The morning air in the city was always gray, but inside the Silas estate, it was a suffocating shade of black. Lyra stood before the full-length mirror, her fingers trembling as she buttoned the crisp white collar of her school uniform. Every movement felt like a betrayal of her own body. Underneath the expensive fabric, her skin felt raw—a map of invisible handprints and the cold, lingering memory of velvet-lined rooms she was never allowed to leave.
She looked at her reflection but didn't recognize the girl staring back. Her eyes were wide, the color of bruised violets, shadowed by a silence that had become her only armor.
"Lyra."
The voice didn't come from the hallway; it came from the doorway, low and oily, like a secret whispered in a graveyard. She didn't have to turn around to know Silas was there. She could smell him—the expensive blend of cedarwood, aged bourbon, and the metallic tang of something cruel.
He walked toward her, his footsteps silent on the thick Persian rug. When he reached her, he didn't grab her. He laid a single, heavy hand on her shoulder, his thumb stroking the base of her neck. His signet ring—a heavy gold band with a crest that represented generations of blood-soaked money, was ice-cold against her heated skin.
"You look so pure in this uniform," he murmured, his breath ghosting against her ear. "A porcelain doll. And what is the rule about dolls, Lyra?"
She swallowed, the lump in her throat feeling like a jagged stone. She couldn't speak. She wasn't allowed to. She simply lowered her head, her chin touching her chest.
"They don't make a sound," Silas finished for her, his grip tightening just enough to bruise, just enough to remind her that he owned the very air in her lungs. "Go to school. Be the ghost I raised you to be. If I hear that you've spoken to anyone if I find out you've let a single word escape those pretty lips, I'll make sure the consequences are... memorable."
He leaned in, kissing her temple. It wasn't a kiss of affection; it was a brand. Then, he was gone, leaving nothing but the scent of his cologne and a crushing sense of dread that followed her all the way to the wrought-iron gates of St. Jude's Academy.
The school was a cathedral of privilege, filled with teenagers who worried about grades and prom dates. To Lyra, it was a different kind of prison, one where she had to pretend the sun didn't hurt her eyes.
She sat in the back of the Literature class, her desk pushed into the farthest corner. She kept her head down, her long, dark hair falling like a curtain around her face. She was the "weird girl," who never spoke, the girl who moved through the halls like a shadow. She preferred it that way. Shadows were harder to hit.
Then, the door opened.
The teacher was saying something about a new transfer student from the city, but Lyra wasn't listening until the air in the room seemed to shift. It was as if someone had cracked a window in a room that had been sealed for years.
"Everyone, this is Julian," the teacher announced.
Lyra glanced up, just a fraction.
He wasn't like the other boys at St. Jude's. They were all sharp edges and arrogance, polished by their fathers' bank accounts. Julian was... soft. Not weak, but radiant. He wore the uniform loosely, his tie slightly crooked, and he had a mess of golden-brown hair that looked like it had been windswept. But it was his eyes that stopped Lyra's heart. They were warm, the color of honey in the sun, and they held a spark of genuine curiosity that she hadn't seen in years.
As he scanned the room for a seat, his gaze landed on her.
Most people looked through Lyra. Julian looked at her.
He didn't smirk or look away in discomfort. He smiled. It was a small, tentative thing, but it hit Lyra like a physical blow. Her heart, which she had spent years trying to turn into a block of ice, gave a traitorous, agonizing thud against her ribs.
"There's a spot next to Lyra," the teacher said, pointing to the empty desk beside her.
Lyra's breath hitched. She froze as Julian walked down the aisle. Every step he took felt like a countdown. When he sat down, the scent of him hit her—rainwater and citrus. It was so clean, so vastly different from the heavy, suffocating musk of Silas's house, that it made her dizzy.
"Hey," he whispered, leaning slightly toward her as the teacher began the lecture.
Lyra didn't move. She stared at her notebook, her knuckles white as she gripped her pen.
"I'm Julian," he continued, his voice a low, pleasant hum that vibrated in her chest. "Tough first day, huh? Everyone's staring like I've got two heads."
He waited for a response. A second passed. Two. The silence between them grew heavy, but Julian didn't seem annoyed. He just tilted his head, watching the way her hair hid her face.
"You can't talk?," he said softly. It wasn't a judgment; it was an observation, filled with a strange kind of tenderness. "That's okay. I can talk enough for both of us."
He reached out, his hand hovering over the desk. For a terrifying, electric moment, Lyra thought he was going to touch her hand. Her skin screamed in anticipation—half-fear, half-shameful longing. But he just tapped the corner of her notebook with a playful finger.
"Nice drawing," he whispered, nodding at the jagged, dark abstract shapes she had been doodling. "It looks like a storm. I've always liked the rain."
Lyra felt a tear prick the corner of her eye. She quickly blinked it away, her throat burning. She wanted to look at him. She wanted to tell him that the storm wasn't on the paper—it was inside her. She wanted to tell him to run, to stay away from her before the darkness that followed her stained his bright, golden life.
But she remained silent, a ghost trapped in a body that was starting to remember how to feel. And as Julian settled into his seat, his shoulder just inches from hers, Lyra realized that the next 300 days were going to be the most beautiful torture of her life.