Chapter Forty-Seven #2
Voices echo behind me—footsteps—my heart’s hammering, but I don’t stop. I round the corner, skidding into the corridor that leads to Finn and Rowan’s dorm.
Their door’s open.
Empty.
Shit.
More steps, closer this time, I spin and bolt for the main stairwell. The first step jars through my ribs like a punch. I grit my teeth and keep going, breath coming too fast.
Then I see him, Finn, near the bottom of the stairs, But he’s not being dragged. Not shackled. Just… walking. Two officers flank him, but they don’t touch him. Don’t lead. Don’t push. If anything, they’re following him.
I leap down the steps, skipping two—three at a time, each one landing harder than the last. It hurts. But still I keep moving.
“Finn!” I shout, Threads already coiling beneath my skin, hot and ready.
He looks up, just for a second, his eyes find mine—but when they catch, there’s nothing in them. No fear. No fight. Not even surprise. Just... stillness. Like something in him’s gone. Then he turns and keeps walking away from me. No chains, no struggle. Just him.
“No—Finn, wait!” I call after him, words tight in my throat but he’s already gone. One of the officers holds back and pauses as I hit the bottom step. Strannt. The fucking weasel.
“Where are you taking him?” My voice cracks. Hands raised. Threads burning, right at the edge, I reach for them. Nothing. I try again, harder this time—Still nothing. Like something inside me just snapped shut. “What did you do to me—”
The words barely make it out before Strannt clamps a hand around my right arm—Pain explodes, hot and blinding.
I twist on instinct, trying to yank free, but the motion sends another bolt tearing through my shoulder.
My legs buckle. The floor tilts. I can’t move. Can’t fight. And my magic—silent, dead.
“He’ll be better soon.” Strannt murmurs, voice low and satisfied, his grip tightening. “He’s volunteering for service. Joining the Inner Circle. Our Sovereign Minister, Vaelric Serrane, will take care of all that negative pain.”
Negative pain. The words land wrong, my stomach clenches, hard and instinctual. The black-eyed ones in white robes. The red-haired cadet. The baker. That’s what they said...
“The pain, the darkness. He can take that away. That conflict. He took ours, separated light from dark. Now there’s no argument left. No noise.”
No. No, it can’t be—Can it? Is this it? Is this what’s been happening all along? The link. The common thread between everything.
Serrane.
The creepy self-proclaimed guru in white. His monthly sermons. His “transcendence.” His obsession with separation—good from bad, light from dark. “Enlightenment,” he called it. Purity. Healing.
I shift, trying to ease the pressure, the pain, on my side, but Strannt’s hand doesn’t move.
No. No, no, no—
Finn, god, Finn thinks he’s signing up for meditation. For peace. He thinks they’re going to help him balance it. The weight. The darkness. The Fog. He thinks they’re going to fix him, or whatever bullshit they whispered in his ear.
But Serrane—he’s going to rip him open. Peel him into something unrecognisable, the same way he did to the black-eyed ones. Separate the light from the dark until there's nothing human left.
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he’s walking into... I have to get to him. I have to.
“Let me go—” I snarl, pulling my arm again, desperate to break free from Strannt’s grip, but pain tears through my side like muscle ripping clean from bone.
So I try and reach for my magic. For anything. Come on. Come on, just something. A spark. A flicker. I could take Strannt, I know I could. I have. But my body’s too wrecked. My magic’s gone. And his grip is too fucking strong.
“Don’t bother reaching for your Threads.” A door creaks open to my right. Professor Strannt, Weasel Senior, steps into view, cane in one hand, voice steady, flanked by an officer. “Clearly, we didn’t mute them well enough the first time. But don’t worry, that’s been fixed now.”
Footsteps echo behind him. Another officer appears, dragging Ezzy into the hall—wrists bound, head low. Her cheeks are streaked raw with half-dried tears. She doesn’t fight. Doesn’t even blink. Her eyes find mine only once, and the look I find there makes something inside me lurch.
“Let her go,” I grind out, twisting hard against Strannt’s hold. “She didn’t do anything.”
Weasel Senior glances lazily at Ezzy, then back at me and the smile that follows curling across his face is all teeth.
“Your friend has been very informative,” he taunts.
“Turns out you’re the one Officer Green was slipping his little books to—all that unsanctioned research.
” Weasel Senior steps closer. “You really don’t know how to stay out of things, do you?
” I open my mouth, but—“No point denying it. She already gave us a Truth String.”
Everything inside me stops. Breath. Thought. Movement.
I glance at Ezzy. She’s already looking at me. And her face, god, her whole face just crumples.
“I’m sorry, Lyra!” She blurts. “I wasn’t thinking. I couldn’t, the dragon, Rowan, they asked and I just... I was following protocol, I didn’t mean—”
The words barely reach me. Like my body’s here, but my mind’s already left.
How could she?
Weasel Senior’s voice slides back in. “I considered executing you right here,” he sighs, “but that would be far too dull. Instead, I’m sending you to follow in your father’s footsteps.
After he did this to my leg all those years ago, I’ve been waiting for payback.
Sending you to the dragons, like I did him, felt more fitting, poetic. ”
My knees buckle. Only Strannt’s grip keeps me standing.
He’s the one who killed him? My father... He Reassigned him?
And now he’s doing it to me. It all hits at once, jagged and breathless. Ezzy’s still frozen, tears trembling on her lashes.
“You can’t,” I rasp. “You can’t separate me from Talen—”
Weasel Senior’s grin widens. “Officer Veirmont. Join us, won’t you?”
The door behind him shifts, Talen steps out and everything in me twists.
The way he’s standing, the calm in his eyes, something’s wrong. Very wrong. I search his face. Anything. Give me something. A flicker. A sign.
“Your friend here,” Weasel Senior nods toward Ezzy. “Withheld information about Officer Green. I thought about sending her to the dragons with you, but... I thought the company would be far too kind. I think this will be more fitting.” He turns, smiling at Talen.
He looks at me once, his boyish waves, sun-kissed at the end, fall across his forehead.
“I told you not to trust me.” He says, drawing his blade.
Metal sings.
My chest knots. No. No, he’s not—
A heartbeat of hesitation—then his knife flashes sideways.
Ezzy gasps.
The sound is small. Fragile. Almost surprised.
For a moment, the corridor goes still. Then she folds. Blood blossoms through her uniform as Talen removes his blade and she hits the stone, eyes wide.
Something splits inside me.
I surge forward, lungs seizing, reaching for her—reaching for anything—But Strannt’s other hand grabs me, pulling me back just as my body folds, stomach twisting, convulsing. I gag, hard, bile scorching the back of my throat.
This can’t be real.
This isn’t real.
Talen didn’t just—
No.
He didn’t.
I pull air, my lungs won’t work. My throat closes. And I feel myself slipping. Not physically—mentally. Out of my body, watching. Frozen.
Weasel Senior exhales, satisfied. “My son here, and these two officers, will escort you to the Northern Peaks.” His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’d wish you luck, but we both know it would be wasted.”
Strannt’s grip tightens, hard and unrelenting, as the two other officers close in.
“No—” I cry out. A sob. A snarl. I don’t even know.
But they don’t stop, just haul me backwards, boots scraping stone, my body jerking between them like a rag-doll.
I reach for my Threads one last time, clawing, begging. Nothing. Not even a flicker.
Beyond them, I catch a glimpse—Ezzy. At Talen’s feet, not moving.
Then the door opens.
Cold air rushes in.
And they drag me out.
The horse-drawn carriage rocks as we leave the last of civilisation behind, wheels thudding over uneven ground, heading north toward the peaks. It’s still dark, but the sun’s bleeding up over the horizon.
I’m in the back, feet and hands bound in rope. Strannt’s weaselly eyes are smug as ever, raking up and down like he’s cataloguing every inch.
One blonde officer is up front holding the reins. The other—older, broad, bald—sits next to Strannt across from me, close enough that his knee brushes mine with every jolt.
But I barely register it. Mind fractured, body somewhere else. Because this—this can’t be real. How could it even happen? Rowan, Finn, Ezzy. All gone. Dead? Because of Talen. Because of me?
I didn’t even get any justice for Ashvale.
I didn't get home to Bren. God Bren... why did I ever leave that morning? I should have just stayed like he wanted me to. Could I have avoided all this? Would they all still be here? Would Serrane’s creepy army of black-eyed cadets and dragons still be attacking?
I should be fighting—planning, doing something—but all I can think is that I don’t want to cry in this goddamn uniform, especially not in front of them.
I just want to get through this without falling apart. Because the truth’s already sitting heavy in my stomach, I can't stop what's coming; that this is the end, that I know I’m going to die.
But I won’t give them the pleasure of watching me break. They’ve already taken enough from me, already taken everything. So chin up. Eyes forward.
I just need to hold it together a little longer. Then it’ll all be over.
But I can’t. The pain is too much—raw and immediate, pressing in until I can’t breathe. Tears slide down my cheeks, salt bleeding on to my lips.