Daughter of the Night [A Twisted Wonderland Fanfic]

Chapter 2

Night Raven College was like nothing that Y/N had thought that it would be like. Immediately upon arriving, Crowley had allowed Y/N to get settled in her room in the Diasomnia dorm and told her that she did not need to attend the entrance ceremony. 

"The boys will react if they realise that a female will be attending the school with them," Crowley said. "It might be best if you stay out of the way for the first while. And I am sure that you would love to get settled first!" He smiled at her. "I am gracious am I not?"

Y/N had chosen not to respond and had instead allowed Lilia to lead her away to the room that she would be using for the foreseeable future. Since she was already a very skilled mage, she didn't like calling herself a magician as she did not perform at children's birthday parties, she would be joining Lilia and Malleus in the third year. And since she had been named the advisor of Prince Malleus of the Valley of Thorns, she had been given a room in the same tower as the one that Malleus and Lilia shared. 

"Are you excited to be studying here for the next two years, Y/N," Lilia asked as they wandered through the grounds. It was already dark out and Y/N knew that the entrance ceremony would be starting shortly. 

Y/N nodded hesitantly and glanced up at the moon. It was the same one that she had seen for her entire life and the same one that she had stared up at when she was a child, hoping that someone else was watching the same moon and thinking about her. It seemed like it was so long ago that those had been the wishes plaguing her dreams. Now, it all felt so different. The moon had not changed in the slightest, save the times when Y/N would feel intimidated by the moon's presence rather than comforted by it. Perhaps it was the fact that she was at a brand new school, far from everything that she had ever known, where she would be studying with people that she did not know. 

"Do you still love the moon, Y/N?" Lilia's voice had suddenly gone quiet, and Y/N lowered her gaze to a familiar constellation just under the moon. Draco. The dragon constellation. Her feet froze beneath her and Y/N felt her chest tighten, her heart starting to throb painfully with every beat.

"Y/N?" Lilia's voice sounded far off as if he was in a valley while Y/N stood atop the highest mountain to be nearer to the heavens that winked at her in greeting. She had come to prefer stars in the past few years. 

"I do not love the moon like I once did, Lilia," Y/N said with a sigh, though her eyes could not tear themselves away from the sky. The young woman was enchanted by the way that the moon and Draco seemed to dance together, the moon howling in pain at not being able to reach out and embrace its dance partner as it so pleased. 

Y/N shook her head to clear her thoughts and turned her gaze to another constellation. Corvus. The crow. 

"And yet you stare up at the sky," Lilia said, following his companion's eyes. He smiled when he saw the constellation that she was admiring. "Corvus?"

Y/N nodded. "I find myself enchanted by the stars." She took a step forward, as if in a daze. "The night sky is so beautiful, is it not?"

Lilia smiled as he watched Y/N walk out into a small field, unaware of how serene she looked out here by herself. 

He could remember a time when Y/N was young when she would run up to the palace doors and sneak in, past the guards that were normally so adept at keeping the doors guarded, and up to where her best friends would wait for her. Malleus and Y/N would play until the sun set, and even after that, they would sneak out onto the roof of the palace and watch the moon as they rose, talking quietly when they thought that no one was watching them. 

But that had all stopped years ago, for reasons that Lilia still didn't know. One day Y/N had just... stopped coming up to the castle. She was seen less around the town and seemed to keep to herself, only coming out for social events that her mother pressed her into attending. And even then, she spoke to no one, and instead, she chose to remain by whatever windows were in the room, as if waiting for the time when she could leave.