They say Ravenwell Academy is for the best of the best—children of politicians, CEOs, royalty, and old money that smells like secrets. I don't belong here. And yet, here I am, standing in the center of its marble lobby, clutching my transfer papers like they might bite me.
The receptionist, a pale woman with icy eyes and a tighter bun than I've ever seen, gives me a glance before sliding my papers back over the counter.
"Locker 215. Homeroom 3C. Don't be late," she says, her voice sharp enough to cut glass.
I nod, offering a tight smile that never reaches my eyes. Smiling feels strange now, like trying to walk on a leg that's been broken and healed wrong.
It's been three months since Ethan died.
People say it like that—died. As if he went to sleep and just... forgot to wake up. But Ethan didn't die. He disappeared. One night he was here, and the next, all that was left was a voicemail and a river. They ruled it a suicide. Closed the case. Case dismissed.
But I never believed it.
Not when he told me, the week before he vanished:
"If anything happens to me, Evie—don't trust anyone at Ravenwell."
So here I am. Transfer student, sister of the dead boy, walking into the lion's den with a backpack full of suspicion and a heart that hasn't stopped aching.
—
The hallways at Ravenwell are too quiet. There's no hum of casual chatter, no squeaky sneakers or gum wrappers. Just the soft echo of loafers on polished stone and the occasional clipped conversation in French, Latin, or something too expensive for public school ears. Portraits line the walls—stern ancestors whose painted eyes seemed to follow me. The light from the tall, arched windows sliced the corridor into bars, and even the dust looked deliberate, as if the Academy itself curated what got to move.
I make it to my locker and try to open it three times before realizing it's upside-down numbered. Typical.
"There's a trick to it."
The voice startles me. I turn sharply—and then freeze.
He's leaning against the locker next to mine, a dark figure in the sea of uniform gray. Black curls fall just above his sharp, unreadable eyes, and there's a slant to his mouth that looks like a smirk but isn't quite. Like he's amused by something no one else can see.
"You have to twist it left-right-left, not right-left-right," he says.
I narrow my eyes. "Thanks."
He doesn't move, doesn't blink. Just watches me like I'm a riddle he hasn't solved yet.
"You're Evelyn Moore," he says.
It's not a question.
"And you are…?"
He pushes off the locker slowly. "Luca. Blackwood."
The name hits like a drop of ink in water. Spreads quickly. Familiar.
Ethan mentioned a Luca once. Just once. A fight. A threat. A warning.
"I've heard of you," I say.
He smiles, but there's no warmth. "Everyone has."
His eyes flick to the bracelet on my wrist—Ethan's. A leather band worn thin from use. He notices, and for a brief moment, something flickers across his face. Guilt? Recognition? Maybe a shadow of something like sorrow. But it's gone in an instant, like a candle blown out.
"You're late for homeroom," he says, already walking away.
I don't follow him. Not immediately. My heart is beating too fast, and I'm not sure why.
Maybe it's the way he said my name like he already knew everything about me.
Maybe it's because he's the first person at Ravenwell who didn't look through me.
Or maybe it's because he was the last person to see my brother alive.
—
Homeroom is a quiet chaos. Students in tailored uniforms lean in close to whisper things they don't want the teachers to hear. Someone's drawing a crown on a notebook. Another girl is scrolling through photos that look like they were taken at a masquerade ball—except every mask has a letter on it. A group of boys trade business cards like they're trading baseball cards. There's an entire economy of secrets here, and everyone knows the exchange rate.
I sit in the back.
Mr. Calloway, homeroom and rhetoric teacher, barely looks up from his attendance sheet. He has the habit of speaking as if he's reading all of us aloud for a jury. "New student," he mumbles. "Evelyn Moore. Try not to cause a scandal."
The class chuckles.
I don't smile.
By the end of the morning my head is full of names I don't remember, faces I won't see again, and the steady, silent pulse of being observed. Ravenwell is a place that catalogues everything: your grades, your lineage, who you sit with at lunch, the rumors that bloom around you and never die. I can feel the school's eyes on me—not cruel so much as hungry, like a library that wants to know which book will be opened.
The campus map they give new students is a work of art: gardens, courtyards, statues with inscrutable expressions. The East Wing is marked in cursive with a small note beside it: "Restricted." No one explains why. The older students only grin and say, "Don't go there unless you want trouble." Which, in Ravenwell terms, translates to: "Go there if you want to disappear into history."
By lunch, I feel like I've aged ten years.
I take my tray and look around, hoping for somewhere—anywhere—that doesn't reek of judgment or whispered gossip. That's when I see him again.
Luca Blackwood, sitting alone at a table near the window, lazily spinning a pen between his fingers. Sunlight throws a halo around his profile and for a second it softens him like a filter. He glances up once, then goes back to his thoughts like the world bores him.
And maybe it does.
I should walk away.
But my feet don't listen.
—
"You're persistent," he says without looking at me.
"I just want answers."
"About your brother?"
I flinch. He's direct. Sharp. Like a scalpel.
"Yes," I say.
Luca finally looks at me. His eyes are dark, stormy. He leans in, and for the first time, I see something dangerous in him. Not violent. Not cruel. Just… haunted. As though secrets have weight, and he's carrying them like stones in his pockets.
"You won't like the answers," he says. "And once you start digging, there's no going back."
I straighten my spine. "I'm not afraid of the truth."
"You should be," he whispers.
He studies my face like he's cataloguing what I am—grief, stubbornness, a thin thread of fury. "Your brother was reckless," he says after a long beat, as if unwilling to say more. "He knew things he shouldn't have known, and he said too much to the wrong people."
I feel the air press in, a pressure familiar from small, claustrophobic rooms—courtrooms, hospital rooms, the space between what people say and what they hide.
"Who are the wrong people?" I ask, though my voice feels thin.
"People with pockets and purpose," Luca answers. "People who make decisions behind closed doors. People who keep the Academy tidy by shoving messy things under rugs."
"And you?"
He considers. "People watch me. People warn me. People make offers I don't refuse."
It's as close to confession as he gets. A shrug of shoulders that says both "I'm compromised" and "I'm dangerous" at once.
"Why would Ethan warn me about Ravenwell?" I ask. "Why would he—"
"He cared about you," Luca says simply. "People protect who they love. Or they try to."
The bell rings. It's a small sound, hardly more than a chime, but here it is an orchestra conductor. Students file out. Luca pushes his chair back, his movements lazy and deliberate, like everything is on purpose but nothing important is urgent.
"Find him," he says, standing. "If you want the truth, find out who Ethan really talked to. But remember: people who want to keep things secret rarely do it politely."
"And you?" I ask. "Are you going to help me?"
He pauses, and that pause stretches longer than the rest of the hallway. If looks could cut, his could carve canyons.
"I'm not your savior," he says. "I'm the person who may have been involved in making things worse. If you want help, ask for it. If you want to survive this, don't burn bridges you can't rebuild."
There's a warning in his words and, beneath the warning, a strange reluctance to step further into the story. It's like watching someone hold a match above a dry forest and hesitate.
"I don't need a savior," I say. "I need answers."
He smiles then, small and private. It's the first time his face looks like it belongs to someone younger than the Academy made him. "Then you're in danger," he says. "Not because of what you know, but because of where you're from—and who you love."
He walks away—slowly, with the kind of confidence that announces territory. I watch him go, feeling like I've been set down inside a machine and the gears have already begun to turn.
—
That night, I sit in my dorm room, staring at Ethan's old journal. The one they returned to us after his death. Most of the pages are filled with drawings, symbols I don't understand, and phrases scratched out in angry ink. There are grocery lists beside sketches of places I've never been, phone numbers that trail off into ellipses.
But there's one line I keep coming back to:
"L.B. knows the truth. But truth costs blood."
L.B.
Luca Blackwood.
I close the journal and look out the window at the dark, twisted halls of Ravenwell below. Lanterns line the walkways, their light more ornamental than illuminating. The Academy's silhouette is a jagged row of teeth against the night sky, and somewhere within those teeth, secrets chew.
I didn't come here to make friends.
I came to find out what happened to my brother.
And now I know exactly where to start.
There's a coldness in the pit of my stomach that feels like the beginning of an avalanche. Luca isn't just a name in a notebook anymore; he's a living answer with a smile that promises riddles. He's handsome in a way that's dangerous—like a storm that will leave you soaked and changed. He is my first clue and my worst enemy wrapped into one.
Outside, the wind picks up and the Academy seems to whisper. I trace the leather of Ethan's bracelet with my thumb until the skin goes numb. If Luca is the person Ethan warned me about—or the person who could help me—then tonight I decide I will learn whether he will be ally or assassin to my search.
Either way, when I close my eyes, the last thing I see is Luca Blackwood's profile, retreating into the corridor like the shadow of something larger, and I know — with a clarity that makes my throat ache — that Ravenwell has already noticed me.