Isabelle's POV
The aftermath was a cold, hollow thing.
By Monday morning, the silence between Julien and me had become a physical wall. We had stopped talking. When our paths crossed in the corridors, we didn't stop, we didn't linger; we only exchanged glances that felt like shards of glass. His eyes were full of a wounded, desperate apology I wasn't ready to accept, and mine… I didn't know what was in mine anymore. Perhaps just exhaustion.
Julien had stopped coming to the Music Hall entirely. The sanctuary we had shared was now a place of hushed gossip. I overheard a group of strings players whispering near the lockers, their voices sharp with the casual cruelty of the elite.
"He shouldn't have been in the club to begin with," one girl sneered, tightening a peg on her cello. "Buying your way into a chair? It's pathetic. He doesn't deserve to be a member after that stunt."
The news of the "King's Gambit" had traveled through the Academy like a contagion. Because the confrontation had happened during the weekend, the initial rumors had been frantic and disjointed, but as the new week began, the story solidified into a legend.
The school was now a house divided. St. Aurelia had split down the middle, and I was the fault line.
One side rallied behind Julien, viewing him as a fallen saint, a victim of the Volkov family's legendary malice. The other side, the darker, more ambitious side aligned with Dmitri, drawn to the raw display of power he had used to crush his rival.
And then there was me. I was blamed for the rift, whispered about as the "Siren of the Strings" who had turned the two princes against each other. In any other circumstance, I would have been torn apart by the student body. I would have been cornered in the bathrooms or had my locker vandalized.
But no one dared to touch me.
The reason was simple: Dmitri Volkov had marked me as his own. He didn't have to say it; the way he sat next to me in class, the way his gaze followed me across the quad, and the way the air seemed to turn to ice whenever another boy approached me said enough. I was the devil's favorite prize, and even the bravest heirs didn't want to risk his wrath.
Dmitri's POV
The tension in the air was a drug. I watched the school fracture from my seat in the back of the lecture hall, feeling a grim satisfaction. Julien was a ghost of his former self, sitting three rows down, his shoulders slumped, his "Golden Boy" aura extinguished.
But my focus wasn't on him. It was on the girl sitting by the window.
Isabelle looked pale, her silver eyes fixed on the horizon as if she were looking for an escape. She was vibrating with a silent, fierce independence, even as she occupied the cage I had built for her.
The bell rang, signaling the end of the morning session, but instead of the usual rush to the cafeteria, there was a flurry of activity in the foyer. A black car with diplomatic plates had arrived.
"The patrons are early," Adrien whispered, leaning over my desk. "The Exhibition follow-up meeting."
One of the guests was Baron Von Hardt, a man whose family had funded the Academy since the turn of the century. He was a relic of the old world, a man with sharp eyes and a memory that spanned generations.
As we walked through the hall, Isabelle was coming from the opposite direction, her violin case gripped tightly in her hand. She looked exhausted, her red hair slightly disheveled.
The Baron stopped mid-sentence as she passed.
His face didn't just change; it drained of color. He looked as if he had seen a man rise from the grave. He turned to the Headmaster, his voice a rasping whisper that cut through the noise of the hallway.
"Who is that girl?" the Baron demanded, pointing a trembling finger toward Isabelle's retreating back.
The Headmaster cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. "That is Isabelle Duval, a scholarship student. Very talented, though she's been at the center of some… extracurricular drama lately."
"Duval?" The Baron's eyes narrowed, his gaze fixed on her with a frightening intensity. "No. I don't care about her name. Look at her movement. Look at the bone structure of her face. She looks exactly like…"
He stopped himself, his jaw tightening. He looked around at the students watching him, then lowered his voice. "Tell me she isn't related to the girl from the 2005 class. Tell me she isn't her daughter."
The Headmaster went still. "The records show she is from an orphanage in the city, Baron. There is no lineage to speak of."
The Baron didn't look convinced. He looked haunted. "Ghosts don't need records to return, Headmaster. If she is who I think she is, this Academy is sitting on a powder keg."
I watched the interaction from the shadows of the archway. My hand moved to my pocket, touching the edges of the old photograph I had stolen.
Echoes of a crown.
The whispers started almost immediately. By lunch, the questions about Isabelle's lineage were no longer just gossip, they were an investigation. The "scholarship girl" wasn't just a distraction anymore; she was a threat to the very foundations of St. Aurelia's elite.
Isabelle's POV
I felt the eyes on me. Not the usual stares of jealousy or lust, but something colder. Something clinical.
I was sitting in the library, trying to focus on my history text, when I heard the voices behind the tall mahogany shelves.
"Did you hear what the Baron said?"
"They're saying she's not a scholarship student at all. They're saying she's the 'Lost Heir' of the Valois line."
"Don't be ridiculous. That family was wiped out in the scandal."
"Look at her, though. She has the eyes. The exact same eyes as the woman in the portrait in the Great Hall."
I froze. The portrait.
I rose from my seat, my heart hammering against my ribs. I walked toward the Great Hall, my footsteps sounding like thunder in my own ears. The hall was empty, the afternoon light filtering through the stained glass in long, bloody streaks.
I walked to the far end, past the founders and the past deans, until I reached a portrait that was usually kept in the shadows.
It was a woman standing by a balcony, a violin in her hand. She wore a crown of small, silver lilies. Her eyes were my eyes. Her hair was my hair.
Underneath the frame, a brass plate read:
Elena Valois-Duval. Class of 2005. Disgraced.
"She was the pride of this school," a voice said from behind me.
I spun around. Dmitri was standing there, his hands in his pockets, his expression unreadable.
"She was a queen here," he continued, walking toward the painting. "Until she fell in love with someone she shouldn't have. Someone who wasn't an heir. The school didn't just expel her; they erased her. Or they tried to."
I looked back at the painting, then at Dmitri. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because," he said, stepping so close I could feel the coldness of his rings as he lifted my chin to face the portrait. "The Baron is right. You aren't a scholarship student, Isabelle. You're a legacy. A legacy of the very people who built these walls."
He leaned in, his voice a dark, possessive silk. "And that means you don't belong to the school. You don't belong to Julien. You belong to the history I'm going to rewrite."
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the draft in the hall. The whispers weren't just gossip. They were a death sentence. In St. Aurelia, being a "disgraced legacy" was worse than being a nobody. It meant I was a target for everyone who had helped destroy her twenty years ago.
"I'm just Isabelle," I whispered, though I didn't believe it anymore.
Dmitri smiled, a sharp, terrifying look of ownership. "Not anymore. You're the ghost of St. Aurelia. And I'm the only one who knows how to keep you from being buried again."