Chapter 1
The first thing I learn about Dominion Prep is that silence has weight. I can feel it pressing against me as the car rolls through its wrought-iron gates and curves up the long, tree-lined drive.
Bare branches claw at a sky the color of aged pewter, as the prestigious academy looms in the distance. A blend of stone and glass that looks as if someone tried to replicate a castle, but lost their vision halfway through. It’s both austere and disorienting. Sweeping grounds, folding into something quietly haunting.
“Prestigious,” my stepmother said, as she slid the enrollment packet across the kitchen island like it was a winning lottery ticket. “Transformstional, some might say. I went there. My time there, unforgettable. ”
That was two weeks ago. The morning after I disappointed her for the last time. My crime? Hanging out with one of the waiters at the country club, the night of my eighteenth birthday.
It was completely harmless. I’d known the guy since we were kids. He came over to check on me when he saw me in the lobby, and I thanked him with a hug. A moment of warmth between friends.
To my stepmother, however, it was a defiant gesture aimed at the woman who claimed to have my best interest at heart.
Lillian Harcourt.
She entered our lives like a perfume commercial. Silk blouses, diamond studs, a smile sharpened by society. She had money the way other people had blood: inherited, unquestioned, and quietly flaunted.
No one ever understood why a woman like her would marry my father. He was not wealthy or powerful and they shared none of the same values. He was, however, smart, and good-looking. Handsome in an Old Hollywood, movie star kind of way. That’s why she chose him. Not for love, but optics.
Before marrying my father, Lillian Harcourt had been Lillian Harcourt-Welles, widow of famed financier Harrison Welles, whose fortune was as notorious as it was vast. Together, they were fixtures in the society world. Glamorous, envied, and endlessly adored.
All that changed, however, when Harrison was found dead in the bedroom of a lavish penthouse that wasn’t his own; heart having given out while strapped down in a position far too scandalous to repeat.
When the news hit of her husband ’s proclivities, Lillian found the society she was born into began turning their backs. Invitations slowed. Whispers grew louder. Her social orbit tightening like a noose made of pearls.
Then came my father. Daniel Quinn. A widow with a modest furniture business and teenage daughter in need of a mother. It was exactly the sort of narrative Lillian needed to reinvent herself.
Society likes a redemption story, nearly as much as it worships money, and after marrying my father, Lillian devoted herself to cultivating her new image. She became a patron of local charities, and a benefactor of arts foundations. She even used pieces my father crafted with his own two hands, as stage dressing in the glossy photographs of her reinvention media tour.
And my father… he fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Why wouldn’t he? Her soft voice and luminous smile made him feel like royalty, and she played the part of the doting stepmother flawlessly. New house, beautiful bedroom with more luxuries than I needed, a car…she spared no expense to buy my affection.
It was all fake, of course.
“This is Lennox,” she’d say when introducing me to someone in her circle, touching my shoulder lightly, fingers cool and impersonal. “Daniel’s daughter.”
It was never my stepdaughter. Always his child, because I was not a girl she wanted to claim. And the way she’d study me…like a design flaw that needed fixing.
Where Lillian was lacquered perfection, I was thread and ink. With my long, curly brown hair and absolutely no interest in makeup, I was everything she wasn’t. I didn’t fit her aesthetic. She collected art, and I created it. And she hated the way my father loved me. The way his voice softened when he said my name.
“Dominion Prep will be good for you,” she said with a smile too bright to be genuine, when I begged my father not to send me away for my last year of high school. “They value refinement.”
“Refinement,” I huff to myself as the car begins its slow climb up the hill. What a load of crap. What she really meant was away. A private school on the other side of the country would keep me neatly out of her sight and comfortably out of my father’s mind.
At the crest of the hill, the car rolls to a stop. Grabbing my backpack from the leather seat beside me, I push open the door and step out. The air is cool, a light breeze whispering across my skin as I take in the stone staircase in front of me.
“Welcome to Dominion.” I turn and find a tall boy in a navy blazer standing a few feet away at the base of a sweeping stone staircase. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter.”
Pulling the belt of my refashioned thrift-store coat tight, I slide my bag onto my back, then square my shoulders.
“And which circle of Hell is this?” I quip, silently thanking my three years of AP English. If he was going for intimidation, maybe he should have used something other than Dante’s Inferno.
“First Assembly,” he says with a smile that eerily mirrors my stepmother’s. “Well, at least in a couple of hours. Though, some call it Limbo. Neither damned nor saved. Just… in between, waiting to be assessed.”
“Assessed?” I repeat with little interest.
“Yup.” His gaze drops to my shoes, then drags back up slowly. “Studying what you’re made of—grit and determination, or rag and bone.”
A cluster of students sweeps past us in a current of cashmere and cologne. A girl with a silk scarf draped like a victory banner glances at me and whispers something that makes her friends' lips twitch.
“So...” He gives me a once over. “What's your name, first year?”
“I’m not a first year.” I tighten my grip on the strap of my bag. “I’m a senior. This is my last and only year.”
“Sweetheart…” He shakes his head and lets out an amused laugh. “Doesn’t matter if you’re a senior. It is your first one here. ”
“Meaning?” I ask pointedly.
We stare at one another for a moment. A tense, awkward silence stretching between us.
“Your bags, Ms. Harcourt.” The driver clears his throat as he sets each of my suitcases down next to me.
“Harcourt.” Blazer boy looks at me with new interest. “As in, Lillian Harcourt?”
“That’s my stepmother.” I nod. “She is Harcourt. Not me.” I correct the driver with a yank of one suitcase handle.
“Whatever you say.” He shrugs. “I get paid, no matter the name.”
Without another word, he makes his way around the car and slides into the driver’s seat, pulling away within seconds.
I turn my attention back to navy blazer after the car disappears down the hill. “I was told the boxes I sent would be in my room when I arrived?”
“Follow me, Harcourt.” Blazer boy ignores my question, and turns, snapping his fingers for me to follow.
“That's not my name.” I grumble, grabbing the handle of each suitcase, and giving them an irritated tug.
He climbs the steps, and I follow, managing to roll each up the smooth stone rock, and when we reach the top, pass through a set of massive wooden doors and step into a foyer. Polished marble floors stretch out before me, gleaming beneath a ceiling that soars impossibly high.
“What is your hall assignment?” he asks.
“Hawthorne,” I answer, noting the name of the dorm in the enrollment letter tucked in my bag.
“It’s that way.” He points down a hall to my left. “I’d suggest more walking and less gawking because First Assembly is at sixteen hundred and it can be a bit of a walk.”
Sixteen hundred? Apparently Dominion spoke a different language. One of military precision and literary innuendos.
“See you later, Harcourt.” He winks, then turns, and makes his way back through the wood doors and out into the gray afternoon.
With a dramatic pull of both suitcase handles, I start down the hall. Arched coffered ceilings line the way, marked by a crystal chandelier every twenty feet. I know it’s twenty because I counted. It’s what I do. Tick numbers in my head when the world tilts and my breath needs steadying.
Finally, after twisting through a labyrinth of halls and stairwells that rivals an MC Escher painting, I reach another set of double doors reminiscent of those I first entered, and a bronze stamped plaque that reads, HAWTHORNE HALL.
I push through and come to a stop, scanning from side to side. To my left, there’s nothing but a row of mailboxes; to my right, a small sitting area.
With nowhere else to go, I continue straight down the hall, wheels of my suitcases humming smoothly, and just at the end of the corridor, spot the room number in my enrollment letter: 12.
Pushing open the door I step inside and look around. It’s smaller than expected. Two twin beds and identical desks and a window that overlooks a courtyard. The only welcome sight are the boxes marked with my father’s familiar handwriting, stacked neatly in the corner.
Letting go of my suitcase handles, I make my way over to the bed closest to my boxes, and drop my backpack onto the mattress.
Reaching for a box, I pull it closer, my fingers already working at the tape. I tear it open and nearly cry with relief when I see my sewing machine and vintage sewing kit inside. I run my hands over the cool metal, tracing the familiar curves and worn edges, my chest tightening.
My mom used to sit at the kitchen table late at night, a single lamp casting a soft yellow circle over the machine in front of her and whatever fabric she was rescuing that week. She never followed patterns. Said rules were more like suggestions when it came to creating.
She’d hum under her breath, old songs she claimed she didn’t remember learning, and let me feed scraps of fabric beneath the needle. I thought I was being helpful. I wasn’t. I was eight the first time I stitched a crooked line across a sleeve and cried about ruining it. She just laughed, unpicked the seam, telling me, “Mistakes mean you’re making something.”
She taught me how to listen to the machine. The steady whir when it was happy, the sharp clack when something was wrong. She said sewing was like people.If you paid attention, you could tell when something needed mending.
I was thirteen when I lost her. Old enough to understand what the doctors were saying. Too young to accept it.
The house went quiet after that. No late-night humming. No half-finished projects draped over chairs. For a while, I couldn’t even look at the sewing machine without feeling like the air had been punched out of me.
But eventually, I sat down at it again. Not because it didn’t hurt, but because it did. And because every stitch felt like a thread tying me back to her. Like she was still there guiding my hands, reminding me that broken things can be taken apart and made whole again.
Setting it down on the desk, I get to work unpacking. I’ve put away all my clothes and opened half the boxes by the time the room begins to feel almost livable. By the time I smooth my mother’s quilt over the bed, running my palm across the faded patches, the ache in my chest isn’t as noticeable.
“Ten months.” I lift my head with convition. “I can do this.”
I say it again to myself, and a third time for good measure, when the deliberate clearing of a throat catches me off guard. My head whips around, and I see standing in the doorway a girl with short, dark as night hair, tousled into deliberate chaos, wearing skin-tight jeans, chunky black boots, and a white babydoll tee, that skims her midriff.
“Hey.” She reaches for the sunglasses on her head, as a bubble swells between her lips, glossy and precise, before snapping with a soft pop. “I’m Verona.”
“Hi.” I stride over, and stick out my hand. “Lennox. But everyone calls me Lenny.”
“Punk rock.” She gives my hand a shake, then steps inside the room like it already belongs to her. “Nice to meet you, Lenny.”
Dropping the bag hanging from her shoulder onto the empty bed, she reaches inside and pulls out a tube, opening it. Rolled up images slide out and when she unfurls one, I see it’s a vintage band poster.
“Got any tape?” she asks while blowing another bubble.
“No.” I look over to my sewing kit. “But I have sewing pins.”
“Cool.” She looks over at the desk, eyeing my vintage sewing basket. “That’ll work.”
I grab a small plastic box from inside the kit and hand it to her. Kneeling on the bed, she holds it to the wall over the headboard.
“I notice you don’t have any boxes.” I watch carefully as she sticks a pin in each corner.
“Nope.” She pulls back, eyeing it with approval. “My parents think this place will build character,” she air quotes, then spins around to face me. “I think Dad not banging his secretary and Mom jetting off to St Moritz every chance she gets would do it, but hey…” She shrugs. “What do I know?”
I smile politely, not knowing what else to do because...yikes.
“Anyway…” Her smile fades slightly. “This will do....for now.”
I arch a skeptical brow. “Not planning to be here long?”
“Nope.” She snorts softly. “Not if I can help it.”
There’s something defiant in the way she says it. Like leaving isn’t just a plan, but a promise. I envy her confidence.
“Looks like you’ll be here longer.” She glances at my side of the room. Neat bed. Carefully placed artwork. Sewing kit organized to precision.
I open my mouth to respond, when blazer boy appears in the doorway. “Ten minutes until First Assembly."
Verona rolls her eyes and I stifle a laugh.
“Something funny?” He leans casually against the doorframe.
“No.” I shake my head, eyes on Verona. “Not at all.”
“Now, Harcourt, you don’t want word getting back to Lillian that you were stepping out of line on your first day, after what…” He pauses and glances down at his watch. A Rolex, of course. “An hour in?”
His tone is smooth, almost amused, but there’s something deliberate in his every word.
“For the last time,” I correct. “That is not my last name. And honestly, I don’t care what you tell her.” What’s the worst she could do at this point? She already took away my senior year; sending me thousands of miles away from my life and friends.
Verona winks as if to say, atta girl, and blows a bubble.
“You know…” He pushes up from the door and strolls into the room. “I could be persuaded to tell her otherwise.”
“Oh yeah?” I roll my eyes.
He drags his eyes down my body and smirks.
“In your dreams.” I scoff, knowing exactly what he's thinking.
“Come on.” Verona reaches for me and tugs me with her toward the door. “He’s not worth it.”
We stumble out into the hall, leaving blazer boy staring after us. “Thank you.” I shoot her a look of appreciation.
“My pleasure.” Verona warns, looking back down the hall over her shoulder. “But be careful of him. He’s the Headmaster’s spy.”
“How do you know?”
“Everyone knows everyone around here.” She faces forward once more. “Where did you say you were from again?”
“I...didn’t.” I admit.
“Right.” She stops and studies me for a moment. “Well, word of advice?”
I nod.
“This place will chew you up and spit you out if you’re not careful.”
“How do you know?” I tilt my head, curious.
“All my parents’ friends send their kids here. It’s a society thing.” She looks around with a sigh. “And Lillian Harcourt...she has eyes and ears everywhere, which means, trust no one.”
“Even the girls?”
“No one.” She repeats.
“Well, okay.” I clear my throat. “Consider me warned.”
“Get moving!” Blazer boy calls out.
We both turn our heads and without missing a beat, Verona flips him the bird, then reaches for me once more.
“I think I might love you.” I marvel as she encourages me down the hall.
“Well then,” she links her arm through mine, “I think this may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“But you don’t plan to be here long.” I note.
“Oh…” She muses with a smile. “I don’t know.”
“Really?”
“Yup.” She tightens her hold.
“What changed in the past five minutes?”
She shrugs. “Something tells me you’re gonna need a guide.”
