When we finally reached the Academy, Kael threw open the front doors. We stumbled inside, our lungs sore from our ragged breaths. And then the darkness of the night dropped away to reveal a sea ofred.
Chapter Two
Acrumpled bodycurled on the stone floor like a broken fingernail. Blood pooled around his head like a deathly halo, seeping from a deep wound in his throat. His dark green cloak had been slashed into a dozen pieces, and it was scattered around the hushed lobby. I pressed a hand to my mouth, both to hold back the whimper and the nausea that bubbled up inside ofme.
On the floor beside him, someone had used his blood to write oneword.
MURDERER.
My roommate Sophia stood just beyond him, her face as pale as the moon. Gut-wrenching sobs shook her body. She fell to her knees, one hand outstretched toward the fallenfae.
I sucked a deep breath in through burning lungs as the realization of who this was finally smacked me sideways. The victim of this brutal crime was Sophia’s new instructor, the male Alwyn had insisted was destined to become her mate. Boyd, the lighthearted Spring fae who never had anything but a smile for anyone he met, and he’d treated Sophia with the kind of respect and attentiveness that most women could only dreamof.
Frowning, I stared at the bloody word on the ground. It was hard to imagine that he could be amurderer.
I knew they’d grown close, even if it had been a mere three weeks. They had practically spent every waking moment together, both knowing that they would one day make the vow to spend the rest of their lives by each other’s side. My heart squeezed tight, and a single tear slid down my cheek. Otherworld had been hard on all of us, but it had been especially hard on Sophia. And now her mate had been taken fromher.
Several other changelings were clustered in small hushed groups throughout the lobby, all wide-eyed and pale as they stared at the grisly scene before us. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a little voice was trying to tell me that I should do something. What, I didn’t know. Just something. But the shock and horror of it all kept my feet rooted to thespot.
“What’s all this commotion about?” Alwyn breezed into the lobby, her eyes alert and wary. Within an instant, she’d taken in the scene before her, her face paling for only the slightest of seconds before she’d regained her control andcomposure.
She jerked toward me with a snap in her voice. “Norah. Get Sophia out of here. Take her back to yourquarters.”
“What’s this all about?” I whispered, eyes locked on the bloodied words. “Why has someone written ‘murderer’ with hisblood?”
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “For now, I need you to get Sophia out ofhere.”
With a nod, I stepped away from Boyd’s body and moved to Sophia’s side. I understood why Alwyn needed me to remove her from the scene. She was shaken—badly. Her eyes were hollow; her breathing was rapid. She was seconds away from a panic attack unless I got her out ofhere.
I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and steered her down the hallway, casting a glance on my shoulder at the body on the ground. A strange sense of unease settled into my bones. Someone had been murdered inside the academy grounds. With the security at our borders, it was chilling to think that someone could have snuck in and out undetected. But what was more chilling was the realization that it could have been someone frominside.
* * *
“What’sthe plan for today? Are we going to pick up where we left off on that whole scent thing?” I asked when I plopped into a chair in the library. I met my four instructors here every day before we trekked out into the forest for our hands-on training sessions. Usually, my four instructors arrived before I did, but Finn was the only one lounging at our table, his feet propped up on the woodenframe.
He arched an eyebrow. “And ignore the fact you can see through the eyes of an animal? I imagine we’ll want to tackle that new insight into your powersfirst.”
With everything that had happened last night, I’d almost forgotten about my new-found ability. I’d spent most of the midnight hours sitting with Sophia and listening to her heart-breaking stories about Boyd. We’d stayed up until the sun had begun to brighten the sky. At that point, we’d both gone to bed, though I’d barely slept. My mind couldn’t settle knowing that we might have a killer in ourmidst.
“So, you do believeme.”
Finn drummed his knuckles on the table. “Rourke seemed pretty adamant that a rabbit was staring at him, and I’m inclined to take his word. He’s not really the type to joke around or imagine that furry little creatures are staring at him when they’renot.”
I snorted. “Tell me aboutit.”
Finn flashed me a smile, but then the amusement in his brilliant green eyes drifted away. “In all seriousness, Norah. You do understand how peculiar this is, yes? Not a single fae I know has this gift, though I suppose it’s something the Autumns could have been hiding from us all these years. I wouldn’t put it pastthem.”
He scowled, an expression I rarely saw cross Finn’sface.
“You really don’t like the Autumn fae, doyou?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Do you? After everything they’ve done to you and QueenMarin?”
Queen Marin. My heart squeezed tight just hearing her name. Even though it had been three weeks since I’d discovered that she was my birth mother, I still hadn’t yet fully processed what that meant to me. It still felt abstract, like it was something that had happened to someone else somewhere very far away from me. How could I, of all people, be the daughter of a woman who had once ruled this entire realm? And it was impossible to fathom how it had even happened. Alwyn had told me that my mother had birthed me in secret and then made sure I was taken away under the cover of darkness, sent to the human realm in the place of anotherchangeling.
She’d heard rumors that he Autumn fae had planned a revolt, and she was worried they would launch an attack against her. And she was even more worried what would happen to her baby girl if they found out she’d had one. So, she’d sent me away before anyone could findout.
Not long after I’d been swapped with a human, a fire had consumed every trace of the changeling records, ensuring that no one would ever know there’d been a Greater Fae baby except those who had been in on the secret. Alwyn had been in on it, and she’d kept her mouth shut all these years, just waiting for the moment I would return to thisrealm.
