Page 17 of Bone Year

Maybe I did.

My eyes are dark brown, almost espresso colored when the sun hits just right. I’ve always wished they were green or blue like everyone else in my family, something brighter and softer, but my father used to say they gave me character, whatever that means.

My hair has always been the one thing people notice.

It’s a deep-coppery red, not bright like fire but rich, warm, the kind that catches light and holds onto it. It falls down my back, thick enough that it takes effort to tame but mercifully not the wild, unmanageable curls my mother battles every morning. I drag the brush through it again, watching it spill over my shoulders, familiar and strangely foreign at the same time.

I glance down, taking in the rest of myself.

I’ve never been delicate. I’m not thin, not willowy, but I am fit, built from years of hauling supplies, standing on my feet all day in the clinic, helping lift patients when no one else was around. Curves where I should have them. Strength where it counts. A body that’s always felt practical rather than ornamental.

Today, it feels like something else.

I’m being measured against a scale I don’t understand.

I lean closer to the mirror, searching for something hidden beneath skin and bone, some invisible mark that explains why I’m here and why everyone seems to know I don’t belong.

The reflection offers nothing back.

Just me, unremarkable Maelis.

But in the back of my mind, the question still gnaws at me. What the headmaster said is replaying on a loop. “If you were ordinary, you'd already be dead.”

Chapter Six

“Ashwell does not simply house current. It generates, circulates, and adapts it, exhibiting behavior consistent with autonomous cognition and unclear intent.”

— Professor Nestor’s private notes

“Looks like we’re neighbors. You headed to orientation?”

The pink-haired girl I noticed in the courtyard this morning stands outside her door as I shut mine. I nod and start toward the end of the hall.

“I’m Lux,” she says, quickening her pace to walk beside me.

“Maelis.” I manage a small, automatic smile, though my thoughts are still stuck on everything the headmaster said and the way this entire day keeps sliding sideways. If anything, it only hardens my resolve. I’m determined now more than ever to prove I belong here. I don’t like being underestimated or dismissed because I’m human and a woman. And I really don’t like being spoken to like I’m already doomed to fail, and that’s exactly how he made me feel in his office. I still don’t even know why he summoned me there. Apparently to get a look at the human girl.

“I know,” Lux says easily. “News has traveled fast that there’s a human at Ashwell, but I think it’s great. Humans are always overlooked.”

I glance over at her, surprised.

She isn’t smirking or teasing. There’s no edge in her tone, and I think she’s being sincere.

For a split-second, I don’t know what to say.

I’d always imagined fae as aloof, superior, convinced they are better than everyone else by default. Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe it’s an assumption I’ve carried without realizing it.

“Come on,” Lux says, already turning down the corridor. “It’s easy to get lost up here, but I know the way. My father’s a professor, so I’ve been wandering these halls longer than I care to admit.”

That earns a sideways glance from me. “And this is still your first year?”

She nods. “Ashwell doesn’t care about age. It cares about readiness. Some people arrive at twenty. Some don’t arrive until their late thirties, I’m twenty six so I guess I’m the middle of the pack. Most of the youngest students are in their early twenties though.” Her mouth curves faintly. “Almost everyone has some kind of medical background already. Healers, field medics, battlefield attendants. If they don’t, then they were exceptional somewhere else. Top of their class, unusual aptitude, or they did something that caught the academy’s attention.”

That makes my skin prickle.

We cross one of the enclosed upper walkways, the stone arches framing drifting snow and jagged mountain silhouettes beyond the windows. The glass is rimmed with frost, spiderwebbed with thin cracks that catch the light. Below us, I can glimpse lower courtyards and students moving all about in the distance.

“Everyone talks about this place like it chooses people,” I say as we walk. “When you say the academy, do you mean the headmaster?”