell stories anymore. Dorian wouldn’t listen even if he did. The roof of Beauregard Manor is a million years away, 1,164 miles away. There are stars out now and nothing blinks in and out of the sky. All the stories have been told and the sky looks down on them with a million prying eyes. 

And for eyes, Dorian performs, no matter if they see or not. 

“Legend has it, Great Mage Meresanhk’s magic is what put the stars in the sky,” Dorian says. Marius nods, not looking at Dorian. He just stares out into the woods as the light fades away.

“Learned that in first year. Don’t need to hear it again.”

“Then ignore me.”

“You make that hard, don’t you?”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You know what it means. You’re not stupid, Dorian.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“This persona you made for yourself, that’s what I mean. It’s mean and loud. Like you want to make sure that everybody knows your name when they already do. Always would. But that didn’t sit right with you so you made yourself larger than life.” Marius spits out each word, something Dorian can’t read seeping into his voice. He curls his hands into fists and doesn’t stop. Dorian’s too surprised to make him. 

“You aren’t real. Every single damn part of you is hand stitched to draw more attention. I don’t even know how you do it, but you do. Everything is about you, Dorian, you made sure of that.” 

The air has gone sour. It almost seems as if more stars—more eyes—have appeared. It’s high time to perform.

“That’s what you think of me? Really?” Dorian stands up and walks to stand in front of Marius. He doesn’t make an attempt to stand but meets Dorian’s eyes. He might draw blood just yet with a look like that. Dorian would fight now, but fairies, would he deserve every drop spilled on this fairiesforsaken roof. 

“Am I wrong?” 

No. “Yes!”

“Tell me how! Tell me where I got it wrong, Dorian!” He’s stood up now, pushing Dorian’s chest. He stumbles back and almost grabs a hold of Marius' wrists. He doesn’t. It isn’t Dorian who will stain the air copper tonight. He’s had his turn.

Dorian searches for the right words. The right lie. Marius laughs coldly.

“Fairies, it’s like you don’t even want to prove me wrong.”

He finds them. “And what about you, Marius? At least I made something of myself! Half the school’s forgotten all about you—”

“I don’t care about this school!”

“Your mother forgot about you! Is that what you wanted? If so, you did a damn good job of it!” 

Marius stumbles back, hands falling limp at his side. Dorian swallows and takes a small step back. The words taste bitter and all he wants to do is spit their taste from his mouth, wash them down the drain and crawl into his bed and ignore them. 

“You don’t—you don’t know that. You’re lying.”

I am, please, see that I am because the eyes are watching and listening and I can’t stop. “You saw me go into her room the night she died. I talked to her for hours and she never said a word about you.”

That look is back in Marius’ eyes, worse than before. Dorian takes another step back. He’s at the edge of the roof now, six stories up. He meets Marius’ eyes and makes sure his are cold.

“You say that I’m the cruel one. I’m the one who took after Arthur and Camille.” He comes closer and closer to Dorian, giving him nowhere to run. “But you are. You’re just another cruel Beauregard in a long line of them. I hope you know that. I hope it keeps you up at night and I hope to every Great Mage you realize just how much you learned from them.

“I hope you keep trying to get away. I hope you run the rest of your life even though you’ll never get away.”

“You won’t either,” Dorian hisses. Marius is right in front of Dorian. 

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not trying to run. I play the game, and I’m going to win it. You quit but you’re not out.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Marius shoves the scar on his wrist in Dorian’s face. “Don’t I?”

He loses his balance, just for a second, but it’s enough. The roof tiles slip out from under his feet. He thinks he screams when his feet don’t steady, short and quick but it might have been a breath. His stomach falls faster than he does. He reaches out best he can, fingers finding the edge of the roof. His arms nearly get pulled from their sockets with the force. 

“Marius,” he gasps.

Marius

He doesn’t see Dorian slip. He hears the half-scream and looks down to see Dorian hanging from the roof. He sees the desperation and horror on Dorian’s face. It might just be the most emotion he’s seen out of Dorian in years. 

“Marius,” he gasps. A breathy thing with all Dorian’s fear soaked into each letter. 

Dorian’s fingers are slipping. 

He should drag Dorian up–he wants to–but something else leaks in.

Let Dorian fall, and Camille and Arthur get what they want. Dorian won’t be at school anymore. Marius could leave now, he’d be back in his room before anyone got to the roof. He didn’t bring anything up to the roof and one spell will destroy any magical trace of him.

Everyone would believe it. They might be sad at Dorian’s—they might be sad but they wouldn’t be surprised if Dorian…fell. 

He’d get off scot free. Dorian wouldn’t. He’d go on. Dorian wouldn’t. He’d be alive. Dorian wouldn’t.

Marius practically falls down onto the roof, grabbing Dorian’s wrists. He holds on tight as Dorian kicks, trying to find the wall to push off of. It’s too far away and Marius isn’t strong enough to pull him up. He doesn’t look down at Dorian, but he can hear the gasping screams, too breathy to be loud. He keeps his eyes in the woods, putting all his strength into trying to pull Dorian up.

“Help him up,” Marius says through gritted teeth. Magic sparks out from Marius’ wrists, wrapping around Dorian’s arms. It pulls up with him, until finally, Dorian’s chest is pulled back up onto the roof. Marius lets himself fall back, taking Dorian with him. 

Dorian crawls up the roof, far away from the edge. He lays on his back next to Marius. For a long while, the only sound is both of their panting. Marius almost thinks he’s too tired to be angry, but it falls back onto him. He bites down the words that come to his mind.

Call me cruel, but I could’ve let you fall.

You’re just like them, Dorian. You never would have pulled me up.

Even if my mother forgot me, at least she loved me when she didn’t. Camille never loved you.

I should’ve let you fall for what you said.

But he knows the taste they’d leave and Marius hates to apologize. He stands up and throws the trapdoor open. 

“Help me down.”

He leaves Dorian, panting and shaking on the roof.

Lev

“Turn off the light, for fairies sake!” Lev almost shouts. Objectively, his roommate is a good, nice person. However, Camilo’s a good, nice person who doesn’t turn off the light and spells a light if Lev turns them off until eleven. On school nights. Weekends are even worse. He buries his face in his pillow, though the thin blanket he’s thrown over his head doesn't do much of anything to keep pixie lights at bay.

The stupid floating lights make it their business to work their way through anything Lev tries to block them out with.

“I just have one more thing, Cohen. I’ll be done in a second, I swear,” Camilo says absent mindedly. It’s nine. One more thing will be taking about two more hours.

“You know, before you I had a good sleep schedule,” Lev grumbles.

“Nobody has a good sleep schedule. It’s impossible.”

Lev sits up on his elbows and stares at Camilo. “No, it’s really not. I had one. My mom has one. My friend Magnus has one.”

“Outliers.”

“But not nonexistent.”

“I’m still right. People don’t have good sleep schedules. I’ll be done by eleven, chill out.”

Objectively, Camilo is a nice, good person, but damn, Lev doesn’t have to like him. He falls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling of their well-lit room. His normal choice is to lay on his back until eleven hits, maybe get some homework done while he’s waiting. He stares out the small circular window. They’re in the attic of Kelpie House, their only window the small circle. Their beds are against the walls, chests at the end of them. Desks against the wall with the window. Nowhere to go except sleeping in the bathroom.

Lev rolls out of bed and opens the chest at the end of his bed. Camilo pays him no mind, completely engulfed in his phone. Lev pulls out the jean jacket he painted on impulse over the summer and puts it on. He pulls on his shoes then walks to the door. 

“Where are you going?” Camilo asks without any real curiosity.

“Out.”

He walks down the stairs and through the Common Room until he’s outside. It’s an hour past lights out, he’ll get caught if he walks around campus. He turns to the woods and keeps walking. Nobody will be in there this late unless they’re trying to sneak into town. Lev might run into someone, but it won’t be long. 

Lev listens to the woods as he walks. Bird calls, mostly owls. Rustling of branches. A few scurries along the ground Lev chooses not to pay attention to. He’ll get freaked out if he pays attention to the things running along the forest floor and he’s got two hours to kill. 

Maybe he’ll turn on the lights and make as much noise as possible when he gets back. Go back at eleven thirty instead of eleven so he wakes Camilo up. If Magnus were here, they’d tell him it was a petty thing to do. Then tell him it was a wonderful idea, to which Lev was happy to listen to. Bex would be disappointed, but hey, when wasn’t Bex at least a little disappointed.

Lev wonders what Marius would say. He’s only talked to the boy twice but fairies, is it fun. It takes a minute to get him to talk back—and Lev means really talk, not just say a few words—but Lev loves it all the same. Especially when he manages to say the right thing so that Marius turns red. He’s the only person Lev’s met with a visible blush and it might be the best thing Lev’s ever seen.

He told Bex and Magnus that after dinner the night before last. 

“You’re so gone, Lev,” Magnus laughed. Lev stuck his tongue out at them and Magnus had done it back. Bex was still cackling too hard to say anything but got his message across well enough. 

“I’ve known him for a day, how am I gone?”

“You also spent the first month of school talking about how pretty this boy in your class was. You’re gone.”

“This is sacrilegious,” Lev said quickly. Bex laughed even harder, Magnus let out a wild yelling laugh.

“Sacreligious? What are you, god?”

Lev stuttered for a bit before confidently yelling; “Yes!”

“Okay, ego,” Bex wheezed. “You’re still an idiot.”

“Why?”

“You’ve talked to him twice, Loverboy!”

“Maybe you’re just aroace. Remember that time you forgot people actually liked kissing?”

“Maybe. Hey, Maggie, is Lev an idiot?”

“Absolutely.”

So maybe it was a bit stupid to like someone he just met, but Marius made it much too easy. He doesn't smile a lot, but when he does it's warm and small, like he’s afraid of handing out a wider one. Lev swears he’ll get a real smile out of Marius someday. He’ll get Marius to laugh, loud and bright, not the restrained one he gives out.

Bex and Magnus can call him an idiot all they want. Marius laughs like the sun in the summer and smiles like the stars. Lev would take any chance to be stupid about a boy like Marius he could get, and Marius gave him plenty of them.

And maybe, he’ll get more than a smile on an even further someday. He wants to loosen Marius’ perfect tie and mess up his hair, every strand perfectly in place.

The thought brings a smile to Lev. Getting close enough to Marius that he earns the right to be the one to mess up what Marius perfects. Honestly, with hair so perfect, he’s asking for it. Lev will be happy to answer when that day comes. 

Lev checks his watch, ten. He wonders how far he’s walked. It can’t be too far, because when he looks behind him, he can see pricks of yellow light. Branches fallen to the floor snap, pulling Lev entirely out of his thoughts.

He takes notes anyway. Mr. Karim only allows retakes if there are good notes, and on the off chance Marius needs one, he’ll be taking it. 

“Now, that’s not to say that these spells have no overlap. Often, one needs to intertwine ghost and necromancy spells to properly bring back a person,” Mr. Karim says. He shakes his head with a laugh. “The question of should you do that, is a question for M. Rosen down in Ethics. Speaking of which, who was them next period?”

Marius and another kid, from Kelpie House he thinks, raise their hands. 

“Great, bring this up to them, sure they’ll love it.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Karim,” the kid chirps, kicking his feet up on the desk. His shoes have been painted and written on, certainly not up to Adrien’s standards. Marius scoffs.

“Thank you, Lev.”

The boy–Lev, apparently–turns back to Marius with a crooked smile. His face is covered in freckles and he’s not even wearing a tie. His blazer is covered in patches, flags and sayings and logos, only a few Marius recognizes. The green and blue flag on his shoulder makes Marius look back down to his notebook. He still hears the slight laugh, just as crooked as Lev’s smile. 

He keeps his head down for the rest of class, ignoring the few times he feels Lev’s eyes look back to him. 

He can’t be more happy when the bell rings. Lev won’t pay attention to him past this period, would he? Marius has crafted himself not to draw attention. Uniform is always perfect, no personalization of anything. He fades out of people's mind after he leaves and that’s the way it’s supposed to work. The way it will work. Lev lasting all of Division of Magicks is a fluke, an exception. It’ll all go back to normal in Ethics. He assures himself further as he fights through the crowded hallways on his way to Ethics. It’s all the way across the school, and even with the seven minute passing periods it’s hard to get all the way there from Division of Magicks. 

When he finally gets to the classroom, the bell rings as he steps through the threshold. He slips quietly into a seat in the back of the room and scans the room for Lev. The desks are in pairs, no one siting next to Marius. Lev isn’t anywhere to be seen. Marius chooses to take that as a blessing. Now Lev will really forget him. 

M. Rosen walks across the room from their desk to the door, closing it then walking back. They don’t sit down, instead tapping their throat, white sparks on both the chalkboard and their throat. Their words appear on the chalkboard as they talk

“Today we’ll be talking about the ethics of–” 

The door opens, Lev leaning forward on the doorknob.

“Necromancy, due to Mr. Karim’s suggestion,” he says. There’s a airy lilt in his voice, like laughter on the breeze. Marius wonders if he had to work for his voice to sound like that or if it comes naturally, then curses himself for giving a second thought to the boy. What would his Aunt or Uncle say if they found out? He pulls his Ethics notebook from his satchel and puts it on his desk, burying himself in opening it and putting a date in the corner of the page. 

“You’re late, Cohen,” M. Rosen says. 

“Sorry for that, but Division is so far away and these shoes are impractical for running. So, necromancy, am I right?”

“The plan was to talk about love spells, but necromancy is always a good topic. Yes, we’ll cover necromancy today and love spells tomorrow,” M. Rosen says. “Take a seat, Cohen.”

Marius titles his notes. Lev slips into the seat next to him, putting his feet on the desk. Marius doesn’t look up. He can feel Lev’s eyes on his paper for a few minutes until he leans over, just slightly. 

“You’ve got great handwriting. Might need you to teach me sometime, yeah?” 

Marius still doesn’t look up.

“How do you get it that way?” 

He swears he can hear the crooked smile in Lev’s voice. The flag from his shoulder flashes in front of Marius’ eyes. He clears his throat and straightens.

“Practice.”

Lev laughs, tracing his fingers over the title of Marius’ notes. He has freckles on them, a fact Marius couldn’t care less about. 

“I also just might need your help with a tie. Can’t even seem to get mine.” Lev picks the tie up from Marius’ chest, holding it for a second before dropping it. Marius spares a look to Lev. He’s got a smile on, of course, and eyes the exact shade as coffee. Dimples too, something else Marius really doesn’t care about.

“I’ve learned wearing them helps.”

Lev laughs again, a bit too loud.

“Pay attention, Cohen. That goes for you too, Beauregard,” M. Rosen says firmly. Marius nods and buries himself back in the notebook as a discussion rings around the classroom. He’s always hated the long discussions in Ethics. Why can’t M. Rosen just give them something concrete to take notes over? 

“So, you’re that Marius.”

“Yes,” he says sharply.

“You know, everyone always talks about Dorian–”

“I’m well aware.”

“–but I can’t see why with you here.”

Marius nearly drops his pen. Lev laughs yet again, and Marius can’t help but notice a certain musical quality to it. Not that he cares. Lev’s next words are kept low, like he’s trying to make sure only Marius hears them.

“You’re pretty when you blush.”

Marius laughs, for a reason he can’t fathom, but he does it anyway. 

Lev

Fairies, he’s never going to forget Marius Beauregard. Not with a laugh like that.

Marius

Marius hopes Lev forgets him. One period next to him and Marius has shown more feelings to a stranger than he ever has. Marius needs Lev to forget him, because damn, Marius won’t be forgetting Lev anytime soon. Not when he laughs like that, smiles like that, does everything in the way he watched during Ethics. 

It feels stupid, caring about someone he just met. It is stupid. Marius is acting like a teenage boy, blushing over some guy he spent one period with. Even after Rituals and dinner, he’s still thinking about Lev’s smile. Somehow, Lev worked a crack into his perfectly crafter exterior. Marius can’t see him again. He’ll have to talk to Professor Conners about switching periods for Ethics and Division of Magicks.

He'll just wear the old family ring. That always seems to convince people to listen. He hates to do that to people, it feels too much like the manipulation Arthur and Camille taught him. Once Lev is out of Marius' life, whatever is going on in Marius will go away. That'll be good enough for him. 

Ares and Nica left the Dining Hall a few minutes before, Marius still sitting at the Phoenix House table. Dorian is laughing with Baz and Diana at the far end of the table, not sparing a glance anywhere near Marius. He looks over to the Kelpie House table, seeing Lev with a book in his hand. He puts it down almost every few seconds to talk to the person next to him. He's laughing and Marius has to look away, knowing that if he looks any longer he'll imagine being the person next to Lev, just like Ethics. And that's stupid. Marius is a Beauregard, and he doesn't have any feelings he doesn't control, let alone for a boy. 

He pushes the food around on his plate, keeping his eyes down on it. He can leave in a few more minutes when it's clear he wasn't leaving with Nica and Ares. He spares another look to Lev. Lev looks back at him and smiles. Marius knows it was for him. He grabs his plate and stands up, walking to the trash, leaving his plate on the tray next to the trash can and heading for the door. 

He only gets a minute of peace before someone runs up next to him and grabs his wrist. He tries to pull it back but the person's grip is strong. The button on the cuff digs into his skin, drawing a few beads of blood.

"Let me go, asshole," Marius says. 

"Why are you doing this, Marius?" Dorian growls. Marius kicks his foot down on Dorian's ankle. He holds tight still, not even wincing at something Marius knows hurt.

"What else am I supposed to do? Just not listen to Arthur and Camille?"

"Yes! Fuck them! I don't need you doing this. It's my last year, you're just going to listen to them?" 

"I have to, Dorian. Now let go of me." The white sparks of magic crawl up Dorian’s hand and arm. Dorian throws Marius' wrist back at him. 

"You're an idiot, Marius."

"Yeah and so are you, Dor."

“At least I’m not another Camille. You’re just another cruel Beauregard in a long line of them. I hope you take well to French, connard.” 

Bastard.

“I don’t think you can say anything, Dorian–” he holds up his wrist, red marks burning where Dorian grabbed his wrist– “not anymore. You’re just as bad as the rest of us except you have a black sheep complex, asshole.”

“Fairies, you got her knack for lying, too.”

“And I’m the only one? How much do your friends know? Do they know where you are every month? How many lies have you told them so they didn’t?”

“They don’t need to know,” Dorian says lowly. Marius scoffs. 

“Sure they don’t. They really aren’t going to worry when you disappear from the dorm tomorrow night and come back with bruises and cuts in the morning. No, there’s no chance of that happening at all.”

“Keep your voice down, Marius,” Dorian hisses. 

“Who’s out here to listen? Not like it’d matter anyway, not when half the school worships you like the next Great Mage Elisedd! Great Mage Ari was fucking controlled for all of zyr stories so who cares if your a we–”

Dorian covers Marius’ mouth with a wild look in his eyes. “Don’t say another word, Marius.” Marius nods, Dorian pulls his hand back.

“Now who’s just another cruel Beauregard.” 

A million different things flash through Dorian’s eyes. Marius can’t tell who the disgust is for. 

Dorian turns back to the Dining Hall. Marius watches him go back in and turns back to go to Phoenix House. He rubs his wrist as he walks, knowing the bruise will be there in the morning. A layer of foundation and the uniform sleeve will hide it well enough for however long it’s there. Footsteps crash behind him and he tenses. He doesn’t want to find out what Dorian wants this time. But the voice that rings out in the woods isn’t Dorian’s. It makes his heart stop just the same.

“Hey, Marius!” Lev yells. Marius knows that logically, he should keep walking. If anyone saw him being friendly to Lev, word would get back to Arthur and Camille. He’d go back to words he didn’t want to hear and more bruises he’d have to cover. But he doesn’t. He stops and waits for Lev to run up next to him. He pulls the sleeve of his blazer, knowing the blood has likely soaked his sleeve already.

“I wanted to come say hi at dinner but you were gone before I got the chance,” Lev says. He bumps his shoulder against Marius’. Marius fights down a smile. It’s best not to give him any ideas that shouldn’t be there. The smile is harder to keep down than any Marius has had before. What is Lev doing to him? Did his parents hire someone to do whatever this is to him? Would they even do that? And even so, they would never send a boy, even if they knew. They’d send a girl to ‘fix him’. 

“Very well.”

Lev snorts. “‘Very well’? Dude, who says that? I mean, besides you. I think my Bubbe Alma has said that before, but she’s the only one.”

Marius starts walking back towards Phoenix House again. “Very well is a normal thing to say, Lev.” 

“Not for a–wait how old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Not for a sixteen year old.”

“It’s really not that weird of a thing to say. I’ve heard people say it before.”

“Who?”

Marius stops, Lev stopping a few inches ahead of him and turning to face him expectantly. “People my parents make business deals with.”

“And there you go proving my point! Very well is a weird ass thing to say.”

Marius keeps walking, brushing past Lev. “Okay, maybe very well is a weird thing to say.”

“It is!”

“Maybe.”

“You’re lucky you’re cute, love.” Lev throws his head back with another laugh. “And there’s that blush again.”

Fairies, Marius is going to have to switch schools, isn’t he? 

“Well, this is Phoenix House. I’ve got to head up.”

Lev nods, Marius walks up the stairs. 

“See you in Division tomorrow,” Lev chirps. Marius turns his head over his shoulder, watching Lev run across the campus to Kelpie House. He turns his head back after a few seconds. Watching Lev is a stupid thing to do. He’s a Beauregard, he doesn’t do stupid. He opens the door to the House and walks quickly to his room. 

Nica and Ares are on Nica’s bed, a notebook between them that they’re laughing over. Ares’ hand ghosts over Nica’s. Marius wonders just how long it’ll take Ares to do something, knowing she probably won’t. It isn’t his place to say anything anyway, not since Ares took the fall. 

“Hey,” he says. 

Nica is the only one to look up. “That sure is a smile. Have anything to do with the dude who kept looking over at dinner?” 

Marius chokes on his spit. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Ares snorts. “Yeah, sure.”

“I don’t!”

“Whatever you say, Mar,” Nica says. 

Marius slips into the bathroom before either of them can say anything else. It's best they lose any idea of Lev, meeting him or seeing him. Blood drips down his fingers and onto the floor. Marius pulls back his sleeve, finding a fairly deep cut in his arm. Dorian always gets stronger near the full moon. Marius laughs dryly. 

“And I’m the cruel one,” he mutters. 

Dorian

Dorian ducks into the woods, far enough that nobody will see or hear him but close enough he’ll find his way out. This isn’t the usual area he slips into but he can’t breathe and there wasn’t enough time to go anywhere else. Nausea rises up in him and it isn’t because of any strong smell.

He thinks he can still smell the copper of Marius' blood. Blood that he drew. By accident or not Dorian did that. He was supposed to protect Marius, that was his job. And yeah, maybe he didn’t do it great but at least he never hurt him. God, what would Aunt Giselle say?

Dorian stumbles to the floor, retching until his stomach is on the forest floor. He’s never been happier for advanced hearing. How would he deal with anyone seeing him right now, dry heaving because it’s not enough to have emptied his stomach? 

He still remembers the night Marius came to live with them permanently. Him and Aunt Giselle had been staying there for a few months then after a failed attempt to leave the family. Dorian had been curious, wondering what the big deal was. He was only seven, after all, he didn’t understand why Aunt Giselle being sick meant she wasn’t going to be okay. He’d gotten sick before. He just wanted to check in on his favorite person in the family. 

He opened the door quietly, late at night, or at least for him it was. Aunt Giselle looked up with dread but smiled when she saw him. 

“Hello, Dorian. Does Camille want something?”

He’d said no and walked to her bedside. He finally understood why she wasn’t going to be okay when she coughed up blood. She danced around it for an hour, Dorian had gotten mad. He could take it, she didn’t need to protect him. She gave in and explained to him she’d be gone soon.

Dorian cried. She wiped away the tears. He asked what he could do. 

“Keep my Marius safe, will you?”

And he did. He protected Marius until today. Dorian tries to stand up but gets sent back to the forest floor with another wave of nausea. 

Even with the noise canceling earbuds, Dorian can hear every sound that happens on the campus the next morning. He spent the night in the woods, falling asleep on his back and waking up at one. Needless to say, Diana and Baz were worried when he sauntered into their dorm at one thirty. He just walked into the bathroom, cleaned up, then went back to sleep. 

The day flies by in a blur of “take out your earbuds” and noises that would make a normal person cringe and Dorian has to leave class. He doesn’t even try the meals, knowing that’s a mess he’d really rather not deal with. 

As his last class ends, Dorian stays in the History classroom. Mrs. Pereira cleans up her classroom, throwing a few glances back at Dorian to make sure he's still there. He throws his wand up and down in the air. He'll have to leave it here before going to the woods along with anything he wants to stay not-ruined. Things will get ripped, stained, cracked, broken. He learned that fast enough after his first few changes. His fourth time, Mrs. Pereira had approached him and offered her help.

"I'd like to see you after class, Dorian," she'd said. The classroom was filled with all of those oooooo's that a room full of twelve year olds do when someone gets in trouble, even a Beauregard. 

"You know, for once I can't think of what I've done." 

"I certainly can, Mister Beauregard."

Then the time ran out of class, and Dorian kicked his feet up on his desk. Mrs. Pereira moved Dorian's feet and sat down on his desk.

"Your parents have told me about your–"

"Don't need to say it," Dorian said quickly. He looks around frantically.

"I'd like to help you deal with it."

Dorian laughed sharply. "And why should I trust you if you got this information from my parents? I can't trust them, I can't trust you. I can deal with this by myself, Pereira." Dorian pushed himself out of the chair and started out of the room. Mrs. Pereira didn't move from his desk.

"I roomed with your mother for my eighth year and she kicked me out half the time. She only called me because she didn't want anyone else at this school finding out. Now, I don't want to help her, but I'd like to help you, Dorian," she'd said.

"I still don't trust you."

"Then let me earn it."

He stopped walking. As much as he didn't want to admit it, he did need help. Magic chains didn't hold the whole night, especially with his horrible attempt at handwave spells. They weren't supposed to need a wand, but Dorian always had bad magic, made even worse by lycanthropy. 

"Are you ready to go, Dorian?"

"Yeah. Let's do it." He stands up, tossing his wand on the desk. He shucks off his leather jacket and leaves it on the back of the chair. He can already feel the shakiness under his skin, a creeping pain in his joints. It’s nothing compared to what will come when the sun goes down. Mrs. Pereira pulls a small leather pouch from her pocket, full of dried wolfsbane. It makes the transitions hurt less. She opens the pouch and crosses the room to Dorian. He holds out his hand and she pours some of the dried plant into his palm. 

It's not much, the exact dose before a werewolf starts coughing up blood is unknown, so it's better to play it safe. It took him all second year and half of third to trust Mrs. Pereira enough to take it. He tosses it into his mouth. Mrs. Pereira holds her hand out.

"You can't see us," she says. Then she turns and leads Dorian out of the History classroom. As they walk through the school, Dorian tucks the wolfsbane under his tongue. The wolfsbane tastes coppery, like blood blooming in his mouth. Memories of last night flicker back. Marius' blood. Dorian's grip. Dorian feels the nausea rise up again. He look up to Mrs. Pereira. He swirls the wolfsbane in his mouth. Why should he get relief after that? After he did that to Marius? When they leave the school, he spits the wolfsbane into the grass. 

Mrs. Pereira doesn't even look back at him. He wonders if he wanted her to. He settles on no when they enter the woods, the shakiness under his skin turning into pins. He knows well enough there won’t be any blood when he looks down, no matter how much the pins hurt under his skin. They don’t leave from underneath until the sun leaves the sky. That's when the real pain starts.

The mouth of the cave sits open in a gaping scream. He's heard rumors of people thinking the cave is haunted. Dorian's even earned the cave a name, Ghost's Gate. He thinks it's stupid, but then again he's the "ghost" in Ghost's Gate. Mrs. Pereira stops at the mouth, Dorian walking past her through the cave. It's a dead end ten feet into the cave, a hook built into the wall. Dorian was there when Mrs. Pereira built it into the cave wall. 

"Are you ready?"

"Always am, Hailey."

She sighs and pulls her wand out of her cardigan pocket. "I'm still your teacher, Dorian." 

"My teacher who is about to chain me to a cave's wall."

"The thoughts still there," she says. She leans down, tapping Dorian's wrists and ankles, then the hook on the wall. "Hold him for the night. Chains hold strong." Dorian closes his eyes as the sparks spin around until silver chains are holding Dorian to the wall, shackles on his ankles and wrists. "Don't burn the boy." Velvet wraps around the inside of the shackles.

Orange light starts to filter in through the mouth of the cave. The pins have turned to knives under his skin. His teeth are growing out, this time the taste of blood is staining his teeth red. He fights to keep his composure, body begging him to double over and curl in on himself

"You should go," he says. His voice has gone ragged in the pain. He hates how weak he seems now. 

"I'll be back in the morning." She turns and walks out of the cave, looking back a few times with worry he can't stand. It tastes like blood that isn't his, hurt that isn't his, pain that isn't his but he has to deal with anyway. He spits the taste out of his mouth and curls in on himself. It doesn't help to any degree, white flashing in front of the eyes he's squeezed shut. He bites down a scream but each fall of light brings on more and more.

The knives under his skin break out when the last of the light is gone. Bones break out from his skin. Dorian can't hold back screams anymore. He fights against the chains, shackles of silver burning when his skin turning fur when he passes the velvet. His screams ring around his ears and he can feel the blood drip from them as they turn to a wolves.

One hell of a haunting.

Moonlight falls into the cave but Dorian's world goes dark.

He wakes up bloody on the floor of the cave. His cuts haven't healed completely yet, blood sluggishly falling out of them. His whole body aches, spiders of pain crawling over and under his skin. Fog has set in his brain, removing any thoughts from his head. Footsteps fall in the woods, getting closer to Dorian. They get softer as they come closer, Dorian sighing with relief. 

He can't pull himself off of the floor of the cave. He can't do much but put on what he hopes to be a lazy smile for whoever is walking inside Ghost's Gate. Mrs. Pereira sits next to him. A brown leather purse hangs over her left shoulder.

"Close the cuts. Remove the ache. Mend the bones."

The pain fades away, the fog leaving his mind. He drags himself up off the floor, silver chains scraping against the cave. He winces at the sound.

"Remove the chains. Be careful, Dorian. I'm no nurse."

"You've got the practice of one." His voice is raw. It makes him nauseous to think of how pathetic he sounds, looks. Mrs. Pereira laughs almost silently–to her–and shakes her head. 

"Take it easy," she says. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a thermos. She unscrews the cap and pours the liquid inside into it. She hands it to Dorian. He takes a sip. She's brought green tea this time. He likes chamomile the best but she refuses to give it to him when he's got school. 

"I won't have teachers complaining about you falling asleep in class."

He does it anyway sometimes. Can't help in when he spends his nights, well, fighting against silver chains. 

"Since when have I done that?"

"I can always hope you'll listen someday. Would you like breakfast?" Dorian nods, she pulls out another thermos. She unscrews it and passes it over. Cinnamon and brown sugar oatmeal. 

"Thank you."

"It's nothing. I like cooking for people. My husband says I'm quite good at it." She smiles at the mention of her husband–Dorian's seen a few photos of the man. A dorky looking man with sandy blond hair.

They sit in silence for a bit. Dorian alternating between tea and oatmeal. 

"What do you plan on doing when you leave school?"

"What? You think I'm going to run rampant around LA? Thought you had more trust in me, Mrs. Pereira." 

"Dorian. You know that's not what I meant."

Dorian sighs. "Same thing I do in the summer. Find a basement to chain myself up in it. Crawl to my room in the morning and sleep."

"No healing spells?"

Dorian scoffs and points to the now-cold tea. "Heat up." The tea freezes into a block of ice. He looks to Mrs. Pereira with a raised eyebrow.

"I didn't know you were the only Magician you know of. Heat up." The tea starts to steam again. She pours more of it into his cup.

"I'm not telling Baz or Diana. I can't." His voice is strong again. Strong and hard. He makes sure his eyes are the same as his voice. Mrs. Pereira–infuriatingly–doesn't back down. 

"Why not?"

They'd never look at me the same.

"Because I can handle this by myself, like I do every summer and break. I don't need their help."

"Maybe not, but that doesn't mean you can't accept it. Even if you can handle something on your own, it doesn't mean you have to. You let me help." Dorian sets the tea down. 

"Maybe I'll stop accepting it." He stands up.

"You won't."

"See if I come to you next month," he spits. Dorian storms out of the cave, his words leaving a sour taste in his mouth. He spits out the taste and keeps walking. He leaves the woods, the brick path to Phoenix House coming into view. He slows down when he reaches the path, early morning sun warming the back of his neck. A cool breeze slips around him. But the sun keeps on beating down like summer's last desperate breath. His uniform is dirty and ripped in a few places. He opens the door to Phoenix House, finding no one in the Common Room. 

Diana is already awake when he reaches his dorm. He looks up from hos chest at the foot of his bed. 

"Where were you?"

His worry slips over Dorian's tongue. 

It was a long summer that year, a hot flash hitting almost all of July and coming back with a vengeance in August. Baz was staying over that night, complaining only once about the heat. Diana’s house was old with barely functioning air conditioning, the unit stuck in her bedroom window barely did anything to quell the non-stop assault of heat. Hell, Diana probably complained more about it than Baz did, even though she was used to the stickiness of it. Baz has the patience of a saint and a nasty habit of making Diana look bad (and Dorian, for that matter). 

"You have to make the stitches closer together, Diana," Baz told her. 

“Do I really? Dor won’t care either way. He’ll probably love it more if it’s messier. You know him.”

“Yeah, I do. He’d ruin everything in that house if he could get away with it. Maybe even if he couldn’t.”

Diana had laughed then. It was a joke afterall, Dorian wouldn’t do something that stupid. He would know what would happen, that it would never end well for him. Wouldn’t he? Diana knows he’s reckless, more than anyone should. She’s spelled a few million barriers to keep Dorian from slipping to where he’d never get out of, she knows how Dorian is. But even then, Diana can’t be sure of what Dorian would or wouldn’t do. Dorian spent his whole life like it was a bet in a casino, unaware of how the house always wins.

He gambled with his life and the lives of the sorry people who cared about him, Diana lucking her way into being one of them. Maybe even if he couldn’t.

Did he get away with it this time? When he left that Fairiesforsaken house, did he get away with it? For all his talk, Diana doesn’t think she’ll ever be sure if he did. Even a fool can get off scot free with luck on his side, and Dorian was no fool. Diana sat on her bed, Baz in the bathroom showering, and watched Dorian’s chest rise and fall in his sleep. She should take his jacket off, hang it up on the bedpost so Dorian wouldn’t spend hours looking for it when he woke up.

But Diana knew what that jacket hid, or maybe she didn’t. She knew of all his scars. She could only guess at where he got them, but his parents seem like a good enough bet. She knew what the jacket meant, or maybe she didn’t. It meant freedom, or maybe it didn’t. Anything meant anything with Dorian, or maybe it didn’t. Maybe everything meant what it seemed to mean and Diana was worried for nothing. But she’d never know. Dorian held his secrets close (he held everything close, really, but it was the secrets Diana worried about most). Like any gambler, he kept his cards close to his chest; for better or worse, Diana doesn’t think she’ll know for a long time, if ever.

Diana stands up and walks over to Dorian’s bed, handling him gently as she pulls the worn leather jacket off of him. 

It can’t be comfortable, she reasons. She hangs the jacket on Dorian’s bedpost as Baz steps out of the bathroom. 

“He really should’ve changed,” Baz says lightly. They’re still toweling their shoulder length hair. They say almost everything lightly, like they’re afraid of anyone taking their words as anything more than a suggestion to be ignored. Sometimes Diana missed the Baz from first year, finding the anger in themself to sock a handsy fifth year and earn a black eye and a bleeding nose. The fifth year–Kade Westman–had picked Baz up and shook them hard, asking if they wanted to be next. 

Baz hadn’t said anything. Just licked their lips and spit in Kade’s face. 

Diana steps into the bathroom, smiling at the memory. It was one of the only times she’d seen do anything like that. The only others had been for people like Kade–the ones who took their power and held it over people like weapons–and for Dorian’s parents (who fit nicely in that category, funny enough). Fairies, Diana would pay every bit of money she had to see Camille Beauregards reaction to Baz spitting in her face. The wretch deserved that and more, a price Diana would happily make her pay in a second. 

She turns the water on in the shower, getting her towel from its place under the sink. Dorian didn’t deserve parents like he got. Marius didn’t deserve to lose his and get placed in that house. But then again, who really gets what they deserve? Certainly not a Beauregard, if Diana’s learned anything from seven years with Dorian. 

Dorian is still asleep when Diana wakes up, Baz too. The sun’s begun the creep through the window, orange beginnings of dawn opening her eyelids with no regard to if she wants them that way or not. She lets her legs fall over the edge of the bed, lets them find the floor, lets them lead her soundlessly to their door and into the Common Room of their House–Phoenix House ever since their first year. It’s the biggest one at Adrien, the only House where each door has their own bathroom. 

It’s an old building. The school’s history books say it was an old inn during the time of Manifest Destiny, run by one of the first families who reached Washington. It shows. With it’s creaking walls and floors, wood composure, musty smell, and ornate siding, Phoenix House shows its age. 

The common room is the biggest part of the house, split in half lengthwise by a large, red, moth bitten couch. A fireplace sits in front of the musty giant, always burning with runes etched into the stone to keep the fire from reaching the rest of the house. A large, hand-carved table sits between the couch and the fireplace. On the other side is a cluster of tables, all ornate and all different sizes. 

Now, the table near the fireplace has three file boxes sitting on top of it. The boxes hold the schedules for every student, meant to be grabbed and read on the way to Adrien’s main building where all the classes are held on the way to breakfast. But at six, it’s one hour to breakfast. Diana knows she won’t be the only one up, but most tend to linger in their rooms until at least six thirty. Diana walks to the files, going through the neatly organized files, grabbing hers, Baz, and Dorian’s.

She climbs the stairs back to their room, avoiding all the creaky stairs until they reach the sixth floor. First door to the right is theirs, one of the largest in the House. Being friends with a Beauregard tends to pay in places like this. Diana hates the part of herself that’s glad Dorian is one of them, because for how much pain it’s caused him, sometimes Diana likes the things it gets her by being part of his life. It’s a nasty thought. Diana got these things from blood and pain, from the hands of people the Beauregard family stepped on to get where they are.

No benefit is worth what Diana knows Dorian went through at that house. Diana may only be able to guess at what happened to Dorian there, but the scars tell a story; one of violence. Diana shoves that thought back and opens the door. 

Baz is awake now, Dorian isn’t. Diana isn’t surprised. It’s six ten, he’ll be up in five minutes. He likes to make everyone at the school think his bravado is effortless, but he spends almost an hour picking out what to wear for the day. One of the only cracks in the persona Diana and Baz get to see, and Diana’s not even sure it’s a crack. Dorian plays his part well, too well. She’d like it better if Dorian let himself slip even once. 

“Morning,” Diana says. Her voice is still rough with sleep. She likes it best when it’s rough, like the gravel roads of the country. She likes it when people have to look twice at the pin on her jacket everyday. That way they don’t have an excuse for getting it wrong. 

“Dorian’s still asleep.”

“He’ll be up in like–” Diana checks her watch– “five minutes anyway.”

“Make that now,” Dorian groans. He rolls onto his back from his stomach, eyes searching the room. He sits up when they find his jacket, pulling it off the bed post and putting it on over his wrinkled clothes. His hair is a mess, falling into his eyes. Diana sees Baz look away and busy themself in looking through their suitcases. Diana would laugh if it hadn’t stopped being funny four years ago. 

“Go get dressed and take a shower. You look like you fought a toddler and lost.”

“Oh my Fairies, Ana, you’re so funny.”

“I know, it’s one of my best traits.” Dorian shambles out of his bed, straight into the bathroom. Diana gets dressed quickly in the school’s uniform–black bottoms, pants or skirt, white button up, deep purple tie, and a black blazer with the same color of purple piping. She doesn’t try too hard with the tie. Dorian taught her and Baz how to tie them in first year, Diana thinks it’s an infuriating thing to do every day. It’s six thirty when Dorian gets out of the bathroom, hair neatly on one side of his head. He’s put on thickened winged eyeliner in Adrien purple. 

Diana walks to the window facing the woods, the windowsill just wide enough to sit on. They’ll stay there until Dorian and Baz are ready to go to breakfast, likely only a few minutes after seven. The walk will take five minutes in itself.

Diana can see most of the school’s grounds from here. Four different Houses form a square that bars the school from the rest of the world. The thick trees around the square really cement the feeling that Adrien is part of an entire new world. The main building is old, made of cobblestone and stained glass. Baz loves to draw it and Diana’s ended up with a few drawings of it. The watercolor one from fifth year is her favorite. 

Then, at the edge of the woods between Phoenix House and Siren House, something moves. For a second, Diana thinks it’s a person. She leans closer to the window to get a better look. It certainly looks like a person, at least in a few aspects. But its legs look too long and its face–at least what Diana can see of it–is porcelain white and completely flat. 

And then it’s gone a millisecond later, disappeared into the thick wall of maple and birch. 

Diana looks over the woods, studying them as intently as she can from the windowsill. But the figure is gone. 

A trick of the light, that’s all.

Ares

For two weeks, two glorious weeks, Ares Fray got to believe Marius wasn’t going to listen to his aunt and uncle. Marius hadn’t made a move, hadn’t started a fight to pin on Dorian, he hadn’t even started a rumor. When he came back to the dorm at night, he didn’t even plan anything that could get Dorian in trouble. Ares thought, just for a second, Marius fucking Beauregard was going to disobey his legal guardians.

Then, of course, Marius had an idea. A horrible idea, naturally. No one would believe Dorian would blow up the Potions Classroom in anything but an accident. He was notoriously good at being bad at potions. Failed–or so the rumor goes–every potions test he ever took.

So why Marius chose potions of all things was beyond Ares. Then again, a lot of things Marius was willing to do were beyond her, so the feeling was nothing new to her. 

Over the years, many things astounded Ares. In first year, Marius had broken down in Ares and Nica’s arms, then ignored it the very next day. In second, he told them that he loved them more than anything, then made sure they knew he could never be seen as their friend. In some ways, Ares found she understood these things to a large degree. Camille and Arthur weren’t the type of people to appreciate their nephew being friends with a half-fae and a magician who had grown up practically human. 

But in other ways, Ares couldn’t believe the amount of times Marius chose Camille and Arthur over Nica and her. What had they done to earn his loyalty? From what Ares heard from Marius, it certainly couldn’t have been enough to make up for what they did to him. There had been too many times Marius had to shake off the threat we can put you back on the streets your mother left you in. She knew that with every single offer Ares gave that Marius could move in with her–truly, her mother wouldn’t mind–Marius thought it was a joke. 

Like Ares would joke about that sort of thing! And it wasn’t even as if the Beauregard Manor was some guarded prison. Dorian had gotten out, hadn’t he? Whether or not he left the manor behind, he’d escaped its walls. Ares and Nica could–would–help Marius leave that damn house behind. They were already there for Marius through everything they could be, what was one more thing? 

But no, instead of trusting them. Instead of helping Dorian, Marius was going to get Dorian expelled from Adrien. Ares could hardly believe it. She didn’t know Dorian personally, but she saw how Dorian waltzed his way through Adrien’s halls as if he owned the school. He saw how he held himself, even when he was in deep trouble. This, Ares knew, was his home. At least more of a home than the manor. He was careless in keeping it, but Ares never thought that Marius would try and tear it away from him like that. She hadn’t wanted to believe Marius could do something like that. 

It may have been his guardian's wishes, but it was Marius’ hand. Camille and Arthur weren’t at Adrien. Wishes didn’t have to be granted. 

Marius waited for a school assembly and left the dorm an hour ago. Ares assumes to set up, but she doesn't follow him down. If he gets caught, maybe it’ll knock some sense into him. Fairies know he needs it right now. Ares stands in front of the full sized mirror in their dorm. They’re on the second floor of Phoenix House in the second biggest room, a privilege Ares would do without if it meant Marius would stop. Nica steps out of the bathroom, purple tie left undone and thrown over zyr neck. Xyr shirt is messy, unbuttoned at the first two. Ares loves the way Nica looks no matter what, but there’s something more about xyr when xe doesn’t care to look nice for anyone. 

Xyr coily hair falls of xyr shoulders and a small grin sits on xyr lips. It falls when xe sees the room empty, a grim sort of thing replacing it.

“Did Marius leave? I wanted to talk to him before…”

Ares nods, turning to see Nica in more than the mirror. She notices the small bit of black eyeliner, wings done almost perfect. She’ll have to ask Nica to do hers sometime, she can never get it right. “I know.”

“It’s too late to stop him, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is. I’m pretty sure the only way we could get him to stop is to tie him down.”

Nica shakes xyr head with a small, sad laugh. “I’ll get the ropes, yeah?”

Ares returns xyr laugh. She meets xyr eyes, deep brown like honey when the sun hits them just right. “He’d chew his way out of them.”

Nica looks away quick. “I’m going to go head down to the theater, I’ll save you a seat. Marius too, tell him that if he stops by.”

“He won’t take it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Nica’s shoulder brushes against Ares’ as xe walks past. Ares thinks for a moment to follow xyr out and walk down with xyr. She pushes that back, knowing that she still has to put on her tie and find the fishnet tights she knows she brought with her. They aren’t strictly against dress code, so she brings them every year to see how many times she can get away with it.

She gets the tie done quickly, not bothering to tighten it once she gets the knot done. The fishnets are considerably harder. She goes through all her suitcases first, finding them nowhere. She only wore them two days ago. They’re not in her dresser either. She looks under Nica’s bed, knowing they’ve been weirder places than that.

She walks to Marius’ bed next, placing her hand on the mattress for balance as she leans down. Something rolls onto her fingers while she gropes the dark underneath, eventually finding the fishnets. When she brings herself back up, on her fingers is a vial of potion. It’s green and yellow, the same type Marius brought down to the theater. She picks it up, considering it. She drops it in the breast pocket of her button up.

Ares pulls on the fishnets then a pair of thick soled boots. She garners more than a few odd looks as she walks down to the theater, looks she can’t make herself care about. Nica is in the back seats of the theater, the ones half hidden from view of the stage and covered in shadow. It’s Nica’s favorite part of the theater, where no one can see either of them and even in a room full of people, sometimes it feels like they’re the only ones there. It’s a ridiculous thought, but one Ares is happy to indulge in. Why shouldn’t she when Nica smiles at her like that when she sits next to xem? 

“Is it bad I’m sort of excited to see what Marius is planning?” Nica asks, leaning over. Xyr breath is on Ares’ neck, slipping down her neck and sending a chill down her spine. She smiles and knocks her shoulder against Nica’s. The hit sends another chill down. 

“It should be. But then again, if Marius is trying to pretend it’s Dorian, then it’s going to be a spectacle.” Nica nods. Xe moves closer to Ares until there’s no reach for them to need to have their shoulders touching. Ares doesn’t even pretend not to care about it, letting Nica know just how difficult it’s making every breath she takes. She looks over to see Nica wearing a smirk. Xe knows exactly what xe’s doing to Ares. 

More and more students start to file into the theater, taking seats and saving them. Ares barely notices, instead she leans her shoulder against Nica’s, cursing the arm rest between them. Ares slips her ankle under Nica’s, feeling the rush of bare skin. 

“Careful, Ares, don’t want the people in front of us to riot,” Nica says with a smile. Ares smiles back.

“We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

“No, we wouldn’t.”

The third years from Siren House don’t even look back. Even so, Ares doesn’t make another move. She doesn’t want to push whatever she has with Nica out of reach. Ares pulls her ankle back from under Nica’s and straightens. She knows well enough not to push anything too far. It would be stupid. It's a thin line, but one Ares has been expertly walking for three years. Since fourth year they've been skirting around, waiting for the other to make the first move for three years now. 

Ares thinks about doing it sometimes. Kissing Nica in their door, in the garden, on the roof, in the Dining Hall, sitting back where they are in the auditorium. She always wonders what Nica will taste like. Maybe the mints xe chews or cinnamon because Nica's one of those people who actually likes them. Xe always has a pack on xyr, even now, Nica's pulled a pack from xyr pocket and started eating them. Ares doesn't like them, but would love to kiss Nica anyway. 

Ares knows all the intricacies of how Nica exists. How xe takes xyr showers in the morning because Marius uses all the hot water at night. How xe has watched the same three shows millions of times over. How xe hates black coffee but drinks it anyway, saying it makes xyr look more grown up. How when xe’s nervous, xe messes with xyr lip ring. How when xe’s trying to wake up in the mornings, xe always plays the same music, punk rock and musicals. 

She wonders if Nica knows the small things about her. Xe probably doesn’t, xe’s the kind of person to forget xyr glasses when they’re on xyr face. And even if Nica was going to know those things, why would it be for Ares? Why would it be for the girl too scared to kiss xyr? 

Professor Conners steps onstage from the left wing, high heels clicking on the wooden floor. For a second, Ares thinks she must’ve put an amplification spell on her steps, but the way the room went quiet as soon as she stepped out knocks that thought from Ares’ brain. 

Anxiety flickers up in Ares’ lungs as she gets closer to the podium, placed right in the middle of the stage. She has half a mind to yell out a warning. But that would just get it blamed on Marius. Dorian doesn’t deserve the blame, and sure, maybe Marius does for doing this, but Ares won’t be the one to place it on him. She’s got enough loyalty for the stupid boy not to do this to him. So she slumps back into her chair and pretends there’s nothing going on.

She pulls the vial of potion from her shirt pocket and starts corking and uncorking it. Nica’s messing with xyr lip ring with xyr tongue, making Ares want to put a hand on xyrs and squeeze it until they both feel fine. A stupid idea, one she knows wouldn’t work, but it sits in the back of her brain anyway. 

Professor Conners steps onto the podium. A moment of silence. Ares lets out a sigh of relief. Tension falls out of Nica’s shoulders. 

A crack echoes through the auditorium, deafeningly loud. A foul smelling smoke billows out from the podium. All Ares can do is close her eyes and wait for the blame to be cast on Dorian, who for maybe the first time, didn’t deserve what he got. 

“Who did this!?” Professor Conners yells. Her voice comes out in a sour-sounding rasp, likely from whatever the smoke was made of. Ares opens her eyes, searching the crowd for Marius. She finds him in the front row–naturally–standing up. Ares looks at Nica, nods, and stands up quickly. 

“I–” Marius starts, but Ares is faster. 

“I did it!” she yells. Now, the third years look back. In fact, most of the auditorium looks back. Their eyes glance over Ares, reading of course she did, look at her. Marius looks back, no emotion on his face at all. He always was good at that. Professor Conners’ eyes narrow.

“Come here, Ms. Fray,” she says, her voice dangerously calm. 

Regret bubbles up, but she swallows it down. She can feel everyone’s eyes on the back of her neck as she walks. She has to fight to keep her head up high, trying for the same swagger Dorian always has. Make it easier for Professor Conners to believe she’d pull anything like this. She tosses the vial from hand to hand as she walks. 

She steps onto the stage and walks right up to Professor Conners, leering down at Ares and she stops in front of the podium.

“Why did you do this, Ms. Fray?”

Ares swallows. “Well, it seemed fun, Professor. Had extra time in Potions and the ingredients to do it. A bit smokier than I thought it would be, a lot louder.” Ares’ heart pounds in her chest. She’s going to kill Marius for this. 

“Fun?”

“Yes, Professor. Fun.”

“That will be a months worth of detention, Ms. Fray. I hope you’ll have plenty of fun with that. Go back to your dorm, Ms. Fray.”

“Yes, Professor.”

Marius

Marius throws open the door to his dorm. He left the auditorium as soon as it wouldn’t be suspicious to. He swallowed his anger on the walk, but let it bubble up as he got into Phoenix House. Ares is at her desk, hunched over the notebook she uses for her writing. She jumps when he slams the door shut, turning quickly.

He throws a hand back to the door. “Keep quiet.” Then he turns all his attention back to Ares. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he hisses. 

“Dorian didn’t deserve that, Mar. He didn’t do anything.”

“That doesn’t matter! Do you think I deserved any of what I got in that damn house? Did Dorian? Nobody gets what the fucking deserve, Ares. I’m doing what I need to, you have no right to interfere with it!”

Ares stands up, pointing at Marius’ chest.

“Like hell I don’t! I can’t just sit back and watch you ruin someone’s life! I have done a lot of things for you, Marius, but that will not be one of them.”

Marius laughs harshly. “I never asked anything of you, Ares. All I need is for you to sit back.”

“Fuck off, Mar. You’re living a fantasy if you believe that. I won’t sit back. Yell all you want, I won’t let you hurt someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

“Well maybe he deserves it!” Marius screams. Realization of what he said grips him hard. There’s a list of things he’d never say anything about. Dorian being at the top of said list. Ares’ face doesn’t soften, but her hand falls to her side. 

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Like hell it doesn’t, I’m not stupid. What. Does. That. Mean.”

“It means nothing, Fray. Leave me the hell alone,” Marius says. He walks to the bathroom, slamming the door like he did the dorm one. “Keep quiet.” He turns on the shower and slips to the floor. 

He used this trick a lot when Dorian left. He didn’t have a wand then and had flimsy magic. He figured out fast they didn’t want him crying over Dorian, or over anything really. He figured out that a shower hid the sound even faster after the first time Camille took a firmer approach. 

Our perfect little Marius, they called him when they wanted him to forget. He never did, maybe because he was never unburned long enough to forget what their anger felt like.

Our perfect little Marius.

And he was. He will be. Perfect Little Marius.

If this is what it takes to keep their anger away, then so be it. He won’t wear the bruises like he did that year ever again. Dorian won’t get any sympathy from Marius now, not when he never showed any for him. Marius is showing him sympathy now. The potion wouldn’t do any real harm, it’d cause a big crack and a lot of smoke, but it wouldn’t hurt anyone. It’d get him in trouble, but not expelled. That is sympathy. He’ll let Dorian have a few months while Marius choses the three things to get him expelled. Marius will be kinder than Dorian ever was. 

He won’t offer false protection from Arthur and Camille like Dorian did. He’ll do what he needs to and be done. 

When the tears stop, Marius gets into the shower. The water is cold.

Dorian

Dorian is frozen in his seat when the explosion happens, the smoke fills his lungs but he can’t move after the loud crack resonates around the auditorium. His hands go to his ears, but it’s too late. His whole body is shaking. His ears are ringing, the crack like a blade through his head.

But he isn’t deafened. He doesn’t get that relief. All the noises of the panicked auditorium mix with the crack, screaming, laughing, yelling. He hears Marius stand and start, and Dorian feels anger course through him. Of course this was Marius, and now he’ll go down for something he would never do. But then he hears a girls voice, taking the blame. 

Ares Fray if he remembers correctly. Fairies, she didn’t do this. Marius never would have stood up if he didn’t do this, but then why is she taking the blame? She’s Marius’ roommate, but nothing else, right?

It doesn’t matter who she is, he decides, just that Marius would go this far. After everything Dorian did for him, after years of making sure Marius didn't live with what he had to, he would turn to quickly. Marius followed through. He tried to get Dorian expelled. He tried to take away Dorian’s home. 

Baz’s voice cuts through the rest of the noise.

“Dorian. Are you okay?” 

Dorian doesn’t have the words to answer for a while. He draws his hands back to his chest. They’re bloody. A new anger spikes in him. Marius is willing to make him bleed for their parents. They got to him first. Dorian gave so much for Marius, and he chose to be one of them. 

What isn’t trust, is Dorian only ever being two things. He’s angry or he’s…well, he’s Dorian. Some mess of happiness and rebellion, a boy in stark defiance of everything he was made to be. But Baz can only guess as to what Camille and Arthur Beauregard wanted him to be. A good one, with Marius the perfect example of a good Beauregard son. They’ve been working for years for that real trust, for more than just being a trust fall at summer camp. Since Baz first met Dorian with a bleeding nose at lunch, half a semester into first year. 

Baz had called an older kid something much fouler than an eleven year old should’ve said. He had deserved it, he had a bad habit of sidling up to girls who wanted nothing to do with him. He made the mistake of doing it to the girl next to Baz. She didn’t do anything to stop it, so Baz did. They threw a punch into his mouth twice, even when they cut their knuckles on the first. Dorian and Diana had joined the fray, earning a long stint in detention and the boy an expulsion. 

They’d worked for Dorian’s trust in that musty classroom, talked with him and Diana through spelled notes, turned into fruit flies and sent between them all. They’d earned a smile so bright it could blind the dead and two weeks later, he’d taken Baz up to the roof with him and Diana.

Year after year, they got a bit more trust. It wasn’t enough, never was because even on the train to their eighth year, there’s only Dorian’s anger. Biting the air of the compartment like a dog baring its teeth. He’s joined in conversations, started them, but the dog's snarl hangs above Baz’s head. It won’t bite, Dorian makes sure his anger rarely hurts them. The few times it has, he’s swallowed his pride and laughed out a happy apology. 

When Dorian laughs along with them, it’s sharp and quick. His smiles are tense. His anger fades eventually when the sun starts to set and Adrien’s only an hour away. He laughs along and this time they’re light and full of all the confidence Dorian is known for. Baz pulls out their sketchbook, Dorian sees.

“Draw me like one of your French girls, my darling Baz Hasan,” Dorian says. He drapes himself over Diana, hand on his forehead like a woman in a Victorian novel. Baz shakes their head, banning that idea from their head permanently. His wand—previously tucked behind his ear—falls to the floor of the compartment. Dorian’s never meant any of what he said when he says things like that. He’d flirt with a mirror, Baz isn’t anything special.

“Now see, I was going to practice my figure drawing with you, but now I’m not. Diana, can I draw you?” 

“But how will I gauge my beauty without a drawing?”

Diana pushes him off her. “Look in the mirror maybe?”

“You can’t trust a mirror around other magicians, Ana. Of all people I think you’d know that.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. Orange wasn’t a good look. Yeah, draw me, Baz.”

“Cool, sit as still as you can.”

“Never mind, draw Dorian. I’ve been on this train too long to sit still, Dorian’ll do whatever you want him to.”

“Ana, shut up.”

“Make me.”

Dorian scrambles to pick his wand up off the floor. Diana gets to it first, shoving it down her shirt and sticking her tongue. Dorian sticks his tongue out right back, but he’s smiling and so is Diana. Baz never understood their need to annoy each other. They seem to enjoy it though, so they just laugh at whatever Diana and Dorian do. 

With the pixie lights on—small lights stuck to the ceiling, any color you wanted them. Baz has them in their bag constantly, throwing them up when they need better light—and a small sliver of the moon sewn into Dorian’s pitch black hair, Baz spends the hour pretending their study of Dorian’s beauty is only for the use of a pencil sketch. A small nick has scarred on his lip, right on the bottom left corner. He’s got a stretch mark on his neck. His oversized leather jack is sliding off the shoulder of his teal silk button up t-shirt. He’s left four buttons open, tucked into a pair of ripped black jeans. 

Baz tries to capture every piece of Dorian he can in the picture. The slight crookedness in his nose. The way his lips curve up slightly even in a neutral state. How his canines are sharper than normal. How when the light hits his brown eyes just right they seem to glow; they’d have to spell the pencil to do it, but know it’d be worth every extra step. The train stops before they can.

Diana stands up first, reaching up above Baz for her suitcase. She throws 

Baz’s suitcases next to them, Dorian’s backpack into his stomach.

“The hell was that for? This has got like, ten books in it.”

“Seven, actually.”

“I rounded up, sue me.”

“Will do, I want all your money right now.” Diana slides open the compartment door. Baz follows after, Dorian having to run a bit to catch up after having to get his suitcase down from the shelf. His grip is tight on the handle and his backpack haphazardly hanging off his shoulder. There’s something else there when he smiles, but Baz hasn’t seen enough of anything besides anger or confidence from Dorian to know what it is. They wish to Faeries that changes, and with Dorian finally leaving that house, maybe they will. 

“You didn’t wait for me,” he says. The burn of a smile is in the air as he talks but the smoke reeks of something far from happiness. Baz knows better than to ask if Dorian’s alright after seven years of never getting an answer. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a new outcome.

“Are you okay, Dorian? You seem tense.”

Then call me insane, Baz thinks. Dorian laughs without clearing the smoke, Diana meeting Baz’s eyes with a roll of her own. Baz can see the worry behind it though after spending so much time drawing them.

“I’m insanely okay. Inhuman, some might say.”  

“You wish they did,” Diana laughs. 

The group force their way through a gaggle of first years, not sure where they need to be. They always tend to gather in the aisle of the train on their first time there. A crowd is starting to form in the aisle, the younger staying mostly out of their way. Baz can’t imagine what they did to earn any of that, but when the people see Dorian, whispers of Beauregard follow them. Baz didn’t do anything to earn this, nor did Dorian. His family name is enough, connection to him is enough.

Dorian falls into it, holding his head high and pulling his shoulder back. He saunters down the aisle, linking his arm with Diana, free one thrown over Baz’s shoulder. His smile says a million things, don’t wear my name out just yet, I am exactly who you think I am, whisper about anything you’d like and make sure my parents hear it. But his grip on the suitcase handle only gets tighter. Baz takes his smile with a grain of salt.

They reach the school's platform, the pixie cars waiting for them on the trail. They’re 1920’s style cars, engines glowing with the pixie’s color of light pink, the color all the lights start at before one changes them. Dorian chooses the first one, even as another person reaches for the door of it. 

“Sorry, this one's ours, darling. You’re welcome to visit my dorm all you want though,” he says as he pulls the door open. They blush and scurry off, eyes widening when he sees the crest on Dorian’s jacket. He opens the door for Diana and Baz, letting them put their bags under the seats. Baz grabs the tablet hanging on the back of the driver's seat the Baz sits behind. They write down all their names and hear the engine start up. Dorian takes his seat in the car, closing the door and sliding in next to Baz. 

His knee is against Baz’s, skin on skin contact sending heat up from it. Baz looks away but doesn’t move. This is all they’ll ever get from Dorian, so why not enjoy the small bits of him they get? 

The car jolts to a start, rolling up the brick road, others trailing behind. Baz wonders which one Marius and his friends are in, wonders if they're all stuck with other people or if Marius carries his head high enough to have the same effect on people. He's never had the same effect on people, he's never made whispers follow him, not like Dorian does. Dorian is a neutron star, pulling people into his grasp with a gravity Baz can’t comprehend yet has been pulled into all the same. Diana, too, though Baz isn’t sure Diana knows how much power Dorian has over people. Europa doesn’t know why it circles Jupiter endlessly, nor does Ganymede or Io or Callisto. The moons simply know they circle the planet.

Diana and Dorian bicker and laugh back and forth, Baz turning the pencil over their knuckles, wishing they got to finish the sketch of Dorian. A few strands of hair are falling into his eyes now and all Baz wants to do is push them behind his ears. They don’t dare try, knowing the reaction they’d get isn’t one they’d ever want from Dorian.

They’ve always been better at watching from afar anyway. Their words never come out how they want them to, always muddled in the mess of their mouth. Diana and Dorian are plenty entertaining as it is, now arguing over whether punk is a good genre of music. Diana’s shouting about how sandpaper shouldn’t be a genre and Dorian’s shouting back that that’s the appeal. Baz leans toward folk, but they’re having fun listening to the inane rambling. 

When the car rolls to a stop, the debate refuses to do the same. Baz shakes their head as people file out of their cars; some laugh at Dorian and Diana, some yell input. So far, Diana seems to be winning. Maybe Baz should be keeping score. That way when the debate finally ends they’ll be a concrete answer, though the loser will call favoritism. Baz can see Dorian’s hands tense as if he’s keeping them from doing something. Shake or clench, Baz doesn’t know. Whatever Dorian feels must be nearly overwhelming for cracks to start show. 

Baz has known they’ve been there since third year. Dorian had gotten back from winter break, half of his face bruised. He played it off and slipped into the bathroom to cover it with foundation. That night when Dorian took his shower, the water wasn’t quite as loud as he thought it would be and Baz could hear him crying, ever so faintly. They knew Dorian wouldn’t have wanted Baz to point it out, but Baz still spent the rest of the three weeks making sure he was comfortable. They told Diana too, though it took some persuasion to keep Diana from storming up to Dorian and telling him they both knew. 

Diana means well, she really does, but sometimes you have to sit on the sidelines. She doesn’t realize that.

Dorian

Dorian spends the walk to the Dining Hall with his heart pounding blood so heavy in his ears, the only reason he can hear Diana is because she’s still shouting about how punk really shouldn’t be such a popular genre with how bad the music sounds. Baz is standing beside Dorian, hand brushing against his occasionally. Dorian has to keep his breath from catching every time. 

Baz’s hands are soft and unmarred. Nothing marks any bit of their bronze skin besides the pimples scattered on their face, a completely mundane annoyance that Baz has never seemed to care about. It feels odd against the scars, stretch marks, bruises, and calluses Dorian’s skin seems to be made of. In some ways, it’s a breath of fresh air knowing that all he is isn’t all there is to be. But then it’s a reminder of why he’ll never get more than fingers brushing in the halls of Adrien. He can’t turn Baz into what he is. Accidents follow Dorian around like whispers in the halls, winds on the roof. He can flirt, he can be friends, but anything more will get Baz closer to being an accident.

He pulls his wand from his back pocket and spells the doors to the Dining Hall open, holding back a flinch at their bang when they hit the wall. He was expecting it, so it was easier not to flinch than if he hadn’t. He scans the hall, finding they’re the first ones to reach it, not surprised by that fact one bit. The faculty though seems to be surprised by Dorian’s appearance, the nerves in Dorian’s gut climbing up to his throat. He throws on a smile and sits at the end of the table he claimed in second year, standing on the table and yelling This is ours! People had listened. He’d gotten detention for a week after that, but the way Diana and Baz had laughed more than made up for it. Diana still laughs about it to this day, Baz smiling along with each dramatic retelling. 

He can feel all their eyes on them, even as the rest of the student body files in. Mrs. Pereira’s eyes are full of pride, something Dorian doesn’t know the answer for. The annoyance, confusion, disdain, those are the looks that make sense. Pride, though, he can’t fathom. Still, he wears a confident smile like a second skin. It begs to peel, but he doesn’t let it. He’s Dorian Beauregard, he doesn’t get nervous. He’s supposed to be here. This table is his. 

The doors to the Dining Hall close, the entire study body inside the large room. That, of course, is when the Assistant Headmaster Conners yells out for silence. It comes quick, even the first years knowing to listen to a voice with so much authority. Dorian swears the whole hall can hear his heart beating. Professor Conner’ face is a mask of stone, betray nothing of whatever feelings might lie behind it. She wears a forest green suit with a white undershirt, a white cloak draped over her shoulders. 

“Dorian Beauregard! Stand up!” 

He does so, flashing the entire hall a grin that couldn’t be more of a lie if he tried. His legs feel like jelly, blood rushing in his ears. The grin turns to a smirk but never falters in intensity. 

“I know you missed me, but the theatrics are a bit much,” Dorian laughs. Many people in the hall turn pale, Baz included. No one ever dares talk back to Professor Conners, and Dorian most definitely shouldn’t be. He isn’t supposed to be here, and Professor Conners surely knows that as the Headmaster’s right hand. Or so everyone says. The Headmaster hasn’t ever shown his face. He could be long dead or nonexistent in the first place. 

“Were you or were you not unenrolled from my school?”

Dorian’s heart stops. Nobody else in the hall can see it still, incessant beating frozen in place. Dorian scoffs.

“And since when have I followed the rules?”

Professor Conners doesn’t seem to find him funny. Dorian didn’t expect her to. All he needs her to do is agree to let him stay for his last nine months here. A small amount of time taken in all the years she’s worked here. Dorian’s parents had her as Assistant Headmaster, nine months is small scale.

“That does not mean they don’t apply to you, Beauregard. A criminal doesn’t get free because they’ve always broken the law. The rules are in place for a reason, and your fervent destruction of them does nothing to convince me not to send you home.”

Dorian should start begging. Pleading his case. Telling her this is all he has and that he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he has to go home. Helen won’t let him stay without Diana there. He’ll have to go back to his parents. But Dorian Beauregard doesn’t beg. He has an image to uphold.

“Yes, but I’m not a criminal, am I? I’ve never gotten anything more than a few months worth of detention, so why send me home? I liven things up.”

“You cause problems.”

“Liven things up, cause problems, what’s the real difference?”

“Whether or not I want you in my school. Currently, I’m leaning towards no if you minted on ‘livening things up’.”

“I can keep him in line, Professor,” Diana says quickly, standing up next to Dorian. She pulls Baz up with her, the three of them standing. Dorian is the only one who looks as if he couldn’t care less whether he left or not. Dorian almost sobs with relief. But Dorian Beauregard isn’t even worried, so he changes nothing about how he holds himself. 

“You and Ind. Hasan are Mr. Beauregard’s accomplices in his rule breaking, why should 

I believe you’ll try to stop him?”

“Believe it or not, I like having my best friend around. Last time I checked, California is decently far from Washington,” Diana says. “Ma’am.”

Professor Conners looks between the three of them. Diana and Baz are practically shaking with nerves and Dorian feels as they look. Instead, Dorian stands with his head held high, chin jutted out just enough to look defiant. She sighs, shaking her head slightly and looking down. She sits back in her chair at the faculty table. 

“Fine, you can stay for the year, Beauregard. But I won’t tolerate anything so more than a whisper of trouble from you. You have three chances, Dorian, don’t waste them. I’d prefer it if you didn’t use them at all.” 

Dorian sits down at his table while Diana and Baz thank Professor Conners profusely. He reaches for one of the wine glasses on the table–they only ever have water, disappointingly–and takes a drink. He wears a smirk the whole time, as if the whole interaction was a game he just won, Professor Conners playing right into his hand. By the way whispers circle the hall as Professor Conners stands back up, rattling off the same speech she gives every year, the school believes him. From to corner of his eye, he sees Marius and his friends slip out of the hall.

Nica

Marius stood up and left the hall as soon as Professor Conners started her speech. Xe felt as his breath hitched each time Dorian had spoken when he was arguing to stay and how it stopped when Diana and Baz stood up. Xe knows Marius like the back of xyr hand, xe’s been there for all the times he got overwhelmed (which is way too many, for gods sake, xe’ll kill his aunt and uncle one day). Nica pulls Ares out of her seat next to xem and out the Dining Hall after Marius.

Xe sees him slip into the closest bathroom, following him in to find him slumped against the wall. He looks so tired Nica wishes xe could make him not care about any of this, make him leave Camille and Arthur behind so far he’s just as free from them as Dorian is. But xe can’t, so Nica settles for locking the bathroom door and sitting next to Marius. Ares sits on the other side of him, arm wrapped around Marius' waist. 

“I don’t want to do this, Nica. I swear, I don’t want to do this,” he says quietly.

“Then don’t, Mar. They’re not here, they can’t make you. You can come to my house on the breaks, Mom’ll love you,” Ares says. “My sister will make fun of your name for sure, but she does that to everyone, so for once, you’re not special.”

Marius laughs along. They’ve had a million conversations like this before, Ares talking about how nice it would be for Marius to stay at his house. Nica always chimes in and says that Marius should really stay at xyr house because xe has all the good food. Ares’ mom only ever has vegan stuff that tastes like it could poison someone. 

“I don’t think Marius wants to spend his time being made fun of. It’ll be much better if he stays at my house, he can work at the restaurant and I’ll take him to the mall next door. God knows our boy needs some outside time.”

“You make me sound like an animal at a zoo.”

“I have a genuine question for you, Marius,” Ares says.

“What?”

“Have you ever actually been to a zoo before?”

“...No.”

The three of them burst out laughing, Marius most of all. He’s always like this at Adrien, slipping away from everyone and joking with them when no one can see them caring about each other. And Nica can’t blame him. If word of him being friends with a half-fae and a kid who didn’t know about magic until it knocked them over. Xyr mom had been magic, but divorce hit before she could tell Nica and then moved as far from Nica’s dad as possible. Xe’d accidentally turned a pigeon into a dog at ten before mom ever decided that Nica needed to know about the world she gave xyr. 

It was an eventful few weeks, especially when xy got shoved into Adrien only a month later. Ares was glad to explain it all to her and Marius was lucky enough to get stuck in the pixie car with them on the first day. 

“I’m so taking you to the zoo when you move in with me,” Ares laughs. 

“No way, Cincinnati has a much better zoo than middle of nowhere Oklahoma. If the goal of stealing Marius is taking him to the zoo, then he’s got to come with me.”

“Yeah but yours is so busy. Mine’s still a zoo.”

“But not as good of a zoo. You have to get the full experience, something I can provide much better than your zoo’s like, two weasels.”

“I’ve actually never seen a weasel either.”

Ares lets out a jolt of a laugh, quick and loud. “Then you really need to come to my house. Mom let Claire get a pet weasel over the summer. It smells so bad.”

“I don’t think I want to see a weasel.”

“No, no, you want to. They’re adorable. It's like a ferret. But–wait, have you ever seen a ferret? Nevermind, it’s long, fuzzy and, well it’s really cute, I suppose you’ll just have to come see for yourself.”

Marius laughs and shakes his head. “I still don’t think I want to see a weasel if they smell bad. Dorian isn’t the only person in this family adverse to strong smells.”

“What if I told you it wasn’t actually that bad?”

“Then I’d call you a liar,” Nica says. 

Ares laughs. The room falls into silence again, laughter still hanging in the air. Dinner will be served now, plates full of the best food Nica’s ever had. Much better than anything xyr parents have ever made before. 

“You don’t have to do this, Marius,” Nica says. Xe grabs his hand from his knee and squeezes it. “You can go to school and just let Dorian go through his last year.”

“I have to, Nica. You don’t get it. Aunt Camille and Uncle Arthur aren’t–if I’m not useful, they’ll get rid of me.” He chooses his words carefully, like he’s scared saying the wrong thing will set Nica or Ares off. Ares shares a look with Nica over Marius’ head, but they made an agreement a long time ago that anger wouldn’t get them anywhere. They’d make sure Marius know Camille and Arthur were wrong, but they wouldn’t get mad for him. 

“And you want to go back to that?”

“I don’t have a choice to. Believe me, if I could leave, I would.”

“What’s keeping you from leaving? Dorian did and look at him. He’s doing great, he’s got everything he wanted from it,” Ares says. 

Marius barks out a laugh at that. He throws his head back, smacking it against the cobblestone wall. He doesn’t seem to mind the pain Nica knows came with the smack. 

“Dorian’s a liar,” Marius says angrily. “He wants everyone to believe that he’s this amazing person, that he’s the Beauregard that got out. But look at him! He’s always wearing this family’s crest on his back! He wants everyone to think he got out but he’s just as trapped as I am!” Marius pushes Ares’ arm off him, standing up and walking over to the door, unlocking it. “Don’t tell me to model myself after Dorian, I’d rather not fall off the roof in the middle of the night because I was too busy dancing to pay attention to the ledge.”

Then he throws the door open and closes it harshly.

Nica stands up first, holding out a hand to help Ares up. She takes xyr hand. They share another look. Ares walks a few feet to the sinks, looking to make sure it’s dry before sitting on the old stone basin. Nica walks over and props xyrself up against the wall next to him.

“I say we give it ten minutes before walking out. It was a bad idea to follow him out so fast,” Nica says. Ares nods.

“You’re probably right.”

“I know I am.”

Five minutes pass in silence. 

“I don’t think we can let him go back home if he’s going to be there without Dorian, Nica. I can’t make myself believe it’ll end well.”

“Me either. But I also believe we can’t make Marius do anything.”

“I know, Nica. I wish I didn’t. It’d make this a lot easier if I thought I could do anything, if I could think he’d let us do anything.” 

“It would. You have to keep in mind that we are helping, at least on some level. I can see it sometimes. Sometimes I think he really considers breaking his aunt and uncle’s rules, even if he never does.”

Ares leans back, head against the mirror. “It still doesn’t feel like enough.”

Not when he left Marius for a year. Marius wasn’t the same when he came back. Neither was he, to be fair. He came back with an undercut dyed blue and a suitcases worth of clothes that almost made his father faint.

Mother threw them all out. She tried to shave the undercut—it had grown out long enough to see the black roots—but it just came back the next day. Thank Faeries for Diana, she learned how to magically dye hair early on. Mother kept trying for the next two weeks, it kept on growing back. Eventually, she just gave up.

Marius was quiet that summer, spending almost every day in the library. Maybe it’s because their parents never went in there, or maybe it’s because he could always beat Dorian when they tried to race up the ladders to the top of the floor to ceiling shelves. He didn’t race that summer. He didn’t hold any conversations much longer than thirty minutes.

He tried to convince Marius to climb onto the roof like they used to. They’d pretend they could see the stars from Beverly Hills. Dorian would pretend to point out the constellations, Marius would tell Dorian until he fell asleep on the roof and Dorian would carry Marius to his room. Sometimes he’d run into his parents in the hall and he’d have hell to pay in the morning. He never told Marius, though. He wanted Marius to know about the nights on the roof, not the mornings when Dorian’s parents found out.  

Dorian promised himself he would keep Marius safe, let him have a good childhood. He’d make sure Marius remembered pointing at planes and pretend they were the Big Dipper. Marius wouldn’t get holier-than-thou speeches from their parents for saying maybe the humans weren’t too bad. Marius would grow up believing his Aunt and Uncle might not have been the best, but at least he never got a slap when he said the wrong thing at dinner. And he would never see Dorian get the same.

But then Dorian left for his first year of Adrien Academy, leaving Marius alone for a year. The worst part is, he loved it. Sure, everyone at the school knows the Beauregard name, but he wasn’t just the eldest Beauregard son, he was Dorian. He let himself loose, made friends with the two people who his parents would hate the most. Baz Adi Hasan and Diana Kosa, two people he didn’t deserve but kept him around anyway.

They’d take him to the roof of the school, and he couldn’t breathe because of how many stars there were. After the first few times, he began to tell Baz and Diana about the stars, reciting Marius’ stories about the constellations. He could never quite get the voice right, but they listened to him anyway. The breaks would send him hurtling back to reality, but it left just as easy after a week or two back at Adrien. But every summer he comes back and Marius gets further away, even when he’s at school with Dorian a year after Dorian’s first. 

But summer hit him like a brick. His parents were just as bad, if not worse after finding out who Dorian made friends with. Marius didn’t talk to him. He couldn’t leave the house, not knowing where Diana or Baz lived and no way to ask them. There weren’t stamps in the house and his parents wouldn’t dare give him a phone. 

Too much connection to the humans, Dorian. We are not human, connect to them and we lose ourselves.

And it hurt, for a longer time than Dorian would like to admit. Marius was gone, his friends were out of reach. He hurt, and he hurt long enough to get angry. 

The summer hangs heavy over Dorian now, full moons worse than they’ve ever been. The anger makes them worse, he’s learned. This one was a particularly bad one, the changes wracking his body, cracking all his bones more than once. It’s noon-ish and he’s just woken up, his leg still feeling like it’s broken. His arms are too heavy to let him move them to check. If it’s broken, it’s broken. It’ll heal by the time the day ends. 

He wants to roll onto his back. His comforter is soaked with sweat and he’d love to pull it off, letting the cold air from his fan hit his skin. Every part of him is too heavy to move and hurts too much for Dorian to fall back asleep. He wishes he could be back at Adrien. Mrs. Pereira always made sure he was okay after the night's change, giving him a healing spell and a warm meal. Here, he just stumbles back to his room at dawn and sleep until he couldn’t anymore 

A knock on his door is deafeningly loud. The too-good hearing never goes away, but it’s always worse after the change. The smallest noise sending a needle through his head. Baz and Diana pitched in to get him noise canceling earbuds in third year, even though he never told them why he couldn’t stand someone closing a door. 

His door creaks open, Dorian grimaces. 

“Mom says you have to come downstairs.” It’s Marius. Dorian knows that logically Marius isn’t any louder than normal, but Dorian can barely stand it. He doesn’t hear Marius walk away, so he forces his eyes open.

“What for?” he groans. Even his own voice is too loud for himself. He can hear the shuffle of fabric of Marius shrugging. Faeries, he hates the sound of fabric moving. 

“You should head downstairs. She’ll yell if you don’t come down soon.” Marius really knows how to motivate a man, especially a day after the full moon werewolf. Marius leaves but doesn’t close the door. One would think Dorian wouldn’t have the energy to get annoyed, but logic never stopped Dorian’s annoyance—or anger for that matter—so he bites down a yell for Marius to close the door. He certainly doesn’t want to hear that yell anyway.

He throws his legs over the side of the bed with more effort than he’d like it to have taken. He tests the leg he thought was broken, finding it just a bit fractured. Not enough to keep him from walking. He stumbles when he tries to stand up, having to steady himself on the edge of his bed. 

“Come on, you know how to walk, fuckwad,” he whispers. It sounds like normal speech, leaving Dorian savoring the taste of quiet sounds before the violent affront of sound he’ll get from downstairs. He slowly draws his hand off the edge of the bed, hoping his legs hold himself up. 

Dorian takes slow steps out his room and down the hall, staying close to the wall in case of a sudden change. The stairs pose a real challenge, steep and thin. Absolutely not made for a post-change werewolf with a fractured left leg. He almost falls down two of the stairs before sitting down on them and inching down carefully. Marius is waiting when he turns the corner into the foyer. It’s a straight shot to the kitchen. Dorian knows he can’t stick close to the wall for this. He’s got to project confidence around his parents, especially when he looks like this. 

Ragged, sweaty, hair a mess. They’ll look for weakness and he’s rife with them currently. Emotional ones can’t be shown and as little physical ones as possible. Not being able to walk without help is a glaring one. 

“Inventive,” Marius says, his voice monotone. Dorian rolls his eyes, trying out the pride he’s known for and throwing on a smirk. 

“There’s a reason I don’t need to study, Rius.” Marius walks next to Dorian on their way into the dining. Marius’ shoulder is against his, and while it’s an accident, it helps keep him standing up straight. 

“Don’t call me Rius.”

“Will do, Mar.”

Marius doesn’t say anything else. He sets his jaw and his muscles tense. Dorian’s actually made him mad this time. He doesn’t get that privilege often.  

Dorian makes sure his shoulders are pulled back before his mother and father look up. Marius shrinks back to the doorway, ready to leave as soon as eyes fall onto him. Dorian can’t blame him. 

Mother is the first to turn. Her eyes bore into Dorian, dark brown the same color as his own. There’s something glistening in them, something that makes dread curl up in Dorian’s stomach. He pushes it down and makes sure his smirk stays up along with his shoulders. His leg is killing him, pulsing in pain. He doesn’t try to take any weight off of it, not with Mother looking at him so directly. She’s an eagle and he’s the mouse, he can’t show anything other than confidence. Father must be cooking. The smells hit him hard and nausea joins dread in him. Baz and Diana always warn him of strong smells. 

“Nice of you to finally join us, Dorian. How was your night?” she asks. In any other world, it was an innocent question. But when Camille knows he spent the night chained up in the basement and having his body contorted, it’s anything but. Dorian learned a while ago there was no innocent question in this house. 

“It was amazing, really. Nothing better than a full moon in my books,” Dorian says dryly. Camille nods. She gestures to a chair at the table and takes a seat in the one across from it. Her eyes flit to Dorian’s leg.

She knows it’s injured. 

Dorian’s already lost. A conversation with Camille Beauregard is a game of chess and he’s lost a fair amount of pawns. He doesn’t take the seat, doesn’t move except to put more weight on his left leg. He’ll show her it’s completely fine. Capture a few pawns of his own. His knee almost buckles and pain curls up in his chest. 

“I’ve got some news regarding your education,” she says calmly. Dorian feels the dread mix with panic, his nausea getting worse. His father is cooking with onions and garlic. If this doesn’t go quickly, he might end up vomiting on the table. Camille would be furious, which adds to the appeal of doing it. But one positive doesn't outweigh the negative of Camille’s checkmate. 

“Have you finally gotten your head out of your ass and realized a B is a good grade, Mother? If so, I am so proud of your progress. Therapy paying off?” 

“This family doesn’t need therapy, Dorian.”

Dorian clicks his tongue. “Now that’s why you’re fucked up, Camille.”

“I suggest you stop talking, Dorian. While you seem to have forgotten this, I am your mother and you are a child.” Objectively, Dorain knows Camille’s right. But Dorian’s too tired for a filter though and if he’s lucky, Camille will give up and send him back to his room. 

“Actually, I’m a teenager.”

Camille stands up, walking around the table and grabbing Dorian’s arm tightly. He’s quick to notice how sore his arm is, especially when Camille shoves him into a chair. He tries to stand back up, but Camille keeps him stuck down in his seat. Once she’s sure Dorian won’t stand back up, she walks back to her chair.

Dorian slides down in his chair, spreading his legs wide and setting his elbow on the back of the chair. He savors the look of disdain on Mothers face. Camille has been trying to get him to sit properly since his first summer back from Adrien. He’ll never see anything better than the look of Camille’s face when he does something she’d never approve of.

The best time was shaving the side of his head, letting all his hair fall to the right side. He did it at 3 AM on his first week back after second year. Thirteen years old with the hair of what Camille called a human. Dorian became a werewolf in his second year, mental stability going out the window the night before the full moon. He always does the stupidest stuff around then.

“You won’t be going back to Adrien this year.”

Dorian’s chest constricts. This is a joke, right? It’s his last year, if they were going to take him out they would’ve done it years ago. He wouldn’t have fought back after one or two years, not like he’s going to now. Like he will if this isn’t a goddamn joke. Dorian scoffs.

“Real funny. What’d you actually call me down for, because this is absolutely ridiculous.” 

“You’re not going to Adrien Academy,” Camille says slowly. Dread falls out of his stomach, a familiar burning anger replacing it. His heart pounds in his chest and something boiling climbs up his throat. He pushes back in his chair, standing up. He doesn’t care enough to hold back a wince, he’s lost all his fucking chess pieces, so what does it matter if she knows he’s got a fractured leg. “Sit down, Dorian.”

“No! Fuck you, you can’t keep me from going!” Dorian yells. It rings in his ears, knocking around his head. Pain runs through his head but he won’t stop now. Camille stands up and gets a dangerous look in her eye.

“Yes, I can. Me and your father have already unenrolled you from Adrien. If you’re going to keep yelling, you can go to your room, Dorian.” Camille’s voice is calm and cold. 

“No you can’t! What’s stopping me from just, getting on the train and going anyway? I’m a Beaureagard, Camille, they’ll let me!” Dorian spits his Mothers name like venom. She draws back her hand and Dorian refuses to show anything when her hand hits his face. 

Dorian looks away quickly and swallows before snapping his head back. Camille looks as if she’s won.

“Go to hell, Camille. Call it a family reunion.”

Dorian turns away, storming away the best he can with his leg. Marius follows him, tucking Dorian’s arm over his shoulders. Dorian tries to push him away, but Marius holds his arm tight.

“Stop fighting, you ass,” Marius mutters. 

“I don’t need your help anymore, Marius.”

“What do you mean anymore?” They reach the stairs, Marius ending up a lot more helpful that Dorian is willing to admit. 

“You know exactly what I mean!”

“No, I really don’t, Dorian,” Marius says through clenched teeth. 

“You just stood there, Mar! You know what Adrien means to me and you let them just, take it away! Did you know?” Dorian tries to push Marius off again, half managing and fully managing to lose his balance. Marius stumbles to the side and grunts when he pulls Dorian up.

“Stop fighting me, you aren’t in any condition to be walking,” Marius says. Dorian can feel the stress in Marius’ voice. He doesn’t care that Marius is right, instead forcing the pair to walk faster.

“Tell me if you knew, Marius!”

“Stop fighting me.”

“You did, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t. I knew they’d do something but I had no idea it was going to be that.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Marius doesn't look at Dorian, just keeping his eyes forward. Dorian’s room is at the end of the hall, and Dorian couldn’t wait for it to come. Marius won’t care enough to lead him inside the room. He hasn’t cared at all since Dorian was ten and certainly didn’t care when Dorian came back during the second year spring break and their parents locked him in the basement, chained to the floor on a full moon. He just threw Dorian a bottle of aspirin that was half empty and left with a slam of his bedroom door. 

“What? Don’t have anything to say?” 

“Not to you. Not right now.”

“What the hell does that mean, Marius?” Dorian says. The pair reach Dorian’s room, Marius stopping a few inches from his doorway. Dorian leans forward onto the door frame and swings inside his room.

“It means you’re an impulsive bastard who doesn’t know where to shut up. I’m not going to try to talk to you right now. Call Baz or Diana if you want to yell at someone, for some reason, they’ll actually listen.” 

Dorian clenches his jaw and slams the door shut. It reverberates in his bones. A headache is pounding in his head, nausea churning in his gut. He stumbles back into his bed, falling into it. 

Dorian’s had a suitcase packed in his closet since he was twelve, hidden under a mountain of laundry his parents would never dream of touching. Father had gotten drunk, and when Arthur Beauregard got drunk, it wasn’t a thing anyone would want to be around. It was a family dinner, and he was on his sixth glass of wine. 

Marius had gotten a few B’s his first semester, still adjusting to being at Adrien. Report cards had been sent that day. Arthur wouldn’t be angry over Dorian’s grades, not since last year. He would be angry over Marius’. So Dorian did what he does best, causing problems. 

He threw all the eggs into the garden boxes. He set a firecracker off by tossing into the fireplace that afternoon. He played music too loud—he got a record player from Baz that year, three records from Diana, all rock—with his door open. With everything he did, more attention got off of Marius. He dropped the plate of food Camille had him carry. He scraped his knife against his plate and brought one of his legs up to his chest. 

“Stop,” Arthur said. His face was flushed red, a vein popping out of his head. 

“Stop what? I’m just eating. Do you want me to take it to my room? I’d be glad to, I haven’t finished listening to the Twisted Sister album Diana got me,” Dorian said. Innocence dripped off his voice, spite hidden underneath the words. He knew Arthur caught all of it and said nothing more.

Instead he stood up quickly, placed his meaty hand around Dorian’s upper arm and dragged him out of the dining room. Dorian fought the whole way, taunting his father with everything he could think of. He could feel the bruise forming on his arm but kept on anyway. This would get the attention off Marius for at least a week, if Dorian was lucky, winter break would be over before he ever got attention back. 

He could ask Baz to help Marius study when they got back. Baz was nice like that, they specialized in making Dorain look bad; he was happy to let them. But Father didn’t drag him up the stairs. 

“Hey! Let me go!” Dorian shouted. He didn’t know where Arthur was trying to take him and he wasn’t keen on finding out. 

“It’s time you learned there are consequences for your actions, boy,” Arthur had said. He opened the front door and threw Dorian onto the porch. “You can come back in when you don’t cause any trouble.”

Then he closed the door. Dorian heard the lock click shut. He pounded on the door and yelled. Screamed that he wouldn’t do anything. Winter wasn’t like the one digit numbers it dropped to at Adrien, but a cold wind slipped through Dorian’s silk shirt and dress pants as if they were nothing. 

He gave up after an hour. After two, the werewolf found him. 

Marius found him in the morning, clothes ripped. A long, thick scar trailed across his stomach and sharp teeth cut his mouth. He packed a suitcase that night. Dorian never thought he’d need it. But he can’t stay here, not for another year. He’s only been seventeen for two weeks, he can’t stay until he’s eighteen. 

He throws his feet over the end of the bed. Sunset light bleeds in through his window, though that’ll be gone soon. He stands. Dorian’s leg is fully healed now, along with the rest of his body. If he leaves, Diana’s house is on the other side of town. One hour in a car, two on a bus, too many on foot. If he ran, he might be able to make it in a day. He’s never tried to run for that long before, only ever managing the enhanced speed in short bursts. There’s no family car he can take, hell, he doesn’t even have a license. 

Mother keeps a bus card in the foyer. She’s never driven them to the train station to go to Adrien, always telling them to take the bus. She’ll be up for a while with a bottle of wine split between her and Father, but maybe if he’s quiet—

“No.” Dorian whispers. He sits back down and tears his eyes of the closet door. He can’t leave Marius again, even if he did know about this. How could he have expected Marius to tell him? Dorian would’ve blamed him anyway. It’s better this way anyway, less words he’ll never swallow. Getting accused is better than him having actually known.

But Dorian can’t stay, not anymore. Summers and breaks are barely manageable, how can he stay another year? He’s not a kid anymore, and he won’t have Marius with him. Baz and Diana, he’s got them now. He’s got Mrs. Pereira. He stands back up and opens the closet door. His school bags aren’t even unpacked yet, only a week off the grounds of Adrien. He hasn’t even bought his books for this year yet. He’d only been able to make it here because he knew Adrien would be waiting. What is he going to do now that there’s nothing to wait for? No light at ther end of the tunnel?

The sun has gone down now. Dorian doesn’t try to turn on the light. He’s really doing this, he can’t get caught before he’s already long gone. He’ll leave a note for Marius. He’ll be the one to find Dorian’s room empty anyway. Dorian can’t remember the last time Mother or Father checked on him personally. Marius is always the messenger. By the time he’s finished the note, it must be around midnight. He didn’t know what to say for the longest time.

The suitcase’s wheel creak louder than Dorian would like as he pulls the suitcase from his closet. He figures he should take his school bags too, they’ve got his uniform. It all fits in a backpack, he always gives his books to someone a year below him, saving them the trouble of a trip to the store. He barely uses them anyway, they’re always practically new. 

He looks around his room and finds there isn’t much he wants to take. He’s made this room his over the years, and he’s going to keep it his. He opens his school bag, finding exactly what he needs at the bottom of it. A small willow branch with emeralds and opals set in it, he carved a moon into the wood and enchanted it to show the phases as they came. 

The wand works as a focus, one most people get rid of during their third year. Dorian’s grown attached to it. His magic hasn’t worked right since he got turned without it, so he’ll take condescending looks in class. He’d rather not accidentally raise the dead instead of growing a flower. 

He holds his wand out—

“Stick.”

—a thin mist of light spreads around the room. Diana always says it looks like sand, Baz says it looks like stars. Dorian thinks it looks like the stars that block his vision during the change. He can always see after it’s done and his body’s all types of wrong, but never during. White dots block out his vision then, almost exactly the same as magic.

He throws the backpack over his shoulder and grabs the suitcase in his left hand. He shoves his wand in his back pocket and opens the door. No sounds come from anywhere else in the house. Dorian’s footsteps are quiet on the stairs but it doesn’t stop his breath from stopping when a soft thud comes from the living room. He can barely hear anything else over the blood pounding in his ears. He flattens against the wall.

“I don’t know if it’s going to work, Camille.” Father. Why would they still be awake? Did they expect him to do this? He wouldn’t put it beneath them to wait there all night to keep Dorian here. Dorian slowly turns and slips back into his room, breath still much too quick. He paces around his room, not able to stay still with his heart pounding so bad.

It’s okay. He can climb out his window, if he breaks something, it’ll heal fast enough. But he can’t run that long and he needs that bus card. He drops his bags on his bed and pulls his shoes off. He opens the door as little as he can, avoiding all the loudest floorboards as he creeps back down the stairs.

“The boy is right where he needs to be, Arthur. If you have your doubts, you can join your sister.”

Dorian’s heart beats faster still, but he keeps his footsteps so quiet he’s sure the only reason he can hear them is because of lycanthropy. The bus card sits on a side table just next to the living room.

“Don’t forget who brought you into this.”

“Believe me, Arthur, I haven’t and you’re lucky for that fact.” Dorian walks closer to the living room, heart beat getting louder with each inch closed. He hopes to Faeries Mother and Father are too preoccupied arguing about him to notice him grabbing the card. 

“This family hasn’t been here this long because we don’t know how to deal with this. This will keep the Beauregard family alive. Throw away your doubts, Arthur, or at least don’t put them upon me.”

Dorian grabs the card from the table. The conversation stops in the living room. Dorian freezes. He’s sure they can hear his heartbeat with how loud it is. One second passes.

Two.

Three. 

“Did you hear something?” Arthur asks. His words are slurred now. 

Four. 

Five. 

Six.

“You’re drunk, Arthur, not a fool.”

Dorian creeps backwards. The foyer seems longer than before, the stairs seeming to grow as he walks up them. He eventually gets back to his room and lets out a long breath. He grabs his bags from his bed, crosses the room to his window, slides it open and drops his suitcase down to the ground. He pulls the backpack over his shoulders. He climbs out, keeping a hold of the wall inside while balancing on the window sill. The drop is higher than he remembers. He could still climb back inside, close his window and stay. He’d be here for Marius the whole summer and every break. It’d be miserable, but he could do it. 

But he spent years being here for Marius. He was there for Marius as soon as his parents died, keeping him safe from Arthur and Camille. What good did it do for any of them? Marius ran to them as soon as Dorian left and got himself stuck being their perfect little boy. They made Marius what they wanted from Dorian and they did it. What else can Dorian do? Nothing. He gave Marius protection and Marius threw it away the instant Dorian left. Why should Dorian spend another second trying to protect him? Why respect the wishes of a long dead Aunt over his own life?

He looks up at the sky above him, completely empty. Lights of the city block out every bit of it, the rest of the world locked away. He looks back into the house, his room looking smaller by the second. The ground is so far away, the drop will hurt. But maybe, he’ll get to see the sky from the roof of Adrien again. Dorian takes a deep breath, the warm air filling his lungs. He lets his grip fade on the window sill, drops so his legs fall into the free air, wind climbing up the legs of his jeans. They’re Baz’s. Loose and ripped, light blue. They still smell like them, honey and milk perfume and the grass smell they put in when they wash all their clothes. He’s going to see Baz and Diana again, walking the halls of Adrien Academy for their last year. They’ll sneak out to the town next to the school and drink themselves silly, nursing hangovers the next day because Mrs. Pereira will tell them they should’ve been more responsible. They’ll skip the classes they don’t want to take and cheat on all their tests. They’ll stay up too late and sleep in past breakfast, and if they get barred from the dances they’ll dance to the records Diana always has and get drunk of music and cheap vodka. They'll hang their flags on the walls. Bi, lesbian, genderfluid, nonbinary. Make them stick so that nobody can tear them down, years from now their flags will still be up on the walls of their dorm. He’ll buy Diana all the chocolate covered coffee beans she can eat and Baz all the honey and milk perfume they could ever want.

Dorian lets go.

Diana

Sun streams through Diana’s window, much to his disappointment. He’s never liked summer, the worst part of it being sunrises at six in the morning. Diana's a light sleeper and never has time to buy thicker curtains, so he's up at seven on a good day. At least in the winter he can manage to sleep until eight. 

He wakes up at 6: 57 to the sun in his face and cups being moved around downstairs. Mom always gets up at five, no matter what. It's somewhat infuriating but at least they'll always be coffee when Diana wakes up. Diana shambles out of bed, and starts down the stairs. He stops halfway down when he hears Mom talking to someone

"–you're sure you don't want anything? Ice for your wrist? Tea? Coffee?" 

Of course there's another person. Mom is just the type of person to let someone else in the house early in the morning when she's the only one awake. 

"No, thank you though. I just want–I don't know what I want. This was just the only place I knew to come to, Mrs. Kosa." Diana almost falls down the stairs with how fast he runs down them. Dorian is sitting at his kitchen table, Mom across from him with a cup of coffee looking worried. Dorian's blood is smeared on his chest, a wrist held close to his chest. By the way Mom's looking at Dorian, she'd love to take care of it but doesn't want to force Dorian into anything.

Dorian’s body is shaking ever so slightly, hands the worst of them all. He’s curled in on himself, trying to make himself smaller. He doesn’t look like Dorian Beauregard, bane of Adrien Academy’s professors, eldest child of the Beauregard family. He doesn’t look like the sixteen year old boy flirting with Baz even though he thinks that’s all they’ll ever be; the boy dancing drunk on the roof while Diana spells a barrier to keep him from falling. The boy who’s dared people to kiss him in the middle of a fist fight, and got a few he didn’t expect. 

He looks like a scared kid who had to run away from home. 

"What the hell happened, Dor?" 

Dorian turns his head slowly, forcing a small smile when he sees Diana. 

"Hey," he says. His voice shakes but the smile he wears pretends it isn't there at all. Dorian's always been good at controlling his face, voice too. For his voice to fail–Diana doesn't even want to think about what made that happen. Diana runs across the room, pulling Dorian out of his chair and into Diana's arms. He rubs Dorian's back and makes sure Dorian's wrist is on the outside of it. 

"What happened, Dorian?" he whispers. Dorian doesn't say anything. He just buries his head in the crook of Diana's neck. "It's okay, Dor. It's okay." Dorian pulls back, straightening his shoulders and taking a deep breath.

"Yeah, it is."

None of them tried to talk to cer. Marella Redek wasn’t a big enough name for the Vacker’s, ce guessed. Ce just sat and listened to whatever the group decided to drone on about. Most of it was meaningless, like what color of lip gloss was going to make a comeback that month. 

Ce lost track of most of what was said when Biana’s arm brushed against cer shoulder. Ae had been talking, carelessly moving aer arms with aer words. Marella didn’t find it annoying until Biana’s arm hit cer. Ce recoils at the contact, not having expected it. Ce pulls cer jacket—ce had let it slip off cer shoulder—back up and leaves the lunchroom. 

Cer lunch goes into the trash, Marella heading into the hallway. Ce’ll pretend ce just got ahead of the rush when the bell rings. About half the people will believe if they care enough to ask. Maybe ce’ll get weird looks but that’ll only be for the day. Cer shoulder keeps that weird feeling of touch left over and it won’t be itched away.

When ce pulls down the shoulder of cer jacket, a teal brush of a soulmark is staring up at cer. Marella brings cer fingers to it lightly. It feels no different than cer normal skin, for some reason ce expected it to. Marella pulls it back up quickly, looking around the hallway.

No one’s seen it, no one’s even in the hallway. Ce lets out a breath ce didn’t even know ce was holding. 

Biana Vacker can’t be Marella’s soulmate. Their touching was an accident, a glitch in the Matchmakers system. Well, system in the way they can tell you wether or not your soulmate should be you soulmate or not. Ce clears cer throat.

Ce’s not old enough for this. Ce’ll worry about it when ce’s old enough to even fill out the Match Packets that are supposed to help you find your soulmate. 

Lunch ends and Marella books it for cer locker. Ce hates Alchemy but can’t get to it fast enough.

.

Biana nearly cries when ae sees aer soulmark. It looks like a burn scar, pink and fleshy. Ae pulls aer sleeve down, covering the much-too-big mark on aer arm. Ae chokes down aer tears and keeps on with Stina and Maruca. 

Fitz pulls aer aside when the bell rings, an all knowing look in his eyes. 

“Nobody else saw,” Fitz assures aer. “Don’t tell Dad that you know who it is, it won’t end well. Mom might be okay, but don’t let Dad hear.”

He leaves before Biana can ask anymore questions. Ae doesn’t need any, anyway. Alden Vacker is a cruel man, and not one privy to having his children ruin his legacy; not when he’ll be there to see it. 

Ae’s too young for this. Ae can’t even fill out a Matchmaker packet yet but ae’s got to think of a good lie. 

When ae gets home, aer father finds the mark quickly. He thinks for a moment ae’s done something stupid enough to earn a burn scar before realizing. Ae thinks it might just be worse to have him know.

“Who is it?” He doesn’t even pretend to be kind. There’s no one else but family here, so his words are harsh. They scrape over aer skin like broken glass and Biana can’t believe Fitz felt the need to say don’t tell Dad.

“I don’t know who it is. I brushed against someone in the hall and didn’t check my arm until I was in Elementalism.” It’s a good thing Biana’s a good liar, or maybe Alden just wants to believe that. He nods tensely and lets go of Biana’s arm.

“Find out who it is, Biana. I won’t have a Mistaken Soulmate ruining our legacy, and I trust you to nip any ideas in the bud if that is the case. Though, I do trust it not to be, don’t you, Biana,” Alden says slowly. Biana nods and pretends Marella Redek isn’t aer soulmate.

Fitz knocks on aer door that night. He sits on the edge of aer bed quietly, but ae can see anger in the tight lines of his face. It’s a look ae’s used to seeing. Alvar gets it too, especially after his soulmate. Dad didn’t approve of whoever it was, Alvar didn’t care—or at least said he didn’t.

“It won’t always be like this. You’ll get to be with Marella. I swear to god, Biana, you’re going to get to be happy with cer,” he says. Ae can see the struggle he has to keep his voice low. They never know if Alden will be outside the door. 

“You can’t say that.” 

“I know, but I am.”

“Then you’re an idiot, Fitz. Don’t promise things you can’t hold out on, it won’t end well.” 

Fitz tightens, curling his hands into fists. He’s not angry at Biana, he’s mad ae’s right. 

“What I am, is you big brother. You’re going to get to live in this world, Biana. The both of you.” 

Biana curls aer legs up to aer chest, staring out the window. It’s roght between aer and Fitz. There are no stars, no moon. Just Everglen’s gates drowning it all out. 

“What about you? Do you know who yours is?” 

Fitz looks away. “I have an idea. I don’t think xe does. Doesn’t give any notion of it. Funny thing is, until xe stops hating me, I won’t have any idea.”

“There’s someone that hates you? I’d like to meet xem,” Biana says with a laugh ae doesn’t mean. Ae wants Fitz to move closer and sleep with aer, just like they did when they were younger, before Alvar knew when it was best not to talk back to Alden. The two would get into screaming matches and Fitz would sneak into Biana’s room. He wouldn’t say anything and neither would Biana. 

Fitz stands up though and Biana isn’t going to ask him to stay. 

“Yeah, there is, Biana. Being the Golden Boy only gets you so far,” he says, back to aer. 

.

Marella find cerself watching Biana for the next few years, never talking to aer for more than a few fleeting conversations. They both know what they’ll never say, not until it’s late and Marella finally knows why Ability Detecting never worked. If ce closes cer eyes, ce can still see the fire. Ce loves it and hates how much ce does.

And maybe pulling out cer Imparter is careless and stupid, reckless, but ce does it anyway. Biana Vacker is cer fucking soulmate, and if ce’s talking to anybody, it’s cer. It rings only two times.

“Marella? Did you remember something?” Biana asks. There’s a forced grogginess in aer voice, like ae wants Marella to think ce woke aer up. 

“Come over. I’ll meet you in my garden.”

“Marella—“

“You’re my soulmate, Vacker, come over,” Marella says, trying not to make it sound like a question. Biana doesn’t say anything but nods. Marella hangs up, walking through the ghost-like halls of cer house. It always gets like this at night. The halls are cluttered but never full.

When ce gets to the garden, ce sits on the bench furthest from the house. It’s hidden from the house but not where Biana’s likely to arrive from. And ae does, Marella bites back cer surprise. Of course Biana came, they’re soulmates. 

Biana sits down silently beside Marella. Ae’s got a piece of grass spinning in her fingers, turning them invisible then back again, watching the grass dance through the air. 

“I’m Pyrokinetic,” Marella whispers. Biana’s fingers tighten on the blade of grass, shock clear in aer eyes, the same color as the mark on Marella’s shoulder. Biana turns aer fingers into color again, staring at the burn-scar soul mark. 

Ae drops the blade of grass and sets aer hands on aer knees.

“I guess I should’ve known, right?” Ae laughs, lacking any humor. 

“Maybe.”

Biana looks to Marella. Ae reaches for Marella’s face, knocking the breath out of cer. Ae runs aer runs aer thumb over cer cheekbone, a chill running down Marella’s spine. 

“Can I kiss you? Just this once?” 

Marella doesn’t answer, just coming forward and meeting Biana’s lips. Ae can feel aer lip gloss on aer lips, know ae really put lip gloss on to come over at three AM. It tastes like vanilla and leaves a shimmer on cer lips when ce pulls away. One of Biana’s hands is in cer hair, the other on the nape of cer neck. Marella’s got cer hands on Biana’s waist, pulling aer closer.

Just this once is going to last as long as Biana lets it. 

“This is the only time, Marella. Only time.” 

“I know.”

And ce kissed aer again. Seeing just how long Biana will let cer make this last. Ce wishes it could last forever, make this few minutes the rest of cer life. Biana leans into the kiss, twirling hair in aer fingers. 

But it ends. Biana pulls back, wiping the smeared lip gloss off of aer lips, fixing aer hair. 

“I’m not your soulmate, Marella,” Biana says. 

“Why not?”

“We’d be Mistaken. I can’t do that, so I can’t be your soulmate. You should be happy, find someone else with a soul mark. I have to go now, Marella.”

And ae’s gone before Marella can say anything, aer lip gloss still on cer lips. 

.

Biana is left watching Marella, watching cer be happy with anyone but aer. And maybe sometimes that’s a good feeling, knowing that even if it won’t be Biana making cer that happy, ce’ll be happy. 

Then sometimes it hits aer in the gut with knowledge that Biana never made Marella smile like that. Linh did. Maruca did. Stina did. Not aer. 

Ae made the right choice, ae convinces aerself. Marella would never be that happy with aer, so it was the right choice.