Chapter 7 Lindsay
SEVEN
LINDSAY
The cracks in the ground settle, sealing themselves as if the world is pretending it never came apart. My shadow self is gone, leaving only silence in her wake. But I’m not alone.
The Academy shifts again. Not with the violence from before—but something slower.
Like time pressing in on itself, folding corners and edges until the familiar becomes uncanny.
I find myself standing in the great hall again, though it feels hollowed out, a memory with the sound turned down. The mirror on the ceiling is gone.
Then I see them.
Kael. Nolan. Raiden.
They’re not quite real, but they’re not illusions either, not reflections in a mirror. They stand apart, suspended like stars in orbit. None of them speak, but I feel them. Their presence. Their pull attached to my chest.
I rub the spot attempting to ease the tension building behind my breastbone. And then their marks appear.
Kael’s palm glows first, like moonlight reflecting off glass. His hand is half-curled at his side, but the mark pulses silver and shadow from beneath his skin, etched in a way that doesn’t look natural.
On Nolan, it glows around his wrist, a golden intricate ring of unsteady light.
It flickers as if unsure of itself, like it’s caught between fading and catching fire.
His expression is unreadable, but that glow speaks for him.
It reaches for me even when he won’t. A thread snaking through the space between us.
Raiden’s is the strongest. The light glows high along his collarbone, golden and steady—anchored. His breath rises and falls in sync with the tether, and I feel it in my own chest, like a second heartbeat.
The realization crashes into me slowly, terrifying in its certainty. I'm connected to each of them. I did this when my power lost control.
Not just Raiden now.
All of them.
Each one tethered to me by something deeper than magic.
Kael’s mark flares as he shifts his stance. Not toward me—but away. Like he’s pulling back like before. Hiding something. Closing me out.
My stomach drops as pain slices through me.
“No,” I whisper. “Don’t.”
But my voice doesn’t reach him. It echoes through the hell I'm trapped in, swallowed by the tension strung between us.
Raiden’s eyes find mine. His mark doesn’t flicker. It hums like it’s always known this—always known me. Upon closer inspection, it's a little frayed at the edges but not broken. Nolan’s glow responds too, pulsing faintly before dimming, uncertain but still present.
I lift my hand instinctively. I don’t know what I’m reaching for. Maybe just confirmation. Maybe them.
The marks react instantly, light surging, stretching toward me like threads spun out of each of them.
And then, just as quickly, they vanish.
The boys. The marks. The hall.
All gone.
The room dissolves, but the echo of the bonds remains, burning behind my eyes. My pulse thuds in my ears, uneven and raw, and then—she’s there again.
My shadow-self.
Leaning against the warped columns of the courtyard steps like she never left, arms crossed, eyes gleaming with dark gold. Her grin is wide, but not cruel this time. Just knowing.
“Told you,” she says. “They’re bound to you. Do you see what you've done? You've taken their choice.”
I shake my head, but it’s weak, instinctual. “That’s not what it means. Marks don’t—”
She laughs, stepping closer. “Marks are only the beginning of this. That’s the part no one ever tells you when you wake up.
But I'm here now, I'll warn you, for our own good. You think it’s just magic? It's not.” Her gaze cuts through me. “You’re stitched to them now. Whether they realize it or not. Whether you do. Don’t let them walk away. You need each other to survive.”
My breath stutters. “That’s not possible.”
She tilts her head. “And yet here we are. Me, casting back in time to warn you and you not believing me. I don’t remember being so hard-headed.”
I step back, but the space doesn’t shift this time. It holds steady, like it’s waiting and it wants me to hear this.
“They’re bound,” she says again, softer now. “Not just with magic. With choice. With instinct. With pieces of themselves they didn’t mean to give you—but did anyway.”
My knees almost give out. “No. That’s not fair to them.”
“Fair?” She laughs again, the sound bitter.
“Fair doesn’t live here. Not in the Veil.
And certainly not in you.” Her smile fades.
“You’re the fulcrum, Lindsay. The center of all of it.
You think the Veil cares if they bleed for you?
If they fall for you? If they die for you?
It only cares about us and what we can do for it. ”
I swallow hard. “What if I break them?”
Her eyes flash, gold and full of something ancient. “You will. That’s the cost of being chosen. But breaking them isn’t the danger.”
“Then what is?”
“Not being there when they break. Really losing them. Don't let them die, nothing is more important than them. You'll regret it, trust me I know.”
The world begins to dissolve again—threads of the academy curling at the edges.
“You’re running out of time,” she says, her voice fading with the light. “Start choosing. Before someone else does it for you.”
I jolt upright, breath ripping from my lungs like I’ve been drowning. My eyes snap open, and everything is wrong.
The world is too bright. Too still.
A round room encases me, the stone walls smooth and seamless. There are no windows. No clocks. Just the faint hum of magic thrumming through the floor beneath me.
The cold of the stone beneath me is the same temperature as my skin. Am I in a cell?
I blink, heart still racing, and realize I’m not only in a circular room, but I'm in a circle of runes—glowing, delicate, and laced with something prickly. Like they’re not just holding me here.
They’re holding something out.
The mark on my arm is higher now wrapping around my bicep like a growing vine. It glows blue now. The dress is still the same—the one Kael left for me before everything unraveled. Torn at the hem. Wrinkled. Cold.
I wrap my arms around myself and slowly rise to my feet, knees shaky. The air bites against my skin, dry and too clean. There’s no warmth in this room. No comfort. Only magic buzzing like static against my senses.
The door clicks.
It opens—but only partway—before a figure steps in, tall and broad-shouldered, shadowed by the light behind him.
Raiden.
He stops just outside the glowing circle, his jaw tight, eyes scanning me like he’s checking for damage.
“Lindsay,” he breathes. “You’re awake.”
My throat tightens at the sound of my name.
I don’t move. “Where am I?”
His gaze drops to the runes between us. “Safe. For now.”
“For now?” I echo.
He doesn’t answer right away. Just takes a breath like he’s bracing for a hit.
“The Council voted. You were unconscious for three days. They—” He swallows hard.
“They want a magical evaluation and possibly want to bind your powers. They believe that the reason the Veil is breaking is because of you.”
The words slice through the air, colder than the stone at my feet.
“What?” I whisper. “Why would they think that? I was dancing with Kael when it happened.”
He presses his lips together and swallows roughly. “They think it’ll keep you stable. Keep the Veil from reacting again. Headmaster Veyne thinks it’s the only way to keep you alive.”
I shake my head. “So they put me in a stone room, while I'm unconscious? No blanket, no bed, no comfort at all, like I'm a wild animal. Surrounded me with magic to keep me in. And no one stopped them?” My voice rises with the question, hysteria trying to take over. I feel betrayed.
“They didn't give us a choice.”
“That doesn’t mean they get to decide.”
He flinches.
I step forward—just to the edge of the circle. The magic buzzes under my toes, warning me back, but I don’t care.
Raiden doesn’t move. He stays just outside reach, tension etched into every line of his body. Like if he takes one step closer, he’ll break something.
Or I will.
My voice is rough when I ask, “Do you agree with them?”
His silence answers for him, and I want to punch him. How can he turn on me like this? After the weeks of training, of bonding with each other to the point that the actual tether didn’t seem that bad, I thought…I really thought—
I feel the tears prick at the back of my eyes and blink them away. He doesn’t deserve my tears. Not if he’s just another vote against me.
When he finally speaks, it’s clipped. Controlled. “The Veilbind between us has to be severed first.”
I stare at him, throat closing. “What?”
He doesn’t flinch. “They’re not going to bind you while it’s still in place. It’s too unstable. It could amplify the wrong magic.”
“You mean you. It could hurt you.”
A beat.
He doesn’t deny it.
“You’re letting them cut the bond,” I say, each word jagged ripping from deep inside of me. “The one that was made to keep me safe. But that doesn't matter, because you just follow orders, don't you? Whatever the council tells you to do, you do, without question.”
“This is the only way to keep you safe,” he replies, too calmly. Too carefully.
Safe. I nearly choke on the word. That’s not what this feels like. This feels like a cage. Like betrayal wrapped in soft words and soft eyes that won’t meet mine now.
“I didn’t ask to be bound to you,” I whisper.
“I didn’t ask for it either.”
I suck in a harsh breath at his words; they hurt. He looks away then—just for a second—and it’s enough. I see it. The tightness in his jaw. The way his hand curls slightly at his side. The breath he drags in like it physically hurts to say nothing more.
But he doesn’t take it back. Doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t step into the circle.
I wrap my arms around myself again, the dress stiff and cold and clinging to a version of a night I can’t return to.
“They’re going to try to take away my magic,” I say numbly. “Erase me piece by piece. And you’re just going to stand there.”
“I’m doing what I can.”
“Then it’s not enough.”
The glow of the runes pulses between us—an echo of everything unspoken.
Raiden’s eyes flick to mine one last time. And in them, I think I see something—grief, guilt, pain—but it’s buried so fast I almost think I imagined it.
He turns toward the door. “I’ll send the headmaster in.”
The door shuts behind him with a quiet click.
And I am alone. Again.