Chapter 88: Back to Normal

Moonstone Academy was loud again by Monday morning, the good kind of loud, full of students complaining about homework and rushing between classes with half-buttoned jackets and coffee cups clutched in both hands.

Someone argued loudly over the cafeteria’s breakfast menu near the main doors, and a cluster of younger students traded theories about why the Lunar Trial had been suspended, each theory wilder and less correct than the last. Roxanne walked the familiar hallway with Isla and Tessa, and for once nobody around them was discussing rankings or scores at all.

Tessa groaned dramatically as they reached their first classroom, flinging her bag down like it had personally wronged her. "I survived three days in the wilderness for this?" she said, dropping her bag on the floor with a thud. Roxanne laughed. "You volunteered," she reminded her. "I was young and foolish," Tessa said solemnly, and Roxanne shook her head, already feeling the easy rhythm of an ordinary school day settle back into place around her.

At breakfast, Roxanne found her usual seat at the Moonstones’ table without anyone asking her to, and without the faintest sense that she needed permission to be there anymore. Liam stole a piece of bacon off her plate before she’d even sat down properly, and she snatched it right back before he could finish celebrating his tiny victory. Roshan had already set her favorite drink at her spot without being asked, and Lucien sat hunched over an unfinished assignment, trying and failing to concentrate while everyone talked around him.

Kai studied her for a moment longer than usual, setting down his fork. "Tired?" he asked. "A little," she admitted. "Then don’t stay after class," he said, glancing at her plate as though the answer were obvious. She looked at him, amused. "Are you giving me an order?" "A suggestion," he said, unbothered. Liam leaned across the table, grinning. "He’s learning," he announced to no one in particular, and Roxanne laughed, the whole table settling into the kind of comfortable noise that had become entirely familiar over the past few months.

The rest of the morning rolled by in the comfortable, ordinary texture of a school day, the kind she used to take entirely for granted. In Pack History, Roxanne leaned over and whispered to Tessa about how the instructor had somehow stretched a single battle from three centuries ago into forty-five uninterrupted minutes of lecture, and Tessa drew a tiny, unimpressed cartoon of the man in the margin of her notebook.

In Wolf Control, Roxanne paired with a quiet boy named Felix and worked carefully through a sensory drill without any drama at all, simply completing it well because she knew how to by now, and the instructor moved on without comment, which felt like its own kind of compliment.

At lunch, Isla leaned in close, glancing around first as though the news were far too scandalous to say at full volume. "You’re not going to believe the rumor going around," she said.

Roxanne braced herself. "Apparently," Isla continued, lowering her voice with theatrical relish, "you’re secretly dating all four Moonstones." Roxanne nearly choked on her water, setting the glass down with a clatter. "All four?" she managed. Isla shrugged, entirely too pleased with herself. "Apparently you’re ambitious," she said, and Roxanne threw her napkin directly at her face, missing by a wide margin and hitting Tessa instead, which only made both of them laugh harder.

Roxanne spotted Arabella across the cafeteria a little later, sitting alone this time at the end of a long table, without her usual cluster of followers trailing around her. A younger student approached her table hesitantly, clutching a worksheet covered in cross-outs, and asked for help with something from class. Arabella glanced at it, nodded, and spent several minutes patiently walking the girl through the problem, with no manipulation, no insult, and no mention of anything that had happened before.

Tessa noticed Roxanne watching and leaned closer. "You want me to go over there?" she asked. Roxanne shook her head. "No," she said. "Why not?" Tessa asked. "Because she hasn’t done anything," Roxanne said simply, and she meant it. She wasn’t obsessed with tracking Arabella’s every move the way she might have a few weeks ago. She was simply aware of her presence in the same way she was aware of any other student passing through her day.

Later, walking between classes with her bag slung over one shoulder, Roxanne passed Arabella in the hallway, and Arabella stopped as though she meant to say something important.

Instead, she only said, "Your presentation in Pack History was good." Roxanne blinked, caught off guard. "Thanks," she said. Arabella nodded once and kept walking down the hall, offering nothing more, no apology and no false warmth, just a strangely ordinary exchange between two people who used to be close. Somehow that unsettled Roxanne more than hostility would have, because she genuinely didn’t know what Arabella was becoming.

After school, Isla and Tessa talked Roxanne into staying behind instead of heading straight to her dormitory to study, and the three of them grabbed food from the cafeteria and settled onto the low stone wall outside the courtyard, the late afternoon sun still warm against the stone.

The Moonstones wandered over not long after, Liam carrying an absurd quantity of snacks he’d clearly raided from somewhere he wasn’t supposed to. Jace showed up a few minutes later, grumbling about missing dinner, and Serena joined them shortly after that, folding herself onto the grass beside Roshan without asking.

For once there was no training objective hanging over any of it, nothing to assess or improve or win. They traded embarrassing childhood stories, argued loudly about which teachers were secretly the worst, and debated who had the most illegible handwriting on campus, which somehow turned into an actual contest conducted on the back of a crumpled napkin.

Liam’s childhood nickname came up at some point, something thoroughly humiliating involving a goat and a birthday party, and Roxanne laughed so hard she nearly spilled her entire drink down her shirt, prompting Jace to declare the story the highlight of his week.

As the group finally started to drift apart in the fading light, Roxanne realized with a groan that she’d left her notebook back in the empty classroom. Kai offered to walk back with her without making it a whole production, and the two of them headed inside together while the others continued arguing behind them about who actually owed whom money from the handwriting contest.

They walked through the quiet, empty hallway together, their footsteps the only sound besides the distant echo of the group still laughing outside. "You know," Roxanne said, glancing over at him, "I think this is the first time we’ve actually had a normal day." Kai looked at her. "Did you enjoy it?" he asked. She smiled. "Yeah," she said. He gave her the smallest, quietest smile in return. "Good," he said, and they kept walking, neither of them needing anything more than that.

The next morning, a notice appeared on the main bulletin board near the front office, announcing a new student-led social committee open to anyone interested in planning ordinary campus events. Roxanne walked past it without much thought at first, her mind still half caught up on the assignment due later that afternoon.

Then her eyes caught on a name already written, in careful handwriting, at the top of the sign-up sheet. Arabella Thornclaw. She wasn’t anywhere near the board herself, instead standing a little way down the hall with two other students, calmly sketching out ideas for the committee as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world. She didn’t glance toward Roxanne once.

Roxanne watched for only a moment, her bag heavy on her shoulder, before continuing on toward her first class. For once, she didn’t turn around to look back. Moonstone Academy had moved on, in its own slow and ordinary way, and everyone in it, Roxanne included, seemed to be quietly changing right along with it.