CHAPTER ONE
Kieran
It had been three weeks since that night in the forest, and nothing about Glenhaven felt the same.
The corridors were quieter, the classrooms emptier. The laughter, the whispers, even the sound of the rain against the windows, it all felt muted, like the school itself was grieving.
Blaise was gone.
Niamh had returned, but she wasn’t the same girl who’d vanished that night.
And I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror without thinking that maybe, if I’d moved faster, if I’d fought harder, Blaise might still be alive.
The official story was that Blaise had “left for treatment abroad.” A pathetic lie printed in the weekly newsletter the headmistress sent to our families. The same newsletter that claimed Niamh had been on “a family trip” and was now “safely back at Glenhaven.”
But we all knew the truth.
The Brotherhood of the Stag was still here.
I could feel it, like a storm gathering behind the walls.
Outside, a cold wind swept across the courtyard, scattering the last of the autumn leaves. The air smelled of peat and rain and the faint, metallic taste of the highlands. I pulled my jacket tighter and crossed the courtyard, heading for the fountain where Maeve Sinclair sat alone.
She’d been sitting there every day after classes since Niamh came back, watching the grey clouds roll in, her sketchbook on her lap, the pages mostly empty. Rowan said she didn’t sleep much anymore. None of us did.
When she noticed me, she didn’t smile. Just tilted her head, her hair whipping across her face.
“You’re late,” she said softly.
“For what?”
“For pretending everything’s fine.”
I sat beside her, the cold from the stone seeping through my trousers. The fountain had half-frozen over; a thin crust of ice spread around its edges, and the trickle of water beneath sounded like something gasping for air.
“You saw Niamh?” she asked after a long pause.
“Earlier. She was in the library with Rowan.”
Maeve’s expression tightened, something dark flickering behind her eyes. “She’s not telling us everything, Kieran. You feel it too, don’t you?”
I hesitated. Because she was right. Since her return, Niamh seemed… altered. Distant. Her eyes sometimes glazed over mid-conversation, as if she was seeing something far away. And when she touched things… walls, books, even people, it was like she was listening to something none of us could hear.
“She’s been through hell,” I said finally. “We all have.”
Maeve turned her gaze toward the chapel on the hill. “You think the Brotherhood is still here?”
“I know they are.”
I reached into my jacket and pulled out the photograph I’d found in the archives , a faded black-and-white image of students in front of the chapel, their faces pale and stiff. On the back, someone had written in smudged ink: The Order of the Stag, 1874.
Maeve took it carefully, her fingers brushing mine. “They’ve been here since the school was founded,” she whispered.
“Maybe before.”
We fell silent for a long time. The clouds shifted, and faint thunder echoed from somewhere over the moors.
“I keep thinking about Blaise,” she said suddenly. “He didn’t deserve any of this. None of us did.”
My throat tightened. “I see him sometimes.”
“In dreams?”
“No.” I looked down at my hands, at the faint scars across my knuckles. “In reflections. Windows. Mirrors. Like he’s still here.”
Maeve didn’t speak, just reached into her coat pocket and took out a small pendant, the silver wolf charm one of the Guardians had given her before they disappeared that night.
“She told me it would protect me,” Maeve murmured. “But I don’t feel protected. Do you?”
“No,” I admitted. “But I’ll protect you anyway.”
That made her look up, startled, maybe, or just unsure if she’d heard me right. I didn’t repeat it.
Lightning flickered across the sky, a white crack above the chapel spire. For a brief instant, I thought I saw movement behind one of its high windows, a shape too tall, too still.
Maeve followed my gaze. “You saw it too, didn’t you?”
I nodded once.
“The Brotherhood,” she whispered.
“Or what’s left of them.”
Rain began to fall, light at first and then steady, soaking through our clothes. We didn’t move.
“They’re watching us again,” she said.
“Then let them watch,” I muttered. “They’ll know we’re coming.”
Maeve closed her sketchbook, tucking the old photograph inside. “And if they come first?”
“Then we make them regret it.”
Her eyes met mine, fierce, unflinching and for a moment, the world fell away. The storm, the fear, the grief… all of it blurred into silence.
We stood, side by side, and walked back toward the dormitories as thunder rolled across the highlands.
Behind us, the fountain’s ice cracked, a long, hollow sound that echoed through the courtyard like a warning.
And in the reflection of the chapel’s glass, I could’ve sworn I saw antlers.
