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Don’t hesitate.

I strike. I hit. It roars. The fiendling surges upward, two—three—five times the size it appeared to be in the brush. It is a thing made of Darkness, its arms sweeping wide with long, billowing shadows like the cloak of an avenging angel. And then all turns to night.

Shadows surround me like icy waters. Fiendlings are spirit, shifting shape at will. The scarlet eyes glow down at me from ten feet over my head. I feel its breath on my neck.

I know you, it whispers inside my head. I feel its Dark tendrils wrap around my mind. And I falter.

If the Light is calm, the Dark is chaos. If the Light is contentment, the Dark is hunger. If the Light is peace, the Dark is pain. Suddenly sharp grief nearly takes the breath out of me. Images flash through my mind—my mother humming while she held me, my father’s laugh, the cold face of my stepmother as she locked me in the attic, left to befriend the birds and rats.

I can’t breathe.

The fiendling lunges. Darkness wraps around my throat. I’m knocked off my feet. I arc my scythe through the air, but I’ve lost my tether to the Light. It pierces nothing. My head is shoved into the ground, the screech of the fiendling all around me. I feel the cold grip of its hands around my throat. My vision blots and I tear at the hands made of shadow that cut off my breath.

I feel the cool press of the earth under my neck, and I remember. I bury my panic, my pain, my half-functioning heart. The scythe still glows, the timid lavender flaring brighter. And while the fiendling’s fingers squeeze tighter around my throat, I lift the weapon over its head.

But before I bring the blade down on it, its eyes widen. Its grip slackens. It utters one pathetic, sour cry. And then it tumbles and shrivels. Was that my doing? I didn’t touch it. But then the shadows recede and the fiendling is left squirming on the grass as a great scarlet blade plunges into it. Strong hands bring the blade up and then plunge it deeper, and with a final cry, the fiendling shrinks into nothing, as though it had never existed.

Standing over me, with a self-satisfied grin on his face, is Lonan Duval, captain of my cohort.

“Evening, Fontaine,” Lonan says in a too-smooth voice. He grins like a devil. “I cannot wait to hear you explain this to the headmaster.”

Chapter Two

C harming. Deviant. Cockroach. An annoyingly pretty cockroach, but a cockroach all the same.

In the chaos of the Blood Woods, Lonan is entirely out of place. He grins down at me with dripping condescension, his nearly black, wavy hair neatly combed and dark eyes gleaming behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. His Gossemort uniform cuts sharp lines across a muscled frame as taut as harp strings. The blazer and tie have never been able to hide the effects of his training at our school for magical warfare. He’s tall, broad shouldered, and achingly perfect, half prince from a storybook, with his sword still gripped in his hand, and half scholar, more at home in a library than on a battlefield. He is practiced charm and carefully curated perfection.

Except for two things—the eyes and the scar. The latter is a thin, faint line that travels from his jaw down his neck to his collar, and whenever Hugo or one of the more daring younger students has asked him about it, Lonan has answered them with a glare that could freeze fire. Even those who have known Lonan longest know little about him. He keeps it that way.

But his eyes—those are his tell. He cannot hide the dark rims or that sleepy half-lidded look he wears that make him seem like he hasn’t gotten a good night’s rest his whole life. He cannot hide the piercing, chaotic gleam in his black-diamond eyes, as shadowed and slick as a raven’s feathers. That part of him, at least, looks at home in these woods filled with monsters.

I glare up at him. “Stop gloating.”

“I haven’t said a thing.”

“I can feel you gloating.” I push myself to my feet. He still towers over me. “What are you doing out here?”

“I’m your captain.”

“Yes, we’re all familiar with your shiny badge.” I flick the little pin on his lapel that designates him as cohort captain. He barely surpassed me last year to earn that badge, and I’m clearly handling the defeat with the grace of a saint.

He sheathes his sword and rests his hand on its hilt. “Hugo told me you charged into the woods. Alone. Just before sundown. I—where are your shoes?”

We both look down at my feet. The freezing water has turned my toes numb and left the rest of me shivering.

“I left them in the cloisters,” I say.

“Why are your socks all . . . wet?” He sighs. “Saints below, Fontaine, are you trying to get yourself killed? You know what’s in these woods. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“For what?” I pretend to dust myself off and pass by him, scythe in hand. I have to find Poppy, even if it’s growing dark and cold. I try to hide my shivering, but my teeth are clacking together.

“For saving you,” he calls after me, following me farther into the trees.

I call over my shoulder, “I didn’t need your help.”

“You were about to be devoured by a fiendling. I didn’t want to explain your ridiculous demise to your godfather. Really, seven years at Gossemort, and you run out into the forest near nightfall?” He tsks like a schoolteacher.

Saints, he really is begging to be slapped. “I heard Poppy scream, and I don’t frankly care if it’s near night. She’s out on patrol tonight, and if . . .” I can’t articulate the words, the images my mind wants to conjure. “If something happened, she needs help.”