WARNING: This chapter may have slight triggers. Please take care as you read. 

The day after Nora's father committed suicide, the house was empty.

Mallory's parents were there to console their daughter and their grandchild—the four of them even disappearing for lunch.

Mallory had been a wreck. Until that point, Nora had never seen her stepmother cry. So when the paramedics came to take the body, she hadn't expected to hear such giant, gasping sobs from downstairs.

Nora hid in her room under her covers. She was just...numb. As if somehow her mind and heart disconnected and weren't on speaking terms. She knew she should be devastated. She even expected some type of heart-wrenching grief.

Only there was nothing.

At first, she couldn't process it. After a few hours of sitting there in an empty house under heavy covers, she finally thought everything through.

And then she couldn't breathe.

She was alone.

Mallory wasn't her mother. Nor did she care to be. Her father had had a somewhat platonic love with her stepmother. They'd been two lost souls swimming in a sea of grief after their respective mate's loss. And somehow they had found each other and kindled a type of acquaintance love. Their loss had been their bonding factor. The bond had been strong enough that her father felt he could marry Mallory and live together with her. Could start over.

Only he'd been wrong.

That had been two years ago, a week before Nora started her freshman year at Jostlin Academy. Mallory made her go to school regardless. Made her pretend nothing happened.

Three weeks after that, Mallory called Nora into her father's study. Her stepsister Felicity was there, sitting in her mother's favorite teal chair. When Nora slipped into the room, Felicity crossed her legs and leaned back in the chair.

Nora hated her father's study. The thought of it alone made her nauseous. She couldn't look at anything—especially not the wooden truss above the fireplace. Or the new white rug underneath it. It had been her father's favorite room. And the room where—

Mallory was still in the same perfectly pressed maroon pantsuit she'd worn to the office—her father's office. Upon his passing, the board granted Mallory the promotion and just like that, her father was replaced.

Not three weeks after his death.

The anger crawled carefully up Nora's spine just seeing Mallory in the pantsuit. Her father spent his life working on his company, Dream Records, building it from the ground up, making a name for himself. And in just three weeks, the board found someone they deemed sufficient enough to replace him.

His current wife.

"What is this?" Mallory asked as Nora walked into the room. She lifted up a simple piece of notebook paper—the only document on her desk.

Recognition immediately flowed through her. It was her homework, her first test from her Freshman Lyrics class, with her perfect score on the top in red. Next to the score, Professor Phell drew a small smiley face. Nora had been so excited about that smiley face she about burst—the first little ounce of joy she'd had since her father's passing. And it was over something as small as a little drawing and a grade.

But that grade...it was her confirmation that she was exactly where she was meant to be. That maybe, just maybe, her father passed her a tiny smidge of talent. Something more than just his ears and the rest of his genes.

She'd been so proud of that perfect score she'd taped it to the inside of her closet door. Proud, but also afraid someone might find it.

Someone like Mallory.

Mallory held the paper tight between her fingers, crumpling the edge. "You never thought to tell us about this?"

Nora would never forget the derisive look in her stepmother's eye. Not for as long as she lived. She curled her lip when Nora didn't respond, "well?"

"It's my test," Nora murmured.

"No one gets a perfect score in Lyrics," Felicity told Mallory, "No one. All the Seniors talk about it too—Professor Phell has never given anyone a perfect score. He's the grouchiest old man ever and he's got a serious stick up his a—" Felicity immediately cut herself off as Mallory sliced a sharp look her way.

Mallory pursed her lips and set the test on the desk in front of her before crossing her arms. "It seems to me, based on the grade Felicity received, that you cheated on this test, Nora."

At first, the words didn't register. They were so out of Nora's behavior range no one had ever put Nora and cheating in the same sentence. Nora never cheated. She was good at school, at the system, and knew how to work it to her advantage for sure. But not by cheating. She only knew how to succeed and that was based purely on her own hard work.

"It's not a test you can cheat on," Nora told Mallory, "Lyrics tests are timed—you get 50 minutes to put together a song based on the prompt."

"Then you knew the prompt beforehand and wrote something prior to class," Mallory declared.

Nora opened her mouth, but for a moment nothing came out. The idea never occurred to her before. "The teacher doesn't reveal the topic until test day," she finally said.

Mallory narrowed her eyes at Nora, then her daughter, and then looked back down at the evidence in front of her. "I see." She click-click-clicked her ruby red nails absentmindedly on the desk. After a moment, she nodded, as if to herself, and straightened. "Here's what we will do."

Mallory laid it all out in front of Nora in quick, succinct steps. When she was finished, Nora gaped at her.

"Well?" Felicity leaned forward, excitement dripping from her face.

Nora frowned at the grown woman behind the desk. The same woman who had her arms crossed and sat back, a self-satisfied smile curling her lips. She'd never seen this woman before. This monster wearing an Ace's skin.

"No."

"No?" Mallory ticked.

It was such a small sound—nothing more than a click of a tongue—but it made Nora's entire body tense. She'd heard the same sound plenty of times—once when her father dropped one of Mallory's expensive glassware bowls and another when Felicity came in late after her first high school party. It was Mallory's disappointed noise. It meant she was going to take action.

And Nora would not like what happened next.

Mallory traced the corner of Nora's Lyric test. "Your father has such a delicate reputation in the eyes of the kingdom...and with his company." She flicked her gaze up to Nora. "I can't imagine how the company would react if they find out the real reason Paul Davis died. They'll wipe his name right off the sign out front."

Nora's heart clenched tight. She knew exactly where this was going. "It was your idea to make it look like a heart attack."

"Because I'm old enough to understand reputations," Mallory's nostrils flared, "If people found out your father was stupid enough to take his own life, they'd stop putting their money into his company. And the board—" She cut herself off with a humorless laugh, "well, you can bet they'd find a way to cut off our income and any money going into your trust fund."

Nora's gaze blurred. "He was sick!"

Mallory slammed her hands on the desk and shot up. "He was weak. And it's about time you realized it. Your father was nothing but a spineless fool pretending he could make it in a cut-throat business."

He was sick, he was sick, he was sick, Nora chanted to herself. That's what the therapist had said after his death. Like her mother had been. Only it was a mental sickness. Not a physical one like her mother's.

He was sick. Nora'd clutched that sentence close ever since her father passed. Because considering the other option made her feel as if a glass grenade exploded in her chest. Her hand trembled as she pressed it against her mouth, holding back a sob.

Mallory took a slow, deep breath and smoothed down the sides of her pantsuit. Nora watched through tears as her stepmother carefully compartmentalized herself. "Here is what is going to happen," she said calmly. "You are going to help Felicity with her career."

"I—"

"We need to know you are invested in this family," Mallory interrupted. "Otherwise I see no reason to pay thousands of dollars to send you to Jostlin."

Half. She was only paying half of her tuition. The other half Nora'd gotten through a scholarship she'd applied for before her father died.

"And," Mallory's gaze sharpened on Nora, "I see no reason to keep your father's reputation spotless."

From the side, Felicity huffed a laugh.

"Convince me you are worth it, Nora." Mallory said, "Starting with Felicity's career."

Even two years later, Nora could not remember what happened after that. If she quietly left. If she said anything to her stepmother. She did remember being in her room and collapsing onto her bed. Remembered cuddling the stuffed koala bear her mother had given her as a child. Remembered thinking about all the things Mallory had control over that she didn't. The house. Her tuition. Her father's reputation.

That was how it started. And then slowly, Mallory added more artists. Felicity's friends. Her friend's children. Nora had more people around her than she'd ever had before.

But like the day her father died, she still felt lost at sea.