Nocturne at Nevermore

Chapter 2 - strings in the courtyard

The courtyard of Nevermore was a stage all on its own. The old fountain, cracked and moss-lined, served as the centerpiece, while students leaned along wooden benches and scattered patches of grass, talking over the weak sunlight that barely bled through the clouds

It wasn’t unusual for outcasts to gather here between classes. What 𝒘𝒂𝒔 unusual was the hush that spread when Venera Nocturne slung her electric guitar case onto the fountain’s ledge and flicked it open.

Eyes turned. Voices lowered.

“Is she really…?” someone whispered.

“Yeah. That’s Nocturne. Heard she used to front a band back at her old school—before she got expelled.”

The rumors traveled faster than her hands could tune the strings, but Venera didn’t mind. She fed on them, thrived on the way they wrapped around her name like smoke.

She strummed a few chords, deliberate, letting the sound echo through the courtyard. Heads swiveled. Even those who pretended not to care leaned in without realizing it.

Then she began to play.

It wasn’t some safe, delicate ballad. The melody was jagged and sharp, threaded with the kind of ache that forced its way under your skin. Her voice rose to meet it—low, velvet, and raw. The kind of voice that made the air vibrate.

The courtyard stilled.

A group of vampires froze mid-laugh. Even a few werewolves, restless and twitchy by nature, found themselves caught in the gravity of her song.

By the time the final note rang out, there was no chatter left—only silence. Then came the clapping. Hesitant at first, then swelling, rolling across the courtyard until the fountain seemed to tremble beneath it.

Venera smirked. She didn’t bow. She didn’t need to.

“Damn,” a boy muttered from the crowd. “She’s—”

“Dangerous,” another finished.

Exactly.

---

From the upper window of the music hall, Isadora Capri had heard it all. She hadn’t meant to stop at the window, hadn’t meant to lean against the frame as the girl performed

It wasn’t the song itself that unsettled her. It was the fire threaded through it—the raw, unfiltered power that seemed to crackle in the air.

Isadora’s grip tightened on the windowsill. Students were already swarming Venera, praising her, asking questions, begging for more. Typical. A performance like that would spread across the campus by dusk, and by morning, Nocturne would be a name on everyone’s lips.

And yet…

When Isadora looked closer, when she caught the faint curl of a fang as Venera laughed at something a siren girl said, she felt it—the wrongness. A pulse in the air. A shift.

Something ancient stirred.

It came like a shiver through the courtyard. The sound was faint, almost imagined, yet sharp enough to prickle along the back of her neck. A howl. Low, mournful, distant.

Isadora’s breath caught.

No one else seemed to notice. Phantom howls.

Her jaw tightened. She stepped back from the window as if the sound could still reach her through the stone walls.

Down below, Venera glanced up at the empty window, her dark brown eyes glinting with amusement. She hadn’t missed the figure standing there. She hadn’t missed the way the music teacher’s silhouette had lingered a second too long.

The corners of her lips curved.

So, 𝑴𝒔. 𝑪𝒂𝒑𝒓𝒊 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈

Good.

Let her.

---

By dinner, word of the courtyard performance had already spread. Students clustered at long tables, retelling it like they’d witnessed a miracle.

“Her voice gave me chills,” a vampire admitted.
“She’s like… untouchable,” a werewolf muttered.
“No, she’s dangerous,” someone else argued. “Didn’t you feel it? Like the air changed?”

Venera sat at the end of the table, chin propped on her hand, basking in it all. She didn’t have to try. The school was hers already.

But even as laughter and admiration surrounded her, her gaze kept drifting—to the head table where teachers sat in their neat row.

And there she was.

Isadora Capri. Composed as ever, eating, her dark strawberry blonde hair cascading down her shoulders, She didn’t look at Venera once. Didn’t acknowledge her.

That was fine.

Venera’s lips curved into a sly smile, sharp as a knife.

Because she’d felt it earlier. That crack in Capri’s composure, the way her hand had jerked back during class, the way she had lingered at the window today.

She leaned back in her chair, voice low but laced with amusement as she muttered under her breath—too soft for anyone else to catch:

“Your turn to play, teach."

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