Thorn lowered her violin slowly, the pale light from the moon painted her face as she stared out into the courtyard. The glimmering purple light of the wards made her take a step back.
"How is that possible?" she whispered to herself.
Her fingers were still trembling, not from strain, but from the wrongness of how easy it had been. She rested the bow against her thigh for a moment, listening, as if the air might protest once she stopped playing.
It didn't.
The final note faded into the room and stayed gone. No backlash. No recoil. No answering hum beneath the floorboards.
Just silence. Silence that she hasn't heard since the last school year.
Carefully, Thorn crossed the room and set the violin back on its stand. The polished wood caught the low light of the candle stub, dark and unassuming, like it had done nothing remarkable at all. She stepped back, half-expecting something to surge in its absence, for something to jump out at her and punish her for even trying.
Nothing did.
The journal on her desk lay open and still. No rippling pages. No crawling warmth beneath the parchment. The burned sigil remained inert, blackened lines pressed flat against the paper, as dead as ink had any right to be.
Thorn watched it for a long moment.
"Okay," she murmured, testing the word in the quiet.
The wards outside her window held their soft violet glow, steady and unbroken. Not flaring and not dimming. Just… present. The color of something deeply satisfied.
Her chest loosened a fraction.
This hadn't been a fluke.
If she had done something wrong, the building would have told her. Reichenbach had never been shy about correcting its mistakes. But the walls didn't creak. The floor didn't vibrate. Even the air felt smoother, easier to breathe.
The Resonance hadn't been silenced. It had settled.
Thorn sank onto the edge of her bed, elbows resting on her knees, and pressed her palms together until the shaking eased. Her pulse slowly found a steadier rhythm.
That was the part she couldn't ignore.
The Choir didn't need to break the Resonance to win.
They only needed to control it.
And somehow, against every rule she'd been taught, she had done the same.
The realization sat heavily in her chest, equal parts fear and certainty.
This wasn't something she could keep to herself.
She had replayed that final note over and over in her mind, the way the journal calmed, the way the entire damn building listened to her. She didn't know whether she should be terrified, relieved, or both.
But she knew one thing:
Xavier needed to hear it. This wasn't something small that she could pretend didn't happen, or wait until morning to mention.
She stood up, reaching towards the end of her bed where her hoodie lived, and pulled it over her head. She thought about leaving Pippa a note if she came back before Thorn did, but the idea of leaving a note explaining that she was going to Xavier's dorm after curfew felt like opening a can of worms.
Thorn slipped out of her dorm room and eased the door shut behind her, careful to keep the latch from clicking too loudly. She paused, listening.
The corridor remained still.
She leaned out just enough to check both ends of the hall. No dorm parents. No flicker of movement. Only the low burn of wardlight and the faint scent of old stone and candle smoke.
Satisfied, she moved.
The halls felt colder at night, the kind of cold that crept through fabric and settled against bone. Lanterns lined the walls at even intervals, their light unsteady, half-lidded, like watchful eyes that hadn't fully woken. Her footsteps sounded too loud to her ears, even as she kept them light, measured, precise.
She took the stairwell down one floor at a time, hand trailing along the banister to steady herself. Her fingers still trembled from the echo of what she'd done, and every step felt intentional, irreversible.
Xavier's hallway was darker, quieter. Fewer doors. Fewer chances to be seen. Thorn slowed as she reached the end, her pulse ticking loud and insistent in her ears. She stopped in front of his door, and for a moment, she didn't move.
Then she lifted her hand and hesitated before she knocked. Three soft taps, close together.
Inside, Xavier thrashed awake.
Not that Thorn could see it, but she felt the echo. Xavier's panic spiked like a flare in the dark.
Xavier jerked upright in bed, sheets tangled around his waist, sweat soaking the front of his T-shirt. His breath came in rough, uneven pulls. He pressed a hand to his forehead as the last shards of the vision dissolved behind his eyes:
Flames swallowing the library.
Students wandering with blank, hollow faces.
Marble fracturing like bone.
Resonance eating through Reichenbach like rot.
The Choir's masks gleamed through the smoke.
His heart slammed against his ribs.
Then, another knock.
He flinched so hard he nearly fell off the mattress.
Xavier stumbled to his feet, trying to wipe sweat from his brow without waking Malrick, who snored like a dying bullfrog on the other side of the room. He padded over, cracked the door open, and froze in place.
Thorn stood there, hair messy from sleep, hoodie thrown over her nightshirt, looking like a storm had carried her here.
"Fuck," he whispered, grabbing her wrist and pulling her inside before her name could echo down the hall. "You're not supposed to be here."
He shut the door quickly, pressing his back to it. Thorn blinked at him, taking in the tremor in his hands, the sweat beading along his collarbone, the wild look in his eyes.
"You okay?" she asked quietly.
"I—yeah. Yeah, I'm just…" Xavier dragged a shaky hand through his hair. "Bad dream."
Thorn gave him a look.
The kind that strips lies down to bone.
"You mean a vision," she said.
Xavier's throat bobbed.
"I guess I forgot about the half-psychic part," he muttered.
"What did you see?" Thorn crossed her arms, her eyes trailing down Xavier's distressed face.
Xavier exhaled, breath shaking as he sank onto the edge of his bed. Thorn stepped closer without thinking, drawn to the gravity of his fear.
"I saw Reichenbach," he whispered. "But wrong. Ruined. Like the Choir had turned every anchor into a nerve-ending and then… plucked them. And everyone here," He swallowed hard. "They weren't themselves anymore. Like their memories were emptied, and they were hollow shells of who they used to be."
Thorn's heart twisted painfully. "Xavier…"
"I didn't get to see you," he added quietly. "You weren't… there. And I couldn't find you, no matter how hard I looked."
She didn't ask what that meant.
She didn't want to know.
Silence stretched, fragile and taut.
Then Xavier lifted his gaze to hers, gentler this time, as if some sense had been snapped back into him.
"Why... are you still up?"
Thorn hesitated again.
"The resonance reacted to my violin."
Xavier blinked. "Reacted how?"
Thorn turned her attention to the window, without a word. Xavier noticed the change in her almost immediately. He stood up, taking a few steps towards the window.
"It… liked me," Thorn whispered between them, embarrassed by the admission. "It stabilized. The journal stopped vibrating. The whole room felt calm. The campus..." She uncrossed her arm long enough to point towards the courtyard.
"It's glowing this ethereal purple I haven't seen in a really long time."
"Is it because you played?"
She nodded.
"That's…" Xavier searched for a word. "Huge, Thorn."
"It's terrifying," Thorn corrected.
"Yeah," he admitted. "Also that, but this might be able to help." Then, after a beat, his eyes lit with something else. Not with excitement, but focus. Purpose.
He turned toward his desk, careful not to make any sudden noise, and flicked on the small shaded lamp. The light pooled low and warm, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. Thorn followed him, steps hesitant, like she was crossing into something fragile.
"I've been working on something," Xavier said.
He pulled open a drawer and spread several pages across the desk. Sketches layered over sketches, graphite darkened and smudged from erasing and redrawing. Runes, but not the clean, ceremonial kind carved into stone or etched into silver. These were iterative. Experimental. Lines thickened, angles adjusted, symbols broken apart and reassembled.
Thorn leaned in despite herself.
"Holy shit, Thorpe. Have you descended into madness or something?" She tentatively reached out to let her fingertips graze the pages.
"These aren't standard," she murmured.
"No," Xavier said. "They're not supposed to be." He slowly looked up at her, watching as her eyes flicked from rune to rune. He could see the questions forming before she even opened her mouth.
"I've... It's been hard to sleep, even before everything that happened at the masquerade," he admitted softly. "So, I've used that time to study runes, how they work, what they mean, everything I could get my hands on."
He pointed to one page in particular, where a familiar sigil had been split down the center and reframed with smaller markings branching off it. "We already know that The Choir uses Resonance to amplify. To extract. To force."
He flipped to another page. "I've been trying to figure out how to redirect it instead. Not to block it, because that causes backlash; it needs to exist, but maybe we can... guide it."
Thorn's eyes widened in realization.
"That's what my violin did," she said slowly. "I didn't fight it. I just played it the way it wanted to be played."
Xavier looked at her, eyes sharp and almost reverent. "Right, exactly."
He tapped the edge of the paper, excitement restrained but unmistakable.
"If sound can stabilize it, then maybe these could anchor that stability."
Thorn straightened, heart pounding, "You're saying we should fight music with music?"
"I'm saying," he replied carefully, meeting her gaze, "that if the Resonance listens to you… Then maybe it can learn to listen to us."
Then, a sudden voice cut through the tension:
"—and if the snakes rise again, I swear to the gods, I'm joining them…"
Thorn jolted backwards. "What. The. Fuck?"
Xavier sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Malrick."
The boy snored louder, muttered something about "serpent union bylaws," then turned over and went dead quiet again.
Thorn blinked. "Does he… do that a lot?"
"More than anyone should be comfortable with," Xavier said. "If there's ever a snake rebellion, I assume he's already on the executive board."
A quiet laugh slipped out of Thorn before she could stop it. Soft. Brief. Gone almost as soon as it appeared, and Xavier couldn't help the gentle tug of the corner of his mouth at the sound.
They stood there for a moment longer, the air between them humming, not with danger this time, but with something unspoken. Something neither of them had the guts to mention.
"You really should go get some rest," Xavier said suddenly. "You look exhausted."
"Gee, thanks," she said finally,
"I didn't mean it like that," he whispered, keeping eye contact with her.
Thorn didn't have anything to say to that. For the first time since he had met her, there wasn't a sharp retort waiting for him.
"Okay..." she said softly.
He nodded once, like that was enough.
Thorn stepped back toward the door. "I should get going anyway, I want to beat Pippa to the dorm."
"Yeah," he said. "That's probably for the best."
She reached for the handle, then paused.
"Xavier?"
He looked up.
"Thanks. For not… making this weird."
Something unreadable crossed his face. "Anytime."
She slipped out into the hall, the door closing softly behind her.
Xavier stood there for a long moment after she left, staring at the space she'd occupied, heart still beating too fast.
Thorn moved quickly through the halls on the way back, tension only easing once she slipped through her own dorm door and eased it closed. The room greeted her with familiar shadows and the faint scent of wax and parchment. She leaned her forehead briefly against the wood, grounding herself, then crossed to her bed and sat down, boots still on.
The silence no longer felt hostile. Just bone-sickly tired.
She'd barely had time to pull her hoodie off when the door opened again.
Thorn looked up just as Pippa slipped inside and shut it behind her, moving with a nervous urgency that made Thorn sit straighter.
"There you are," Pippa said, breathless. "Glad they finally released you from the infirmary."
Thorn blinked. "Oh, Yeah."
Pippa studied her face for a second, studying her for a moment, then shook her head like she didn't have the energy to question anything.
Instead, she lifted her arm.
"I was in the Aviary all day."
The words didn't fully register until Pippa pushed up the sleeve of her cardigan.
The silver cuff was gone.
No etched runes. No faint hum of suppression. Just bare skin, slightly reddened where the metal had been for years.
Thorn stood so fast the bed creaked. "Pippa. What did you do?"
"Don't freak out," Pippa whispered, eyes bright and a little wild. "I got some Sirens to sing to a faculty member to take it off."
"Pippa, how?" Thorn looked from Pippa's wrist to her wide smile.
"I called in a favor they owed me from last semester. Turns out catching someone in the act of cheating on their final comes with some perks."
Pippa flexed her wrist, fingers trembling, being so unused to freedom.
.
"I can feel everything again," She said. "It's like… like breathing with both lungs for the first time."
Thorn stared at her, a hundred questions colliding in her chest. "Why?"
Pippa's smile wavered. "Because after the Masquerade, I... I felt so useless. And because Danny—" Her voice caught, then steadied. "Because I can't pretend nothing happened anymore."
The room felt smaller suddenly. Charged with an energy that pushed all the restlessness aside.
Thorn swallowed. "Are you okay?"
Pippa nodded, then shook her head, then laughed softly at herself. "I don't know. But I wanted to show you, maybe,"
She stepped closer and took Thorn's hand, grounding and warm.
"Maybe I can help now."
Thorn squeezed her fingers back, tight.
"Welcome to the team, Pip."