Isabelle's POV
The air at St. Aurelia didn't just feel charged; it felt like the moment before a lightning strike. Every corridor was a silent battlefield, every glance a potential ambush. But the Academy's machinery of excellence ground on, indifferent to the social bloodshed. Today, it demanded a sacrifice to the god of precision: the Advanced Chemistry Invitational.
I stood at my lab station, the sterile scents of ethanol and hydrochloric acid burning my nostrils. Across the aisle, Dmitri Volkov stood rolling up his sleeves with deliberate, predatory slowness. The white lab coat was a joke on him; it looked like a shroud over something far more dangerous. Julien's conspicuous absence left the stage glaringly, intentionally empty. This was a duel.
"The rules are simple," Professor Thorne's voice cut through the quiet. "I give you the product. You give me the pathway and the proof. Speed is admired. Perfection is required."
The board lit up: C_{27}H_{44}O.
Cholesterol. Acid-catalyzed hydration.
My hands moved on instinct, a calibrated dance of glass and liquid. But my awareness was split, half on the procedure, half on the dark gravity well beside me. Dmitri wasn't just completing the steps; he was performing a critique of my every move through his own terrifying efficiency.
"Adequate pace, Isabelle," his voice was a low murmur meant only for me, a violation of the lab's solemn silence.
"Don't distract me," I hissed, calibrating the burette, my fingers steady only through force of will.
He let out a soft, dark laugh. "The meniscus is wavering. Nervous? Or just out of your depth?" His own titration was a flawless, ruthless progression.
"I'm exactly where I need to be," I whispered back, the lie tasting sharp.
The experiment became a silent, furious race. Our movements mirrored each other, a distorted synchronization. When we both reached for the solitary bottle of silver nitrate on the shared rack, our hands collided.
The contact wasn't an accident. It was a live wire. A jolt of pure, undiluted current shot up my arm. I snatched my hand back as if scalded, but not before I saw his eyes, the blue had darkened, consumed by a look of stark, predatory hunger. The attraction was no longer a subtext. It was a physical law in the space between us, thick and suffocating.
I finished my titration a heartbeat before him. The solution bloomed into the perfect, faint blush-pink.
"Finished," I announced, my voice unsteady.
Thorne inspected. "Duval: 99.9% purity. Volkov: 99.8%. Victory to Miss Duval."
Dmitri didn't scowl. He looked… pleased. Intimately, disturbingly pleased. He leaned across the aisle, invading my space. "Such a specific, vicious talent," he murmured, his gaze tracing the frantic pulse in my throat. "Don't let them blunt it. I'd hate to see something so sharp go to waste."
Dmitri's POV
The chemical high of competition faded, replaced by the colder calculus of reality. Victories in labs were ephemeral. Power outside them was permanent.
I was steering Isabelle toward the library, a casual, possessive gesture, when the heavy doors of the administration wing groaned open. My father, Viktor Volkov, emerged with Director Rousseau and a clutch of grim-faced advisors.
Viktor was a monument to calculated power. But as his gaze swept the hall and locked onto Isabelle, the monument fractured.
He stopped dead. All color drained from his face, leaving a mask of grey stone. His hand, usually so steady, rose slightly, fingers twitching.
"Elena?"
The name was a breath stolen from a grave. It wasn't a question. It was a recognition that shattered his composure completely. He took an aborted, staggering step forward, his eyes wide with a raw, haunted horror I had never witnessed. The mighty Viktor Volkov was disintegrating in public.
Isabelle froze beside me, her knuckles white on her violin case. "My name is Isabelle, sir."
He didn't hear her. He was lost in a decades-old nightmare. Director Rousseau moved with swift, practiced grace, inserting his body between my father and the girl, a hand firm on Viktor's shoulder.
"A thousand apologies, Miss Duval," Rousseau said, his voice a smooth, neutralizing agent. "Mr. Volkov is fatigued from board discussions. The mind plays tricks." He turned, his tone shifting to one of gentle, unyielding command. "Viktor. My office. Now."
He guided my shell-shocked father away. Viktor kept looking back, his eyes glued to Isabelle as if she were a ghost pulling him into the past.
I turned to Isabelle. She was trembling, her face as pale as his had been. The confusion in her eyes was a vulnerability that made my chest tighten unpleasantly.
"Pay no attention," I said, stepping closer, using my body to block the retreating figures. My voice was softer than I intended. "He's under strain. He mistook you for someone from long ago."
"He looked at me like he'd seen a demon," she whispered.
"He's just a man," I said, the lie smooth on my tongue. My own mind was racing, connecting shattered pieces. "And men see phantoms when they're tired. Go to the library. I'll find you later."
I didn't go to the library. I went to the private lounge where they had sequestered him.
I entered without knocking. He was slumped in a chair, a glass of vodka clutched in a hand that wouldn't stop trembling. He looked old. Defeated.
"Who is Elena?" The question was an accusation.
He took a long, burning swallow. "A sin I thought was buried. A girl who was never meant to walk this earth again."
"She is the mirror image of Isabelle Duval," I pressed, my voice cold. "And Isabelle's mother was Elena Valois. You didn't see a ghost, Father. You saw a bloodline you failed to erase."
He looked up then, and a spark of his familiar, icy fury returned, aimed at the memory, not at me. "She was the daughter of a king. A virtuoso. She was meant for a crown." His voice dropped to a guttural rasp of pure, aged bitterness. "But she chose a man who made our power look like a child's fantasy. A man whose name became a curse in our circles. Her husband… Isabelle's father… he wasn't just royalty. He was a force of nature. We tried to dismantle them. We thought we had succeeded."
The pieces snapped together with terrible clarity. Isabelle wasn't a scholarship rat. She was a scion of two legends, a fallen queen and a king who had vaporized rather than surrender. Her very existence was a thumb in the eye of everyone who had tried to erase her parents.
I looked at my broken father, at his fear that was older than I was. A cold, possessive certainty settled in my bones.
"I am not you," I said, turning for the door. "I don't run from ghosts. I collect them."
The game had been upended. This was no longer about winning a school. It was about claiming a lost empire. And I would be the architect of its return. Not for her legacy. For mine. She would be the crown, and I would be the hand that placed it and the power that controlled the throne.