Chapter 100: The invitation nobody expected

Chapter 100 — The Invitation Nobody Expected

Roxanne had learned not to trust quiet mornings, but she walked into the dining hall expecting one anyway.

Isla was already at their usual table, glaring at her tablet as though it had personally insulted her. Tessa sat across from her, calmly peeling an orange.

"Three thousand words," Isla announced as Roxanne sat down. "On pack treaty history. Due Friday. Who does that to people?"

"Professor Hale," Tessa said. "Every year. You’ve known since September."

"Knowing and accepting are different things."

Roxanne reached for the teapot and let their bickering wash over her. It was almost peaceful. Then Tessa slipped a segment of orange into her mouth and said, far too casually, "So. Kai still hasn’t assumed anything about the party?"

"Why would he assume anything?"

"Exactly my point. The boy refuses to presume. It’s either very respectful or deeply frustrating, and I haven’t decided which."

"You’re enjoying this."

"Immensely."

A chair scraped beside them, and Liam dropped into it with the energy of someone who had slept well and intended to share the benefit. "Are we discussing Roxanne’s love life? Brilliant. I brought emotional support."

"You brought nothing," Roxanne said.

"I brought my full attention. Same thing." He studied her with exaggerated gravity. "Honestly, the drama club could take notes. Four brothers, one ex, a party, an almost-"

Roxanne picked up a piece of toast and raised it like a weapon.

"You wouldn’t."

"Try me."

Liam plucked it from her fingers before she could throw it and took a large bite. "Mine now."

"You’re unusually interested in my love life."

"I’m interested in everyone’s love life. Yours just has better entertainment value."

"Find another hobby."

"I tried. It was boring." He stood, saluted her with the toast, and wandered off across the hall.

Isla looked up from her tablet. "I hate how charming he is."

"He’s a menace," Roxanne said, but she was smiling.

The announcement came halfway through breakfast, delivered through the speakers in the headmistress’s brisk, practiced voice.

"Students, a notice for this term. In two weeks, the academy will host an inter-pack social evening. Each student may invite one guest from another pack or academy. This is not a competition, a royal function, or a formal banquet. Dress casually, bring good company, and try not to embarrass us."

The hall erupted before the speakers clicked off. Chairs scraped, voices overlapped, and somewhere near the back someone shrieked a name with enough force to rattle the cutlery.

"Casual," Isla breathed. "Dancing. Strangers. I might actually survive this week."

"You haven’t started your essay," Tessa said.

"The party gives me hope. Let me have hope."

Roxanne sipped her tea and felt something loosen in her shoulders. A social evening, nothing more. She had no one to invite from outside Moonstone, and no intention of turning another school event into a spectacle with the brothers at its centre. She would go, or she wouldn’t, and nobody would need to write a speech about it.

She was reaching for a second piece of toast when a girl from her history class stopped beside the table, hovering with the particular excitement of someone carrying news.

"Roxanne? Are you really bringing someone from outside Moonstone Academy?"

Roxanne frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"The guest board. Outside the east corridor." The girl held up her phone, where a photograph showed a long sheet of parchment already crowded with names. "You’re on it."

Roxanne took the phone and read the line the girl was pointing to. ℴ𝗆

Roxanne Silver — nominated guest.

Her name was there in neat ink. The column beside it, where the nominator should have signed, was blank.

"I didn’t nominate anyone," Roxanne said slowly. "And I certainly didn’t get nominated."

"Well, somebody did," the girl said, with far too much delight.

By lunchtime, the entire academy had theories.

Roxanne heard them in fragments as she crossed the courtyard. One of the brothers had done it, a public claim dressed up as a polite gesture. No, it was Dorian, looking for a doorway back into her life. No, it was a prank. No, it was a scheme.

"Everybody has decided what this means," she said, dropping onto the bench beside Isla and Tessa. "Nobody has asked me."

"I could investigate," Isla offered at once, already scrolling. "The board is enchanted, but the ink has a registry. If I get ten minutes with the front office logs-"

"No."

"Five minutes."

"Isla."

"Fine." Isla slumped. "But for the record, I’d be excellent at it."

Tessa leaned back and watched a cluster of students whisper their way across the lawn. "I think you should wait. Whoever did this will either have the courage to admit it or they won’t. Either answer tells you something."

"I’m not chasing rumours," Roxanne said. "If someone wants to invite me somewhere, they can use their words."

"That’s a very reasonable approach," Tessa said.

"Thank you."

"Which is why I’m shocked you’ve chosen it."

Roxanne threw a napkin at her. Tessa caught it without looking up and used it to wipe her fingers.

The brothers heard before the afternoon bell, and none of them made a scene.

Liam found her outside the library and bowed deeply. "I’m told you’ve become so popular you’ll need a personal secretary. I’d like to apply. I have excellent handwriting and no morals."

"Go away."

"That’s a no on the morals, then."

Lucien was more succinct. He passed her in the corridor, slowed, and said, "If you don’t want to go, you can decline. It’s your decision." Then he continued walking, as if he’d only reported the weather.

Roshan said nothing at all. He simply watched her across the classroom, and when she finally caught his eye, he gave a small, knowing nod. She was more annoyed than curious, and he’d seen it. Somehow, that was more irritating than a lecture.

Kai caught her last, near the stairs outside the science wing, backpack hanging off one shoulder. He didn’t smirk, and he didn’t tease. The memory of their date and that nearly-kiss hovered between them, unspoken, as steady as a pulse. But he only tilted his head and asked one question.

"Do you want to go?"

Roxanne opened her mouth, then closed it. Everyone had asked who nominated her, or what it meant, or what she would do about it. Nobody had asked that.

"I haven’t decided."

"Then you don’t owe anyone an answer today."

He nodded once, as though the matter were settled, and continued down the stairs. Roxanne stayed where she was a moment longer than necessary.

The card was waiting in her notebook.

She found it during last period, when she flipped to a fresh page and a small square of cream paper slid out onto her desk. It had been folded twice, the creases sharp. There was no name on the outside.

Inside, in a few lines of careful script:

You deserve one evening where people meet you without deciding who you belong to first.

There was no signature. No flourish, no confession, no hint.

Roxanne read it twice, and the second time her chest tightened. It didn’t sound like Liam, who would have buried the sentiment in a joke. It didn’t sound like Lucien’s directness, or Kai’s bluntness, or Roshan’s quiet precision. None of them would have phrased it that way.

She didn’t assume it was one of the brothers. That was the unsettling part.

She turned the card toward the window and studied the handwriting, the narrow loops, the slight lean to the right. She had seen it before. She was certain of it.

She just couldn’t remember where.

She didn’t hunt for the sender. She folded the card along its creases, slid it back into her notebook, and went to dinner, then to the library, then back to her room, determined to prove that nobody’s decisions but her own were going to steer her evening.

It was nearly dark when she cut through the east corridor on her way back, and the noticeboard caught her eye, as it had been catching everyone’s eye all day.

She slowed. She stopped. ℯ𝐥.𝒄ℴ𝓶

The nomination had been updated. Beside her name, where the column had stood empty that morning, a single line of ink now gleamed in the lamplight.

Roxanne stepped closer and read the name.

Then she read it again, because it was someone she had never expected to see anywhere near Moonstone Academy.