Page 37

The bark is rough. Cold. But it pulses beneath my skin, slow and thick, like a second heartbeat not my own. Magic coils around my fingers, not threatening, but familiar. Like a long-dead animal curling up beside me, deciding—for now—not to bite.
And then everything shifts.
The trees open.
No creaking, no snapping. Just a slow shudder as the trunks twist aside, the pathway beyond them reshaped in silence. The clearing ahead yawns like a mouth—and I feel it in my gut. The wrongness.
Because this time, it’s not Branwen waiting at the center.
It’s what came before her.
A structure rises out of the fog like bone built into cathedral—sharp, animalistic, primal. Not Daemon Academy. Not anymore. This is older than its stone. Older than memory.
It’s nestled in the ravine like a secret that shouldn’t have survived.
Stone and bone and twisted thatch, the village spills downward in uneven steps, each house perched on the edge of collapse but held together by some ancient, stubborn magic. The roofs are dark with soot, their chimneys coughing out smoke that doesn’t smell of firewood—but something older. Bitter. Metallic. The kind of scent you carry in your lungs for days after.
And between it all—lanes not paved but worn into the earth, paths packed by centuries of footsteps that no longer echo. The forest doesn’t end where the village begins—it wraps around it like it’s keeping the place trapped. Or protected. Or both.
The sky changes here. Colors bleed through in unnatural shades—bruised violets, sickled silvers. The clouds churn low enough to lick the tips of the cathedral spires, that massive, grotesque silhouette perched like a god above its supplicants.Its bells are silent, but I feel them vibrating in my chest, the memory of sound that hasn’t been heard yet.
Elias whistles low. “Nope. I’ve definitely died here before in a past life. Probably after making a joke about someone’s goat.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Riven mutters, arms crossed like they’ve been chained that way.
But it’s Silas who leans forward, eyes lighting like we’ve stumbled onto buried treasure. “Tell me I’m not the only one who remembers this place.” He jerks his chin toward the slope. “That tavern right there—bottom of the hill, the one with the hanging sign shaped like a fang? They had ale that could make your bones sing.”
Lucien doesn’t look at him. He’s staring at the village like it’s a wound reopened. “That ale was laced with powdered root and sinstone.”
Silas shrugs, grinning. “Exactly. Fun.”
I don’t speak. I can’t—not with Orin and Lucien walking in range of my voice. But I feel the pull in my chest, stronger now. The place knows me. Not in name. Inblood.Something in it sings to the part of me I’ve barely begun to understand—the part Branwen tried to take. The part that was never hers to begin with.
Elias
The Fang’s Tooth is exactly how I remember it. Unfortunately.
All crooked beams and sagging walls, windows too fogged to see through and too warped to care. Smoke pours from the chimney like the tavern’s still exhaling the same breath it took a hundred years ago. There’s no music. No laughter. Just the shudder of the door slamming open again and again as figures pass through, dressed like they never got the memo that centuries have passed.
Tunics. Capes. Laces tied in uncomfortable places. The kind of wardrobe built not for fashion or function, but pure, uncut chafing. I hated it back then. I hate it now. Especially when one guy walking by gives me a nod like we’re in some medieval club and I should be grateful for the recognition.
“Do we... bow?” I ask no one in particular, because it’s better than asking the real question. Like why the fuck is this place still standing?
Silas snorts beside me, his eyes gleaming with mischief and nostalgia and whatever chaos is currently tickling the back of his throat. “If you bow, I’ll kneel.” He winks at Luna, then looks vaguely offended when she doesn’t immediately roll her eyes. “C’mon, that one was solid.”
She doesn’t respond, not verbally. But her fingers twitch like she’s debating flicking him in the forehead, and I—Gods help me—kind of wish she would. The world tilts off its axis when she’snear me, and Silas only makes it worse. Her heat, her magic, herpresencemesses with the lazy equilibrium I spent decades crafting.
It’s not that I don’t like her. I do. Too much. It’s that liking her feels like setting myself on fire and trying to nap through it.
And she’s looking at me now. That look. Like she knows exactly what I’m thinking and is daring me to say it.
“I’m just gonna go ahead and say it,” I mutter, stuffing my hands in my coat like that’ll keep me from doing something stupid. “This place is cursed. Haunted. Possibly a set piece from one of Lucien’s wet dreams.”
“You think Lucien dreams?” Silas asks.
I hum. “Only in spreadsheets.”
Riven glances back from where he’s half-shadowed, always looming, always brooding. “You two done?”