Chapter 18 Lindsay
EIGHTEEN
LINDSAY
The attic dorm is quieter at night.
It’s one, wide, slanted-ceiling space, with exposed beams and mismatched beds pushed into loose clusters as though someone once tried to organize us and gave up halfway through.
Moonlight filters through the round window at the far end, silvering trunks and half-open textbooks and the pile of Tamsin’s boots by the stairs.
Most of the girls are asleep.
Tamsin isn’t.
She’s sitting cross-legged on her bed, back against the wall, a candle burning low beside her. She’s not reading. Not sketching. Not muttering over a spell.
She’s waiting.
The second I step through the door and pull it shut behind me, her head tilts. There it is. That look. She’ll never admit it, but I know she’s worried for me.
“What happened?” she asks quietly.
Not where were you. Not are you okay.
What happened.
I don’t answer right away. I just walk farther into the room, shadows trailing close to my ankles, thicker than they should be.
Tamsin’s gaze drops to them. Then back to my face.
“Oh,” she says softly. “It’s that kind of night.”
I sink onto the edge of my bed. The mattress dips under my weight. The darkness coils under my ribs, restless but not erupting. I stare at my hands as though they might do something without my permission again.
They look normal. That’s the terrifying part.
Tamsin moves off of her bed and drops down next to me.
“Okay,” she says quietly. “Scale of one to accidentally summoning an Eldritch god, how bad was it?”
I huff out a weak breath. “I almost hurt Mira.”
Her expression shifts immediately. Not with judgement or panic or even fear. But with focus. Her hand covers one of mine.
“How almost?” she asks.
“My shadows wrapped around her ankle.” My throat tightens at the memory. “They weren’t listening to me. I told them to stop. They didn’t.”
Her knee bumps mine, and I glance up at her. She squeezes my hand.
“Okay,” she says slowly, holding my gaze. “First of all, that’s deeply concerning. Second of all, you stopped. Great job, bestie.”
“I didn’t,” I whisper. “I would have killed her if he hadn’t shown up.”
Her brows lift. “Shadow Daddy?”
“No.” My stomach twists. “Auron,” I say, his name tasting like ash in my mouth.
There’s a beat of silence.
Then she inhales loudly. “I’m sorry, who?”
“Auron.”
She blinks at me looking like an owl.
“The platinum popsicle?”
Despite everything, I snort.
“Yes. The platinum popsicle.”
Tamsin’s mouth falls open. “The dangerous, haughty, I’m above everyone bloodborn stepped in to save Mira from you?”
“He absorbed the magic.”
She stares.
“I’m going to need you to rewind and replay that sentence because I think I hallucinated it.”
“He stepped into the alcove, and my anger… I wanted… I tried… the shadows lunged for him.” My hands tremble slightly as I remember it. “And they just…went into him. Like water into dry ground.”
Tamsin’s eyes widen slowly.
“That’s…deeply unfair,” she mutters. “That’s like finding out your sworn enemy has a secret ‘fix everything’ button.”
“It’s not a button. Apparently it’s a curse on his family that lets him do that.”
She tilts her head. “Okay. That tracks.The most powerful family has a curse that is connected to the Veil.”
I swallow. She is taking this way easier than anyone ever should. “They weren’t fully under my control, Tams.”
The words feel like glass in my mouth, but she needs to know the full extent of it if she’s going to be around me. I’m dangerous.
“I tried to stop them. They didn’t. They felt so…hungry for power.”
Tamsin doesn’t even flinch. Her fingers just tighten on mine. “Okay,” she says quietly. “Listen to me. You went through something no one else could have survived. You came back with a cosmic void attached to you. You’re adjusting.”
“I almost killed her.”
“You didn’t.”
“Because he—”
“Because you, Linds. It’s all you, babe.”
I try to blink away the tears that are trying to gather. What sort of person cries when they weren’t the one hurt?
“Tamsin, I don’t want to hurt you, too. I don’t want to hurt anyone I love.”
“Awe, you love me.” She grins at me.
I blink again, and a tear streaks down my cheek. “That’s what you got out of that?”
Tamsin shrugs, completely unrepentant. “Obviously. Priorities.”
I let out a broken laugh that turns into something embarrassingly close to a sob. I swipe at my face, annoyed with myself.
“What kind of person cries when they weren’t the one hurt?” I mutter.
“The kind that didn’t want to hurt someone,” she says simply.
That stops me.
The attic dorm is quiet around us—low breathing from the other beds, the soft creak of old beams adjusting to the night air. Moonlight spills across the wooden floor between us, catching in the faint flicker of magic still coiled near my boots.
Tamsin notices.
“Hey,” she says softly, squeezing my hands again. “You showed up here this year with magic you couldn’t control. Remember that?”
I huff a weak breath. “I remember.”
“You were a danger to everyone—at least that’s what the Council wanted everyone to think.” Her eyes flash. “Hell, that’s how it all started. You bonded to Fire-Fox Hottie, and suddenly, everyone panicked. Then Shadow Daddy. Then our sweet, nerdy Cinnamon Roll.”
Despite myself, my mouth twitches.
“They were terrified of you,” she continues. “Not because you were evil. Because you were powerful and unpredictable.”
“I was unstable,” I say quietly.
“You were new,” she corrects. “You were human three seconds before you stepped through those gates. Of course you were unstable.”
The word human lands strangely. I haven’t felt human in weeks.
“You saved us,” she says firmly. “Multiple times. You stabilized the fracture in the west tower when half the Council froze. You stepped into that ritual circle when no one else would. You saved us at the dance. You kept Raiden from burning himself out trying to protect you.”
Her voice softens.
“You have always chosen us.”
The darkness stirs faintly at my feet.
“And tonight?” I whisper.
“Tonight you almost lost control,” she says. “That’s not the same as choosing to hurt someone.”
“I felt it,” I insist. “The hunger. It wasn’t fear or panic. It was… appetite.”
Her grip tightens slightly, but she doesn’t pull away.
“Okay,” she says carefully. “Then we acknowledge that. Appetite doesn’t make you evil. Acting on it without remorse would.”
I look down at our hands.
“You’re sitting here crying over it,” she adds. “That tells me everything I need to know.”
I shake my head. “You’re taking this way too well.”
She snorts softly. “Lindsay, you bonded to a literal fire fox within your first month here. Then a shadow prince with abandonment issues. Then the most anxious warlock in existence. My bar for ‘normal’ has been obliterated.”
A watery laugh slips out of me.
“You were new,” she continues, gentler now. “You had no power at first. Then you had unstable power. Now you have Veil magic that could probably level a wing of the academy.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s not supposed to be.” She leans closer. “It’s perspective.”
My shadows curl inward slightly, less agitated.
“You didn’t walk into this year knowing you were some prophesied thread,” she says. “You didn’t ask for the Veil to grab you. You didn’t ask to come back changed.”
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” I whisper.
“I know.”
Her voice is steady. Solid.
“But you adapted,” she says. “Every single time. And this time will be no different.”
The candle flame near her bed flickers as the light at my feet dims another shade.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I say, the words spilling out before I can stop them. “Or Raiden. Or Nolan. Or Kael. Or—”
“I know,” she says again.
“And if the darkness decides it wants to—”
“Then we don’t let it.”
Her certainty hits harder than any reassurance should.
“How?” I ask, fragile in a way I hate. God, I still feel so weak even with all this power.
“Because you are not alone in it,” she says. “You think Shadow Daddy is going to sit back if you start spiraling? You think Fire-Fox Hottie won’t burn down the moon to protect you? You think your Cinnamon Roll isn’t already drafting seventeen contingency plans?”
That pulls a shaky smile from me.
“And me?” she adds, arching a brow. “I will absolutely hex you unconscious before I let you hurt yourself or anyone else.”
I blink at her.
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s very comforting,” she argues. “You just don’t appreciate my methods.”
The attic creaks again. Someone turns in their sleep. I exhale slowly.
“You’re not scared of me,” I say quietly.
She studies my face, really studies it.
“I’m not scared of you,” she says at last. “I’m protective of you. There’s a difference.”
That lodges somewhere deep in my chest.
“You are not evil,” she repeats. “You are powerful and traumatized and carrying something ancient that’s trying to figure out where it fits.”
The darkness flickers faintly, almost thoughtful.
“And if part of it really isn’t you?” she adds. “Then we figure out what part is.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It’s not easy,” she says bluntly. “It’s just not impossible.”
Her thumb brushes over my knuckles.
“You were new to this academy a few months ago,” she says. “You didn’t even know how to hold your own magic steady. Now you’re a Veil-born badass, who terrifies half the student body.”
“That’s not exactly the legacy I was aiming for.”
She grins. “Give it time.”
A quiet settles between us—not heavy or suffocating.
Grounded.
“I love you, too, by the way,” she adds casually.
My throat tightens.
“You’re impossible,” I murmur.
“And you’re dramatic. Seriously, stop crying.”
“I’m not—” My voice cracks immediately.
She points at my face. “Evidence says otherwise.”
I huff out another soft laugh, scrubbing at my cheeks again.
Tamsin pushes herself to her feet and stretches, arms over her head, shirt riding up slightly as she yawns.
“Get some sleep, Linds,” she says, padding back toward her bed. “I have a feeling we’re going to need it. Adding Platinum Popsicle to the mix is going to come with… emotional side quests.”
I groan softly.
“Please stop calling him that.”
“Never.” She flops onto her mattress, pulling her blanket up. “He will earn a better nickname when he stops being an ass to everyone. Which, let's be honest, will be never. I’m pretty sure being an ass is in his DNA.”
I lie back slowly on my own bed, staring up at the slanted beams of the attic ceiling. The dorm smells faintly of old wood and lavender oil someone uses on their pillow. The other girls shift and sigh in their sleep, unaware that I almost shattered something tonight.
“But Linds, don’t try to ice me out to protect me. I won’t let you.” She leans up, and I meet her gaze as she blows out her candle. “Good night, my terrifying bestie.”
“Good night, Tams.”
The moonlight shifts as the darkness settles around us. And somewhere inside my chest, the Veil stirs again—softly, thoughtfully—as if it’s learning.