Chapter 16 Lindsay
SIXTEEN
LINDSAY
Night settles over the academy.
I’m alone in the east cloister, the stone cool beneath my palms as I brace myself against the low wall. The moon hangs thin and cool above the courtyard, silver light pooling in the cracks between flagstones.
The darkness inside me is louder at night. It doesn’t sleep. It circles the same way I imagine a lioness would circle its prey.
It swells and contracts against my ribs like a second heartbeat—off rhythm, hungry, and impatient. Lightning flickers behind my eyes when I blink too slowly. My shadows stretch long across the ground, thicker than they should be, moving even when I don’t.
I inhale carefully. This is mine. This is me.
Except—it shifts again, too fast, too eager. It presses outward as if it’s testing the edges of my skin. And for the first time since I stepped out of the Veil—I hesitate.
Maybe it isn’t all me.
The thought lands wrong. Dangerous.
The darkness responds instantly, tightening around my lungs in warning.
Mine.
“I didn’t say you weren’t,” I mutter under my breath.
A soft scuff of boots on stone makes me straighten.
“Lindsay?”
I turn.
Mira Cade stands at the edge of the cloister archway, clutching a stack of books to her chest like a shield. Her dark curls are pulled into a messy braid, spectacles slightly crooked on her nose. Ink stains smudge her fingers. She looks exactly the same as she always has.
Grounded. Practical. Closer to human in a way I stopped being the second I stepped foot on the academy grounds.
“I was looking for you,” she says gently. “Tamsin said you might be out here.”
Of course she did. Mira steps closer. Slowly. Careful, but not afraid.
“I know things are…intense right now,” she continues. “But if you need research assistance or—”
The darkness surges. Hard. It doesn’t like her tone. Soft. Curious. Unthreatening.
Weak.
My shadows ripple violently at my feet. Mira stops mid-sentence, her eyes widening at them. The books tremble in her arms.
I feel it happen a split second before I can stop it—my magic snapping outward in a cold wave, the air temperature dropping sharply. Frost creeps along the stone near her boots.
Her breath fogs.
“Lindsay?” she whispers.
The darkness coils upward through my spine.
She’s fragile. Easy. Breakable.
No.
My fingers curl into fists, nails biting into my palms. “You should go back inside, Mira.”
Concern replaces caution in her eyes.
“You’re shaking,” she says. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
The darkness laughs. Alone. Alone. Alone. It lashes out wildly.
Not at her body—at her magic. A shadow darts across the floor and snaps around her ankle like a whip. Mira gasps as the books spill from her arms.
I didn’t tell it to do that.
The realization hits like a punch to the sternum.
“Stop,” I hiss.
But it isn’t listening. It wants pain. It wants proof of power. It wants to feel something snap. My shadows climb higher, twisting up Mira’s leg, tightening just enough to make her stumble forward to her knees.
“Lindsay—” Her voice cracks.
Panic slams through me. This isn’t revenge or the prophecy. This is—predatory. And it’s not fully under my control.
“Enough!” I shout, trying to pull the magic back into myself.
It resists.
That’s when the air changes. The cold shifts to something else. More magic enters the area, cutting through my shadows like a blade drawn through silk.
“Release her.” Auron’s voice is low and controlled—and edged with something dangerously close to fury.
The darkness in me snarls in response. Mine. Her power is mine. But the shadow around Mira’s ankle hesitates. Auron steps fully into the moonlight. His eyes aren’t cold tonight, no, they’re focused—on me.
“I know this magic,” he says quietly.
“It’s under control. Stay out of this.”
“The Veil is controlling you.” The certainty of his tone slices through the chaos.
He moves slowly closer, hands visible at his sides, no magic at the ready. The darkness tightens around Mira’s ankle again, until she cries out. No. No. No. Make it stop.
“If you come any closer—” I don’t know what my magic will do. Please don’t make my shadows hurt her.
“You won’t,” he says softly. And then he steps into my reach. The darkness lunges for him.
The shadows should have wrapped around his throat. They should have driven him to his knees and made him beg. Instead—they sink into him, like water poured into dry earth.
I freeze.
The pressure in my chest eases abruptly, as if someone opened a valve and released it. Auron inhales sharply, but he doesn’t step back. The shadow around Mira dissolves, sliding off of her like smoke caught in a breeze.
The tension in the cloister thickens like smoke after a fire.
Auron stands motionless in the moonlight, dark veins fading from his skin as the last of the absorbed shadow sinks into him.
His breathing is controlled—too controlled—the only sign that what just happened cost him something.
Mira is gone; her footsteps still echo faintly down the corridor, fast and uneven.
The books she dropped lie scattered across the stone like broken promises.
I can’t stop staring at him.
My shadows have retreated to my feet, subdued but not dormant. They curl lazily around my boots now, the lightning dimmed to a faint, restless glow. I can breathe again. But the relief feels wrong. Tainted.
He shouldn’t have been able to do that.
He shouldn’t have wanted to do that.
“You absorbed it,” I repeat, voice barely above a whisper. It isn’t a question. It’s an accusation wrapped in confusion.
Auron inclines his head once. The motion is small, regal, infuriatingly composed.
“My curse,” he says quietly. “Or what’s left of it. The bloodline that tried to chain the Veil heart ended up chained instead. We don’t wield darkness. We…endure it. Take it in. Hold it so it doesn’t destroy everything else.”
His gaze flicks to the spot where Mira had been kneeling.
“I didn’t do it for her,” he adds, almost too soft to hear. “I did it for you.”
The words hit like a slap.
I take one involuntary step back.
“Don’t,” I snap. “Don’t pretend this makes you noble. You pushed me into that portal. You stood there and watched it close. You let your father—”
“I know what I did.” His voice cuts through mine—low, rough, stripped of its usual polish. For the first time since I returned, the mask slips. Not completely. Just enough to show the fracture underneath. “I know exactly what I did.”
The red thread between us pulls—sharp, insistent, undeniable. It isn’t gentle anymore. It burns.
I hate it.
I hate him.
And I hate that some part of me—some small, treacherous, Veil-touched part—doesn’t.
“Why?” The word rips out of me before I can stop it. “Why did you do it?”
He doesn’t answer right away.
His eyes—cold diamond blue—hold mine for a long, aching moment. Then he looks away, out toward the moonlit courtyard.
“My father believed the prophecy,” he says finally.
“The real one. Not the redacted version the Council teaches. He believed the fifth thread—the one to hate—would either destroy the Veil heart… or become it. He wanted it destroyed, so he could try to control it again. I—” His throat works.
“I wanted to see what would happen if it wasn’t. ”
The confession lands between us like a stone in still water. Ripples spread through me.
“You threw me into the dark to see what would happen,” I repeat slowly.
“Yes.”
I feel the shadows at my feet stir again—not angry this time. Curious. Testing.
“And now?” I ask. “Now that you’ve seen?”
Auron turns back to me.
His expression is unreadable again, but his eyes…his eyes are burning.
“Now,” he says, “I’m not sure what I want anymore.”
The thread between us pulls so tight I almost gasp.
He takes one step closer—slow, deliberate, as though he’s walking into a trap he already knows is sprung.
“I can’t undo what I did,” he says. “I can’t give you back the weeks you lost. But I can give you this: every time the darkness rises, every time it tries to drown you, I will take as much as I can hold.
Until there’s nothing left to give. Until it burns me from the inside out.
If that’s what it takes to keep you from losing yourself… I’ll do it.”
My pulse thunders in my ears.
The darkness inside me doesn’t snarl this time.
“Why?” I whisper again.
Auron’s gaze drops to my mouth, then lifts again.
“Because the prophecy was wrong about one thing,” he says quietly. “It said the fifth thread would hate. It never said for how long.”
He’s close enough now that I can feel the heat radiating from him, the faint tremor in his hands he’s trying to hide. Close enough that I can see the way his throat moves when he swallows. Close enough that the darkness inside me reaches for him again—not to attack.
To touch.
Auron’s breath stutters as it brushes along his collarbone, along the line of his jaw.
He doesn’t pull away. Neither do I. The moon watches. The shadows watch. And for one suspended heartbeat, neither of us moves.
Then he speaks—voice so low it’s almost lost in the night air. “If you want to punish me,” he says, “do it. Hurt me. Hate me. Use me. But don’t let it take you before you’ve had the chance to decide what you want.”
He lifts his hand—giving me every second to stop him. His fingertips brush my cheek—cool, steady, trembling just enough to betray him. The contact ignites something.
The thread between us sings. And the darkness inside me—finally, finally—goes still.
Not gone.
Just…waiting.
As though it’s listening to something only it can hear.
Auron’s thumb traces the line of my cheekbone once—barely there—then falls away.
“I’ll be here,” he says softly. “When you’re ready. For whatever comes next.”
He steps back.
One step.
Two.
Then he turns and walks away—standing tall, every inch the untouchable bloodborn again.
But I see it. The faint tremor in his shoulders. The way his hand flexes at his side as if he’s forcing himself not to reach back. The way the darkness inside me follows him—quiet, curious, no longer hungry.
I stay where I am long after he’s gone. The moon keeps shining. The shadows settle.
And the red thread between us hums—patient, steady, stronger than before.
I don’t tug it. I don’t cut it. I just let it be. For now.
Because when the moment comes—when I finally decide what to do with him—I want it to be me.
Not the darkness.
Not the prophecy.
Me.
And when that day comes…he’ll learn exactly what it means to be the one I hate.
And the one I may—against every instinct, every scar, every betrayal—end up needing anyway.