The lecture drags on for another hour, and by the time it ends, I’m ready to claw my way out of my own skin. I shove from my seat and head for the door, ignoring the curious stares that follow me.
If these people tuned into the little show when the Royal assholes announced reopening the school, they would have heard Legend’s little declaration.
Did that part get shared across the realm?
Did they hear him stake his ridiculous claim?
Do I want them to have?
I sigh, annoyed with my damn self. No. No, I don’t.
Because it’s not true.
Outside, the air is cooler, and I suck it in like I’ve been drowning.
I need to move. Need to do something that doesn’t involve sitting still and listening to people explain how screwed I might be. I don’t understand this place, and the worst part of it all?
There’s this pestering in the back of my mind, warning me that the longer I’m here, the more I might want to.
That would be a terrible fucking idea.
Chapter Eleven
Legend
The rot’s denser here.
It hangs in the air like it’s got nowhere else to go, bleeding into the bark, curling through the spaces between ancient stone. Sulfur stings my nose, but there’s something underneath it. Something heavier. Death, maybe. Or whatever the fuck lingers after.
The river cutting along the shifter quadrant looks all kinds of wrong—less silver, more like the color of a bruise that hasn’t quite healed. Clouded and murky.
Sick.
Knight’s crouched by the tree line, fingers trailing over something half-swallowed by moss. “This one didn’t even make it far enough to run,” he says, voice flat, detached.
I step over a body twisted at an unnatural angle, my eyes catching on the mark burned into the ground next to it. Some crude emblem smeared in ash and blood—a moon split clean through by jagged lines. I’ve never seen a sigil like this. Not on this side of the realm, anyway.
The message painted across the house wall behind us is almost poetic in how fucked-up it is.
Am I being too subtle?
Blood drips from each letter, mixing with something tar-likethat makes the whole thing look like it’s crying black tears. Still wet enough to catch the dim light.
Yeah, real fuckingsubtle.
A family lived here. Shifter-blooded.Stygianborn. Now they’re scattered across their own doorway, throats opened wide, eyes vacant and glassy.
Then I feel it.
The bond slams into me like a punch to the ribs, flooding me with her terror in waves that make my jaw clench. She’s here. Close. Too damn close to all this carnage.
I spin, scanning the tree line, and there—
Haide.
On her knees at the edge of the clearing, hands pressed into the moss, blood streaked across her throat, her arms, soaking through her clothes. Her eyes are feral—more animal than girl—chest rising and falling with ragged breaths.
“Fuck,” I mutter, already moving.
