Chapter 5
CHAPTER
FIVE
“Molly’s kid? Molly didn’t have a child as far as we know.” A strange female voice pulled me from unconsciousness.
The sound came through layers of fog.
“I know my best friend. She looks just like her, and we don’t know where Molly went in her year of?—”
“She’s awake,” the unfamiliar female voice said.
I snapped my eyes open to find that I was in a room not unlike a hospital room, though it was better decorated.
The air smelled faintly of something herbal, like someone had cracked open a window near a garden or was burning incense.
The lighting was soft, warm, almost golden, and the room held a quiet stillness that made my pulse slow.
The room was modern with pale blue walls and a window that overlooked?—
“Whoa.”
I sat up too fast, and dizziness washed over me, so I lay back down as a wave of nausea roiled through me. I let my head sink into the pillow, breathing through the spin. Then I turned my head to peer out the window.
The window overlooked a really cool university campus or something like that.
It was a beautiful redbrick cluster of buildings with green grass fields and students milling about with backpacks on.
The buildings stretched upward with long arching windows and ivy creeping up their sides, catching the early sunlight in a way that made the whole place feel picturesque.
Pathways curved through the grass in perfect symmetry, dotted with benches and old-fashioned lampposts that flickered softly even in daylight.
But that wasn’t the cool part.
That would be the glowing runes.
Symbols were etched into stone arches. Tall spires rose in the distance, carved with glowing marks that pulsed faintly, like the buildings themselves were alive.
People dressed as warriors walked the paths among the students, swords strapped openly at their sides, armor catching the light as if this were the most normal thing in the world.
Runes.
Students walked beneath them without even glancing up, which told me this was normal here. A whole world full of magic symbols and glowing protection charms like it was just school spirit decor.
And the warrior stuff… Yeah, that was impossible to miss.
On one of the fields below, a group of students trained in organized lines, each wearing black tactical gear.
Some carried long blades. Others held staffs marked with runes that flared when they struck the ground.
A woman barked orders at them as they pivoted and moved, their motions sharp and practiced like they’d been doing this forever.
In another corner, two guys were sparring with short swords, the metal clashing quick and clean.
A third sat on a bench, wrapping his hands like he had a full fight coming in five minutes.
No one seemed afraid. No one looked surprised by any of it.
It was just another day in whatever world this was.
A gust of wind carried faint sounds up to the cracked open window. Laughter. The ring of steel. Someone shouting instructions. It was like a campus and a military base had been smashed together, but with magic glowing through all the cracks.
This was absolutely not a dream.
I stared until my eyes started to dry out, trying to make sense of any of it.
Nothing in the human world looked like this.
Where the hell was I?
“Welcome to the world of Veil Haven, Stella,” the woman who’d initially told me that she thought she knew my mother said as she approached my bedside. “I’m Celia.” She tipped her head to the woman beside her. “And that’s Headmistress Rubina of Nightguard Academy.”
My gaze flicked to the headmistress, and instead of greeting me, she just cocked her head to the side like a curious cat. She was a beautiful woman in her fifties with creamy peach skin and glossy blond curly hair that hung to her shoulders. Her eyes were a deep blue so dark they were almost navy.
“Who was your mother?” Rubina said directly.
Celia cut her a sharp look, but Rubina just pinned me with a glare so piercing it caused chills to race down my spine. The last twenty-four hours had been a lot to process, and I wasn’t in the mood for any crap.
“I don’t know. I’m motherless.” I glared back, and she swallowed hard, having the decency to look embarrassed.
“I told you. She told Asher she was adopted,” Celia scolded the headmistress.
Adopted? No. But it was a semantic distinction I didn’t want to argue right now.
The headmistress raised one eyebrow and crossed her arms. “Claiming she’s some lost-born who should be given safe haven here is one thing, Celia. But saying she’s a legacy, with rights to Molly Sinclair’s inheritance and a full-ride scholarship to Nightguard, is another. I’m going to need proof.”
Legacy? Inheritance? Full ride?
Things just got very confusing.
Celia nodded to the headmistress. “I’ll get her DNA profile into the system and file the paperwork.”
Rubina looked surprised at that. “ You will be filing her paperwork?”
“Yes.” Celia tipped her chin up in defiance, and I had no idea what was going on but I loved her already because it seemed like she was sticking up for me. “Wouldn’t want any issues .”
“Fine,” Rubina growled, moving toward the door. “You have twenty-four hours.”
Rubina left the room, and the door closed more loudly than one would if they were being polite, the sound snapping through the quiet space.
Celia rushed to my side. “Hey, kid, how ya doing?”
I just blinked up at her, my head still swimming. “Overwhelmed. Confused. I want to go home.”
She sighed, pulling up a chair and taking a seat beside me, her posture angling toward me. “I know this is a lot to take in, but I need you to accept that this is your home now. And that you can’t ever go back to the mortal realm.”
The mortal realm? I laughed, a short, uncertain sound, but she didn’t return the smile. Oh, they really called it that?
“Listen.” She leaned in closely, lowering her voice.
“Headmistress Rubina is good friends with Molly’s mother, who stands to absorb your inheritance if we don’t prove you are Molly’s kid, and I don’t trust her not to interfere.
So I need you to lock in with me for the next twenty-four hours, and then I can slow down and properly teach you about our world. ”
“Inheritance? What?”
She grabbed a clean set of folded clothes and handed them to me before drawing the curtains closed and giving me her back, blocking the light from the window.
“Get dressed,” she ordered.
I stood and began to change clothes.
“Tell me about this Molly woman,” I said to her.
“Your mother went missing almost twenty years ago, she was my best friend in the entire world, and you look just like her.”
Her words sliced right into my heart.
I stopped in the middle of buttoning up my jeans, my fingers freezing on the button, and had to take two slow breaths to steady myself, the room suddenly feeling too close.
“I do? I have a mother?” I finished dressing, and Celia spun around.
“Of course you do. Everyone does. We just need to prove yours was Molly Sinclair.”
I slipped on the black leather jacket she’d given me and looked down at the outfit, taking myself in. I wore faded ’90s jeans, a white tank, and a vintage black leather jacket with matching boots. A pretty cool outfit that was just my vibe.
Celia grinned. “Even her clothes fit you.”
My face fell, and I reached up and touched the worn leather jacket, my fingers brushing the softened seams.
Celia walked over and grasped my shoulders, steady and warm. “You ingested a Celestis Astra rune without dying. I’m sure you’re Molly’s kid, but even if you’re not, you belong here at Nightguard where you can be properly trained and protected.”
At this point, I was just nodding and going along with it, because I was too overwhelmed for anything else. My thoughts were lagging behind the conversation.
“And what would I be trained for?” I asked as we moved to the door, hesitating half a second before following her.
“To protect humans against vampires of course.” She peered back at me with her eyes narrowed.
“Right. Because vampires feed off humans. Like in the books.” I nodded, clinging to the only reference I had.
Celia pulled me into the hallway, her hand firm on my arm. She nodded to a few people in white lab coats as we passed by, and then we made our way outside.
The air was warm, the sun was shining, and I took in a deep breath, letting the light and heat steady me.
“Not quite like the books,” Celia said as we headed straight through the winding pathway to the north end of campus, gravel crunching softly under our boots.
“There are three types of vampires. Drinkers, they are your book-type vampire as they only feed on blood. They’re the ones with red eyes.
Then you have drainers. These are an elite type of vampire that feeds on emotions and memories.
Blue eyes for them. Blood is optional. Then at the top tier, you have sires.
They have silver eyes and can turn anyone into a vampire as well as compel them mentally to do their bidding.
As you can imagine with the gift of compulsion and the ability to turn someone with a single bite, a sire can turn a hundred humans into vampires in one night. ”
I stopped walking, my feet planting to the stone path, mouth open.
“We met one of them. Asher and I. He didn’t compel us though.”
Celia grinned, clearly pleased. “Because you’re hunters. We aren’t fully human. Not really. We were born with a genetic anomaly. We can withstand the compulsion of a sire, and drainers can’t feed off our emotions.”
Whoa. That was a leg up.
“So we can only be drunk from or bitten?”
Celia nodded. “See, you’re a quick study. You’ll fit in in no time.”
We reached a small gray stone building at the far end of campus that had a sign that read, Hall of Records: DNA, Ancestry, and Miscellaneous Files , the letters etched neatly into the stone.