Thorn's breath caught before she could stop it.
The mirror in their dorm room was tall enough to see everything.
Every shadowed layer, every curl, every quiet piece of her that she usually kept hidden. But tonight… Valerie's hands are in every stitch, every seam, every protective rune subtly stitched into the hem. Her mother didn't just sew a dress; she built Thorn armor she could wear without sticking out like a sore thumb.
At the top, an unmistakable black corset: structured, sharp; the lace along the neckline softened it just enough to look deliberate rather than fragile.
The sleeves are made with black tulle, sheer and soft, but shaped into off-shoulder clouds that float around her upper arms. They don't cling; they hover like a gentle whisper. They give coverage without swallowing her silhouette. They make the bodice look even more wickedly fitted, almost like she had stepped out of a dark fairytale. One where she was not the princess, but rather, the warning that lingered at the edge of the woods.
Her skirt fades from black to deep forest-green, layered so delicately she can see hints of the shadow-branches Valerie embroidered into the underskirt. The tulle catches the dorm's lamplight, glittering faintly like dew at midnight.
Thorn lifts a hand to her hair.
It's down, around her shoulder. Long, soft curls falling over her shoulders and down her back, just unruly enough to still feel like her. A few pieces are pinned back with simple dark clips, enough to show her collarbone. Two curled strands framed her face and dusted her cheekbones with each move.
Her makeup was dark. Inky liner, brushed out like a soft smoke at the corners of her eyes. Nothing like the sharp, black wings she usually used as defense. She wore a near-black plum on her lips, elegant but not heavy. Not hiding anything. It brought out the green in her eyes, the warm olive of her skin, the deep red of her hair. For the first time since she'd turned, she felt beautiful without apology.
Pippa whistles low beside her.
Thorn pretended to roll her eyes.
But the girl in the mirror?
She looks like something her mother dreamed up. A creature of shadow and forest, stitched from memory and magic. A daughter of light and dark. A hybrid who finally looks like she stepped into both halves of who she is.
And for a second, just a fleeting second, Thorn lets herself smile at the girl in the reflection.
Not cruel. Not sharp.
Just… steady.
"Damn, Thorn. You sure do clean up nice for a dance you didn't even want to go to." Pippa smirked, reaching into the little black gift box on her vanity and pulling out the masks she'd bought with Danny.
"This one's yours," she said softly.
She placed it in Thorn's hands. It was light, the more intricate of the two. Danny's mask had been the solid matte-black one, heavy and carved with bold lines and winged details. This one… this one had been meant for Pippa, originally.
It was gorgeous.
A lacquer-black filigree mask shaped like lace frozen mid-flight, delicate but dramatic. The metalwork curled into sweeping patterns that looked almost like blooming vines and unfurling wings. Tiny clear gemstones dotted the swirls, catching the light like diamonds. The edges flared out in elegant arcs, giving it an almost regal silhouette, half raven, half cathedral window.
The eye cutouts were framed in a trail of rhinestones that shimmered faintly when Thorn tilted it, adding just enough softness to balance the sharp, gothic detailing.
It wasn't subtle.
It wasn't sweet.
It was alluring.
Bold and dark and unmistakably Thorn.
Pippa's voice gentled. "Danny wanted us to match. So I'm wearing his."
Thorn looked down at the filigree mask again, the weight of it light in her palms, but the meaning anything but.
"Yeah," she whispered as she swallowed thickly. "Okay. Then I'll wear yours."
Thorn carefully tried the ribbons of the mask, hiding the black fabric among the mess of curls and pins.
"You ready to go?"
"As ready as I'll ever be." Pippa pressed the mask into place and gave a small sigh.
"For Danny."
"For Danny," Thorn repeated, the two girls made their way out of their dorm room. The door locked behind them as other students filtered out of the halls to make their descent down to the Great Hall.
The walk there was quiet, but not the heavy kind.
Pippa's silence buzzed with nervous anticipation. The only kind that came before a dance she'd had imagined attending with Danny. She kept smoothing the skirt of her dress, fingers trembling just slightly, as if each step pulled her closer to something she wasn't ready for and couldn't turn away from.
Thorn's silence was different.
She walked half a step behind Pippa, eyes flicking from shadow to shadow along the stone path. Every gust of wind through the cloisters sharpened her pulse. Every distant echo from the Great Hall tightened something in her chest.
Because she knew the truth beneath all the glitter and music, that the same masked musicians from the forest could return at any moment, and the first note could break the world open.
And when it happened, because it would happen, she and Xavier were the only ones prepared to stand in its path.
But she stayed quiet, kept pace, letting her friend lean on the illusion for just a little longer.
The two of them stepped into the Great Hall side by side—and Thorn had never seen it look so alive.
Gold light poured from the chandeliers overhead, not gentle but blazing, each crystal prism scattering fire onto the polished floor below. They hung like constellations someone had shaken loose from the sky and trapped indoors. It was….
Brilliant.
Excessive.
Almost desperate in their brightness, as if the room itself were trying to drown out the memory of everything buried beneath it.
Students swept past them in a storm of satin and velvet.
Masks of foxes, lions, saints, and things Thorn couldn't even name. Some were feathered, some jeweled, some were a simple bone-white, but each one leaned into the Founders' tradition of hiding one's identity to "honor the past." Except no one seemed to notice the irony of wearing masks atop a floor built to cage something monstrous.
Music unfurled from the orchestra balcony in warm, elegant waves: violins, cellos, a harp spun with gold wire. The notes threaded through lace sleeves and silk gloves, through laughter and whispered gossip and the metallic clink of glasses.
Pippa poked at her side, cheeks flushed, curls pinned with a gold comb that glimmered whenever she laughed. "You can at least pretend you're not regretting this," she said, tugging Thorn's wrist.
"I am pretending," Thorn said, but didn't move.
Pippa rolled her eyes. "You know… You're supposed to move your feet, not just your sarcasm."
Thorn let out a small sigh that was half affection, half surrender. "Fine," she said, letting herself be dragged toward the dance floor. "But if I step on someone, it's your fault."
"You won't," Pippa said with a grin.
"You're right. I'll step on you."
Pippa didn't respond; she had already busied herself with the task of pulling them both out onto the dance floor.
The waltz carried them into the center of the room. Thorn moved stiffly at first, but Pippa's warmth was stubbornly contagious. For a few minutes, she almost forgot that danger had a rhythm too. The sound of laughter and light chatter filled the air as students paired up to dance. Hundreds of students were made easy targets.
There was a ripple that went through the room, and heads turned.
Xavier had arrived.
The crowd seemed to part for him. Half from curiosity, half from unease. The son of Victor Thorpe, art prodigy-turned-murderer-turned-exile, had decided to show up to the dance.
Xavier looked like he walked straight out of a funeral for someone who wronged him. Sharp, severe, and unintentionally breathtaking.
His suit is charcoal-black, with clean lines, tailored enough to look expensive but lived-in enough that he still looked like himself in it. His jacket hung open, the shoulders structured but not stiff, and the fabric caught the light in soft vertical striations that made him look even taller than he already was.
But it was his dress shirt that was the problem.
It wasn't sage, or emerald, but that deep, green-grey twilight shade. The one that lives in the darkest part of the woods, the one that Thorn's skirt fades into. It sat against his skin as if it were explicitly chosen to echo her.
The shirt is tucked neatly into his trousers, but the belt breaks the formality. Black leather with circular grommet detailing, unmistakably him. A little rebellious, a little messy, a little rock band at a gala. It cinches at his waist in a way that shows off the narrow lines of his frame without being intentional.
His hair is still that tousled, perpetually sleep-mussed mess, like he ran his fingers through it instead of using a comb.
And somehow, standing there in black and forest-green, he looks like the shadow to Thorn's starlit darkness. Like they walked out of the same story. Like matching halves of something neither of them wanted to admit.
The effect is only amplified when her gaze catches on the mask.
It was carved in the shape of a raven, matte black and feathered in layered ridges that looked almost alive in the low lantern light. The sculpted wings swept back from his temples, sharp and elegant, framing his face in dark angles that made his eyes look brighter than they had any right to. The feathers weren't soft or delicate. They were fierce, carved with deliberate strokes, like a creature meant to guard something sacred.
A long, curved beak extended down the center, sleek and predatory without tipping into costume absurdity. If anything, it made him unreadable. Older. A little dangerous.
The mask fit Xavier too well to be new. It looked like something kept in a drawer since the moment he got to Riechenbach, a relic from the old Nightshade society he had talked about before. Polished once, then forgotten until tonight. Even now, it carried the faint impression of a secret he'd never fully shaken off.
He found Thorn immediately. She froze for half a second, caught off guard by how strange it was to see him like that. With his hair pushed back, his suit perfectly fitted, no graphite on his hands for once.
"Whoa," Pippa whispered. Her eyes slid slowly from Xavier to Thorn, widening with recognition, and then, as if perfectly timed, mischief.
"I-uh, I think I'm going to grab some punch before someone spikes it."
Thorn snorted as Pippa disappeared into the glittering crowd, and left her alone under the wash of gold light with Xavier.
He took a few steps toward her, hands still shoved in his pockets like he was trying not to touch anything, including her. The chandeliers threw soft fire across his suit, catching the deep green of his dress shirt.
She opened her mouth before she could stop herself.
"You look—"
Instant regret.
Xavier arched a brow. "Human?"
"I was going to say tolerable," she muttered, but there was the faintest hitch in her voice that betrayed her.
His mouth twitched. "And you look…"
He stopped, the word hanging unspoken between them. Like, if the word 'beautiful' would break something between them.
"…different."
Thorn smirked, a slight upward pull of her lips she couldn't quite suppress. "Different," she echoed, pretending the word didn't make her stomach tighten.
Before she could respond, a voice cut through the crowd like a blade dipped in perfume.
"Hey, Thorn. Didn't think you'd actually show up to a school dance."
Thorn's smirk immediately fell flat.
"Cecelia," she said, turning. "Didn't think you'd bother talking to me again after freshman year."
Cecelia stood in a shimmering white-and-gold gown, handcrafted to show off every angle of her delicate fairy wings. She smiled with the sharp sweetness of someone who'd never truly forgiven anything in her life.
"Well, I just had to come over here," Cecelia said lightly. "I mean… your date. Congratulations on your date!" Her eyes sparkled with malicious innocence. "We both know romance isn't really your thing."
Thorn's jaw tightened, a muscle feathering along her cheek. Just enough for Xavier to notice.
"He's not my date," she said flatly. "Pippa is."
Xavier blinked, glancing at Cecelia now that Thorn's attention had turned. He recognized her instantly. The fairy girl from archery. The one who laughed whenever Marcellus threw his little verbal darts at him. The one who had never once spoken to him directly.
Until now.
Cecelia perked up immediately.
"Oh! So he's free to dance with me?" she asked, voice softening into a coy curl, gaze raking up the length of him.
Thorn didn't move, but something about her stillness was almost dangerous.
Xavier cleared his throat, scratching lightly at the back of his neck.
"Actually, uh—" he said, stumbling only because Thorn was looking right at him, "I was just about to ask Thorn to dance. So… maybe later?"
Cecelia froze for half a breath, her polite smile stiffening at the edges.
Thorn's smirk returned; it was barely there, razor-thin but just enough for Cecelia to see it.
Cecelia forced a smile. A thin, cracking thing. "Of course. Maybe later."
She drifted off, wings flicking behind her like an irritated cat's tail. Xavier watched her go before tilting his head toward Thorn. He watched her for a moment before he opened his mouth.
"You… know her?"
Thorn bit the inside of her cheek. For a moment, her eyes flicked away, softened, then shuttered again.
"Yeah," she said quietly. "We used to be friends."
Xavier blinked. Once. Slow. And then realization slipped into his expression like ink blooming through water.
The girl she told.
The one who "stopped being friends with her" after she died. After she came back. After she was changed into what she is now.
It hit him harder than she probably meant it to.
He didn't mean to push, but the question still rose, gently and carefully, "Used to be?"
Thorn's fingers twisted in her skirt before she forced them still. She nodded once, small and reluctant as she turned to look up at him.
"She didn't want to be friends with a monster."
The word hung there, heavy as a dropped stone.
Xavier didn't immediately say you're not one; he wasn't stupid enough to think she'd accept comfort she hadn't asked for, especially from him.
Instead, he exhaled slowly and stepped just an inch closer, voice low enough to be swallowed by the music around them.
"Sounds like she didn't deserve to be your friend," he said. "Not the way you are now."
Thorn didn't argue; she didn't deflect. She just looked at him, the chandelier light catching the green in her dress and the guarded flicker in her eyes.
"Come on," Xavier added, offering his hand without quite offering it, palm angled, not pressed.
"We should at least pretend to blend in before something tries to kill us."
The smirk that returned to Thorn's face was softer this time.
And real.
Thorn looked at his hand reluctantly. Not because she didn't want to take it, but because she did, and she wasn't exactly sure how to deal with that newly discovered fact.
"…Fine," she muttered, placing her hand in his.
Her fingers were calm, steady, while his were warm, calloused from charcoal and bowstrings.
The first shock was how well they fit.
He pulled her gently toward the edge of the dance floor, where the music was softer, and the light wasn't so merciless. Couples moved around them in a slow swirl of silk and candle-glow.
Thorn exhaled like she'd forgotten how to breathe in a room full of people.
Xavier noticed.
Of course he did. Xavier had come to understand all of the small tells of Thorn, the sarcasm she wore as a shield, the way she poured too much honey into her green tea, and the way she found comfort in the shadows when the light was too dangerous.
He didn't say anything. He just shifted his hand a little lower on her waist, not pulling, just there, grounding without making a scene.
"You don't have to actually dance, you know," he murmured, leaning closer so no one else could hear. "We can just fake it."
Her eyes flicked up to him, annoyed and grateful in equal measure.
"You think I don't know how?"
"I didn't say that. I just think you hate being watched."
Thorn opened her mouth to snap back, then closed it again. She wasn't used to being seen, at least, not in this way.
"…Fair."
His smile was small, crooked. The kind that felt like something beautiful, trying not to be noticed.
The waltz began to rise around them, warm and glittering. Xavier carefully guided her into the first step. Slow and deliberate. He wasn't showing off, though; he could. He had spent much of his younger years learning the art of ballroom dancing. All at his father's request.
Even with all those years of dancing under his belt, Xavier didn't lead with ego. He led like he wanted her to feel safe. Thorn's heartbeat stumbled once. Just once, as they moved in a slow orbit, closer than they needed to be but not close enough to admit it. Her dress brushed his leg with every turn. His breath stirred the loose pieces of hair near her cheek.
Thorn kept her eyes on his collar at first. It was the safer territory, but Xavier dipped his head down slightly, trying to catch her gaze.
"Thorn," he said quietly.
There was something in his voice, it was... gentle, steady, interested, and itdragged her eyes upward. And when her eyes met the warm hazel irises of Xavier Thorpe. The room fell away.
Not dramatically.
Not magically.
But in the way that the world goes quiet when someone looks at you like that.
Xavier swallowed, his throat working around something he didn't say.
"You look…" He stopped himself again, lips parting with a word he refused to release. "…good."
"Try again," she whispered, not because she needed the compliment, but because she wanted to hear what he wasn't really saying.
Xavier swallowed thickly, and then his voice lowered to something that almost trembled.
"You look dangerous."
"…Better." The corner of her mouth pulled up, and for a moment, all she could think was, Is this what it feels like, being seen without being hunted?
They danced a few more steps.
Slow.
Measured.
Heavy with unsaid things.
Xavier laughed under his breath. Quiet, breathy, like he wasn't used to laughing, especially in moments like this.
"You're allowed to enjoy this, you know," he said softly.
"And you're allowed to stop staring at me like that," she shot back, but her voice trailed off at the end. Too thin. Too honest.
"I'm not staring."
Thorn's eyebrow raised skeptically, hidden behind her mask.
"You are absolutely staring."
"I'm...observing."
Thorn rolled her eyes, but her cheeks warmed in a way that had nothing to do with the chandelier light.
They turned again, and for half a second, their masks aligned in the reflection of a golden pillar. They looked like a matched set, something almost... intentional.
As if fate had made a joke and forgotten to tell them.
That realization hit both of them at the same time. Thorn's breath caught, and Xavier's grip tightened. Only by a fraction, but enough that she felt it, and enough that he realized she did.
He loosened his hold instantly, cheeks flushing under the warm lighting of the chandeliers.
"Sorry," he murmured.
"Don't be," she whispered.
It wasn't permission.
It wasn't an invitation.
It was just the truth.
Her truth.
For a moment, the world hung suspended. The music, the lights, the swirl of masked students, laughter, and joy. All of it moving around their quiet, electric center.
Then...
The music changed.