Zara
I didn’t sleep that night.
Even after the bells tolled midnight and the academy fell silent around me, I lay awake staring at the ceiling, counting the faint cracks in the plaster. Sleep refused to come. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Alex’s face as she slipped Mira’s diary into her satchel. Her narrowed eyes. Her precise movements. Her betrayal.
By dawn, my decision was made.
I waited until the morning classes began and the corridors buzzed with chatter and hurried footsteps. The air smelled faintly of coffee, as students filed into lecture halls in tight clusters, their voices weaving together into a blanket of noise that muffled my racing heartbeat.
I kept my head down as I walked past the statue of Alvaro statue, the school’s first headmaster , his stone gaze following me
