Ghost and Crown
690 Words
They said Cassian Moretti could have anything he wanted.
Power. Money. Blood.
And girls — gods, the girls. They followed him like planets in orbit. Clung to his arms, melted under his touch, gave themselves over like offerings to a dark god with pretty eyes.
He didn’t even have to try.
“Cassian,” a girl breathed beside him as he sauntered down the hallway, her red-tipped nails skating over his chest. “I had a dream about you last night.”
He grinned lazily. “Was I good?”
“You ruined me.”
He leaned in, lips brushing her ear. “Then it wasn’t a dream.”
She gasped — aroused, addicted. Just like all the others.
The crowd thickened in the quad. The usual chaos — flirting, posturing, secret deals in plain sight. He barely paid attention.
Until he saw her.
Wednesday Hale.
Sitting beneath the dead tree again, legs crossed, skirt rumpled but not suggestive. Her uniform neat, severe. Black tights. Black cardigan. Black eyes that refused to look at anyone — especially him.
There was something about her stillness that messed with his head. Like she’d been frozen in time, carved from ice and ash, and set here just to f**k with his control.
No makeup. No perfume. No desperation.
Just a quiet defiance that said stay the hell away — and made him want to get closer.
He slowed. Stared.
She didn’t move.
Didn’t even flinch.
His friends noticed.
“Yo, Cass,” said Dante, one of his closest boys, clapping him on the shoulder. “Why the hell are you looking at her?”
Lucian raised an eyebrow. “You planning to raise the dead now?”
Cassian didn’t answer. Just watched.
Wednesday turned a page in her book — slow, deliberate.
“She’s not even hot,” a girl nearby said, wrinkling her nose. “Like, she could be, if she actually tried. But she’s weird. Creepy. Like some kind of haunted doll.”
“She’s got trauma stamped all over her,” Dante muttered. “No way she opens up for anyone. Like… ever.”
“She's untouched,” Lucian added. “I mean that literally. You’d probably burst into flames if you tried.”
Cassian chuckled under his breath.
“She looks like she hasn’t smiled in years,” someone else said.
Cassian’s eyes didn’t leave her. “Maybe I’ll be the first.”
Lucian laughed. “You? With her? Please. You’d have better luck charming the headmistress.”
“Challenge accepted,” Cassian murmured.
“Oh, come on,” Dante scoffed. “You’ve been in half the dorms on this side of the building. You seriously want Ghost Girl now?”
“She doesn’t even look at you,” someone added.
And that, more than anything, sealed it.
Cassian tilted his head. His voice dropped low and dangerous, that cocky grin playing on his lips. “Didn’t your daddy ever warn you,” he muttered under his breath, watching her, “about boys like me?”
Still, she didn’t look up. Didn’t react.
So he leaned in closer, eyes tracing the line of her jaw from a distance, the soft curve of her mouth.
“I’m starting to think,” he said slowly, “that if I got under the covers with her, she wouldn’t even blink.”
Dante choked. “You’re out of your goddamn mind.”
Cassian smirked. “Maybe.”
Lucian whistled. “No way you even get close. She’s got fuckin’ armor under that skirt.”
But Cassian wasn’t laughing anymore.
Because for just a second — a flicker, like the wind catching a flame — her eyes lifted from the page.
And they met his.
Still. Cold. Curious.
She looked at him like he was an equation she didn’t care to solve. Like he didn’t matter.
And then she looked away.
Dismissed.
Cassian’s jaw flexed.
“Holy s**t,” Dante muttered. “She really just looked at you like you were furniture.”
Cassian licked his lips slowly, a dangerous heat settling low in his stomach.
“Oh, this is gonna be fun.”
- Writer
