[External POV]

MEANWHILE, IN THE CRIB

"This place is shit."

Riven had his hands on his head. The pose of someone who had walked into a mess and had no choice but to walk straight through it. He regretted the exact hour he’d walked into the staff room and requested an application form for the BHA.

Apparently, he wasn’t alone in that. Cael was fidgeting thoughtlessly with his spoon, stabbing into his porridge one too many times like it had personally offended him. Zael was working very hard to not frown with every bite he took — which was impressive, considering the porridge. He’d been the one who’d decided in the first place that it was a good idea for them to come here. He’d convinced them to apply because he hadn’t wanted to be alone.

For every reason available, Riven felt the urge to pulp his brain right there on the cafeteria table.

"C’mon guys, don’t be gloomy." Zael said, with a forced smile that didn’t exactly portray the encouragement he meant. "On the bright side — week-long holiday before graduation. Think about it."

"Yeah, but at school I get to choose my own meals." Riven’s voice carried a slow flare of building annoyance. "School is not this loud. We don’t sleep in small dorm rooms—"

"And we get to keep our abilities." Cael added, with the calm delivery of someone who had accepted defeat and was simply documenting it.

"Exactly." Riven clicked his fingers. "Some of us only learned defence through ability use. If things go south out here, is the Bureau going to personally protect every single one of us?"

Cael’s head dropped toward his bowl. A slight groan followed. "I want to go home."

"You guys are being big babies." Zael took another forced mouthful of porridge. "Look around you. Think about it properly. If we play our cards right, we could all end up in the top ten ranking results. With Silvic High in the mix, there’s almost no real competition—"

"Think again, douchebag."

The girl standing across their table had her eyes burning directly into Zael, a wicked smile sitting comfortably on her small face. Trimmed hair dyed pink. Piercings lined across her left ear.

"The heck?" Zael’s reaction was almost a full shock. "Who said you could come here, Freya?"

Freya folded her arms. "Did you forget we’re in the same grade, dum-dum? Do you think I need permission the same way you sulk up to your dad’s ass?"

"I thought you hated hunters."

"I still do. But I never said I wasn’t planning to become one myself." Attitude, full load. "So deal with it, asshole."

"Who is she?" Riven was already smiling in an impressed way.

"My cousin, Freya." Cael said, head still sunk. "She’s always like this."

"I like her."

"Alright, let me make one thing clear." Freya placed both hands flat on the table and looked around at all of them. "I had the option of staying at school to deal with those girls who thought my boots were knockoffs. I still chose to come to this shitty camp for some messed up trials." She let the pause sit. "You wanna know why?"

"Why?" Riven obliged.

"Because my older cousin here — the douchebag — loves competition." She reached over and nudged Zael’s forehead. "And I’m just a bitch who loves watching him lose to me."

"Lose to you." Zael scoffed. "You wish."

"Oh really? 8th grade. I whooped your ass while the teachers were watching." Freya’s smirk deepened considerably. "You couldn’t even form words through your tears when the disciplinary teacher asked for your statement."

Riven immediately looked at Cael for confirmation. He got a nod. He clamped both hands over his mouth, trying to physically contain the laughter threatening to break through. The King of Silvic High — gagging on his own tears in front of a disciplinary teacher. The image was already too good.

"So. Here’s the deal." Freya continued. "I’m going to crush you in the trials."

"How is that even a deal?" Zael asked.

"You’re right. The actual deal is this; you either participate and end up embarrassed, or you run now and don’t bother crossing lanes with me. Your choice."

Zael laughed. The specific short laugh he always produced when something was beginning to genuinely get on his nerves, and he was trying to make sure nobody clocked that.

"Good luck then." He replied. "I sincerely hope you whoop my ass badly this time."

Freya didn’t respond. She glanced at Cael, then returned her gaze to her mortal enemy for one last second. Then she walked away without looking back.

"Well." Riven watched her go. "Should we be worried about her?"

"I’d be worried if I were him." Cael gestured toward his brother. "Freya always finds a way to make him look like a dork. I genuinely don’t know what the original cause was, but those two have been on bad blood for years."

"Fucking dang it." Zael cursed under his breath, stabbing his spoon into his porridge with enough force that the bowl developed a small crack. "I take it back. This place really is shit."

Riven watched Freya until the exact moment she stepped out of the cafeteria. Then something clicked in his memory — one last member of the group that hadn’t been accounted for.

"By the way." His eyes moved to Cael. "Where’s Sera?" 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

***

"Skipping meals?"

Seraphine hadn’t moved from her mattress since she’d landed on it. Hours had passed and she’d been sorting through her phone gallery, focused enough that she’d almost missed the time entirely.

Skipping dinner was intentional. She could go days without eating when there was something else to occupy the space.

When her new roommate dropped the question, she ignored it. She knew a conversation bait when she heard one.

"Probably better you missed it, honestly." Nyx Galloway. Dirty brown hair. Lime-coloured eyes over a smooth, round face. There was something about being around her that felt subtly off to Seraphine — she hadn’t been able to name it yet. "They served this awful slobby porridge. I genuinely almost threw up."

"That must have been bad." Seraphine said, without looking up from her phone.

The phone gallery was turning into its own separate problem. She’d been trying to delete photographs of Zael for the past several hours and was barely halfway through. Zael had always been the indulgent one about documentation. On supposedly quiet, ordinary dates, he’d wanted photos — with or without her active cooperation.

A thousand files. Maybe more. And she’d rarely been smiling in any of them. The only exception was the one where he’d dropped a small scoop of strawberry ice cream on her nose. Even then, she hadn’t been smiling at the ice cream. It had been the way he’d laughed before taking the picture— mocking, but genuinely happy, the specific laugh he didn’t perform for anyone.

That had pulled something out of her involuntarily.

[Delete This File?]

"Look, maybe I’m reading this wrong." Nyx said, turning from her laundry. "But why does it feel like you have a problem with me?"

"I don’t."

"Oh, but you do." She slapped her own lap for emphasis. "You give me a few words here and there. You don’t care about anything I say. It’s like you don’t want me in this room."

"I never said that."

"You don’t have to." Nyx’s voice went overhead. "Your eyes do it. You look at me like I’m the flu or something."

Seraphine met her eyes. "We both have one week here. I’d prefer we stay out of each other’s way until it’s over."

Nyx scoffed. The scoff of someone who had not been expecting that level of directness and wasn’t immediately sure what to do with it. Her small hands balled briefly into fists — but she didn’t push back with words. She just turned, stormed toward her corner of the room, and resumed with her laundry in pointed silence.

None of that was Seraphine’s concern.

She went back to the photograph. The one where her smile got slightly wider every time she looked at it instead of smaller, which was the opposite of what was supposed to happen when you were preparing to delete something.

She was going to delete it. She’d decided that. One last memory, significant enough that it warranted an actual decision rather than just a swipe.

But she couldn’t move her thumb.

Now that she was sitting with it, maybe her father had been wrong about the whole thing. Maybe behind everything he’d arranged and everything she’d quietly followed, she’d actually had something real for Zael. And at the end of all of it, it still landed on a maybe.Which meant she still didn’t know. Which made it worse.

She knew who she was. Her father’s obedient daughter. The one expected to demonstrate perfection in rule-following, as if she had no opinions running underneath it. And so far, that was exactly what she’d been.

Even when he’d told her to end it— without giving her any real reason why— she’d done it quietly. No argument. No pushback. Just compliance, the way he’d always trained her toward.

No one— and certainly not a boy— was going to make her defy her father.

[Delete]