38. CHAPTER 38
I tugged my jacket tighter against the chill as my wing and I cut across the courtyard toward the dining hall. The first rotation on breakfast always meant the place was quiet, the air sharp with the scent of wood smoke and the promise of coffee. My stomach growled, eager for food.
Then I saw him.
Initially, my mind tried to tell me he had just collapsed.
Maybe he fainted from exhaustion or hunger.
But the stillness felt wrong. Too wrong.
He lay sprawled across the courtyard stones, eyes open and glassy, staring into nothing.
His neck bent at an impossible angle for a living body.
Blood pooled beneath him, but it was the wound that truly froze me.
His chest was ripped open, not by blade or claw, but seared—blackened. The mark wasn’t clean. It crawled out from his sternum in burned veins, curling the fabric of his uniform like parchment too close to flame. The edges still smoked faintly, a sickly scent burning the back of my throat.
Gods.
Gasps and screams erupted around me as everyone froze, boots scraping on the stone. No one dared to step closer. I couldn’t look away. I had seen death before—training mishaps, brutal falls, cadets pushing themselves too hard on the mountain. But this—this was no accident.
My bond stirred uneasily in my chest, like both Esme and Zane sensed my distress.
“Gods,” someone whispered. “Who would…?”
My hands trembled at my sides. Whoever had done this hadn’t just killed him. They left him here, in the open, as if they were saying, " I’m here, and no one is safe. "
No one moved at first. The courtyard held its breath. Then the whispers started.
“Was it sabotage?”
“Training accident, it has to be.”
“No—no one dies like that.”
I took a step back, my boots scraping stone. My pulse thundered in my ears. This wasn’t training. I knew it down to my bones. Someone had done this.
“Clear the courtyard!” an instructor barked from across the yard, but his voice actually cracked at the sight.
The cadets shuffled, but no one tore their eyes away.
His gaze, glassy and fixed, looked like it still tracked us.
The smell of burnt flesh clung to the air, thick and sweet, sinking into the back of my throat until I wanted to gag.
Behind me, a girl bent double and vomited.
Another voice trembled through a prayer, the words sharp against the silence.
Zane appeared at my side, his shoulder brushing mine. His jaw clenched hard, eyes gone dark with fury. I knew that look—he was already scouring the crowd, ready to fix blame. And gods help whoever he chose. “Don’t,” I whispered. My voice sounded foreign in my own throat.
He didn’t answer, but his hand brushed against mine, steadying me in a way he wouldn’t admit aloud.
Professors rushed in, robes sweeping the floor as they forced us back.
One dropped beside the body, two fingers pressing against the cadet’s throat.
His stillness told the truth—he was gone.
Another professor scattered powder in a ring around him, muttering low and fast, the words laced with urgency.
Not to save him. To contain whatever lingered.
“Back to your chambers,” the instructor snapped. “Now.”
But no one moved. Because we all knew the truth, whether they said it aloud or not, this wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t training.
Someone killed him.
And they wanted us to see it.
We didn’t go to breakfast. We didn’t go anywhere .
“Back to your chambers,” the instructor roared again, voice raw with something that wasn’t solely anger—fear. “Now! Move!”
The courtyard erupted into chaos with boots pounding and cadets stumbling into each other as we were herded like livestock.
I followed, my legs feeling as if they were carved from stone.
My eyes kept darting back to the body until the professors formed a tight circle around it, obscuring it from view.
Lockdown. Morning lectures canceled. No drills, no training.
Only the hollow echo of our own thoughts filled the quiet chambers.
I went to the seventh floor to check on my flight. The halls were chaotic. At first, no one spoke. We had all seen death before, but not like that—left in the open as some twisted message.
“They said accident,” one of the cadets muttered, voice thin.
“Accident?” I snapped before I could stop myself. “Did you see his chest? That wasn’t a blade or a fall. That was—” I cut myself off, throat closing.
“That was what?” someone challenged, eyes wide, desperate.
There was no answer, only the image of those blackened veins crawling from his sternum.
“It was murder,” another whispered.
The word silenced the chamber. Murder. Once spoken, it clung to the walls, impossible to scrape away.
I finally made it to my own chamber after encouraging everyone to get into their rooms. My mind kept replaying the way his eyes were empty, how his body had been left in the courtyard like a warning. The person who did this wanted us to be afraid. And it was working.
I’d been sitting on the edge of my bed for what felt like hours, staring at the same knot in the floorboards, replaying the courtyard again and again. The boy’s eyes, the blackened wound, the way the professors closed ranks around the body as though shielding us from the truth.
A sharp knock rattled the door. I jolted upright. No one should be visiting during lockdown.
“Auri,” Lili’s voice hissed through the wood. “It’s me. ”
I rushed across the room and swung open the door.
Her braid was half-loose, and her cheeks were flushed as if she had run here.
She moved to come inside but hit the invisible barrier and bounced back.
She looked shocked, but I reached out, grabbed her arm, and pulled her in. I closed the door behind her.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, heart hammering.
“We are gonna come back to that , but I had to tell you.” She wrung her hands, pacing once before stopping in front of me. Her eyes were wide, fierce with a secret that wanted out. “This isn’t the first cadet they’ve found.”
The words landed like a punch. “What do you mean?”
Her throat bobbed. “It’s the fourth. Four bodies, Auri. The others were… removed before anyone else could see. Found quick and quietly. But this one—” she shook her head, voice dropping to a whisper, “they couldn’t hide it. Too many of us were already in the courtyard.”
Pure cold washed over me. “Four,” I repeated, as if I said it out loud, it would make sense. It didn’t.
“They keep saying it’s on a need-to-know basis.” Lili’s mouth twisted, bitter. “But how long can they keep lying to us? Pretending it’s simply an accident when it’s murder?”
I braced against the edge of my desk, knuckles white. “Why tell me?”
Her expression softened, but her voice cut sharply. “Because if someone’s hunting cadets, you may be in their sights. You stand out, Auri—your bloodline, your mark, your bond. You’re exactly the kind of target they’d choose. And you’re my best friend, like the only sister I have.”
She gripped my hand for a heartbeat, urgent and warm. “Be careful. Whoever this is, they’re not finished.”
“I will, I always have my daggers on me.”
“Now—what the fuck was that ?”
“What?”
“The ward that didn’t allow me to enter.”
“Ahhh. Zane.”
“Protective much?” She raised one of her eyebrows.
“As a third-year you don’t have a ward on your room?”
“You’ve been in my room… no.”
“Well… I have people trying to kill me, and I have been kidnapped.”
‘That’s true I guess.”
“Anybody that I want in here, can come in.”
“Okay. I guess that helps me feel a little better about your safety.”
“You should ward your room.”
“Yeah… I should. Be safe, little savage, I got to go.”
“Always.”
And then she disappeared, the door clicking shut behind her, leaving me alone with the truth.
Four dead.
And the promise of more.
The walls of my chamber felt like they were pressing in on me. My thoughts kept circling the same dark truth. Four dead. Not one. Four.
I closed my eyes and reached for him. “Zane?”
His presence brushed mine almost immediately, steady and warm in the way his voice rarely was. “Yes, my Anam Cara”
“You knew. You knew this wasn’t the first cadet. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Silence. For a moment, I thought he blocked me out, but then his voice slid in, low and heavy. “Because knowing doesn't change anything except worry you more than you do. You think I want that for you?”
“Don’t lie to me,” I pressed, pacing across my room. “ Lili told me. Four cadets. Four, Zane. Who were they?”
A sigh rippled through the bond, tired, weighted. “Two were Shapeshifters. The other two were Infantry. Different wings, different branches. No pattern anyone can trace.”
The air caught in my lungs. “And the professors are covering it up.”
“You saw what happened this morning. Multiply that by the entire academy and it unravels fast. Chaos, riots… squad members turning on each other. No one survives that.”
My pulse thundered, my bond sparking hot. “So, we simply pretend? Pretend we’re not waiting for our tragic death?”
“I don’t like it either,” he admitted. His voice softened, brushing against me with a warmth that cut through the chill of my chamber. “But pretending doesn’t kill you. Knowing too much might.”
I sank onto the edge of my bed, clutching my knees. “So, what do we do?”
For a heartbeat, his presence pressed closer, almost like his hand against mine. “We survive,” he said. “We keep our eyes open. Whoever’s doing this… they’ll make a mistake. And when they do, we’ll be ready.”
His certainty settled in me like an ember, not enough to burn away the fear, but enough to keep me from breaking under it.
And I couldn’t shake the thought. What if I was next?