Trash Affinity? No-Genius

Genoveva Stuart POV:

"I don't want to go to the School of Myriad Races, Daddy!"

Bella's voice was honey-thick and cloying. She had wound herself around Father's arm, her white gown a smear of innocence against his black suit, her face tilted up in a mask of horror. Tears already glittered in her blue eyes. Above her brow hovered a faint ring of light-the Aasimar shimmer she had inherited from her mother, and never once let anyone forget.

"They're all savages there. And their dean-Griffin McBride-is a madman, everyone says so. The Silver Cloud Society is our home. Our future."

I watched from the far side of the mahogany desk. The air was thick with Father's cologne and cigar smoke.

Two admission letters lay on the wood. One bore the crest of the Silver Cloud Society, our family's own crest, embossed in gold. The other was heavy parchment, sealed with a gleaming emblem: four beasts entwined-a phoenix, a dragon, a falcon, a stag.

My rebirth had set me down in this exact moment. The day my fate was sealed.

Bella had been reborn too. I knew it from her first word-the same lines, the same tears, right on cue, a script she had already run. Last time, this letter was hers. She wept for it, pleaded for it, right here in this room-and Father never denied her anything. She went. She never came home. Her memory had been tidied. She remembered wanting it-the letter, the glory, the great escape. The price, and the one who paid it, she had chosen to forget.

A phantom chill crawled up my spine. I stayed home last time. I gave that family everything I had-my magic, my years, my name-and built them into what they are. And when there was nothing left of me worth taking, they threw the rest away. A hundred days in the dark, and then the beasts.

This time, I had the cold for a shield.

"The Silver Cloud Society is on the rise," Bella went on. "Everyone who is anyone will be there."

Father was already swayed. He smoothed her golden hair, his face going soft. "Of course, my little princess. You'll stay. You'll become the brightest jewel the Society has ever worn."

Then his gaze slid to me.

The warmth froze. What replaced it was familiar-the old, chilled disgust I had known my whole life.

"Genoveva. You will go to the School of Myriad Races."

Not a request. A sentence handed down.

"Your Chaotic Affinity is a joke here. A disgrace to the family name." He flicked two fingers at the parchment. "Perhaps that motley crew of freaks out there can find some use for you. It's for the best-for you, and for the family."

Chaotic Affinity. The magic that refused to stay in its lane. It was never that they thought me weak. They thought me "untidy". Useless, they said. Unclean, they whispered. A stain on the family's name.

Old hurt clawed at my ribs. I forced it down.

"Okay, Father."

Something flickered across Bella's face. For one instant her mask slipped-she had braced for a fight, for tears, for begging. In my first life, the one begging had been her.

Edmund blinked too, caught off guard. Then relief flooded him, and he shoved the parchment across the desk as if ridding himself of something foul.

I bit down on the pad of my thumb. The pain grounded me. The taste of blood woke me up. I pressed the print over the four-beast emblem-and the seal answered, a pulse rising to meet my touch, a whisper that resonated with the chaotic power coiled inside me. I closed my hand around the letter. Not an admission. A vow.

Bella recovered her poise and smiled, sweet as poisoned sweets. "Good luck, sister. I do hope you survive." I stopped in the doorway and looked back at her. "Do you?" Her smile held. Something behind her eyes did not. I turned and walked out without looking back.

Behind me, she was already wheedling Father for a new magical trinket.

The heavy door clicked shut, sealing one world off from the next.

I walked the long, cold corridor, past modern canvases on older walls. Everything in this house was expensive. Nothing was warm. A family portrait hung at the turn: Edmund, his late wife-Bella's mother-and a beaming little Bella. There was no space for me on that wall.

There never had been.

In my bare room, I opened the letter again. Ancient ink curled across the page: "On the eve of the first term, at King's Cross Station, seek the Phantom Platform."

A place that existed on no map a mortal could read.

I held out my hand and looked at it. A thread of light unspooled above my palm-five colors braided into one, turning slowly. Everyone in this house called it a defect. In eighteen years, they had never once let me use it. I closed my fist. The light went out.

I opened my laptop. The screen still glowed with my application page-Oxford, the dream I had fought for in another life. I dragged the files into the recycling bin, clicked Empty, and didn't hesitate.

Outside, London's night came down, neon flickering awake. From downstairs drifted Bella's little celebration: laughter, glass, music-a house already forgetting me.

I closed the window and held the letter to my chest, feeling its faint, living thrum.

Last time, I gave this family everything. And I died for it.

This time, I would live for myself.

They thought they were sending me to hell.

They had no idea they had just opened the gates of my heaven.