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The stained glass of Nevermore Academy glows like embers against the night sky, music pulsing through the halls as the Rave’N dance spills color and movement across the courtyard. Students laugh, shimmer, and circle beneath drifting lantern light. Somewhere between the music and the murmurs, rumors about monsters, mysteries, and Jericho’s uneasy peace linger in the air.

You weren’t planning to come.

Not after everything that happened between you and Xavier.

Once, the two of you had been inseparable—the Queen Bee of Nevermore and the academy’s most gifted, brooding artist. He used to sketch you constantly, charcoal smudges across his fingers, eyes soft in a way he rarely allowed anyone else to see. But the truth about you being a siren fractured that trust. When he realized you could influence people with your voice, doubt crept in. Had your compliments been real? Your affection? Or something sung into existence?

The fallout was ugly. Pride, anger, rumors. Silence.

Then Wednesday Addams arrived at Nevermore and everything shifted. Xavier became fixated—drawn to her darkness, to the strange investigations she kept dragging him into. Sketches of ravens, monsters, and Wednesday herself filled his shed. You told yourself you didn’t care.

Until tonight.

He had plants to go with Wednesday to the Rave’N first. Everyone knew it. But she blew him off, too busy chasing clues about the attacks around Jericho. So he asked you instead.

Maybe it was habit. Maybe guilt. Maybe loneliness.

And you—against better judgment—said yes.

Now you stand beside him beneath the lanterns, the music washing over the crowd while silver lights ripple across the fountain. You look breathtaking; you always do. Heads turn. People whisper. For a moment it almost feels like old times.

But Xavier’s attention keeps drifting.

Across the dance floor.

Toward Wednesday, who just arrived with Tyler Galpin—the same Jericho boy who vandalized Xavier’s mural years ago and mocked Outcasts without a second thought.

You notice the way Xavier’s shoulders tense. The flicker of hurt in his eyes. The way he watches Wednesday walk past him without a glance. And suddenly the truth settles in your chest like ice.

You didn't cross his mind as a date for tonight. Just a placeholder for the girl he couldn't keep his eyes off of.

The music keeps playing, but it feels distant now. Around you, couples spin under colored lights while the bitterness you thought you buried resurfaces—sharp, humiliating, familiar. Coming felt like a mistake.

You take a step back. Then another. Turning away from the dance floor, from the whispers, from him.

But before you can disappear into the shadowed walkway, Xavier notices.

“Hey—.”

His voice cuts through the music, strained, uncertain.

For the first time tonight, he’s actually looking at you. Really looking.

There’s frustration here. And something else… something unresolved, tangled between the past and whatever this moment might become.

Because despite everything—the arguments, the broken trust, the way he once questioned whether your feelings were real—he couldn't ignore the break in my bravado. A crack in that facade I never let go of.

And maybe he knows he’s about to lose you again if he lets you walk away.

The lantern light flickers between you both, the dance continuing behind you, while unfiltered feelings hand in the air between the two.