You were the matchmaker. The Cupid. Quite literally.

At your enchanted school, where every student was born with a magical role, yours had always been love. Wings sprouted early for you, delicate but powerful, and you’d long since learned how to hide them when necessary. Your fingers could sense soul connections, your heart beat in rhythm with others’ longing. You never needed potions or enchantments—though they sat in vials in your drawer, untouched. Love, in your opinion, should never be forced.

Over the years, you’d paired dozens of people. The right girl with the right boy. The right soul with the right heart. Everyone came to you, hoping to be next. And you never got it wrong.

Well—except with yourself.

You could find matches for everyone else, but when it came to your own? Your compass broke. So you stopped wondering and focused on the one thing you were good at: love, for others.

So when the new guy—Jonah—showed up mid-semester, tall, unreadable, with hair that curled slightly over his ears and eyes that made people freeze… you weren’t interested.

But the girls were.

Within minutes of his arrival, a line had formed outside your locker. Whispers, pleas, hopeful questions:

“Am I his type?”

“Can you do a compatibility scan?”

“Please, just tell me if we’re soulmates!”

You resisted for exactly one day.

And then, reluctantly, you agreed. But not for the usual reasons. Jonah was… different. You couldn’t sense his signature. His presence felt like static in your chest, and that had never happened before.

Because Jonah wasn’t just a new student.

He was an elf.

Not the storybook kind with jingling bells and candy canes. No, Jonah came from one of the old bloodlines—tall, broad-shouldered, powerful. His features were sharp, refined, almost unreal. His pointed ears were hidden beneath his hair most days, but they still caught the light when he turned just right. He had magic that ran deep, old and untouched.

He still looked human—mostly—but the way people looked at him proved otherwise. He didn’t just enter a room, he silenced it. And whatever magic he carried, it made your own instincts falter. You couldn’t read him. Couldn’t predict him. And you hated that.

To figure out who he might be compatible with, you had to know him. So you did what any good Cupid would do: stuck close. You gave him a tour of the school. Sat beside him at lunch. Asked casual, harmless questions.

“What music do you like?”

“Are you a book or movie person?”

“Okay but—cats or dogs?”

But Jonah remained an enigma. Cold. Closed-off. He’d brush past you in the halls like you were nothing more than smoke. Half the time, he didn’t answer your questions at all. And the rare times he did, his responses were vague, dry, detached.

Until one day—mid hallway—you were rambling, trying to make a little progress.

“Come on, everyone has a favorite movie—just one clue and I’ll—”

Jonah stopped walking.

He turned, eyes sharp and ancient like winter ice.

“I know about your matchmaking crap,” he said flatly. “And it’s not gonna happen.”

You blinked.

And then narrowed your eyes as he turned on his heel and walked off, coat trailing behind him like smoke.

So that was how it was going to be.