Page 32 of The Witch They Crave

Zeva locks them around my wrists. The thorns press into my skin—light, a warning, not yet drawing blood. My magic flares against the ward-script and the iron heats instantly, a sharp sting that races up both arms and makes my jaw clench. I breathe through it.

Don't react. Don't give them a reason.

Aamon is behind me. I can't see his face but I hear his breathing change—one controlled inhale, held a beat too long.

"Let's go," Corvin says.

The courtyard is blinding. I squint against it, hunched slightly, the cuffs heavy on my wrists and the thorns pressing every time my arms swing with my stride. The campus unfolds around me—slate-grey buildings, Spanish moss gone brown at the edges, the November air thinner and cooler than I remember. The magnolias are prepping for winter. Everything looks stripped back, exposed.

The worst part… students line the path.

Not just a handful. Dozens. They've come out to watch—lining the walkway to the administrative building in loose clusters, some sitting on the low stone walls, some standing in the grass. The whisper current starts before I'm ten steps away from the watchtower. I don't hear words. I don't need to. The sound is its own language: suspicion, curiosity, fear, the particular buzzing hostility of a crowd that's already made up its mind.

I keep my chin level. Keep walking. The thorns dig with every step and I feel a thin line of blood start down my left wrist, warm and slow.

Something hits my shoulder.

I flinch before I process it—an apple core, half-rotten, bouncing off my collarbone and landing on the path in front of me. I stare at it. My magic surges so hard the cuffs blaze hot against my skin and I gasp, the ward-script flaring white for a half-second before I choke it back down. The thorns drive in. More blood. My vision goes narrow and bright at the edges before I can get my breathing back under control.

Corvin doesn't stop walking. Nobody stops walking.

I hear a shout from somewhere behind us—a voice I don't recognize, raw and ugly: "Murderer." Just the one word. Just once. It hangs in the air and nobody contradicts it.

I think about Emric. I think about his hands reaching for me at the Revel. I think about the fact that the word is accurate, and that's the worst part—it's not a lie, it's not slander, it's just the truth in someone else's mouth and it sounds different from the outside.

The administrative building looks different when you're walking into it in chains. I met Leyonna here on my first day—her office is on the ground floor, warm wood and books, the closest thing to welcoming this campus has. We walk inside and I’m instantly thankful to be out of the public eye, away from all the students who would condemn me right now if they could.

Corvin turns left past the main corridor instead of right toward Leyonna's office, and the ward-lines in the floor get thicker, denser, pressing against my feet through my shoes until my teeth ache. I've never been down this hall.

The doors to the courtroom are already open.

It's bigger than I expected—high ceilings, no windows, stone walls lined with old portraits I don't look at. A curved table on a raised platform at the far end, three empty chairs behind it. Ward-lines in the floor forming concentric circles radiating from a single point at the room's center.

That point is a chair.

My chair.

Wooden. Alone. No table, no barrier. Sitting at the center of overlapping containment wards like something placed inside a cage that's been drawn instead of built.

My posse of enforcers walk me to it. The gallery behind us is already filling—three rows of seating along the left wall, bodies shuffling in, the low murmur of people arranging themselves for a spectacle. I scan for faces while Corvin guides me to the chair and—

Nellie.

Third row, near the aisle. She's gripping the seat in front of her with both hands, knuckles white, curls wild, and when our eyes meet her whole face breaks open—relief and terror and something fierce enough to make my throat close. Margo is beside her, arms crossed, jaw set, radiating fury at everyone and no one. Shandy sits still and watchful. Tess's eyes are wet and she's angry about it.

They came. I don't know how they got in. I don't know who let them, but they came.

I take in a deep breath and imagine what one of Nellie’s hugs would feel like right now.

Corvin sits me down. Zeva unlocks the cuffs.

The thorns pull free from my skin—small, precise stings, a dozen tiny punctures per wrist that well red immediately. I press my hands flat against my thighs and hold them there, feeling the blood seep slow into the fabric of my pants. My magic floods back into the space the iron was suppressing, raw and hot and trembling, and I have to clamp down on it so hard my vision whites out for a second.

Breathe. Hold. Center.

Balcour is already at a side table, portfolio open, pen uncapped. Same grey eyes, same expression he wore the first day I met him and the night Emric died.

Leyonna sits near the wall. Present but not presiding. Her dark eyes find mine and she gives me the smallest nod.