“Oh, okay, so you’re... okay?” she replies.
Bren lingers a step behind her, face tight, eyes locked on mine.
“Yeah,” I manage, swallowing the shake in my voice and forcing a smile. “A little wobbly, but I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Thank you.”
My stomach twists. A low, curling nausea that wasn’t there a second ago. She didn’t see us, and even if she had, it wouldn’t matter—Ezzy still thinks this thing with Talen is real.
But Bren....
His eyes flick once to my lips. They don’t linger, don’t need to. Flushed cheeks, swollen mouth. He’s seen me like this too many times.
“Guess I was right,” he says, gaze moving back to mine, “it was never fake.”
His voice barely carries, but it lands like a crack through stone. No edge to it. No shift in his stance. Just his eyes, wide open, soft, glassy.
Beside him, Ezzy—pot still in hand—glances between us, brow creased, as the wordfakehangs in the air. Shit. Does she know? Did she hear that?
But I don’t have time to explain, to smooth it over—lungs won’t even work around the guilt tightening in my throat. I drop my gaze, jaw locked. I can’t look at Bren—I already know what I’ll see.
So I turn instead, breath catching as the cold night breeze scrapes down my raw throat. The smoke of Ashvale still hangs thick with it, but something else seeps through—the smell of regret. Like something I wasn’t supposed to touch and I realise the weight on my shoulders isn’t mine, it’s Talen’s jacket.
The breeze kicks up, biting at my fingers, so I shove them into the pockets for warmth—and hit something. Small. Smooth. I pull my hand free with two small glass vials. One is full of a clear liquid. The other is empty, a label peeling at its edge. Tilting the empty one toward the firelight below, I squint until the letters snap into place.
My stomach drops.
What the?—
Snare Urchin.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Hey... do you think this means anything?”
Beside me, Rowan taps a finger against the page, his voice cutting through the Citadel library's silence. The ink’s brittle with age, half the paragraph drowned in thick redactions—just fragments left behind.
I lean in. “Don’t think so.”
The library’s so quiet, nothing to muffle the stench of mildew and ink, thick like damp secrets crammed between rotting shelves. Most cadets won’t be back from the semester break until this afternoon. Until then, it’s just Rowan and me. He stayed behind to give Ezzy space, said the two weeks apart would do them both good.
My eyes skim the shelves. Row after row of rules pretending to be knowledge.I thought coming back here would feel different. But everything still stinks of power and lies.
And the worst part? I came back willingly.
Leaning across the table, I drag another book closer. Pages crack as I thumb through more censored crap and half-truths dressed up as doctrine. I'm well aware I’m not going to takedown the Citadel with a stack of textbooks. I’m not stupid. But this is where it starts. If there’s something buried in here, I’ll find it. I’m done being kept in the dark. I want answers. I wantrevenge.
But wanting it isn’t enough; I need to survive long enough to get it. That means getting control of my magic. That means not getting gutted by some power-hungry cadet trying to prove themselves in a Demonstration. Not drawing attention to what I’m really doing here. And definitely not screwing up again when it comes to Talen.
I can’t keep blundering through like last semester’s version of myself. I don’t have to like this place, don’t have to agree with its rules—but I do have to play by them. At least for now.
Rowan drags a hand through his hair, muttering under his breath. I watch him as he flips a page and something presses against my ribs—low and quiet, the kind of ache that doesn’t go away when you ignore it.
God, I have to change, I need to. It has to be different this time—with him, with Ezzy, with Finn. No more lies. Well, no more new ones. I don’t need more strategic partners or alliances built on leverage. I can't keep pushing people away; I need to let them in. I need friends. Real ones, ones I can trust, ones that trust me.
Everyone back home is gone, and I walked away from the only other person I had. Bren barely looked at me when I left. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t move. Just sat there, staring like I was already gone. And that, that hurt more than anything he could’ve said.
I thought about staying, hell, part of me wanted to, desperately, but how am I supposed to help? How do I fix anything when I’ve got no answers and no power?
The soft flick of a turned page breaks my thought. “What about this one?” Rowan asks, tapping again. I scan it, but nothing useful. Nothing that connects.
