𐙚˚࿔ Scarlett POV 𝜗𝜚˚⋆

The independent study room was located in the oldest wing of the academy, a place where the Wi-Fi was spotty and the dust motes danced in the high, arched shafts of sunlight. No one came here. The elite students preferred the glass-walled, high-tech library where they could be seen studying by their peers.

I sat at a heavy oak table in the corner, a textbook open in front of me, but I wasn't reading.

I was looking at my hands.

They were so thin. No scars yet. In my past life, when I was twenty, I had smashed a mirror in a hotel room in Paris after Zyan had attended an art exhibition with Stella as his official family guest. A shard of glass had sliced open my right palm, leaving a jagged, silver line that never truly faded. I used to look at that scar and think it was a badge of my love, proof of how deeply I could feel things.

What an absolute fool I was.

I rubbed my thumb over my unblemished skin. The memory of that pain was still there, a phantom ache that reminded me of the true danger of this timeline.

I hadn't seen him yet.

Zyan.

Just the thought of his name made the air in my lungs feel thin. The heir to the world's number one conglomerate. The boy who moved through life like an old god—unbothered, untouchable, completely immune to the trivialities of human emotion.

When I was sixteen, I thought his coldness was a challenge. I thought if I could just climb high enough, if I could just throw myself into his path enough times, he would have no choice but to catch me. I used to find out his schedule, show up at his favorite cafes, buy him expensive vintage records he never listened to, and send him letters he probably used to start his fireplace.

I remembered the last time I saw him in that past life. I was twenty-one, completely broke after my father had frozen my accounts, standing outside his corporate office in the pouring rain, begging his secretary for just five minutes of his time.

When he finally walked out to his car, flanked by four bodyguards, he hadn't even stopped. He had looked at me through his dark sunglasses—just a brief, two-second glance that carried no hatred, no anger, no disgust. Just a pure, unadulterated emptiness. Like he was looking at a piece of discarded plastic on the sidewalk.

"Miss Salvatore," his assistant had told me, handing me a dry towel with a look of intense embarrassment. "Mr. Zyan requests that you stop loitering. It is bad for the street's aesthetic."

Bad for the aesthetic.

That was what my life had been to him. An aesthetic inconvenience.

A soft knock on the independent study door broke my thoughts. I didn't flinch, but my hand instinctively closed into a fist, hiding my palm.

The door pushed open, and Noah stood in the frame.

He didn't have his usual smirk. His school blazer was unbuttoned, his tie slightly loose, looking less like the pristine Salvatore prince and more like a teenager who had spent his lunch hour searching the entire campus for something he lost.

"So this is where you hid yourself," he said, stepping into the room. He didn't sit down; he just leaned against the edge of my table, his dark eyes analyzing my face, trying to find the crack in my armor.

"I'm not hiding, Noah," I said softly, keeping my voice small, letting my eyelashes cast long shadows over my cheeks. "I'm just doing my work. Like Father told me to."

Noah winced slightly at the mention of our father. He reached up, rubbing the back of his neck. "Look, Scarlett... about what happened in the car. And what happened with Chloe in the hall."

"What about it?" I looked up, making sure my eyes were completely wide and innocent, devoid of any of the malice he was used to.

"Chloe is an idiot," Noah said bluntly, his voice carrying a rare edge of annoyance. "She doesn't know when to shut her mouth. But Stella was really upset, Scarlett. She's been crying in the student lounge because everyone is whispering that she's bullying you at home."

A cold, vicious thrill shot through my veins, but I didn't let a single trace of it reach my face. Instead, I let my eyes widen further, my lips parting in a small, horrified gasp.

"Crying?" I stood up quickly, my chair scraping against the floor. I let my hands tremble as I gathered my notebooks, deliberately dropping one to the floor to show how scattered and panicked I was. "Oh no... I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to make her look bad, Noah, I swear. I was just... my head really hurt, and I didn't want to fight anymore. Please tell her I'm sorry. I'll go tell everyone it was my fault. I'll tell them I'm just crazy, like I usually am."

I bent down to pick up the book, my movements clumsy, desperate.

Noah's hand reached down, gripping my wrist to stop me. His grip wasn't tight, but it was firm. He forced me to stand up, his eyes locked onto mine. For the first time in his life, he wasn't looking at me with indifference. He looked confused, deeply unsettled, and—for a fraction of a second—guilty.

"Stop it, Scarlett," he said, his voice dropping to a lower, rougher register. "Stop talking like that. You're not crazy."

"But that's what you all think, isn't it?" I whispered, letting a single, heavy tear finally spill over my eyelid, tracking slowly down my cheek. I looked up at him, my biological brother, the boy who had ignored my existence for years because Stella was easier to deal with. "Every time I speak, you look at me like I'm a mistake. Every time I cry, Mom tells me to stop being dramatic. I'm just... I'm so tired, Noah. I'm so tired of being the bad guy. I just want to be quiet. Why won't you let me just be quiet?"

Noah's hand loosened on my wrist, his fingers slipping away as if he had been burned. He stepped back, his chest rising and falling heavily. He looked at me, really looked at me, seeing the hollow exhaustion in my eyes—an exhaustion that a sixteen-year-old shouldn't be capable of faking.

He didn't know that this exhaustion wasn't from today. It was from twenty-two years of a wasted, unloved life.

"Scarlett..." he started, his voice cracking slightly.

But I didn't give him the chance to fix his conscience. I grabbed my dropped notebook, shoved it into my bag, and rushed past him, letting a soft, muffled sob escape my throat as I tore open the door and ran down the empty hallway.

Behind me, Noah didn't follow. But I knew him. He was the social reader, the one who balanced the family's public image. And right now, the image of his little sister sobbing, begging to just be allowed to exist in silence, was going to burn a hole straight through his guarded, logical heart.

One down, I thought as I ran toward the courtyard, my face slick with tears but my mind as cold and sharp as a winter morning. Two to go.

    𐙚˚࿔ thank you𝜗𝜚˚⋆

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