Page 37

ASH

I slam into my room, back thudding against the door.

Acid burns up my throat. My hands shake—violent tremors I can’t control.

The woman who survived twenty-seven impossible missions just broke.

The panic claws through my chest—sharp, foreign, wrong. I don’t panic. Ever.

But here I am, heartbeat hammering so hard the pendant bounces against my chest with each pulse, vision tunneling to pinpricks while my body betrays twenty-eight years of conditioning.

“What the fuck do I even—” The words die.

What, Ash? What exactly are you supposed to do now?

Shower. One controllable thing in a world spinning beyond my grasp.

I push off from the door on unsteady legs and glance down at my arm, slowly lifting my sleeve.

My breath dies.

Stems spiral up my forearm, alive and hungry.

Buds swell fat with impossible life, splitting open to birth flowers that shouldn’t exist. Petals unfurl like tiny mouths gasping for first breath.

The patterns pulse with my racing heartbeat, moving beneath my skin as though they’ve always been there, just waiting.

I tear my shirt off and stagger to the mirror, eyes widening at the reflection that can’t possibly be mine.

The stranger in the mirror blinks when I blink. Her eyes burn green where mine were gray. Her skin tells stories mine never lived. Vibrant patterns splash across pale flesh, spreading from the collarbone down my torso, wrapping around ribs like living tattoos that breathe with her lungs.

I press my palm to the glass—she mirrors it, but I don’t recognize the woman touching back.

My fingers trace a pattern that ripples in response, delicate petals moving beneath my touch. A sound escapes my throat—half laugh, half sob.

Control. It’s all about control.

But there is absolutely nothing here I can control—not the fire clawing through my veins, not what’s erupting under my skin, not the way the pendant’s absence lets something older, wilder, finally breathe.

I stumble into the bathroom and crank the water, stripping mechanically. The pendant clatters to the floor as I sink into the rapidly filling tub until water closes over my head.

My body blazes ice-cold and burning-hot simultaneously.

Since I was a little girl, there have been only two ways I manage overwhelming emotions—running until my lungs burn or hiding underwater until the world goes silent.

As the water swallows me, I open my mouth and scream.

The sound distorts, bubbles rising around me as everything I’ve suppressed for days erupts outward.

My whole fucking world just collapsed. I came here believing I was human, that the things I saw in the forest were figments of imagination—until I could no longer deny them.

And now I’m in a place that whispers of home with a visceral pull I’ve never felt before, more torn than I’ve ever been in my life.

Seven days.

Seven. Fucking. Days.

The timeline burns through my skull like acid. Seven days before Davis arrives with his extraction team and those cold, calculating eyes.

I burst up from the water, lungs burning. Water cascades down skin that isn’t mine anymore. Not really. The mirror across from the tub shows me, but also not me. With these patterns, these fucking beautiful, terrifying patterns that shouldn’t exist but do.

Thorns pulse with each heartbeat while tiny flowers unfurl like they’re breathing, have always been alive inside me.

I drag trembling fingers across my collarbone where a new pattern forms—intricate, delicate, impossible.

The bloom quivers at my touch, and I snatch my hand back like I’ve been burned.

“Well, fuck. Guess I’m not exactly human after all.”

The real fear clawing up my throat isn’t just about what I am—it’s about what I’ll lose. Twenty-eight years of identity dissolving into lies. My whole life before now suddenly feels like a cage I never knew I was in.

The room sighs, air shifting in recognition. Stone walls warm beneath my palms. When I lean against them, they pulse once—like a heartbeat welcoming me home.

I climb out, dripping across the floor, and eye the pendant where it lies. Small, innocuous, lying piece of shit little prison. The pendant lies three feet away but I feel its claws in my bones. My body leans toward it like an addict craving a fix. I dig my nails into my palms until I taste copper.

I need to think without its ice crawling through my veins.

The towel feels too soft as it wraps around me like an embrace I don’t deserve.

A notebook sits on the desk that wasn’t there before—exactly the model I’ve used since basic. The pen positioned at the precise angle I need it, left edge slightly higher than right. I’ve never told anyone that, not even Graves.

This isn’t accommodation. It’s recognition.

I sit naked beneath the towel while patterns shift under my skin like living things and start writing, organizing chaos like I was trained, like I was made.

The pen moves like it belongs to someone else. Elegant script flows from fingers that remember curves I never learned. Each letter a small rebellion against twenty-eight years of military conditioning.

I document everything since arriving.

The pendant burning cold, the combat forms my body knew but my mind didn’t, Kieran’s shadows that felt like recognition, Orion’s hands steadying me when everything was too much, Finnian’s careful distance, his fingers barely brushing mine over texts about treasures that made my skin burn.

Kieran’s name burns across the page. The thorns along my wrist bloom midnight blue—deep as winter storms, dark as his eyes when he called me “ troublesome thing .” The memory of his cold touch against my overheated skin sends the patterns beneath my arm spiraling into darker shades.

Then Orion this morning, his chest against my back, hands guiding me through sensory overload. “ You’re not meant for stone walls and iron cages .” The flame-red patterns pulse at the memory of his heartbeat matching mine, like they’re reaching for something they recognize.

Three men, three courts, three different pulls on whatever the fuck is waking up inside me.

My body knows things I don’t. Has always known.

“Control,” I mutter, reaching for the pendant. My hand reaches for it. Stops. Reaches again. Stops. On the third attempt, I curl my fingers into a fist—I need to think first.

The pendant is working too well, making me vulnerable in the name of control.

The knock explodes through my skull. I’m pressed against the far wall before thought catches up—back flat against stone, eyes scanning for weapons that aren’t there. Blind. Deaf. Human.

The pendant is working too well, making me vulnerable in the name of control.

“Professor Morgan?” Finnian’s voice, muffled through wood. “Reports of the boundary incident reached faculty... I found myself rather concerned for your welfare.”

My heart slams against my ribs as I scramble for clothes—leggings, sweater, fingers combing through wet hair. Ridiculous behavior, yet I can’t stop myself.

I open the door to find Finnian standing with his hand raised, about to knock again. His amber eyes track every detail—damp hair escaping its braid, the glow that won’t quite die at my wrists, green bleeding through gray irises. His breathing catches. Pupils blown wide with recognition.

“You’re safe,” he breathes, relief flooding his features so completely that his composure cracks. “When word spread through the Academy about boundary hunters attacking faculty members... I discovered myself far more concerned than academic detachment would typically allow.”

“Yeah, well. Still breathing.” The casual deflection tastes like copper. “Takes more than a couple overgrown attack dogs to put me down.”

His gaze lingers on my face, my eyes. Does he see the green bleeding through the gray? Does he notice how the pendant doesn’t hide everything anymore?

“May I?” He gestures toward the threshold, amber eyes holding mine with careful intensity that makes my pulse skip. “I’ve brought something that might ease the... aftermath of encounters with ancient magic.”

I step back, too aware of him passing close, too aware of his scent—books and herbs and something underneath that’s warm like sunshine trapped in honey.

Heat claws through the pendant’s ice, pooling liquid and dangerous between my thighs.

My pulse hammers against my throat where he can watch it jump.

Focus, Ash. Focus.

He watches me too carefully, eyes catching on my wrist where the faintest pattern pulses beneath skin. “Boundary hunters leave few survivors,” he says, voice carefully modulated yet unable to hide the thread of something deeper. “Those who do survive rarely emerge... entirely unchanged.”

I sink onto my bed, suddenly exhausted beyond words. “Had backup.”

“Yes. Prince Nightshade’s intervention has caused quite the stir among Academy circles.” Something lives in his voice—not jealousy but awareness of currents running deeper than surface politics.

He sets a small jar on my table, its contents shifting like trapped sunlight. “For the marks the forest left behind,” he explains, voice dropping to something almost reverent. “Encounters with that level of ancient magic leave impressions that conventional healing simply... cannot reach.”

I reach for it. As our fingers brush, sensation zips up my arm like electricity finding the path of least resistance. Recognition—the moment his skin touches mine, every pattern beneath the pendant strains toward the contact like iron filings to a magnet.

“Thanks.” I pull back too quickly, unsettled by my own reactions.

I just need time to process, to breathe.

He settles across from me, maintaining careful distance yet somehow filling the space with quiet intensity. “The Academy affects everyone differently,” he says, watching me with those too-knowing amber eyes. “Though rarely with such... immediate manifestations.”

The unspoken question creates space for me to reveal or conceal.