CHAPTER 2
1578 Words
Crestfall Institute had a way of turning teenagers into little politicians.
Not the charming kind.
The kind that could smile at you while deciding whether you were useful.
By fifteen, most people at Crestfall already had a brand. Some of them wore it like perfume. Others wore it like armor. Mine was simple: Miracle Baby. The CEO’s daughter. Quiet. Sharp. Untouchable.
It wasn’t exactly wrong.
It also wasn’t exactly me.
The thing about being watched is that you start watching yourself back. You learn what your face looks like when you’re tired. You learn how to keep your voice steady even when something inside you is shaking. You learn how to sit in a room full of people and make them think you’re not afraid of them.
I got very good at that.
Caius got very good at everything else.
He showed up in my life like a bright stain nobody could ignore, and then he stayed. Not because he needed me. Caius never needed anybody. He simply chose.
And when Caius chose you, the whole school eventually noticed.
He’d tilt his head when people spoke, listening like a judge. He’d raise one eyebrow when a teacher tried to shame him, like the teacher had made a fashion mistake. He’d laugh at the wrong moments, then speak at the right ones and leave everyone quietly scrambling to catch up.
Some people called him arrogant.
I called him accurate.
He’d sit beside me in the cafeteria, legs crossed like he was posing for a photograph, and critique everybody’s outfits with the kind of seriousness that made you wonder if clothes were actually life or death.
“That boy is wearing three logos,” Caius whispered one afternoon, eyes narrowed in disgust. “Three. Like he’s sponsored by desperation.”
I stared at the boy. He was laughing loudly with his friends, shoulders too tense, trying too hard to be seen.
“You’re mean,” I said, but my mouth was already trying not to smile.
Caius glanced at me. “No. I’m honest.”
“You’re both.”
His grin flashed, pleased. “Thank you, Zahira.”
I froze.
He only called me that in private. Never at school. Never out loud where the name could become a rumor. Zahira was the name that belonged to my father’s voice late at night. A soft thing. A safe thing.
Caius said it like he’d stolen it, then returned it to me polished.
I looked at him sharply. “Don’t.”
His expression changed immediately, all the teasing falling away. “Sorry,” he said, quiet, and then he leaned closer so only I could hear. “I just wanted to see if you’d react.”
My eyes narrowed. “Why?”
He shrugged, too elegant for the movement to look casual. “Because you don’t react to anything. It’s unnatural.”
“It’s necessary.”
Caius studied me for a second, his face suddenly too serious for a cafeteria full of noise. “You know you’re allowed to be a person, right?”
I didn’t answer fast enough.
He nodded once, like he’d just confirmed something. Then his voice went light again, like he’d folded the heavy conversation into a pocket. “Anyway,” he said, waving his fork like a weapon, “I’m redesigning your entire existence.”
I let out a small laugh. “What does that even mean?”
“It means,” he said, eyes glittering, “we’re going to make them stop thinking they own the story of you.”
That was Caius.
He could say something ridiculous and somehow it landed like a promise.
The first time I realized how far his protection went was not dramatic. Not a fight, not a scene, not one of those school moments people replay for years.
It was smaller. Scarier.
It was during debate season.
Crestfall took debate like religion. You didn’t just win; you represented the school’s intelligence. People trained for it the way athletes trained for nationals.
I was team lead that year, which meant everybody who didn’t like me had to swallow it.
Our first big match was against Dominion Heights, our biggest rival. The kind of school that produced loud, confident kids with polished accents and parents who sat in the front row like judges.
On the morning of the match, I walked into the debate room and felt the air tilt.
My notes were missing.
Not misplaced. Not forgotten.
Missing.
My folder was gone from my bag, like someone had reached into my life and removed the thing that made me feel prepared.
My throat went tight. My hands stayed steady. I refused to give the room the satisfaction of seeing panic.
I turned my bag upside down anyway. Papers fluttered out like useless birds.
Nothing.
My teammates looked at me like they were afraid of the silence around my face.
And then I heard it.
A soft tapping.
Not a table-tap like annoyance. A nervous tap, fast, unconscious.
I followed the sound with my eyes.
One of the substitute debaters—someone who’d smiled at me for weeks—was tapping their pen against their knee under the table.
Fast. Faster. Stopping. Starting again.
Guilt has a rhythm.
Caius strolled in late like he owned time, took one look at my face, and didn’t ask what happened.
He just said, “Oh.”
One word. Flat.
He walked across the room, leaned over the substitute debater’s shoulder as if he was checking their tie, and murmured something I couldn’t hear.
The boy’s face drained of color.
The tapping stopped.
Caius straightened, smiled at the room like nothing was wrong, then walked to my desk and placed my folder down perfectly centered.
My folder.
My notes.
Every page intact.
The room went so quiet the ceiling fan sounded loud.
I stared at Caius. “Where did you—”
He leaned down close enough that his perfume hit me. Clean, expensive, faintly spicy. “I asked politely,” he whispered.
“Politely,” I repeated.
Caius smiled with his mouth only. “And then I remembered I don’t actually have to be polite.”
My stomach flipped, not with fear but with something else. Relief laced with the sudden awareness that Caius could be terrifying if he wanted to be.
He tapped the edge of my folder gently. “Win,” he said, like a command.
I swallowed. “What did you say to him?”
Caius’s eyes slid toward the boy. The boy wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“I told him,” Caius said softly, “that if he ever tries to humiliate you again, I’ll make sure he never gets into any university his father can’t buy.”
I stared.
“That’s crazy,” I said, because it was.
Caius shrugged. “So is stealing from you.”
I should have been angry.
Instead, I felt something warm and dangerous settle in my chest.
Because nobody protected me like that.
People feared my father. People flattered my mother. People watched me.
Caius protected me.
And he did it like it was nothing. Like it was as natural as breathing.
We won that debate match, of course.
Not because I’m a miracle.
Because I worked. Because I’m sharp. Because I was furious.
After, in the hallway, I found the substitute debater crying quietly by the lockers.
He looked up at me with swollen eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “They said— they said you wouldn’t notice. They said you’d just… stay quiet and take it.”
My throat tightened again, but this time it wasn’t panic. It was anger—slow, deep, controlled.
“Who is they?” I asked.
He shook his head, sobbing harder. “I can’t—”
Caius appeared beside me, hands in his pockets, expression blank.
The boy took one look at him and flinched like he’d seen a ghost.
That’s when I understood.
Caius’s protection was not a schoolboy thing.
It was instinct.
It was training.
It came from a family that didn’t argue with the world. They rearranged it.
I turned to Caius slowly. “What are you?”
His eyes flicked to my face, and for a second the mask slipped. Something old. Something shadowed.
Then he smiled, lazy and pretty. “I’m your friend,” he said. “Obviously.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Caius leaned closer, voice soft, almost tender. “Zahira,” he said, and the name hit like a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t ask questions you’re not ready to carry.”
I went still.
Because something in me already knew there were questions my life couldn’t afford.
Caius touched my chin lightly, tilting my face up as if he was checking my posture. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go home. You’re too tense. It’s aging you.”
I slapped his hand away. “I’m fifteen.”
“And already a widow,” he said dramatically, then grinned when I glared. “I’m joking.”
I should have laughed.
Instead, I looked at him and thought, not for the first time, that Caius was beautiful in a way that made people reckless.
And I realized something else too.
If Caius loved you, you were safe.
If Caius didn’t, you were in trouble.
And I had no idea which category the world had put me in.
End of Chapter Two
- Writer
