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BU CHòIR SIN

I t’s a message, a simple one. Yet it echoes like a scream in the quiet classroom. You’re next. Each move is so deliberate, almost a caress along the skin. It will seem chaotic to those who don’t know what to look for, an act of nonsensical gore. They are the ones who don’t understand the language of violence and blood and pain. They don’t see how each strike, each moment of prolonging the pain, adds to the song that can only be heard by those with the same darkness.

My hand curls around the shaft of one of the sharpened spears. It once hung on a stone wall of this classroom, but now it pierces the fae girl sprawled over the desktop, its tip embedded deep into the wood beneath her. I doubt I could yank it out unless I exerted some true strength, and it would be noisy, bringing people to the scene. Forty-nine weapons are buried into this single body, another deliberate choice. Like the strokes of an artist’s paintbrush, every part of this is intentional.

Violence is a song, a painting, and a dance for those who know the steps. For us, it is more. They will look upon this display and think it is overkill, senseless and needless. I know better. They’re a bell reverberating through the realms. A challenge. A message.

This is more than a message to my little fae. It is a message to the powers that dared to provide her shelter at this university. They proved that no matter the wards, the abilities of the faculty, and the reputation of their revered headmaster, they could not protect the object of their desire.

I look at the wall above her, my fingers hovering over the letters, tracing the message drawn in blood.

SHE BEARS THE MARK OF NIMUE. SHE WILL BE OURS.

Nimue was one of the last handmaids lost during the Fall and one of the great enemies of the leader of the guild. She’d been gone for centuries. It’s a game, lives being weighed and discarded as chess pieces, all in pursuit of the final objective.

The capture of the white queen.