Chapter 6 6

Layla's-~

I knew the file was wrong the second I saw it.

Not because of the name. Not at first. Because of the paper.

Old paper meant old records. Old records meant the academy was trying very hard to hide something and had done a poor job of it. I stood in the archive wing with my jaw tight and my cousin Jared leaning against a shelf like he had nothing better to do than watch me get more irritated.

“You look like you want to murder a cabinet,” he said.

“I might.”

He lifted a brow. “That bad?”

“I’m checking a transfer file.”

“That sounds boring.”

“It is not boring when the school forgets to vet a student and then acts surprised when the ward system spits her out in front of everybody.”

Jared’s expression shifted just enough to show he understood the part I wasn’t saying.

“Still her?” he asked.

I did not look up. “Layla Byrne.”

He let out a low whistle. “You’ve been paying a lot of attention.”

I shut the folder a little too hard. “Don’t start.”

“I’m not starting anything. I’m observing.”

“Like everybody else.”

He smiled, but there was not much humor in it. Jared had always been the only person in the family who could say hard things without making them worse. That was probably why he survived me.

“You know,” he said, shifting his weight, “most people would call this obsession by now.”

I gave him a flat look. “Most people don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“That’s what obsessed people say.”

I ignored that because he was getting too close to the truth, and I had already had enough of truth for one day.

The archive wing smelled like dust, old ink, and cold stone. The school kept its records here because it liked to pretend history could be controlled by locking it in a room. It couldn’t. Not really. All it did was make the lies smell old.

I pulled the transfer file out again and checked the date.

Same birthday.

That part still sat wrong in my chest.

The school’s rules around that myth were stupid, but not meaningless. They checked birthdays for a reason, and the fact that Layla had slipped through intake without the flag being caught told me somebody had been careless or somebody had wanted her in before anyone thought too hard about it.

Either option was bad.

Jared watched me scan the line again and sighed. “You’re really going to do this all night?”

“If I have to.”

“You won’t have to if you stop acting like you’re the only one in the school with a problem.”

I looked up. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” he said carefully, “you haven’t had a proper conversation with anyone in days, and now you’re stalking the archive like it insulted your mother.”

I gave him a sharp look.

He raised both hands. “Not literally. Don’t glare at me like that.”

I should have laughed. I didn’t.

Because he was right. Not about the mother part. About the rest.

I was alone in ways I refused to name too often. The school knew me. Respected me, even. That did not mean I had people. It meant I had expectations. There was a difference. Friends were rare enough here that I barely counted the ones I had, and even then they were more useful than warm. Duty got you far in a place like Blackwater Hall. Comfort did not.

Which was part of the reason Layla kept getting under my skin.

She did not fit the system. She looked at it wrong from the start. She noticed things too quickly and answered back when she should have kept quiet. She made the room tense just by standing in it like she had not yet been taught how to fold herself smaller for people who wanted that from her.

Jared tapped the folder. “You going to tell me why you’re staring at the transfer girl’s file like it owes you money?”

“Because the school got it wrong.”

“On purpose?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He studied me for a second. “That’s what worries me.”

I shut the folder and moved toward the archive shelves. “I need the original intake ledger.”

Jared frowned. “Why?”

“Because I want to know what else the office missed.”

He muttered something under his breath, but he followed when I opened the restricted cabinet and pulled out the thicker red-bound ledger tucked in the back.

This was the one that mattered.

Old family line records. Original intake. Bloodline placement. The book the academy liked to pretend did not matter anymore.

My fingers tightened on the cover when I opened it.

There, near the center of the page, was her name.

Layla Byrne.

My gaze dropped to the line beside it.

There was another name already written there in dark ink.

Mine.

My own name.

The date sat beside both entries.

Same day. Same record line. Same school year heading.

I stared at it for a second that felt too long.

Then I turned the page.

A seal mark burned red in the corner of the ledger, and under it, in handwriting too old to be casual, was a line that made my skin go cold.

If the Byrne girl arrives, do not let the Hall forget.

My fingers tightened on the page.

Jared saw my face and stepped closer. “What is it?”

I did not answer.

I couldn’t.

Because there was a second line under the first, half-covered by the edge of the next page, and when I peeled it back, I saw the rest.

The gate will answer her.

The archive room seemed to go very still.

Jared looked over my shoulder. “Callum.”

I did not move.

Because there was something else in the ledger that had not been there when I first opened it.

A photograph.

Old, faded, tucked beneath the margin.

A young woman in Blackwater Hall uniform stood in the courtyard, one hand holding a stack of books against her chest, the dark line of the Blackwater Hall crest pinned to her collar.

Layla’s face was in the angle of the smile.

Not Layla exactly.

Older. Softer around the edges. But enough.

Enough to make my stomach drop.

Jared leaned in slightly. “Who is that?”

I stared at the photograph for one long second before I answered.

“Mae Byrne.”

Jared blinked. “The transfer girl’s mother?”

I did not speak.

Because the line under the photograph was worse than the face.

Mae Byrne.

Former student.

Record removed.

Exit status unresolved.

My thumb moved across the edge of the page as if touch could make sense of it.

“Her mother attended Blackwater Hall,” I said quietly.

Jared’s voice came low now. “That’s not supposed to be possible.”

I did not answer.

Because I was too busy looking at the margin note beneath the photograph.

Bring the Byrne girl to the east gate before dusk.

My head lifted at once.

Jared swore under his breath.

The archive room had gone too quiet again. The kind of quiet that made every breath sound like a mistake.

Then the ward bell rang.

Once.

Low and clear.

The archive woman in the outer hall went white. Jared took a step back. I went very still.

And through the thick glass windows beyond the shelves, I saw the east gate glow blue.

Not bright.

Wrong.

My chest tightened.

Because the gate had begun to open by itself.

Then, from somewhere under the floor and far beyond the shelves, a voice whispered my name.

Not Layla’s.

Mine.

And that was when I understood something had already started moving toward her, and I was too late to stop it quietly.