ALESSIA POV
The University of London didn't smell like expensive lilies or the suffocating scent of floor wax that clung to the halls of my family estate. Here, the air was sharp with the ozone of the underground, the metallic tang of rain on asphalt, and—most importantly—the sterile, biting sting of antiseptic.
For most, the hospital-scented corridors of the medical faculty were a place of stress. For me, they were a cathedral.
I sat in the highest row of the anatomy theater, a space where the shadows were deep enough to swallow my frame. I didn't just sit; I retreated. My oversized charcoal turtleneck was pulled so high the wool grazed my jawline, a thick, knitted barricade against a world that always wanted to see more of me than I was willing to give.
I opened my laptop, the screen's pale glow reflecting in my eyes—the only part of me that felt alive today. On the monitor, a sea of neuro-regeneration data waited for my touch. Here, I wasn't the "unfinished" daughter or the "fragile" smudge on the Vane family portrait. I was the student with the highest GPA in the year in the faculty of medicine, a mind that could map the human nervous system with a precision my mother would never acknowledge.
But even here, the silence wasn't safe.
I could feel the minutes slipping through my fingers like water. Every tick of the digital clock on my taskbar was a reminder of the four o'clock deadline—the moment the marble gates of the estate would swing shut behind me, locking me back into the performance.
Below me, the theater was filling. I could hear the rhythmic hum of student life, but it reached me as a series of jagged whispers.
"Is she even breathing?"
"I heard she stayed in the lab until 3:00 AM again. It's pathetic."
"Brilliant? Please. You saw her last grade on the cardiovascular pathology exam. Nobody is that perfect unless they're doing extra work for Professor Raymond behind closed doors."
"With a body like hers? She's probably desperate to get noticed"
The words drifted up like toxic smoke. They wanted to believe I was sleeping my way to the top because the alternative was too hard for them to swallow: that I was simply better than them.
Better, because while they were curated for ballrooms and social climbing, I was engineered for the theater of the mind.
I stared at my laptop, my fingers hovering over the keys. They saw a girl who was "too quiet" and "too thin," but the digital archives of the medical world saw A.V. Veritas. I had spent my life building a fortress out of data, publishing under a pseudonym so my mother couldn't claim my intellect as another Vane family asset.
I scrolled through my private folder, the titles of my work a silent, jagged retort to every whisper in this room:
Correlation of Proteomic Biomarkers in Cerebrospinal Fluid with Early-Onset Neurodegeneration. I was seventeen when I published this. I had been naive enough to show the physical journal to Mother, hoping for a sliver of pride. She hadn't even looked at the abstract; she just told me that a lady's hands were for the piano, not for "staining herself with the business of the dying." I became a ghost that day.
Kinematic Synergies and Postural Instability: A Predictive Model for Idiopathic Parkinson's. My second year of med school. I spent six months observing the subtle "micro-hitches" in how people move, proving the brain fails the body long before the tremors begin. It was a study on survival something I understood intimately.
Optimization of Convolutional Neural Networks for Mapping Cortical Microcircuits via SmartEM. My foray into AI. This is the hardest of all the paper I have written so far. I taught machines to see the shadows between neurons, the places where communication actually happens. It was cited by three major firms this year, and I watched the dividends hit my secret offshore account with a cold, hollow satisfaction.
I kept my head down, my hair acting as a dark curtain between me and the prying eyes of the theater. I tried to focus on the flickering cursor of my laptop, but the air in the room suddenly shifted. I was a world-renowned genius in the journals, and a "smudge" in my own kitchen.
I tried to lose myself in the data, but the sterile peace of the anatomy theater was suddenly strangled by the arrival of Le Lion—my sister's suffocatingly expensive perfume.
Seraphina
The rhythmic click-clack of her designer heels began the ascent toward the back row. Usually, the other students stayed away from my corner, but Seraphina moved through the world as if she owned every inch of ground she stepped on.
"Oh, leave her alone, girls," Seraphina's voice rang out—bright, airy, and dripping with a sweetness that made my teeth ache. She stopped at the row just below mine, turning to the group of girls who had been whispering the loudest. She didn't scold them; she coddled them.
"Alessia isn't being 'rude.' She's just... in her own world today," she said, giving them a conspiratorial, weary smile. "You know how she gets when she's stressed. It's not her fault she doesn't know how to be social. We have to be patient with her."
The girls exchanged looks of mock-sympathy, their eyes darting to me with a new, sharper kind of pity. "You're so patient with her, Seraphina," one whispered. "I don't know how you do it."
"She's my sister," Seraphina sighed, a small, tragic tilt of her head suggesting a burden she was too "noble" to complain about. "I promised Mother I'd look after her. Even if she makes it... difficult."
She finally stepped up into my row, invading the only six feet of space I had left. She didn't sit; she hovered, looking down at me like a queen visiting a leper colony.
"Alessia, love," she murmured, leaning in close enough for the girls below to see her "comforting" me. She reached out and tucked a stray strand of my hair behind my ear, a gesture that looked tender to everyone else, but felt like a threat to me. "I brought you this juice. I know you stayed up all night, I saw the light under your door. I told Mother you were probably just studying, though I think she's worried you're... well, you know. Spiraling again."
She didn't say the word crazy. She just let it hang in the air, thick and suffocating.
"I'm fine, Seraphina," I said, my voice flat. I didn't look at her. I couldn't.
"See?" Seraphina turned back to her squad with a helpless, shaky smile. "So prickly. But we love her anyway, don't we?"
She leaned down further, her voice dropping so only I could hear the venom. "Don't forget the guests at four, Birdie. Try to look a little less... haunted. For Mother's sake? She was so embarrassed last time you barely spoke to her friends. Don't be a smudge on the wallpaper today."
She patted my hand—three sharp, condescending taps—and then she was gone, sweeping back down the stairs with her disciples trailing behind her.
I sat there, staring at the green juice like it was poison.
"She's quite the actress, isn't she?"
The voice didn't come from a quiet corner. It came from the seat directly next to mine, vibrating with a confidence that only comes from owning the building you're standing in.
I didn't have to look up to know who it was. Julian Thorne, the heir to the "Thorne Empire". If my brother Leo was the "Golden Heir" of the Vanes, Julian was the "Infamous Prince" of the London social scene. The Thornes were one of the few families in Kensington who could look my mother in the eye without blinking. Their empire was built on Thorne Maritime, the kind of deep, old-world power that didn't just fund the city—it moved the very earth beneath it and Julian carried that power like a weapon he wasn't afraid to misfire.
His family owned Thorne Global—a logistics and private security empire that acted as the invisible circulatory system of the city. They owned the docks, the shipping containers, and the armored cars that moved the world's wealth. If the Vanes were the mind of the elite, the Thornes were the muscle and the gatekeepers. They knew what was coming into the country before the government did, and they knew exactly who was hiding what behind closed doors.
"Go away, Julian," I muttered, my fingers flying across my keyboard, desperate to look busy.
"Is that a way to treat a colleague, Birdie?" He leaned back, crossing his arms behind his head.
I felt a familiar flash of irritation. Julian was the second-ranked student in the Faculty of Medicine—trailing right behind me. It was infuriating. He never looked serious; he spent more time in Mayfair clubs than in the library, and his lab coat was always suspiciously pristine. If I didn't know how rigorous the board exams were, I'd swear he was bribing the Professors. But I knew the truth: he was just effortlessly brilliant, the kind of person who could memorize an entire anatomy text while nursing a hangover.
I stiffened at the nickname. He used it just like the others, but while Seraphina used it to make me feel small, he used it like a dare.
"We aren't colleagues," I said, finally turning to look at him. His eyes were bright with mischief. "And don't call me that. You know how much attention you draw. I don't need your 'fan club' cornering me in the restrooms because you decided to talk to the 'weird' Vane girl."
His gaze traveled over me, slow and intentional, lingering on the thick, charcoal wool of my turtleneck. A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth
"Still wearing the carpet, I see," he remarked, his voice dropping to a hum that only I could hear. "It's a shame, really. All that fabric to hide a frame that's already trying to disappear. You look like a beautiful little skeleton lost in a laundry basket, Alessia. Doesn't your mother buy you clothes that actually... fit?"I felt the heat climb my neck. He was making a joke of the very thing that made me feel safe. "It's called comfort, Julian. Not all of us dress to be 'merchandise' for the public."
"No, you just dress to be invisible," he countered, his smile fading into something sharper.He flicked the cap of the green juice Seraphina had left on the desk, his eyes trailing her as she walked away. "But it's not working. You're the smartest person in this room, Alessia, but you're a total idiot when it comes to your own life."
I gripped the edge of the table, my knuckles turning white. "I don't need your opinion on my life, Julian."
"Someone needs to give it to you," he said, standing up and swinging his bag over his shoulder. He leaned down, his face way too close to mine, his voice dropping to a low, rough whisper. "You're so busy being a genius that you've turned into a doormat. She just handed you a bottle of poison in front of everyone, and you said 'thank you.' It's pathetic, really."
I went cold, my throat tightening as I stared at the desk. I wanted to snap back, but the words felt trapped behind my teeth.
"Keep hiding behind your research, Veritas," he added.
He didn't wait for a reaction. He turned and strolled down the stairs with that lazy, effortless gait that made it look like he was walking on air. My brain was still stuck on the "doormat" comment, my pulse thrumming in my ears so loudly I could barely think.
I watched him reach the bottom of the theater. He didn't head for the exit. Instead, he stopped by a group of second-years, leaning against a desk and flashing a grin that had them leaning in like flowers toward the sun. He was already laughing, flirting as if he hadn't just shredded my dignity.
Veritas.
The word finally hit me. It wasn't a jab. It wasn't a nickname. It was me.
My breath hitched. My heart skipped a beat, then hammered against my ribs with a sudden, violent force. He knows. I hadn't used that name for anything other than the 'research papers'. I'd scrubbed my digital footprint. I'd used encrypted servers.
As if he felt the weight of my stare, Julian looked up. He didn't stop talking to the girls, but his gaze sliced right through the crowded room and locked onto mine.
He didn't look concerned. He didn't look guilty. He just gave me a slow, deliberate wink before turning back to his audience.
I sat there, the air in my lungs feeling thin and cold. The word Veritas was still echoing in my head, a silent explosion that had leveled my sense of safety. My eyes were fixed on Julian, but he had already moved on, laughing as if he hadn't just dismantled my entire life in a single sentence.
He knew. The one thing that was mine—the one part of me that wasn't a "Vane" or a "smudge" or a "Birdie"—was in his hands.
My hand shook as I reached for the bottle of green juice. I didn't want it, but I needed something to hold onto. As I moved, the cuff of my sweater pulled back, revealing the slim, silver face of my watch.
I stopped breathing.
3:45 PM.
The blood drained from my face, leaving me colder than the antiseptic air of the lab. The "guests" were arriving at four. The Valentinos. The dinner that Mother had been orchestrating for weeks with the precision of a military invasion.
I was supposed to be home, dressed, and "presentable" by now. I wasn't just late; I was a disaster.
If I wasn't there when the first car pulled into the driveway, Mother wouldn't just be angry. She would make sure I felt the weight of my failure for the next month. I could already hear her voice—the quiet, sharp disappointment that always preceded the sting of her hand. Mother didn't believe in screaming; she believed in "correction." She believed that skin was just another canvas for her control.
I looked at the reddening skin of my wrist where the watch sat. I could almost feel the phantom ache of the last time I'd been "improper."
The panic hit me then—a cold, sharp spike through my chest.
I didn't pack my bag; I shoved everything into it, the zipper catching on the wool of my sweater. I didn't look at the girls whispering in the front row. I didn't look back at Julian. If I stayed one more second to process the fact that he knew my secret, I'd be walking into a house that was no longer a home, but a cage with a very hungry occupant.
I bolted for the heavy oak doors, my heart hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm.
I had fifteen minutes to cross London. Fifteen minutes to scrub the "weird Kensington girl" off my skin and paint on the face of the perfect, dutiful Vane. If I was even a second late, the silk of my dinner dress wouldn't be enough to hide what Mother would do to the "beautiful little skeleton" she was so ashamed of.
I hit the street running, the cold London air biting at my lungs, desperate to outrun a clock that was already ticking toward my undoing.