Chapter 3 The Watchers

I dreamed of water.

Cold, endless, rising fast. A hall of portraits filling with black tide. I tried to scream, but the ocean took my voice, and when I turned to run, I saw him. Standing beneath the chandelier, perfectly dry. Watching me drown with a smile on his lips.

I woke with a gasp, fingers tangled in the sheets.

The room was still dark, though a blue-gray light was starting to bleed through the curtains. Rain whispered outside like it hadn't stopped all night. I rolled onto my side, staring at the words still carved into the floor beside the bed:

> Don't trust the ones who smile.

I didn't know who left it.

But I was starting to think they had a point.

---

Breakfast was quiet.

Ravencroft's dining hall was cold in the mornings, full of silver cutlery, candlelight, and the kind of tension that didn't come from hunger. Everyone looked sharp and polished. Perfectly groomed. Like they'd been raised in glass cases.

I sat with Petra, who greeted me with a muffin and an apology for falling asleep mid-conversation last night.

"Let me guess," she said, watching me stir my tea. "You ran into someone again."

"Why would you guess that?"

"You've got the look."

"What look?"

"That 'I saw something I'm not supposed to talk about but can't stop thinking about' look." She bit into her muffin. "Classic first-week symptom."

I didn't answer.

Because she wasn't wrong.

---

Later that morning, I had Literature in the South Tower-a long room with leaded windows and ancient oak shelves that smelled like dust and arguments. The class was led by a professor who spoke like Shakespeare owed him money.

We were studying Macbeth. Of course.

"Ambition," he said, pacing slowly. "Desire. Madness. Betrayal. These are not just literary devices. These are human truths. Ravencroft, in many ways, is built on them."

I wasn't sure if that was a warning or a compliment.

Halfway through the class, someone slipped into the seat behind me.

I didn't turn. But I felt him there. That calm energy that didn't feel calm at all.

A pen tapped once, twice, against a desk.

When I glanced down at my notebook, I saw it:

A line written at the top of my page, in handwriting that wasn't mine.

> Macbeth wasn't mad. He just stopped pretending.

I swallowed and didn't look back.

---

By lunch, the clouds had broken enough to allow pale sunlight through the arched windows, like God had cracked open a secret just a little. I wandered outside instead of eating, walking the gravel path past the West Garden toward the older part of the campus.

Everything felt... theatrical. Ravencroft didn't just exist, it performed. Vines coiled too perfectly up the sides of stone towers. Benches sat at ideal angles beneath trees. Even the birds seemed rehearsed.

I turned a corner and froze.

There he was again.

Sketching. Alone. On a stone ledge overlooking the ravine.

His back was to me, but he didn't jump when I approached. Just tilted his head like he'd been waiting for my footsteps.

"You're not in class?" I asked.

"No one notices when I'm gone."

"That can't be true."

"It can." He glanced up at me. "Some people are built to be seen. Others... to see."

I sat beside him, careful not to look at what he was drawing.

He didn't stop me.

After a long silence, he said, "You don't belong here."

I laughed softly. "You think I don't know that?"

"That's not what I mean."

He looked at me properly now-quietly, without pity. As if I was something delicate but sharp, like broken stained glass.

"You move like someone who expects the floor to fall out."

"Maybe it already has."

Another pause.

He slid the sketchbook between us.

I hesitated.

He had drawn me again.

But this time... I was standing in front of a wall. One hand pressed against it. My head tilted, as if listening.

And inside the wall-hidden in the stone-were faces. Shadowy, twisted, watching.

I shivered.

"You see things," I whispered.

He nodded once.

"Do you draw everyone?"

"No," he said. "Just the ones I can't stop thinking about."

---

That evening, Petra dragged me to a common room debate between the four houses. It was something about tradition versus innovation, but most people only came to watch the Roswen team win.

Which they did.

Effortlessly.

Afterward, as students scattered and laughter floated through the hall, I found myself standing near the windows, watching rain bead against the glass again. The view of the forest was silvered in mist.

Someone stepped beside me.

"Do you like it here?" he asked.

I didn't have to turn to know who it was.

He always smelled faintly of clean soap and old books. Like secrets and order.

"I haven't decided yet."

He hummed, thoughtful. "Give it time. Ravencroft is... a world of its own."

"I'm not sure that's a good thing."

He smiled softly. "You'll learn how to survive it. You're smarter than you let on."

I glanced up at him, surprised. His eyes weren't just warm-they were watching me. Closely. Like he was trying to memorize something he might need later.

"You don't even know me," I said.

"Not yet," he replied. "But I intend to."

Someone called his name behind us. He turned without another word, already slipping back into that effortless charm, that perfect posture. That smile.

I watched him walk away.

And I didn't smile back.

---

That night, I couldn't sleep.

The wind rattled the old windows, and the rain picked up again, like a heartbeat.

I stared at the ceiling, the room too quiet, the bed too stiff, my chest too full of things I couldn't name yet.

I thought about the two of them.

One with eyes like stormlight. The other with hands that made shadows beautiful.

Both watching.

Both waiting.

For what, I didn't know.

But the walls were starting to whisper.

And I was starting to listen.