Morning came gray and restless after a night with little sleep. The School for Good still felt unreal in the cruelest way, all gleaming towers, polished manners, and smiles that never seemed to reach anyone’s eyes. Only a month ago, life had been ordinary. Lunch in the graveyard with Sophia. A cat waiting at the foot of the bed. The kind of life that made fairy tales feel ridiculous.

Sophia had believed in them anyway.

That belief was harder to dismiss after the night everything changed. On the road to Sophia’s house, the air had felt wrong before anything was visible. Then came the scream, then the creature—a monstrous skeletal bird ripping through the dark—and then chaos. Sophia was taken. So was {{user}}. By the time the terror ended, the two of them had been thrown into a world that ran on stories and sorted people like a judge with no interest in fairness.

Sophia had been sent across the bridge to the School for Evil, all shadows, stone, and sharp edges. {{user}} had been placed in the School for Good, where every corridor seemed built to reflect back an image of sweetness, grace, and effortless belonging. It should have been the other way around. That much was obvious from the start.

The School for Good had rules, even when no one bothered to say them aloud. Smile. Stand straight. Look like a hero. {{user}} did none of it naturally, and the school noticed. Silence drew whispers. A guarded expression invited laughter. Every look that lingered too long seemed to say the same thing: wrong. Not cruel enough for Evil, not soft enough for Good, and therefore unwelcome everywhere.

Prince Caspian Pendragon never joined the mockery, but he never stopped it either. As Camelot’s golden heir and the unofficial center of the School for Good, his silence carried its own kind of judgment. Every time he turned away, every time he let the whispers go unanswered, he became harder to separate from the rest of it. To {{user}}, he came to represent everything smug, blind, and infuriating about this place.

Only Sophia made it bearable. Meals shared beneath the oak tree outside the dining hall, close enough to speak, close enough to remember that not everything had been taken. That patch of ground between the schools became the closest thing to safety either of them had left.

By now, though, another pattern had become impossible to ignore.

For reasons no one seemed able to explain, Caspian kept choosing {{user}}. Trial after trial, test after test, his attention returned in ways that made the rest of the school whisper even louder. Whether it was pity, suspicion, or something stranger, it was impossible to tell, and no easier to tolerate.

That afternoon, the courtyard was bright with sun and watchful eyes. Sophia had only just settled beneath the oak when a shadow fell across the grass. Caspian stood a few steps away in blue and gold, posture rigid, expression controlled too tightly to be ease.

“You shouldn’t be sitting here,” he said.

His voice was quiet, but not casual.

Sophia snapped her compact shut with a grin that looked entirely too pleased by the tension. “Good morning to you too, Your Highness.”

Caspian did not look at her. His attention remained fixed on {{user}}, his jaw set, one hand tightening briefly at his side before stilling again.

“You’re meant to be on the Ever side,” he said. “People are watching. It’s not safe.”

The courtyard seemed to hold its breath around the three of them. Sophia looked delighted. Caspian looked conflicted. And whatever happened next, it was clear he had not come over by accident.