Chapter 38
MEDRA
The refugees were at the door, but the doors weren’t opening.
They were being held firmly shut. I moved towards the vaulted foyer at the front of a column, flanked by Visha on one side and Lysander on the other.
Behind us came Theo, Vaughn, Evie, Rodriguez, Sankara, and a mix of students from all three houses.
A crowd of blightborn and highbloods blended together in a mishmash of red and purple, gold and silver and black.
Some might have said the colors clashed. I thought they were beautiful together.
We could hear the banging on the doors as we reached the top of the stairs. The sounds of heavy oak panels rattling beneath the fists of the hundreds of refugees trapped outside. Cries bled through the cracks. Men shouting, women pleading, children crying.
Between us and those doors stood House Mortis.
Silvio Santos, his pale blond hair plastered back against his tan skin, white-and-crimson steel armor hugging his frame, stood shouting orders.
He and his lackeys had obviously been there for some time.
They’d dragged banquet tables from the refectory into the entranceway, pulling them across the doors in a makeshift barricade.
Above, at each end of the mezzanine, stood a dozen or more House Mortis students armed with bows.
They’d smashed the windows overlooking the courtyard.
Now they held position—some looking eager, others uncertain—as Silvio shouted at them to prepare to shoot.
Around the foyer, other students looked on in silence, sitting on the floor or leaning against colonnades, gaping, hesitating, weary—neither obeying nor intervening.
“Tell me I’m fucking imagining this,” Theo whispered, coming up beside Lysander with Vaughn.
“I wish you were,” Lysander said.
“These aren’t all House Mortis students,” Sankara observed.
“No, there are blightborn here, too. They fear the ship is sinking.” Rodriguez’s voice was laced with disgust. “They’ll take the side of least resistance.”
“You mean the side most likely to win,” Visha said starkly.
“That would be us,” I said firmly. “They’re outnumbered. And this isn’t fucking happening. We are better than this.”
“We?” Theo raised his eyebrows. “You including highbloods in that statement?”
“Well, you’re here, aren’t you? Standing beside me, holding a blightborn’s hand.” I looked around the group.“And Visha, Lysander, Sankara, Evie.” I met the Avari girl’s eyes, and she nodded tightly. “You’re all here because you’ve had enough. We’ve all fucking had enough.”
Something inside of me had snapped the moment Blake had flown out the window.
He was out there, somewhere beyond these walls, flying with wings that weren’t his own.
Carried forth by Viktor’s lust for control, tormented by his uncle’s desire for power.
I didn’t know if I’d ever see the man who formed the other half of my heart again.
If I’d ever hear his laugh. See him smirk lazily in that way that turned my blood to fire.
Hear him call me Pendragon, as if it were both a challenge and a promise. Hear him snarl mine.
But this was our fucking school—Blake’s and mine.
Our strange, brutal, beautiful Bloodwing.
It had shaped us, brought us together, made us into who we were, for better or for worse.
And while it was still standing and while the blood ran in my veins, there was plenty I could do to keep it truly ours.
Outside those doors were hundreds of innocent blightborn. Maybe I couldn’t save Blake tonight. But I could save them.
Silvio’s voice rang across the foyer. “Archers, prepare to fire on my mark!”
“Put your weapons down,” I roared, stepping up to the balcony rail. “Belay that order. Open the doors, Silvio.”
The Mortis leader laughed. “Not a fucking chance. So you crawled out of the refectory alive, did you?”
“We noticed you ran and left the rest of your Bloodguards to die,” Visha spat.
Silvio waved a hand. “I went back to my tower to rally my house to serve Lord Drakharrow. There are many Bloodguards here with me now.”
I took in the scattered badges. Too many for my liking.
“Rally them to do what? To attack more blightborn?” Theo demanded.
“Blightborn students are right here with us,” Silvio said dismissively. “Look around. They support our cause.”
“Oh really? And what cause is that? Because it looks to me like you’re preparing to slaughter hundreds of innocent people who just fled a dragon,” I said flatly. “And if you think we’re going to just stand here and watch you do that, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Silvio sneered. “Go back to your kennel, Pendragon. House Mortis stands proud. We answer to no one, certainly not some blightborn bitch.”
Visha hissed. Lysander bristled. I lifted a hand—Wait. The door behind Silvio shuddered as blows rang down upon it from the outside. A baby’s wail carried through the broken windows. One of the archers, a blightborn First Year, flinched, his bow drooping.
“What would you have us do?” a Mortis highblood girl shouted up at us, her face angry. “If we let them in, they could be infected.”
“It isn’t the blightborn who are infected,” I called back. “It’s the highbloods. They turn when bitten by another infected highblood.
Blightborn are immune.”
Murmurs rang out around the hall. They weren’t all House Mortis, I realized.
There were Drakharrow students mixed in with Silvio’s supporters, too.
I recognized Quinn, Larissa, Gretchen, and Edward.
Lucian Aleron was missing, though. He hadn’t made it out of the refectory—Visha had seen to that.
A few students’ clothes flashed purple and gold. Others black and silver.
“Lies!” Silvio declared. “She lies to save her skin. If we let this horde of rabble into the school, we’ll be slaughtered.”
“Look at the people by my side,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the banging at the door. “They’re highbloods and blightborn. They come from all houses.”
“I don’t see Kage Tanaka with you,” Silvio sneered. “Clearly he doesn’t support whatever the hell this is.”
“It’s an insurrection,” I said coolly. “Believe me, Kage would love to be here. But I’m afraid he’s gone into the city to try to stop a fucking dragon.” I could only hope he found the right one.
More murmurs broke out at that. I knew Kage would be here backing me up if he could.
“So has my friend, Florence Shen, the rider of the Duskdrake. She’s flown into Veilmar with Nyxaris and right now is fighting to stop the massacre that’s taking place—a massacre that was ordered by Lord Viktor Drakharrow.” I let that bombshell explode as the room burst into noise.
“Viktor Drakharrow believed it was better to burn Veilmar to the ground than try to save it,” I shouted. “He’d rather kill blight-born and highbloods so that he can consolidate power over us all.”
The room slowly fell silent.
“Viktor wants to divide us. To divide this school. Just look at the rules he had our new headmistress put in place. He’d have us at one another’s throats,” I went on.
“That’s the highblood way,” Quinn shouted. “Our fangs at your throats.” Around her, a small group of highblood students cheered.
I scowled.“I’m speaking to those of you who haven’t decided to support Silvio or Quinn or any of the highbloods intent on keeping the status quo,” I said, once they’d quieted down.
“I’m speaking to all those of you who know this is wrong.
Who have always known.” I pointed down into the crowd at a blightborn girl who sat weeping on the stairs.
“How old were you when you knew? How old were you when you felt it in your bones?”
The girl slowly pushed herself to her feet.“I was seven. Seven when a highblood woman fed from my father. She enthralled him, and he followed her back to her home.That was the last time we saw him.”
I pointed at a House Mortis student who leaned against a colonnade. He was a highblood but something in his face told me he didn’t want to be there. “And you? How old were you?”
“I was twenty,” he said quietly but loud enough that we could hear. “I knew tonight. When I watched Silvio kill a blightborn girl who tried to stop him from barricading these doors.”
“This struggle feels impossible, doesn’t it?” I said.
He nodded. “Hopeless.”
“Yet all over Sangratha, I guarantee you it’s happening.
Thousands upon thousands of people are fighting their own small rebellions.
” I thought of Regan, trapped beneath Viktor’s thumb and, worse, sharing his bed.
And yet clearly something in her was rising up, slowly but surely.
I thought of the way she’d gone with Kage into the city, the way she’d rescued Florence and Neville, and stopped her own Bloodguards from feeding on Dani.
“Some of them are blightborn, some are highbloods. We may not know them. But we are them. We are united.” I took a deep breath.
“This plague, this illness, is terrifying. It creeps across Sangratha. It threatens us all. But it’s brought one truth out into the light, something each of us has always known.
Sangratha is wounded. Sangratha is broken.
And if it takes a disease to show us we all stand in darkness, so be it. Let that disease unite us as one.”
“What the fuck is that even supposed to mean?” Silvio scoffed.
I leaned closer to the rail. “It means Bloodwing is a battleground. This is our school. This is where we make our stand. Orphos or Avari, Drakharrow or Mortis. Anyone ready to stand up against tyranny is welcome to join us.”
And then, while Silvio stood there gaping at my words, I moved.
Faster than I had ever moved in my life.
Faster than wildfire. Faster than lightning.
As fast as a highblood. I moved with the power of Blake’s blood.
One moment, I was by the rail. The next I was beside Silvio with a knife to his throat.
“You will open the doors,” I said in his ear, my dagger brushing his skin.
Up on the mezzanine, every weapon in my motley company rose as one.
Lysander stepped forward. “The rest of you will drop your weapons.” He glanced at Visha and Evie, and I saw them nod. “As of this night, all highblood house boundaries are dissolved. Any student from House Mortis wishing to join any of our three houses may do so and be welcomed.”
Visha stepped up beside him. “Similarly, any student in any house who believes in highblood supremacy, who believes that students should be drained in our halls, who believes blightborn lives are not just as sacred as our own, you are no longer welcome in House Drakharrow.”
“Or House Avari,” Evie said loudly.
“Or House Orphos,” Lysander echoed.
“You hear that, you fucking bitch?” Visha called down to Quinn. She gestured to the group around Quinn. “All of you? You’re out. Get your shit, and go to House Mortis. You’re no longer in Drakharrow.”
“You can’t do this,” Quinn seethed. “Our parents—”
“Will be dealt with next,” Lysander said quietly.
“This is how a revolution begins,” Rodriguez said, coming to stand beside the three.
“If you wish to continue attending school here during these unique revolutionary times, Miss Riley, I suggest you fall in line.” He pointed to the doors.
“Otherwise, the door leading out will soon be open. Feel free to make your way into the city. I understand it’s a little hot there this evening. You may wish to dress for the weather.”
“We don’t want to spill any more blood in these halls,” I declared.
I withdrew my dagger, giving Silvio a savage shove.
He staggered away from me, rubbing his neck and gnashing his teeth.
“We don’t want to fight you,” I went on.
“We’re asking you to make a choice. If you want to follow Silvio and his like, then leave now.
We’ll let you go in peace. But these doors behind me are opening.
For those of you who stay, you’ll help us tend to the refugees.
Bloodwing will give them a place until they can return to their homes. ”
“Just don’t forget, we have a fucking dragon on our side,” Visha called as students began to scatter.
“Yeah, Quinn, you little bitch. You’d better run.
” She snarled gleefully as Quinn began to trot up the stairs, heading towards one of the side passages, Edward and the others clambering after her.
Then she hopped the railing, jumping down effortlessly into the middle of the foyer, and punched me lightly in the shoulder.
“Let’s get these tables cleared away. We have work to do. ”
I nodded, and together we turned to the doors of our school.