I tried to focus on the spell diagram on the board.

  The professor’s chalk tapped out each rune pattern with meticulous rhythm, the lines of the glyphs curling into something elegant and precise. Everyone else had their quills scratching or their rune tablets glowing with annotations.

  Mine stayed blank.

  All I could think about was my brother.

  Cale.

  He’d walked into Arclight Academy for the first time today. Into Halden’s lecture hall. I should have been paying attention to Arcanum circles and stabilization ratios, but my mind kept drifting down the corridor, wondering how he was doing.

  Was he nervous?

  Was he standing awkwardly at the front of the class, trying not to make eye contact?

  Or was he holding himself stiff and soldier-straight, the way he always did now?

  I chewed my lip until a sharp whisper cut through my thoughts.

  “Did you hear?”

  Two seats over, Selene Deyor was leaning across the aisle, her blond curls bouncing as she tried to keep her voice low.

  Which meant, of course, that everyone heard it. Selene never truly whispered.

  “The transfer to the sophomore year,” she hissed. “Apparently Professor Halden made him drop a glamour at the start of class.”

  My heart lurched.

  A glamour?

  The girl Selene was talking to gasped and smacked her quill down. “You’re joking. Who comes to school wearing a glamour? That’s awful. What if he was hideous underneath?”

  Selene giggled, eyes bright. “That’s what makes it juicy. Half the girls in his section are already saying he’s… well. Let’s just say not hideous.”

  A laugh bubbled from behind me.

  Mara Kellen, who had been sketching Arcanum formulas in the corner of her notebook, leaned back in her chair. “Not hideous? What are they five years old? Just say he’s gorgeous and be done with it.”

  Selene rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I said.”

  “That’s exactly what you implied and it functions the same,” Mara shot back. She glanced at me, sharp-eyed and smirking. “So, Ellara. You going to confirm this rumor, or are you going to sit there pretending you don’t know him?”

  Heat rushed into my face. “I—what?”

  “Don’t play dumb.” Selene pounced immediately. “You told us last week your brother was enrolling. Your brother who came back from the dead. Anyone paying attention knows the transfer is your brother.”

  Half the class twisted in their seats to look at me.

  I wanted to sink through the floor.

  “Yes,” I muttered. “The new transfer is my brother.”

  The collective squeal of delight made my temples throb.

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  Selene clapped her hands together like a child handed a present. “Ellara! Why didn’t you tell us your brother looks like a Stage Icon?”

  Mara smirked. “Probably because she knew you’d react like this.”

  “React like what?” Selene demanded.

  “Like you’re about to carve his initials into your Crystal Interface.”

  I groaned, pressing my palm to my face.

  I didn’t even know what they were talking about. My brother did not look like a stage icon. He was quiet. Plain. The kind of person people walked past without noticing.

  But apparently… he’d been wearing a glamour?

  What was going on?

  The gossip spread like fire.

  By the end of lecture, three different students had “heard” three different versions of the story. In one, Cale had ripped off his glamour in defiance and made the entire class swoon. In another, Halden had nearly expelled him for hiding it. In a third, my brother was supposedly a bastard son of a noble house, and the glamour had been hiding his identity from some of the seedier syndicates.

  None of them were true. At least, I think none of them were true. Damn...I hope none of these are true.

  The bell rang, but instead of scattering, everyone clustered around Selene. She was holding up her Crystal Interface; it's spirit-glass lens was projecting a faint, glowing image above her desk.

  “In the name of Her Beauty, someone recorded it!” Selene squealed. “Look, look, look!”

  Mara raised an eyebrow. “And here I thought we weren’t allowed to record in class.”

  Selene waved her off. “Who cares? Watch.”

  The image wavered, but it was clear enough.

  Cale stood at the front of Halden’s lecture hall, plain and forgettable—the version I’d been living with for the past several days.

  Then Halden’s voice cut through the projection.

  “Remove the glamour.”

  I held my breath.

  The image shifted.

  The plainness peeled away like smoke, features sharpening into something vivid and undeniable.

  Blue-black hair, uneven and wild. Stormglass violet eyes so deep they looked alive, shifting shades as he turned his head. His face sharper than memory, harder than childhood—but unmistakably his. The eyes I remembered.

  My chest tightened.

  That was him.

  Really him.

  Selene gasped so loudly the projection nearly flickered. “He’s—oh. Oh.”

  “Saints above,” someone whispered. "Where in the HELL did this guy come from..."

  Mara let out a low whistle. “Yeah. Not hideous. That might be the understatement of the century.”

  Selene rounded on me, eyes wide. “Ellara! Why didn’t you warn us he was—” She flailed helplessly. “That?”

  I couldn’t answer.

  Because the truth was, I hadn’t known.

  The recording ended, and the room exploded into noise.

  “Did you see his eyes?”

  “He’s definitely noble-born. No commoner looks like that.”

  “Maybe he’s a Knight Trainee—look at how he stands.”

  “You’re right. He’s too pretty.”

  “Pretty? He looks like trouble.”

  Selene fanned herself dramatically and collapsed back into her chair. “If I faint, someone catch me.”

  Mara rolled her eyes, though she was smiling. “You’re all hopeless. He’s not walking into your dorm to seduce you, Selene. He’s Ellara’s brother.”

  Selen snorted. "Well not with that attitude he won't. Think positive Mara."

  That earned another wave of squeals and laughter.

  I sank lower in my seat, wishing—for maybe the hundredth time that day—that I could vanish under a glamour of my own.

  By lunch, the recording had spread across half the Academy. Every group we passed in the dining hall was whispering about the new transfer.

  Selene thought this was simply marvelous.

  “This is perfect!” she announced, dropping her tray onto the table. “You’re going to introduce us. Right, Ellara?”

  I choked on my water. “What?”

  “You have to,” she insisted. “We’re your friends. Friends introduce each other to gorgeous brothers. That’s like basically the rules of Feminism.”

  Mara snorted into her soup. “I’m not sure you know what that word means.”

  Selene narrowed her eyes. “Just because you’re allergic to romance doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t enjoy it.”

  “I’m not allergic,” Mara shot back. “I just don’t drool over every boy with decent hair.”

  “Decent? Decent?” Selene pressed a hand to her chest. “Did you see him? Malan Heart is decent. Ellara’s brother should be on holoboards and on projection vids.”

  “This poor guy,” Mara said dryly. “No wonder he hid behind a glamour.”

  I shoved a spoonful of stew into my mouth to keep from answering.

  The next period wasn’t any easier. The whispers didn’t stop, and people kept looking at me. I couldn’t get the image out of my head—the glamour falling away, the blue-black hair, the stormglass eyes.

  For ten years, I’d remembered him as soft. Kind. Laughing over pie, playing games with the cousins, always making room for me.

  The man in the projection wasn’t soft. There was no warmth in his expression. No easy smile.

  He looked like a hurricane given flesh.

  And yet… those eyes. Those were the same eyes from my childhood.

  It was him.

  He was older for sure. He was most likely harder. That was probably a given.

  But it still him. That was enough for me.

  “You really are back,” I whispered to myself. “I missed you, brother.”