Chapter Fifteen #2
The good thing, if there is one, is I don’t have to shove people out of the way, since every whisper on my trek is pointed directly at me. Did you hear about what happened in Professor Astra’s class? She almost burned it down. Bet she did kill Elena…
Bunch of softies is what they are. Their whispers are irrelevant to me.
I’m not here to make friends or be their entertainment.
Hell, I never asked to be here in the first place, but after today’s class, I don’t know.
There’s this nasty little nagging of optimism building in the back of my skull.
A slow-burning fire created by the flame of my own making, telling me to dig deeper.
If speaking specific words that were scripted by some ancient witch or what the fuck ever can give me fire…then what, if anything, can I do my damn self? With my own words, actions, or whatever else it is that the gifted draw from?
I have no idea, but I’m going to find out. And when the time comes, Creed will help me get away. I’ll leave with whatever it is I’ve learned.
Hopefully the island, greedy bitch that she is, doesn’t take it right back when I return home for good.
Can you really go home and leave him here?
I shake the thought away.
I wander the campus, letting my feet take me deeper into the campus grounds.
The paths twist and branch, leading through courtyards and gardens, past training yards where students clash with staffs and swords, their movements sharp and controlled.
I watch for a while, leaning against a stone pillar, and feel a pang of something I don’t want to name.
Zev would love this place.
He’d take one look at these pristine little warriors and their perfect forms and laugh himself sick. Then he’d probably challenge the biggest one to a fight and win through sheer audacity and a willingness to fight dirty.
Gods, I miss him, and I hate missing things.
Miss the way he’d sprawl across my bed whenever I’d want him to, all long limbs and easy grins, bitching about the heat.
Or the shit we had for food. Or whatever else.
Miss the way we’d spar until we were both bruised and breathless, then collapse in a heap and let the adrenaline bleed into something else entirely.
No strings. No expectations. Just…easy.
Nothing about this place is easy.
I push off the pillar and keep walking, following a path that winds upward, climbing toward a section of campus I haven’t seen yet, my codex held tight in my hands. The air changes as I go, growing cooler, sharper, like the magic here is older somehow.
The path ends at a small hut.
Thatched roof sagging, walls patched with moss and crumbling stone, and beyond its crooked doorframe, vines choke what might’ve once been a garden, now swallowed by shadow. The door hangs ajar, no lock, nothing keeping me out—but my pulse kicks up anyway, some animal instinct whispering back away.
I step closer.
The pull slams into me, chest-deep.
Not pain. Weight. Like whatever’s inside has hooked into my ribs and started reeling me in, hand over hand.
I reach for the doorframe, fingertips grazing splintered wood, and then everything goes black.
…
I wake up in blood.
It’s everywhere. Pooled beneath me, soaking into my clothes, slick and warm against my skin. The smell hits me next, copper and iron, thick enough to choke on.
I jolt upright, heart slamming against my ribs, and scan my surroundings.
Some kind of house. It’s tiny, packed with stuff, and feels way too close—shelves everywhere stuffed with books and jars and weird things I can’t even identify.
The labels are either worn away or in an unfamiliar language.
There’s just one window that leaks grayish light, which still fails to illuminate the room in any helpful way.
Through the dirty glass, I can see trees with their naked, twisted branches scratching at a dull sky like bony fingers.
The blood isn’t mine.
Blood coats the room. A man—forties, maybe, though it’s hard to say for the giftless—lies sprawled near the center.
His throat is torn so deep the jagged edges of muscle and cartilage gape open, bone glinting like a knife left in the dark.
His fingers claw the air, frozen mid-reach, eyes wide and glassy with whatever final terror he saw.
The walls wear his death in streaks, the shelves drowned in it, books and jars slick with crimson. A slow dripping of it hits the ground.
Then there’s her.
The woman in the corner sits slumped, her chest split open like a butcher’s prize, ribs splayed wide as petals.
Her face tilts toward me, mouth slack, horror still etched into every line.
Blood soaks her dress, turns her hair to clotted ropes, and seeps into the floorboards in a stain that’s already crusting at the edges.
My boots skid in the mess as I jerk back, breath sawing in and out—too loud, too raw—in the suffocating quiet.
What the fuck. What the fuck. What the—
My hands are clean. No blood under my nails, no cuts, nothing bruised.
My knife’s still strapped to my thigh, sheathed and dry, with the leather strap undone but not messed with.
I frantically check myself over, looking for wounds, for proof, for anything, but there’s nothing.
Nothing on me. Nothing that explains why I’m standing in this slaughterhouse surrounded by death and gore and that overwhelming copper smell.
But here I am.
In this house.
Surrounded by corpses.
With zero memory of how I got here other than touching a damn door handle. Not even THIS door handle.
This looks fucking bad. I need to leave.
I stumble backward, fingers groping blindly for the door handle, but it vanishes when the door tears open from the other side.
I tumble into blinding sunlight, squinting as I throw up a hand to block the glare, and there, blocking my escape, stand the four royal assholes.
Legend’s eyes snap to mine. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
I spread my arms out, the blood-splattered walls surrounding me like some twisted picture frame. “You think I know? I touched a door and next thing, I’m waking up in the middle of this shit show.”
“Bullshit.” Creed moves forward, jaw clenched, gaze sweeping over the carnage at my back. “You actually expect us to buy—”
“I don’t give a shit what you believe. I just got here, same as you. So don’t even try to pin this shit on me. I’d have no problem admitting it if it were.”
Silver, the one nonroyal who seems to get a pass into their little royal squad, moves past Legend.
He observes the scene with clinical detachment.
He crouches near the doorway, fingers hovering over a smear of blood without touching it.
“The blood’s borderline cold. If she did just arrive as she claims, this would have happened before she got here. ”
“Like I said.” I cross my arms.
“Or maybe she’s standing right in front of us and knows a good cooling spell.” Knight’s voice cuts through the tension. He leans against the doorframe, his eyes as cold as his words. “Convenient timing, don’t you think?”
The rage flares hot and immediate. “Convenient? You think I wanted to wake up covered in—” I bite off the words, swallow them down. Getting angry won’t help. These assholes have already made up their minds.
Legend pushes past his brothers, stalking toward me with that predatory grace that makes my pulse kick up for all the wrong reasons. “How did you get here?”
“I told you. The door—”
“What door?” He’s close now, too close, and the heat rolling off him makes the air between us shimmer. “There are wards all over this campus. You can’t just appear somewhere without triggering them.”
“Then maybe your wards are shit.” I meet his glare with one of my own, refusing to back down even though every instinct screams at me to run. “I was walking. Found some old hut I was planning to practice this candle thing. Touched the door. Then this.”
Creed’s eyes fall to my codex and he frowns, muttering something under his breath before turning to Silver. “Check the perimeter. See if there’s any residual magic.”
Silver nods and disappears around the side of the house, his footsteps crunching through dead leaves.
Knight straightens, his attention shifting from me to the interior. “We need to figure out who they were and why the fuck someone is feeling so bold.”
“Whoever did this—” My words die as something catches my eye. A photo frame hanging on the wall, half-obscured by a spray of blood. The glass is cracked, but I can still make out the image beneath.
A boy. Maybe fourteen, with dark hair and eyes that look too old for his face.
He’s standing between the two corpses, the man’s hand on his shoulder, the woman’s smile strained.
I know that face.
“Wait.” I push past Legend, ignoring his growl of protest, and move closer to the frame. The blood makes my boots stick to the floor with each step, the sound wet and obscene. “I know him.”
“What?” Legend’s voice hits my back like a fist.
I tap the glass, leaving a smudge. “This kid. He’s on Exile Island.”
The silence that follows is absolute.
Then Creed’s there, shoving me aside to get a better look. His breath catches, and something shifts in his expression—something raw and dangerous. “What did you just say?”
“I said he’s on Exile.” I step back, giving them space as Knight and Legend crowd in too. “Just arrived a few weeks ago. I put an arrow through his eye.”
“So, they have a son on Exile Island…” Creed turns to me over his shoulder. “Another connection to you, I see…”
“The thing about seeing, Creed, is I can rip your eyes out so you don’t have that problem anymore.” I flash him a wide smile before shrugging. “It wasn’t me. So I don’t know what else to tell you.”
I turn on my heel, done with this shit, done with their accusations, and done with the way Legend’s stare burns holes into my back. I’m halfway to the tree line when a hand clamps around my arm, yanking me to a stop. The grip is iron, and I don’t need to look to know it’s him.