The Space Between Their Shadows
854 Words
Karina Reed had never understood how a room could feel both freezing cold and on fire. But sitting in Aldwych’s Grand Lecture Hall that afternoon, she realized it was entirely possible.
Ethan Holloway was one row behind her. One row too close.
She could feel him like a storm at her back—quiet, building, brimming with unsaid things. The memory of his whisper in the library still haunted the curve of her neck. “Try harder.” Not a threat. Not quite encouragement. Something else. Something that made her toes curl in her shoes and her thoughts stutter.
The lecture was on Political Philosophy in Magical Governance, but Karina couldn’t absorb a word. She tapped her pen against her notebook, letting her golden curls shield her from view.
“Miss Reed,” Professor Hawthorne’s voice cut through the hall like a blade.
Karina straightened, swallowing her panic. “Yes?”
“Your thoughts on dual-authoritarianism within enchanted societies?”
Karina opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Then—
“She agrees with Marcus Devlin’s view,” Ethan’s voice slid through the air like silk, dark and smooth. “That enforced hierarchy doesn’t allow for moral variance when power is magical in nature.”
The class turned. So did Hawthorne. And Karina just gawked.
“Is that true, Miss Reed?”
She blinked. “Uh… yes. Yes, it is.”
Hawthorne raised a brow but nodded. “Very well. Continue reading.”
Karina turned slowly in her seat, her deep blue eyes narrowing at Holloway.
He smirked. Smirked.
“You’re welcome,” he mouthed.
She mouthed back, you’re impossible.
But beneath that, there was something else. A silent thread now stretched between them, pulled taut. A little more than rivalry. A little less than... something she wasn’t ready to name.
After class, Karina moved fast, her boots clacking down Aldwych’s echoing stone corridors. She needed air. Or a distraction. Or maybe to bang her head against the wall a few times until Holloway’s smirk stopped replaying in her brain.
Instead, she ran straight into Scarlett and Izumi.
“Well, well,” Scarlett said, arms folded. “Someone looks flustered.”
“Shut up,” Karina grumbled, brushing past. “Not everything is about Holloway.”
Izumi raised a brow. “You’re the one who brought him up.”
Karina groaned. “I hate you both.”
Scarlett slung an arm around her shoulder. “We love you too, sunshine. Now come on, you promised to help me finish that research project, remember?”
Right. Research. Distractions. Perfect.
But as they passed by the arched windows leading toward the east wing, Karina’s steps slowed.
Something shimmered in the glass. Not a reflection. Not a trick of the light. A figure. Pale. Barely visible. Standing at the edge of the school's cemetery.
Karina froze.
“Did you guys see that?” she asked.
Scarlett and Izumi turned. “See what?”
“There was… someone. Outside. In the cemetery.”
They peered out the window.
“There’s no one there, Karina,” Izumi said gently.
Karina stared a beat longer. The graveyard stretched in the distance, a tangle of stone and mist beneath the early sunset. Empty.
“Maybe I’m just tired,” she mumbled.
Scarlett tugged her along. “You’ve been spending too much time near Holloway. He’s corrupting your brain.”
Karina didn’t laugh.
She looked back over her shoulder.
And saw nothing.
---
Ethan Holloway sat in the darkest corner of the campus greenhouse that evening, watching his breath fog the glass.
His bracelet—thin silver, etched with runes—glinted softly in the moonlight. His mind, however, wasn’t calm. Not even close.
The thing in the cemetery had returned.
He’d felt it last night. Not seen—felt. A prickle behind his eyes, a pressure in his skull, like someone was watching him from behind the veil.
And today, Karina had seen it too.
That was the problem.
She shouldn’t be seeing these things. Not yet. Not when the principal and a handful of others had worked so hard to bury the past.
And yet Karina Reed—of course it had to be her—was poking holes in the illusion.
A ghost was one thing.
But if she kept digging, she might find more than spirits.
She might find him.
And that was a secret Ethan wasn’t ready to bleed for.
---
That night, Karina couldn’t sleep.
The moon hung fat and low, casting ghostlight across her dorm ceiling. Scarlett snored softly in the bed across the room. All was still.
But her mind was spinning. Holloway’s words. That figure in the window. The cold that sank into her bones.
She climbed from her bed, tiptoeing to her desk. Her necklace, glowing faintly, cast warm gold across her notebook.
She wrote one word at the top of the page:
Cemetery.
Then below it:
Ghosts?
Hallucination?
Covered up?
She was going to find out the truth.
Even if it meant working with the last person she wanted to ask.
Even if that person was Ethan Holloway.
- Writer
