Chapter 2
GROWING IN THE SHADOW
Hakan
The Light Academy stood as testament to everything the Light Court believed itself to be.
Its spires pierced the heavens like prayers made stone, each tower sheathed in marble so white it seemed to glow from within.
Crystalline windows caught Gün Ata's eternal radiance and scattered it into rainbows that danced across courtyards where the realm's finest young minds gathered to learn the sacred arts.
Fountains sang with voices of pure light, their waters blessed by priests each dawn.
Gardens bloomed with flowers that never wilted, their petals permanently kissed by divine magic.
It was beautiful. It was holy. It was the heart of enlightenment in a world perpetually threatened by darkness.
It was also where I learned that nobility had nothing to do with blood and everything to do with cruelty dressed in silk.
I made my way through the eastern colonnade as the afternoon bells chimed the hour, my scholar's robes marking me as one of the fortunate few permitted to walk these sacred halls despite lacking the proper lineage.
Lord Kaya's apprentice. A scholarship boy plucked from obscurity because my talent with light theory had caught the attention of someone who mattered.
The other students parted around me like water around stone—not from respect, but from the particular disdain reserved for those who had earned their place rather than inherited it.
I had grown accustomed to their sidelong glances, their whispered comments, their casual assumption that my presence somehow diminished their own.
The library awaited me—three hours of research into ancient binding rituals for Lord Kaya's latest project.
Tedious work, but necessary. Everything I did was necessary.
Every hour of study, every perfectly executed assignment, every moment spent proving myself indispensable brought me one step closer to a future that did not depend on the charity of my betters.
One step closer to becoming someone worthy of—
I severed the thought before it could fully form. That path led nowhere but madness.
The colonnade opened onto a smaller courtyard, one typically deserted at this hour. I had chosen this route specifically for its solitude, its distance from the main thoroughfares where I might encounter—
Voices.
I halted mid-stride, pressing into the shadow of a pillar before my mind had fully registered the words floating from the garden alcove ahead.
"—saw her at the ceremony yesterday. Weeping over plisk filth like it was her own kin."
Ferit Ercel. I recognized his voice immediately, that blend of aristocratic drawl and wine-soaked contempt.
"She has always been soft toward the tainted ones." Another voice, one of his sycophants. "Strange, for Gün Ata's daughter."
"Strange?" Ferit's laugh scraped across my nerves. "It is not strange at all, when you understand what she truly is."
I should have walked away.
My feet refused to move.
"The court whispers about her," Ferit continued. "About whether the divine blood runs as pure in her veins as her father claims. Her mother spent years in those border villages. Far from the palace. Far from her husband's watchful eye. Who knows what manner of creatures she entertained?"
"Ferit, careful—"
"I am merely saying what everyone thinks.
" Something shattered—a practice blade thrown against stone.
"Ada plays at being the pious princess, but we all know what she really craves.
Shadow-touched cock between her thighs. That is why she wastes her tears on plisk—she wishes she could spread her legs for them openly. "
The world narrowed to a single point of white-hot focus.
"The servants talk, you know," Ferit pressed on. "They say she visits the lower quarters at night. That she lets half-blood guards touch her in dark corridors. That she moans like a common harlot while shadow-tainted filth use her like the border-bred whore she—"
"That cannot be true."
"Why not? She is her mother's daughter." Ferit's voice dripped venom. "A shadow court slut hidden behind divine light. The only reason that whore still breathes court air is because no one has the courage to tell Gün Ata what his precious daughter does when he is not watching."
Silence.
Then laughter—his companions joining the mirth, their voices rising in waves of aristocratic amusement.
I stood frozen behind the hedgerow, something dark and terrible rising in my chest. My hands had clenched into fists. My breath came shallow and fast.
A shadow court slut.
A whore.
Spreads her legs for shadow-tainted filth.
I thought of her standing in the Golden Hall three days past, trying to save that servant girl. The way her voice had cracked when Lady Seher silenced her. The way she had walked from the hall with her spine straight even as something in her shattered.
She was the only person in that room who had seen the ceremony for what it truly was.
And Ferit called her a whore for it.
The training blade in my hand snapped. I had not realized I was gripping it until the wood splintered against my palm, until blood welled from a dozen small cuts.
I looked at my bleeding hand.
And began to plan.
Sarp found me an hour later in the Golden Bull, a tavern near the Academy gates. He slid onto the bench across from me, took one look at my face, and signaled for two cups of whatever was strongest.
"You have that expression again," he observed.
"What expression?"
"The one that says someone is about to suffer tremendously and you are going to enjoy every moment of it." He accepted the cups from the barmaid and slid one toward me. "Who has earned your wrath this time?"
"Ferit Ercel."
"The princess's cousin?" He whistled low. "What did he do?"
"He disrespected Ada."
"Ah." The humor faded from Sarp's face. "What did he say?"
I told him. Every word, every vile accusation. By the time I finished, Sarp's easy smile had vanished entirely.
"Well," he said quietly. "That is considerably worse than his usual idiocy."
"I am going to fucking destroy him."
"Obviously. The question is how." Sarp took a long drink. "Ferit is nobility. You cannot simply gut him in the training grounds, satisfying as that would be."
"I am aware."
"You need something subtle. Something that makes him the architect of his own destruction."
A commotion near the tavern's back corner interrupted us. A group of young lords had surrounded someone—a serving girl, I realized, but not like any I had seen in the palace district.
Wings.
Delicate, iridescent things that sprouted from her shoulder blades, folded tight against her back as though she could make them disappear through will alone.
An Iskylarian—from the mountain territories near the border where her people had settled after the great flight from Skandvar.
When Light Court King Harold invaded, the Iskylarians had fled in masses, escaping his terror to these remote peaks.
Generations of isolation had changed them; fae bloodlines mixing with creatures of the air until the wings bred true, until they became something new entirely.
They were rare in the Light Court. And valued, I had heard, for reasons that made my stomach turn.
"Please." Her voice carried across the tavern, thin with fear. "I must return to my duties—"
"Your duties can wait." One of the lordlings—thick-necked, with the look of someone who had never been denied anything—grabbed her arm, yanking her closer. "We merely wish to examine your wings. They say Iskylarian’s feathers bring luck if you pluck them fresh."
"That is not—please, my lord, they do not grow back if—"
"Hush." Another lordling circled behind her, fingers reaching for the delicate membrane of her left wing. "Hold still and this will hurt less."
"Her wings are exquisite and I wonder how well you would obey my orders on your knees," the thick-necked one mused, stroking a finger along the wing's edge while the girl flinched.
"Tell me, creature—is it true what they say about Iskylarians?
That you spread your wings during mating?
That if a man clips them just right, you cannot fly away no matter how badly you wish to escape? "
The laughter from his companions made my fists clench. Those idiots called themselves noblemen. They were worse than half breeds.
"Perhaps we should test the theory," another suggested. "For scientific purposes, of course. The Academy encourages empirical study."
"I hear the Shadow Court breeds them deliberately." The thick-necked lordling's voice dropped to a conspiratorial murmur that still carried. "Keeps whole flocks of Iskylarians as pleasure slaves. Clips their wings and chains them to beds for any shadow lord who wishes to use them."
"Savages," one companion agreed. "Though one can see the appeal."
"Indeed. At least the shadow creatures are honest about their depravity." He yanked the girl closer, making her cry out. "Here in the blessed Light Court, we must pretend we do not want to do exactly the same things."
"Let me go—"
"Should we tell her what happens to Iskylarians who displease their betters?" The lordling's smile turned cruel. "The purification ceremonies burn the wings first, I am told. The priests say the feathers carry shadow-taint. That the ability to fly is itself a corruption that must be cleansed."
Tears streamed down the girl's face. Her wings trembled, trying to fold smaller, trying to disappear.
"My cousin underwent the ceremony last spring," she whispered. "She has not spoken since. She sits by the windows and stares at the sky and weeps when birds fly past."
"Then she is blessed." The lordling released her with a shove that sent her stumbling.
"Purified of her unnatural abilities. Welcomed into Gün Ata's light.
" He turned to his companions with a smirk.
"You see? The Light Court's mercy is boundless.
We even save the creatures that were never meant to exist."