Chapter 13
MEDRA
The halls of Bloodwing Academy had started to feel like home to me not long ago.
Now they were simmering with something ugly.
Anger radiated off blightborn students like heat from a stove, and it was easily attributed to the new programs our headmistress recently put in place.
The extreme force of the Bloodguard had pressed in on the student body all at once, but no one quite knew how to fight back without facing extreme consequences.
I stood with my back against the wall, flipping through the pages of my essay for Professor Allenvale’s alchemy class, while I waited for my Intermediate Combat class to begin.
We’d been moved to an older part of the castle and were using a gymnasium that was in a sorry condition.
I knew Professor Stonefist wasn’t fond of the new space, but she’d managed not to complain too loudly in front of the class.
I’d decided I’d either imagined or dreamed Blake’s red eye. Because when I woke up the next morning, he looked exactly the same as when we’d fallen asleep the night before: one eye perfect and gray, the other still wrecked but slowly healing.
The corridor was full of students arriving from their previous classes, most wearing blue and silver.
A few highbloods strolled through, looking like they owned the place as usual.
Most of us pretended not to notice them.
A sound from across the hall caught my attention.
I looked over to see a highblood boy leaning in close to a familiar-looking dwarven girl and swore under my breath.
Dani had her head tilted up obediently, her body relaxed and pliant as he sank his fangs into her throat, drawing out her blood.
The bliss on her face was unmistakable, which would have been fine if she’d managed to stay quiet.
Unfortunately, she let out a loud, throaty whimper of pleasure that had more than a few heads turning.
I forced myself to look away, feeling uncomfortable.
The scene had too many parallels to my own existence.
But Blake didn’t use thrallweave to coerce me, I reminded myself.
No, I was a willing participant now. Being fed from …
and being fucked. Was that any better? I felt a disturbing twinge of guilt.
Usually, a feeding like that would have been done in a more private space, tucked away in an alcove or behind a closed door.
Not because it was shameful but because highbloods had some sense of, well, discretion and tact.
But apparently, not anymore. This was open. Blatant. Deliberately provocative.
The highblood boy—someone from House Mortis, from the look of his red and white attire—pulled away lazily from Dani, his mouth wet and gleaming red.
He wiped the back of his hand over his lips carelessly, then tossed a smirk over where I stood with the rest of the blightborn students, and walked away.
I muttered a curse under my breath. What a fucking fool to leave his thrall there like that, if she even was his thrall.
The last time I’d seen Dani, she’d been with a highblood named Brocklin.
The enthralled girl stayed where she was, eyes half-closed, swaying slightly, clearly still caught in the haze of thrallweave and the highblood’s bite.
At first, I thought it was over. That the crowd of students around me would just ignore her.
Maybe they would have, if Professor Stonefist hadn’t been late that day.
The buzz of chatter in the hall started to shift.
A group of blight-born boys—four or five of them—broke off from the rest of the crowd of waiting students and moved over to Dani.
Their faces were tight, angry. I recognized one of them, a tall burly boy I’d encountered a few months back.
He was from House Avari. Kage had told him off once for harassing me. I was pretty sure his name was Lochlan.
Now he sneered down at Dani. “Slut,” he spat.
The crude comment stopped me in my tracks.
The other boys began to close in.“Highblood whore,” one hissed.
“Disgusting,” muttered a third. “You’re throwing yourself at them. For what? A moment of their attention.”
A blightborn girl marched up. I recognized her long braided hair from a previous encounter. “She’s not even dressed right.” She yanked at Dani’s dress. “Look at her—House Mortis colors.”
My heart sank: She was right. Dani’s dress was red and white. A silver cloak had covered it so I hadn’t noticed at first. Now the dress was like waving a flag in front of a herd of rampaging bulls. A symbol of favor.
Before I could even think to react, the girl with braids drew back her arm and slapped Dani full in the face. “That’s what you get, whore,” she hissed, then followed the slap up by spitting full in Dani’s face.
I watched the dwarven girl blink rapidly, horror dawning as she finally realized what was going on. The boys around her laughed and jeered, quickly following up with mouthfuls of spit of their own.
I’d had enough. Dani had been through enough.
Disgusted, I pushed through the circle of students that had formed around Dani and her tormentors. As I made my way to the front, I heard the sound of fabric ripping and saw Lochlan holding up a piece of red triumphantly. Behind him Dani was sobbing and clutching at the bodice of her dress.
“Hey!” I snapped, feeling a ridiculous sense of déjà vu. I shoved through the last of the crowd and snapped my fingers, loudly. “Hey! That’s enough.”
The girl with braids looked at me. “Look, Drakharrow’s pet is here, Lochlan.” She sneered at me. “Going to defend this one? That makes sense, you’re no different. Part of a special highblood sluts’ club, aren’t you?”
I could feel my blood boiling. “That’s enough. Back off. You have no idea what this girl has already been through, believe me.”
Lochlan stepped forward. He was taller than me, brawnier. But if I had to, I knew I could take him. I tensed my body.
“What? You think you’re better than us because Drakharrow feeds from you?”
I decided not to point out that this was exactly what the Sanctum taught, what every blightborn had been brought up to believe.
The only reason these two felt so feisty right now was because the compulsion magic woven through this world was faltering.
Funny how I’d originally thought that would be a wonderful thing.
“So do many other blightborn. And they do so willingly.” I tried to lower my voice. “This is different. Dani wasn’t willing. I understand why you’re so upset, but you need to leave her alone.”
“Not willing?” one of the boys behind Lochlan hollered. “She looked pretty fucking willing to me. Let’s take her back to the First Year tower and see how willing she is with us, hey, Lochlan?”
To his credit, Lochlan looked a little repulsed by that proposition. But he didn’t back off.
“Your friends are mostly First Years, aren’t they?” I said to him quietly. “You’re going to get them all expelled, Lochlan. Or worse. You’re interfering with a highblood thrall.” Immediately I knew I’d said the wrong thing.
Lochlan’s eyes blazed. “Fuck that. They act like they own us. Own our women.”
“Your women?” My hackles rose. “We’re not your women, you prick. She should be able to make her own choices. But that’s just the point, she didn’t get to make one. You know how hard it is to say no to a highblood,” I pointed out. “So please. Just leave her the fuck alone.”
“You’re not one of us.” The girl with braids pushed in between Lochlan and me, her voice raised. “You let one feed from you, too. You’re no better than her.”
I stood my ground, heart pounding—not from fear but from rage and frustration.
“Look, it’s not about that. It’s about consent.
It’s none of your fucking business what I do or what Dani does—as long as we’re all right with it.
But what that highblood just did to her?
He did it with thrallweave. You and I both know that.
She doesn’t deserve to be attacked just for being manipulated.
” I raised my voice so the students around us could hear me.
“Because we all know the same thing could happen to you or to me.”
The girl blanched a little but her lips were still set in a stubborn expression. “Fuck that. It’s not happening to me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine, then I won’t bother talking to you.
If you want to be na?ve about things, go right ahead.
” I turned to face the students behind me.
“But the rest of you—you think tearing each other apart like this is going to help anything? Change anything? You think it’s going to stop them from doing what they want to us? This isn’t the way.”
Some students looked away, suddenly uncertain. Others moved off to the side, clearly deciding they weren’t going to get involved.
A tall skinny girl wearing a blue dress stepped forward. “Easy for you to say. You belong to a House Leader.”
“I’m not Blake’s property, and I assure you he’d say the same thing,” I said firmly. The way Blake and I talked to one another when we were alone? Absolutely none of their fucking business. “I am my own person. Otherwise, would I really be speaking to you all like this?”
She ignored me. “You’ve got a dragon! That’s real power. If you really hate the highbloods so much, why not use it? Why don’t you stand up for us?”
My heart sank; I should have known it would come down to that.
It was, of course, an excellent question.
And with the way things had been going at Bloodwing, I was reaching the end of my rope.
If Nyxaris had truly been mine, I might have been reaching out to him—begging him to intervene. But he was not mine. He was Florence’s.
A chorus of murmurs followed the girl’s questions. Obviously many agreed with her.
The weight of responsibility that those murmurs placed upon me was heavier than anything I could have imagined. Even without Nyxaris, I was burdened by their expectations. I wasn’t even from this world, and yet I felt a horrible awareness of letting them down.
Another student shoved forward. “Forget the damn dragon, Isha. There are bigger things happening than our little problems at school. Haven’t you heard the rumors? There’s a plague. A highblood plague. And it’s spreading.”
The girl he’d called Isha scoffed. “Rumors? Lies, more like. Highbloods don’t get sick.”
“No one is sick in Veilmar,” someone protested. “We’d have heard if there was a plague.”
“That rumor came from a little town thousands of miles away, Alain,” another called.
Alain set his jaw. “So what? Doesn’t mean it can’t still be true. A thousand miles, a hundred. Plagues spread, you idiots.”
“We’re talking about dragons not plagues.” Isha’s eyes were back on me. “This girl has power no highblood could dream of possessing, and she’s done absolutely nothing with it to help us.”
I decided not to point out that highbloods absolutely could dare to dream.
“Dragons have minds of their own. Nyxaris isn’t a weapon to be controlled.
But I assure you, he’s not fond of the way highbloods rule Sangratha either.
” I glanced behind me at where Dani cowered against the wall, still holding her ripped dress.
“Regardless of what Nyxaris chooses to do or not do, this isn’t the way, Isha.
Hurting this girl won’t fix anything. She’s already been hurt enough.
We have to stand together, help one another. If we don’t—”
Lochlan gave me a shove as he came to stand beside Isha, crossing his arms over his broad chest. I took a step back towards Dani, pulse racing. If they attacked, if I fought back …
“Call him,” Lochlan demanded. “Prove you’re one of us. Otherwise, shut up and get out of here.”
Where the hell was Professor Stonefist? A few words from her and these idiots would scatter. Then I had a terrible thought: Maybe Regan had gotten rid of her. Was that going to be the next step, eliminating all of the blightborn faculty? I wouldn’t put it past our new headmistress.
A beefy hand shoved my shoulder—Lochlan again. I let out a gasp as I stumbled and nearly went sprawling backwards.
“Keep your hands off me,” I snapped. “And keep them off this girl. I’m taking Dani back to her room now. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay the hell out of my way.”
“Or what?” Isha challenged. “You’ll sic your dragon on us? You’ve basically already said you can’t. He doesn’t listen to you.”
A tremulous high-pitched voice rang out through the hall. “No, but he’ll listen to me. Leave Medra alone!”
The mob of students slowly parted. A girl stepped forward slowly, outfitted in a knee-length dress of royal blue, her black hair pulled into a long black ponytail.
Her cheeks were flushed with emotion. Her glasses had slid slightly down the bridge of her nose.
I could tell she was nervous because she didn’t bother to push them back up.
Her shoulders were squared like someone about to step onto a battlefield.
In that moment, I knew I’d made the right choice to save her, no matter what the price—not that I’d ever doubted it.
Florence was a bookish, quiet girl, far too kind and reserved to ever intentionally choose to be a dragon rider—and yet, there was fire in her blood. Once she realized it, gods help the ones she wielded it against.
Still, I knew this wasn’t the time. I stepped forward, knowing what I had to do.