Prologue
This story is in progress.
Whatever is available to read is not fully edited! Feel free to let me know if there are any mistakes!
Set in the aftermath of Ashes and Gold, this prologue marks the beginning of Cassie and Evan’s story—where quiet moments, old wounds, and unspoken feelings take center stage.
Cassie Adams has spent her life trying not to be noticed; Evan Walker has spent his pretending nothing matters. When their paths intertwine, quiet moments turn dangerous, rumors ignite, and both are forced to confront the parts of themselves they’ve kept hidden. This is a slow-burn, emotionally charged story about first love, vulnerability, and choosing growth when staying comfortable would be easier.
Prologue
1 year ago
I was hiding, in the library again. Away from all the noise and prying eyes of the school hierarchy.
Not in a dramatic way. Just tucked into the back corner of the library where the shelves leaned close together and the carpet smelled faintly like dust and old paper. The fantasy section was always quieter than the rest of the room, like it existed slightly outside the school day. No loud conversations. Other kids would’ve probably called me a loser for hanging out in here. No one hung out in the library during lunch.
The fantasy section was always quieter than the rest of the room, like it existed slightly outside the school day. No loud conversations. No people looking for somewhere to be seen.
But there was no one looking for somewhere to be seen anymore.
I learned that lesson freshman year.
It had been the first day of school — the kind that smelled like late summer and floor cleaner, lockers slamming too loudly, voices already sorting themselves into groups I didn’t belong to. I was moving too fast, trying to get out of the main hallway before the bell rang, clutching my favorite book to my chest like it could anchor me.
In the Forest of the Night.
The cover was soft from rereading, the corners bent, my name written carefully on the inside cover. I’d brought it with me because I didn’t know what else to do with my hands. Because stories were easier than people. Because I thought maybe — stupidly — that if I stayed small enough, no one would notice me.
I didn’t see him until I tripped. My foot caught on the edge of a navy backpack someone had left half in the aisle, the zipper teeth scraping against my ankle bone. I stumbled forward with a sharp gasp, arms flailing like broken windmill blades as I tried to catch myself against the polished linoleum that reflected the harsh fluorescent lights above. The book slipped from my sweaty grip. It skidded across the floor with a whisper-scrape sound, spinning once in a blur of dog-eared pages before sliding to a stop when it bumped into someone’s sneaker. Black. Clean. Expensive. The kind with the little red tag on the heel that cost more than my entire outfit. “Watch it,” a voice said above me, low and bored and dripping with casual disdain. I froze, half-crouched with my knees trembling, heat rushing to my face in blotchy patches as I straightened slowly, my spine unfolding one vertebra at a time. “I— I’m sorry,” I said, already reaching for the book, my fingertips barely brushing its worn cover. “I didn’t mean to—” A hand snatched it up before I could – long fingers, clean nails, a silver ring glinting on the index finger.
He turned it over once, then again, his fingers leaving oily prints on the worn cover as he read the title with exaggerated care. His lips curled around each syllable like he was tasting something strange. “In the Forest of the Night,” he said, eyebrows arching high enough to crease his smooth forehead. “What is this?”
The people around him laughed — not loud, not yet. A ripple of snickers that traveled through the hallway like a current, curious and testing the waters.
“I— it’s just a book,” I said, my voice barely there, a whisper that evaporated in the fluorescent-lit air between us.
He grinned, teeth straight and white against his tanned skin, like I’d just given him permission to continue. The kind of smile that belonged on a predator.
“Yeah,” he said, flicking the corner of a dog-eared page. “A weird one.”
He glanced at the boys flanking him, their shoulders squared in identical navy blazers, clearly enjoying the attention now, feeding off it. “You carry this around on the first day?”
“I like it,” I said, instantly regretting the words as they left my mouth, my fingers twisting into the hem of my shirt, shifting nervously from one foot to the other.
That made him laugh, a sharp bark that echoed against the metal lockers.
“Of course you do.”
I didn’t know his name then. I only knew the way the space around him felt different — heavier somehow — like the hallway had adjusted itself to make room, the fluorescent lights seeming to shine a fraction brighter where they caught on his perfectly styled hair. The boy laughed again, the sound echoing off the metal lockers, his teeth flashing white against his tanned skin. He was already bored, already moving on, his attention sliding away from me like water off glass, as if I’d stopped being interesting the second my reaction disappointed him. He was good looking, that was for sure. Tousled dark hair that fell just right across his forehead, cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, and eyes the color of expensive whiskey. The kind of boy whose jawline seemed sculpted specifically to make girls like me forget how to breathe properly. He looked like he’d walked straight out of one of my romance novels—the brooding love interest who’d be described as “devastatingly handsome” at least three times per chapter.
Too bad he was a complete ass, the kind who’d step on a flower just to hear it break beneath his designer shoes, who’d probably never apologized for anything in his life because no one had ever taught him the shape of the word “sorry” in his mouth.
“Yo,” he said, nodding toward the older boy standing a few steps back, his blazer unbuttoned to reveal a crisp white shirt beneath. “What do you think?”
The book arced through the air, pages fluttering like a wounded bird, tossed with the careless ease of someone who’d never worried about breaking anything important.
The older boy caught it without looking, long fingers closing around the spine with lazy precision, his silver watch—some expensive brand with a face like a small moon—glinting under the hallway lights. His impossible blue eyes, the kind of blue that belonged on a magazine cover or in an artist’s palette rather than in someone’s actual face, glanced down at it once. His dark eyebrows barely moved beneath the sweep of dark hair that fell across his forehead in a way that suggested both carelessness and hours of styling. They had to be related—same jawline that could cut glass, same aristocratic nose, same air of untouchable privilege. But where the younger one was merely handsome, this one was beautiful in a way that made my stomach twist, like looking at something dangerous and knowing you should look away but not being able to.
That was all it took.
His mouth twisted — not in disgust exactly, more like mild irritation, the corner of his lip curling upward. Like he’d been handed something beneath his notice, a piece of trash someone expected him to dispose of.
"Not my thing,” he said, shrugging one shoulder with the casual indifference of royalty dismissing a peasant. “Looks depressing.” His voice carried the bored inflection of someone who’d never had to find escape in fiction.
A ripple of obedient laughter spread through the gathering crowd, their faces blurring together in my peripheral vision like watercolors left in the rain.
He flicked the book back without another glance, his manicured fingers treating my treasure like discarded gum wrapper. His attention had already drifted toward the girl pressed against his side—all glossy dark brown hair cascading over her shoulders and coffee-colored eyes rimmed with perfect liner. Her crimson-tipped fingers curled possessively into the expensive wool of his jacket sleeve as she whispered something that made her breath stir the hair by his ear.
He smiled at her—not the predatory grin from before, but something softer, intimate. But the smile didn't fully reach his eyes.
Before I could react—before my brain could even process the shift in his expression—the book was airborne again, tumbling end over end through the stale hallway air.
“Wait,” I said, the word tearing from my throat as panic crashed through me like a wave. “Please—”
He didn’t slow down. Didn’t even turn.
The paperback left his hand in a careless arc, pages fluttering helplessly like a wounded bird before it hit the water with a dull splash and disappeared beneath the fountain’s chlorine-scented surface, ink already bleeding into oblivion.
The laughter came louder this time, a wave of sound that crashed against my eardrums until they throbbed. I stood frozen on the speckled linoleum floor, staring at the ripples spreading across the fountain’s chlorinated surface. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed like trapped insects as my ears rang with white noise. My chest felt hollowed out, ribs splintered from the inside, lungs struggling to expand against the invisible weight pressing down. “That was your favorite, wasn’t it?” he called over his shoulder, his smile gleaming like a knife’s edge beneath the harsh school lighting. I didn’t know who either of them were—these boys with their perfect haircuts and expensive watches that caught the light with every casual flick of their wrists. I didn’t know why everyone seemed to orbit them so easily, like planets locked in gravitational pull. I only knew the way my hands trembled, fingers curled around nothing but air, the ghost-weight of my book still imprinted on my palms. The older boy didn’t look back, his shoulders straight beneath his tailored blazer as he disappeared into the current of students.
Not at the fountain where my book floated face-down, its pages bloating like a drowned thing. Not at me standing frozen with empty hands.
Whatever moment there might’ve been passed without registering in those impossible blue eyes.
That was the thing that stayed with me in the weeks that followed, haunting me during sleepless 3 AM staring contests with my ceiling.
Not the insult that burned like acid in my throat.
Not even the cruelty that left fingerprint bruises on my self-worth.
The ease of it—the casual flick of a wrist, the way his shoulders didn’t even tense with the effort of the throw.
The way something I loved—dog-eared pages I’d revisited until the spine cracked in precisely the right places—could be dismissed, passed along, and destroyed without a second thought, like crushing an ant beneath an expensive leather sole.
After that, I learned how to move through the halls like I didn’t exist, shoulders hunched forward, making myself small. How to keep my books pressed against my chest like armor. How to walk carefully along the walls, fingers trailing the cool metal of lockers. How to stay in places where accidents didn’t turn into performances with audiences that smelled of expensive cologne and mean-girl perfume.
Places like the library, with its dust motes dancing in shafts of afternoon light and the comforting smell of old paper.
I traced my finger along the spines, reading titles I already knew by heart. I wasn’t really searching. I was stalling. The bell had rung twenty minutes ago, and lunch was half over, but the idea of the cafeteria — the noise, the way people seemed to fill every inch of space without noticing who they crowded out — made my chest tighten.
I stopped when I saw it.
Tithe.
The spine was cracked and faded, the black lettering rubbed pale from too many hands. It had been checked out so often the cover curled slightly at the corners, like the book itself was tired but still willing.
I smiled despite myself.
I reached for it.
So did someone else.
Our fingers brushed — barely — and I flinched, instinctively pulling my hand back as if I’d been caught doing something wrong.
“Oh—sorry,” I said automatically, even though I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for.
The girl beside me laughed, surprised and a little breathless. “No, that was my fault. I didn’t even see you there.”
I glanced up.
She was new. I knew that much instantly. There was a stiffness to the way she stood, like she hadn’t learned the building’s rhythm yet. Her uniform looked right in all the wrong ways — a black hoodie over her navy blazer, that looked like it might’ve been too small, navy tie hanging loose and slightly askew around her collar, skirt bunched awkwardly at the waistband where she’d likely pinned it to keep it from sliding down her hips. Everything had the faded, softened look of clothes that had cycled through too many owners. Her hair was dark and wavy, falling in coffee-colored waves past her shoulders, framing a face with high cheekbones. Her expression hovered somewhere between guarded and curious, and when she looked up, her hazel eyes caught the library’s fluorescent light, flecks of amber and moss green glinting beneath lashes that were too long to be fair. She was the kind of pretty that belonged in the center of a crowded cafeteria table, not tucked away between dusty shelves. Her fingers, with dark nail polish catching the fluorescent light, fidgeted with the book’s edge like she wasn’t used to standing still. The way her eyes darted toward the library door every few seconds told me she was hiding out during lunch just like I was, though I couldn’t imagine why someone like her would need to.
Her eyes dropped to the book between us.
“Tithe,” she said, running her fingertip along the embossed letters on the spine. “Good choice.”
My grip tightened reflexively around the polished wood of the shelf edge, the corner digging into my palm. “You’ve read it?”
“Twice,” she said, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “And *Valiant*. And *Ironside*. Holly Black kind of ruined me for normal fantasy.” Her eyes lit up as she spoke, the hazel brightening to amber under the library’s lights.
That startled a laugh out of me before I could stop it—a sound I barely recognized as my own. I covered my mouth with my fingers, heat rushing to my cheeks. “Me too.”
Something shifted in her expression at that—like she’d found solid ground after walking on ice. The wariness in her posture melted slightly. “The way she writes faeries,” she continued, leaning closer and lowering her voice to a whisper that smelled faintly of mint gum, even though no one was nearby. “Not pretty. Just... sharp.”
I nodded, my hair falling forward across my face. “Like they’d actually hurt you.”
“Exactly.” The word hung between us, weighted with recognition.
For a moment, neither of us reached for the book again. It sat there between us on the shelf, forgotten, its worn cover catching dust motes in the slant of afternoon light, like it had already done its job.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. “You can take it,” I said finally, fingers twisting the hem of my uniform sweater. “I’ve read it already. I just—” I gestured vaguely at the shelf, at the empty space where the book belonged. “Like knowing it’s here. Like a landmark.”
She studied me for a second, head tilted slightly, a strand of dark hair falling across her cheek. Her eyes narrowed, not unkindly, like she was solving a puzzle. Then she shook her head, the silver rings on her fingers catching the light as she reached for the book. “We can share.”
I blinked, the word hanging between us like something fragile. “What?”
She slid the book from the shelf with careful fingers and held it out toward me, the worn cover resting in her palm like an offering. “You take it today. I’ll grab it next time. Or we can trade.” Her smile widened, revealing a slightly crooked eyetooth. “There’s a copy of Ironside that basically lives in my backpack.”
I hesitated, my fingers hovering above the book without quite touching it. Not because I didn’t want it—the familiar weight of those dog-eared pages felt like coming home—but because offers like that usually came with expectations I didn’t know how to meet, strings I couldn’t see until they were already tangled around my ankles.
But her smile wasn’t impatient, no tightening at the corners. It wasn’t pitying, no slight tilt of the head. It was just... open.
“I’m Jackie,” she added, like an afterthought, tucking a strand of coffee-colored hair behind her ear where large silver hoop ears sat.
“Cassie,” I said, surprised by how steady my voice sounded in the dust-moted quiet between the stacks.
She nodded once, a quick dip of her chin, like she was filing the name somewhere safe behind those hazel eyes. “Do you... want to sit together? I mean. Not now, if you don’t want to. Just—” She gestured toward the tables with fingers adorned with chipped black nail polish, a silver ring glinting on her thumb. “I don’t really know where people sit yet.”
I glanced toward the front of the library, where clusters of students leaned into each other, their laughter bouncing off the vaulted ceiling. They sprawled across tables meant for four, backpacks claiming territory, legs stretched into walkways, taking up space like it was theirs by birthright.
Then I looked back at the quiet table in the corner, half-hidden by the tall biography shelves. Dust motes danced in the rectangle of sunlight that fell across its scratched wooden surface. The one I always chose because the shadow of the bookcase fell just right, letting me disappear into the grain of the wood.
“There’s a seat by the window,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “If you want. The radiator underneath makes it warm.”
Jackie’s smile softened. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
We walked over together, our footsteps falling into unexpected synchrony on the worn carpet, the space between us comfortable and new. She sat down across from me, resting her elbows on the table.
As I opened Tithe, the pages falling open to Chapter Three without my guidance, I felt something loosen in my chest. Just a little. Like a knot I’d been carrying for months had slipped its first loop. Like the day had shifted without asking permission.
I didn’t know then that this moment — this quiet, accidental meeting between dusty shelves — would ripple outward into midnight phone calls, whispered secrets, and a friendship that would eventually save me in ways I couldn’t yet imagine. I only knew that for the first time that semester, the library’s silence felt different. The afternoon light caught in Jackie’s silver earrings and cast tiny prisms across our shared table, transforming the ordinary air between us into something shimmering and alive. And somehow, that felt like the kind of magic Holly Black might write about — not pretty, but real. Sharp enough to change things.
