My Sister’s Murderer Is Protecting

CHAPTER TWO: BLACKTHORN ACADEMY

POV: Vespera Vale



The gates of Blackthorn Academy looked like something built to keep people out, Or in. I stood at the bottom of the stone steps with my new uniform itching against my skin, and I did not move. My mother touched my shoulder.

“You’ll be fine,” she said.

She didn’t sound like she believed it either. I walked through the front doors and the noise of the hallway dropped like someone had hit a switch. Not all at once. It moved through the crowd like a wave, conversation dying as people turned to look at me.

A girl near the lockers grabbed her friend’s arm and whispered something behind her hand. I caught two words.

“Seraphine’s sister.”

I kept walking. I kept my chin up. I had practiced this in the mirror that morning, telling myself I would not let this place see me shrink. But I felt it, Every eye on me, Like I was something they’d dug up.

~~~~~~

My homeroom teacher, Mr. Hale, introduced me like I was a transfer from a normal school in a normal town.

“Class, this is Vespera Vale.”

The silence that followed was worse than the hallway. Nobody whispered this time. Nobody moved. It was the kind of silence that comes from thirty people trying very hard to look like they aren’t staring.

Then I saw him in the Back row, Dark hair, A face like he hadn’t slept properly in three years. He was already looking at me when I found him, and the second our eyes met, something happened to his face I did not expect. I expected curiosity. Maybe irritation. Maybe nothing at all.

I did not expect him to go pale. Not surprised-pale. Not the kind of pale you get when a new student is prettier or stranger than you thought. This was different. This was the color draining out of someone who had just seen something they thought was buried.

I sat down two rows in front of him. I could feel him behind me for the entire class. Not looking away. Not even pretending to take notes.

~~~~~~~

I found him again by my locker after class, like he’d been waiting.

“You need to leave,” he said. No introduction. No hello.

“Excuse me?”

“Blackthorn Academy. You need to leave. Transfer somewhere else. Today, if you can.”

I almost laughed. “I just got here.”

“You have no idea what you’re walking into.” His voice was low, controlled, but there was something underneath it that didn’t match the calm. Fear, maybe. Or something close to it.

“I know exactly what I’m walking into,” I said. “My sister died here.”

Something flickered behind his eyes.

“What happened to her?” I asked. “The real story. Not the one in the papers.”

His jaw tightened. For a second I thought he might actually answer me.

Instead he said, “Your sister is dead. Leave her dead.”

The words hit harder than I expected. I wanted to say something cutting back, something that would make him regret saying it. But I couldn’t find the words fast enough, and he was already walking away, his shoulders stiff like he was holding something in by force.

I stood there gripping my locker door, furious. And underneath the fury, something else. Something I didn’t want to look at too closely. Because when he’d looked at me in that classroom, just for a second, I hadn’t felt like he was looking at me at all.

I felt like he was looking at her.

~~~~~~

The rest of the day fell apart in small, strange pieces. Someone had scratched a word into the inside of my locker door. LIAR. Carved deep, like they’d pressed the pen hard enough to hurt their own hand doing it.

My bag, which I had left under my desk during lunch, was sitting on top of it when I came back, turned exactly the opposite direction from how I’d left it. My phone died twice, even though I had charged it that morning.

By the time the final bell rang, my hands wouldn’t stop shaking, and I told myself it was just a bad first day. New school. New rumors. People do cruel things to the sister of a dead girl.

Then I opened my locker one more time to grab my coat, and something small fell out and hit the floor.

A necklace, silver chain, and a tiny star pendant. I picked it up with fingers that had gone numb, because I knew this necklace. I knew it the way you know your own name.

I gave it to Seraphine for her sixteenth birthday. It was found around her neck the night she died. It was supposed to be buried with her.

I turned it over in my palm, and that’s when I saw it. The pendant was hollow. A tiny seam ran along the edge, almost invisible unless you were looking for it. I pried it open with my thumbnail.

Inside was a piece of paper, folded so small it barely looked real. I unfolded it with hands that wouldn’t stay steady.

Five names, written in a hand I didn’t recognize.

Riven Ashcroft. Celestine Voss. Maddox Valehart. Elara Wren. Dorian Blackwell.

Underneath, in different ink, someone had written:

ONE OF THEM IS A MURDERER.

My heart was pounding so loud I almost didn’t hear the footsteps behind me, I looked up. The hallway was empty. Everyone had gone home. Except for one person, standing close enough that I hadn’t heard him approach, staring down at the paper in my hands.

Riven.

His eyes moved over the five names, and whatever control he’d been holding onto all day cracked right down the middle.

“Where did you get that?” he asked. His voice wasn’t cold anymore. It was raw.

I didn’t answer fast enough. He reached out and took the paper from my hands before I could stop him, and as he read it, his face went from pale to something closer to white.

“What?” I said. “What is it?”

He didn’t answer. He turned the paper over, and I saw it too. Written on the back, in handwriting I recognized instantly. My sister’s handwriting. The same loops in the S, the same slant she always used when she was writing something she didn’t want anyone else to read.

One sentence.

IF VESPERA EVER COMES TO BLACKTHORN, KILL HER BEFORE SHE REMEMBERS..