Page 57 of Beasts of Shadows #1

The common room is quiet at this hour. Too late for study groups, too early for curfew. Just the hum of the radiator, the distant thud of boots on upper floors, and the scratch of Reema’s pen as she writes in her planner like fate will wait for her to finish organizing it.

I linger in the doorway longer than I mean to. She doesn’t look up.

“You want something?” she asks without breaking her rhythm.

“I was just checking in.” I walk in slowly, easing down on the arm of the couch across from her. “I haven’t seen you since before break. How’s…Geneir?”

She lifts her gaze. Sharp. Tired. Beautiful in that way that makes you forget how dangerous she is.

“I heard about the fight, if that’s what you’re getting at. Couldn’t bring myself to go. Drama is only good when it’s in books.”

“I just want to make sure you’re okay,” I say, softer now. “The men… They’re both idiots.”

“Hmm. Are you asking as a friend,” she says coolly, “or as someone keeping secrets that don’t belong to them?”

The breath catches in my throat.

She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Thought so.”

“I get that you’re mad. I am too. And I’m so over my own... complications. But I just wanted to check in. Things are coming. Big things. And I need my closest friend.”

“Is Picca not your friend now? I heard you were just in the prophecy chamber with her. Or am I mistaken?” She shrugs lightly. “College kids and hearsay.”

My pulse trips. “Reema—.”

“I’m not even mad,” she says at last, dropping her pen and swiveling to face me.

She gives a broken laugh. “How can I be? You’re right that something’s coming.

It crawls in my skin. In my blood. I wake up knowing things I can’t remember being told, speaking names I’ve never heard.

Like my body’s remembering before my mind can catch up. ”

A beat. Then, more quietly, “You’re the future girl. You see the cliff before we fall off it.”

I swallow hard. “I’m not always right.”

“But you always see something,” she says, eyes fixed on mine. “So tell me. What did you see after you married Nikolai? When you sought the future with Picca?”

I hesitate. I know what she’s asking about, although I cannot for the life of me figure out how she knows. I told no one. I doubt Picca did.

“I used to believe that I would meet my husband on my twentieth birthday. Remember that?”

“Yes.” The word is a loose hiss. The truth is, I’d completely forgotten about her mother’s deal. About what fate has in store for her .

“That won’t happen, though, will it?”Her voice is steady. Too steady. “There is no man in my future. Only death.”

“Reema…”

She shakes her head, lips pressed in a near-smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Don’t. Don’t do the pity voice. I’m not fragile. Anything but.”

Her hands fold neatly over her planner, but her knuckles are white. “You saw something, Nari. I know you did. Don’t pretend you didn’t. You have to do something, don’t you? Like you did with Ravi.”

I open my mouth. Close it again.

“Maybe.”

She nods, as if I’ve confirmed everything she needed to hear. Slapping her notebook closed, she stands and closes the distance between us. Still she doesn’t look at me. I desperately wish she would. I wish I could explain what all this is about.

“I want you to do it,” she says, head still as low as her voice. “If you don’t have a choice…if I become a threat…You need to end me.”

The words punch the air out of my lungs.

“No,” I say instantly. Too fast. Too loud.

Reema finally looks at me, and her eyes aren’t teary—they’re clear. Resigned. Terrifying.

“I mean it,” she says, voice like ice. “No one can fight back when a god comes to claim their debt. You and I both know how these stories end. There’s always a price. And girls like me? We never get to walk away clean.”

Her eyes harden.

“We can’t all get your happy ending.”

She turns without waiting for a response, shoulders squared like she’s already decided she can carry whatever comes next alone.

I watch her walk away—through the common room door, down the hallway, until her footsteps vanish into the hush of the dorms.

We can’t all get your happy ending.

The words hang there, heavier than any vision. Heavier than prophecy.

What does she know?

Because I don’t know if I can do what she asked.

Reema is the smartest, kindest, most grounded person I know. So what does she see coming that I don’t?

What could she possibly become… that would make her right ?

#

I shouldn’t be wasting my time on field exercises.

Not when my best friend just asked me to kill her. Not when I know the goddess of winter has marked her return on the calendar with ice and blood. Not when I can still hear Reema’s voice in my head—calm, unshaken, like she’s already made peace with being sacrificed.

But here I am.

Boots laced. Blazer half-zipped. Standing in the frozen clearing north of the East Quad while Percy reads off survival objectives like this is just another Saturday.

“Map fragments are hidden in three quadrants,” He announces, barely glancing up from his clipboard. “Your group has till sunset to locate and reconstruct them before returning to base. Last team back gets kitchen duty for a week. Any questions?”

Kilronan raises a hand. “Can we trade a mortal for snowshoes?”

A few students laugh. I don’t.

Nikolai gives him a blatant shove in the side.

“Try it again and I’ll trade you ,” he says mildly, like he’s commenting on the weather.

Kilronan lifts both hands. Grins. Doesn’t have a comeback.

Nikolai. Gods, I haven’t had the bandwidth to deal with his betrayal—let alone everything Ravi said about us.

He’s dressed like the cold is a suggestion—open coat, gloves tucked, the kind of careless elegance that reads as a threat if you know what you’re looking at.

When his gaze glances off mine, something in my chest tightens.

The mark under my sleeve gives a traitorous pulse.

Heat skates across my wrist; the frost by my boot toe loosens, a thread of melt tracing the leather.

He notices. Of course he does. He angles his body, as if he’s shielding me from Percy’s line of sight.

I don’t look away. Let him cave first.

“Let’s get our star team back together. Harper,” Percy calls. “You’re with Cat, Kilronan, and…” a pause, a little too deliberate, “…Matholwch.”

He gives Nikolai a knowing grin.

For fuck’s sake. I really shouldn’t be wasting my time on this . With him .

Nikolai pushes off the tree and falls into step beside me like that’s where he’s always belonged. “You’re underdressed,” he murmurs, eyes on the treeline. “Take the charm.” He presses a flat disc of copper toward me—heat shimmer coiled in its etchings.

“I’m not cold.”

It’s true. I actually feel toasty. As if the cold no longer bothers me.

“You say that,” he replies, not looking at me. “But you say a lot of things, and you rarely mean them.”

I keep my eyes forward. “Like how you meant to tell me about my mother?”

A beat. He deserves the hit. He takes it.

“I went to your door,” he says quietly. “Twice. I didn’t want to be the one to turn grief into strategy.”

“Cowardice looks tidy when you iron it.”

A ghost of a smile. “And yours looks like bravado when you lace it into boots.”

Cat bumps my shoulder on her way past, a warning in her eyes. Behave. Or don’t. She’s happy either way.

We fan out toward the west path, spruce shadow swallowing us in tall, green teeth. Snow squeaks underfoot. The air tastes like copper. It makes the feel of my mouth bitter.

“Rule one,” Percy calls after us. “No one goes alone.”

“I’m not alone,” I say without meaning to.

Alone would be easier. At least then I wouldn’t have to guess who’s keeping secrets to protect me… and who’s just keeping secrets.

Nikolai hears it. “No,” he says, softer. “You’re not.”

I swallow the heat that climbs my throat. “Don’t mistake proximity for permission.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He offers me the map strip Percy must’ve slipped him, holding it loose like it’s beneath him to carry it. “River fork, then ridge. The fragment will be set where the current undercuts the bank. She likes edges.”

“Calea?”

“Skowa?”

He doesn’t answer, but for the first time, I wonder how much he knows about these people. He grew up in their world. I’m still trying to survive it.

Regardless of how angry I am, he may have some information that I can exploit, when it comes to killing Calea.

We crunch through a drift. The cold needles my cheeks; beneath my skin, something warmer answers back, a slow coil unwinding. Bud-scent. Damp soil. Spring insisting on itself.

“Focus,” he murmurs. “You’re bleeding season.”

“Oh, you know about that too, don’t you?”

Cat peers between the two of us, her green eyes as curious as her namesake.

“Why don’t you go a couple paces ahead?” I ask, gesturing to both her and Kilronan. “Give me and Nikolai a second.”

“Lovers’ quarrel?” Cat probes.

Kilronan chuckles. “Sure. If that were true, Ta?sse would have already staged a massacre.”

“Oh, babe,” Cat drawls, rising onto her toes to throw a “comforting” arm around his massive shoulder. “You are so out of the loop.”

We reach the river—black ribbon, fast-run under ice. Cat and Kilronan drift away.

Nikolai crouches, gloved hand over a seam where current gnaws at the bank.

“Is there anyone who doesn’t know about our deal?” he wonders absently.

“Embarrassed?”

He glances up, eyes half-lidded. “Of course not. Just curious how long it’ll take them to realize you’re not just scandal—you’re an ascension in progress.”

Damn, that’s smooth. My resentment fades. Just a little.

“No one knows,” I reply. “Picca suspects, but I haven’t said anything.” I shrug, because I can’t bring myself to talk about Ravi or Reema.

“They’ll figure it out soon enough,” he says. “If Calea suspects enough to target your family, then it won’t be long before everyone senses your divinity.”

He reaches for my shoulders, then stops, as though he’s struck a barrier.

“I’ve revoked your invitation.”

His jaw ticks.

“Of course you have.”