Chapter 55: The Rumor

Reed

I noticed the atmosphere the moment I walked into the academy that morning. On the surface, everything looked ordinary, students moving between classes, conversations filling the corridors. But too many of those conversations went quiet as I passed, and I’ve always been observant enough to notice patterns like that.

At first I assumed it was leftover chatter from the ball, the usual noise that followed any academy event. Then I heard her name.

"That’s her."

"I heard she—"

"The princes..."

The students noticed me a beat later and lowered their voices, but that told me enough on its own. Something about Astrid had already spread through the school, and I hadn’t heard it directly yet.

It didn’t take long to piece together fragments as I moved through the halls. Someone suggested Astrid had deliberately gotten close to us, that she’d used the carnival and the ball to draw our attention. Another claimed she’d run from the ball because she’d been rejected and embarrassed. A third insisted she’d run to make us chase her.

None of the versions matched. That was the part that told me nobody actually knew what had happened. It hadn’t stopped anyone from talking anyway.

My irritation rose steadily as I walked. I remembered her face outside that door, her voice breaking apart as she begged us to reject her. There had been nothing calculated in that. Nothing performed.

They had turned the worst night of her life into entertainment. That was what bothered me. What it was doing to her.

I found her across the courtyard, walking beside Ivy, deep enough in conversation that she seemed unaware of anything around her. But I noticed the smaller signs anyway, her shoulders held a fraction too tense, her eyes carefully avoiding any cluster of students large enough to be whispering, her pace quickening slightly whenever a voice dropped low nearby.

She was pretending it didn’t touch her. I recognized the effort because I’d been doing something similar all morning.

Every instinct told me to go to her. I stayed where I was instead. She’d asked for space last night, and whatever I wanted didn’t override that.

Selene stood with her usual three companions a short distance away, and I noticed the group watching the same direction I was. One girl leaned in to whisper something. Another glanced toward Astrid. Selene asked a question I couldn’t hear, and the group exchanged looks afterward.

I didn’t like it. Selene had never been particularly warm toward Astrid, and I’d learned enough about academy gossip to know how quickly it could curdle into something worse than idle talk.

She approached me not long after, casual in the way she always was when she wanted something.

"Did you enjoy the ball?" she asked.

I gave her a brief answer.

"You and Xander seemed very interested in her," she said next.

I stayed guarded, offering nothing.

"What happened after she left?" she pressed.

"Nothing that concerns you," I said.

She smiled like the answer didn’t bother her, though she kept going anyway. Why had we followed Astrid? Why had Xander looked so worried? Why had I barely spoken to anyone all day?

She was fishing, carefully, wrapped in enough casual curiosity that most people wouldn’t have noticed the strategy underneath it.

Then she said something dismissive about scholarship students suddenly finding themselves very comfortable around princes.

My patience ran out.

"Don’t talk about her like that," I said.

She paused, clearly not expecting that response from me. I hadn’t meant to sound as sharp as I did, but I didn’t take it back either.

"Whatever you think you know about Astrid," I said, "you don’t know enough to judge her."

She laughed it off, though something in her expression shifted before she walked away.

Not long after, I saw Xander confronting a student who’d apparently made a comment about scholarship girls climbing higher than expected. His expression had already changed by the time I reached them, his whole posture sharpening toward a fight.

I stepped between them before it became physical. Xander told the student to watch his mouth. The student backed down, but several others had already seen it happen.

I knew immediately we’d made things worse. Both of us had just confirmed, in front of half the courtyard, exactly how much Astrid mattered to us.

I pulled Xander aside once the crowd dispersed.

"We can’t keep reacting publicly," I told him.

"So we’re supposed to let them insult her?" he said.

"No. We’re supposed to stop giving them reasons to keep talking."

He didn’t like that answer, but he understood it. We agreed, quietly, that we needed to be more careful going forward.

"Do you think she’s okay?" he asked, quieter now.

I looked toward where Astrid had been standing earlier. "No."

That was all I said. I knew she was trying hard to look okay, and I knew exactly how much that effort was costing her.

I watched her later that afternoon when her books scattered across the courtyard floor, papers sliding everywhere. A few students nearby laughed. She dropped down immediately to gather everything herself, refusing to let the moment linger.

I nearly moved toward her. I stopped myself.

Another student crouched down to help instead, and Astrid thanked them. I felt something complicated settle in my chest, relief that someone had helped her, and disappointment that it hadn’t been me.

I wanted her to look for me. I wanted to matter to her the way she’d already begun mattering to me.

Near the end of the day, I saw Selene again.

She didn’t approach this time. She simply watched, and I couldn’t tell what conclusion she was reaching, only that she was reaching one.

I watched Astrid leave with Ivy that evening, the two of them disappearing down the corridor together. I thought about the rumors circulating through the school, the questions Selene kept asking, Xander’s temper flaring in front of an audience, Astrid’s careful, exhausting effort to appear untouched by any of it.

Everything felt like it was shifting beneath us the way ground gives way before it actually collapses.

Selene had her gaze fixed on Astrid.

Whatever questions she had, I suspected she wasn’t going to let them go.