Chapter 22 #2
Blonde hair caught the light, a streak of gold moving through the crowd. Rian’s face—thinner now, a new scar across her chin—broke into a smile that cracked something inside Elora’s chest.
The impact of Rian’s body against her pushed air from her lungs. Arms wrapped tight, smelling of lavender and chamomile. Familiar calluses on the fingers that gripped her shoulders.
“Elora,” whispered against her ear, breath warm and real.
Elora’s arms rose without permission, muscle memory completing the circuit.
For one suspended moment, she was back at The Institute, before blood on stone floors, before Tehvan’s empty eyes, before Arria’s choking gasps, before Thorn’s fingers traced patterns into her skin that still burned in the dark.
The murmurs faded. Conversations trailed off mid-sentence, glasses paused halfway to lips, a chair leg scraped against the floor and then went still.
She pulled back from Rian’s embrace. A circle had formed around them—apprentices’ frozen mid-gesture, drinks halfway to their lips, heads turned in her direction.
The nearest boy’s mouth hung slightly open, his brow furrowed as if working through a difficult puzzle.
Three girls by the window whispered behind cupped hands, their eyes never leaving her face.
Some faces were familiar—older apprentices, younger ones, a few she’d trained besides, a few she’d avoided. Others she didn’t recognize at all. Strangers, their gazes sharp with curiosity, calculation, disbelief.
Rian’s smile faltered. Her gaze drifted upward, lingering on Elora’s eyes, and her expression shifted—a flicker of recognition followed by careful neutrality. Rian didn’t ask. She didn’t say anything at all. But Elora saw the question anyway, flickering just beneath the surface.
Instead, Rian pivoted toward the room, her voice rising above the silence.
“Look who’s back,” she announced, as if Elora’s presence explained itself. “She’s—well—” Words failed her. A nervous laugh escaped her throat. “Don’t just stare.”
The room remained frozen.
A weight pressed against Elora’s sternum.
The hesitation wasn’t unexpected. These people had once despised her—envied Tehvan’s special attention, resented her immunity when punishment fell freely on them.
She’d braced herself for bitterness, for satisfaction in their eyes at seeing her finally knocked from her pedestal.
Then across the room, lips curved upward.
Cautious. Testing.
Alfie shifted forward. Lily followed.
Several faces registered something Elora hadn’t prepared for—genuine welcome.
They surged toward her all at once, and the beast stirred under her skin.
Hands brushed her sleeves. Voices layered over one another, overlapping, climbing, pressing in until Elora could barely see where one face ended and another began. She tried to look past them—over dark hair and familiar shoulders—for a flash of white blond. Violette would have been easy to spot.
She wasn’t there.
Symond wasn’t either. That was a relief that barely registered before the questions started.
“What happened after Thorn made you a ward?”
“What did he do to you?”
“How did you get out?”
“Is it true he kept you in a cell?”
Her chest tightened.
“Why are your eyes yellow?”
That one made the beast rattle under her ribs.
Each question stole a little more air from her lungs until breathing felt like something she had to remember to do consciously.
Some voices trembled with genuine concern.
Others were sharp, hungry, seeking confirmation, proof.
They wanted to know that she had suffered.
Wanted the story of it, the details, the validation that she had finally paid the price they’d always thought she should.
The beast shifted beneath her skin—not just demanding, but seducing.
A fragment of her wanted to surrender to it, to let claws replace fingernails, to feel bones crack and reform as she scattered these people back.
How simple it would be. How freeing. Yet another part of her recoiled at the thought of what she might become in front of these faces she once knew—these people who didn’t know what lurked inside her now.
Would they see her as a monster or marvel?
Would she care either way once the change took her?
Rell—she remembered him suddenly—was trying to intervene, his voice cutting through the noise, asking them to give her space, telling them to back up.
It wasn’t enough.
She needed out.
Either now, while she still had the ability to walk away—
—or later, on four blood-slick paws, ripping her freedom from stone and bone.
She chose to walk.
Elora stepped backward, hands raised in a placating gesture she hated herself for. “I just—I need some air,” she said, her voice thin, barely her own. “I’ll—I’ll come back.”
She began to turn—
And a sharp whistle cut through the room.
Her body reacted before her mind did.
Twenty bodies jerked upright in unison, mouths snapping shut mid-syllable. Hands slapped against thighs. Chins lifted, eyes fixed on nothing. The room transformed from chaos to order in the space between heartbeats.
For one terrifying second, it was The Institute again.
A low chuckle broke the silence. Near a wooden pillar, a man with a jagged scar across his jaw leaned forward. “Like puppets on strings,” he said, tapping his temple. “Still wired for command.”
The tension loosened, just a fraction. The apprentices relaxed, sheepish smiles appearing as they remembered where they were.
Someone coughed. A girl’s shoulders dropped first, then a boy scratched his neck. Awkward smiles flickered across faces as they shifted their weight, reclaiming their bodies inch by inch.
Elora’s feet remained rooted to the floor, her muscles locked. The beast inside her clawed at her insides, its hackles raised, sensing the invisible collar that had descended over the room—the one these people had slipped into so effortlessly, without resistance.
Rell turned.
“Neat trick, Queen Bee.”
His tone was light. Familiar. But Elora didn’t turn with him.
“Elora,” he said gently. “This is the leader of The Hive. Florence.”