Chapter 5

Morgause had learned two things about the city in her first week.

One: No one cares who you used to be.

Two: The streets don’t give second chances.

She slept on a stained mattress in a crumbling flat with peeling walls and broken floorboards. The water barely ran. The window didn’t close. She had no heater, no phone, no cash. Just a half-burnt photo of Granny Ivy pressed into the lining of her bag and a switchblade tucked into her boot.

The girls in the squat called her Ice Queen. She didn’t talk much. She didn’t cry. But when one of them brought home a guy with wandering hands, Morgause made sure he left with two black eyes and a broken rib.

That morning, she sat on the rooftop, watching the city choke on its own breath.

Cars crawled below like insects. Billboards flashed luxury she couldn’t touch. A group of pigeons pecked at something dead on the power line.

She gripped Granny Ivy’s scarf in her hands. It smelled like soup and earth. Her jaw clenched as memories poured in.

“Always keep your fists ready, but your heart soft,” Granny Ivy had told her once, brushing her wild hair with calloused fingers.

“No one’s born evil. But some of us are born into it.”

Morgause hadn’t cried at the funeral. She hadn’t even had one. But now, alone in a city that didn’t know her name, the pain clawed up her throat like a ghost trying to escape.

She let a single tear fall, then wiped it off like it betrayed her.

Later that afternoon, trouble came looking.

She was walking through the plaza, hoodie pulled up, pocket half full with three stolen protein bars and a can of Coke. The shopkeeper hadn’t even seen her, too busy shouting at another homeless teen.

But someone else did.

“Hey!” a man barked behind her. “What’s in your pocket, girl?”

She didn’t run.

She didn’t freeze.

She spun.

“Back off,” she growled.

He lunged for her.

She punched him in the throat.

By the time the security guard got involved, the man was on the ground wheezing and bleeding from the nose, and Morgause’s lip was split open.

The police came quick.

Two officers grabbed her, shoved her against the brick wall, barked questions she didn’t answer.

“Name?”

Silence.

“Address?”

Silence.

“You think you’re tough, huh?”

Morgause turned her head slowly, blood running down her chin.

“I know I am.”

They tossed her into the back of a police cruiser. The door slammed shut.

Behind the glass, the city lights blurred into streaks, neon, toxic, loud. She leaned her head against the window, eyes distant.

She should’ve felt scared.

But all she felt was fury.

Fury at the men who killed Granny Ivy.

Fury at the city for chewing her up.

Fury at this pull inside her chest, toward something, someone she didn’t know.

She whispered into the silence:

“Granny… what the hell am I?”

And the wind outside whispered back.

Elsewhere, at that exact moment…

Morgana dropped her phone in the hallway at school. Her heart raced.

She didn’t know why.

But her hand began to tremble.

Like something

Or someone

Had just crashed into her world.

Morgause sat handcuffed to a metal chair in a small, cold room.

No flickering lights. No strange pulses. No glowing hands.

Just four concrete walls, a dusty ceiling fan, and a woman with stiff posture and tired eyes sitting across from her with a manila folder.

The officer, Detective Kimmy Felon flipped a page and sighed. “You’re a tough one. No ID. No records. No fingerprints in any database. Like you dropped from the sky.”

Morgause shrugged, blood crusted on her lip. “Maybe I did.”

“Name?”

“Morgause.” Her voice was steel.

“Surname?”

She didn’t answer.

“Age?”

“Eighteen.”

Kimmy narrowed her eyes. “Where are your parents?”

“Dead.”

“Anyone else?”

Silence.

The detective leaned back, frustrated. “You nearly broke that man’s nose in public. And assaulted a guard.”

Morgause rolled her eyes. “He touched me first.”

“Still doesn’t excuse what happened.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Morgause’s gaze sharpened. “But you should’ve seen what I wanted to do.”

There was a long pause. Kimmy stared at her, brow furrowed, trying to understand the girl behind the wall of rage.

Eventually, she said, “We’re not putting you in jail. Not this time. But you’re not walking out free either.”

A few days later…

Morgause stood on the steps of Silver Heights Girls’ Home, staring up at the crooked sign above the gate. It wasn’t exactly warm. Or welcoming. But it wasn’t a cell either.

“Just until we figure out long-term placement,” Kimmy had said. “You’ll be safe here. Try not to start a gang.”

Morgause had only smirked.

Inside, the building smelled of soap, boiled rice, and disappointment. A tired house matron led her to a tiny room with peeling pink walls and a saggy bunk bed. The other girls peeked at her like she was a tiger dropped into a kennel of kittens.

One tried to snicker behind her.

Morgause spun around.

“You got a problem?”

The girl looked away real fast.

Morgause dropped her bag and laid down fully dressed, staring at the ceiling, fists clenched.

She hated it.

The noise. The rules. The locked doors.

But she hated the silence in her chest even more.

Two weeks passed.

Then the matron knocked on her door one morning. “You’re sitting for an entrance exam. St. Crescent’s College. Some charity sponsors girls from the home. Full ride if you pass. Wear something clean.”

Morgause scoffed. “I didn’t come here to be a student.”

But later that day… she showed up anyway.

She sat in the back of the exam hall, hoodie over her head, staring at the test paper like it had insulted her. Then she picked up the pen.

Math? Easy.

Logic puzzles? Fun.

English essay? Boring—but she wrote it in twenty minutes.

She finished half an hour early and leaned back like she was bored out of her mind.

Two days later, a social worker stormed into her dorm.

“Who taught you to write like that?!”

Morgause blinked, biting into an orange.

“No one. I read stuff.”

“You read stuff?”