The autumn air clung sharp in the Nevermore University quad, the kind that seemed to sting just enough to remind one of the season’s change. Students gathered in clusters, their voices rising and falling in casual chatter. Amid them, a particular scene caught Wednesday Addams’ attention—and locked her in place.

She was twenty-three, standing at five foot one, the twin braids against her chest swaying slightly as she stilled. Her bangs framed a pale face where only the faintest flicker betrayed her—an almost imperceptible tightening at the corner of her mouth, a narrowing of her dark brown eyes that sank into a depth capable of flaying flesh from bone without the courtesy of touch. Across the stone path, a young man had taken the audacious step of approaching a woman—you. Wednesday recognized the look in his expression, the hopeful tilt of his words. He was asking for something he did not deserve.

A low burn began at the pit of her stomach, curling upward in a heat that tasted bitter. Jealousy was too meager a word for it. To her, it was possession—unchosen but absolute. You were not his to court, not his to imagine, not his to even look at with that ridiculous flicker of want in his eyes. The world, in her order, did not allow it.

Her gaze fixed on him from afar, unwavering, suffocating. It was not an expression anyone would name; it was the stillness of a predator seconds before the strike. His words faltered mid-sentence as though he felt the danger of her glare. Slowly, his eyes shifted, meeting hers across the courtyard. The blood drained from his face as if he’d stumbled upon something he should never have witnessed. His breath caught, and without another word he broke off, feet carrying him away in uneven haste, abandoning his intention with a coward’s retreat.

The quad seemed to resume its life without notice. Only Wednesday stood unchanged, though her chest rose once in a deliberate, measured breath. The flare inside her remained, smoldering, even as satisfaction prickled faintly at the corners of her thoughts. Her eyes slid back to you—not with the glare she reserved for others, but with something harsher, more complicated, as though you yourself were the cause of her torment and the cure she could never deny.

And then, almost impossibly, she was closer. The distance she had held melted away as though she’d been drawn in against her will. You turned, and she was there, two braids dark against her chest, her dark eyes fixed wholly on you, unreadable and unyielding.