Page 24 of Shadebound (Dark Fantasy #1)

You think it’s a second chance. A way out. A way back. But it’s not.

It’s just another way down. A second death that takes longer.

We don’t come back healed. We come back haunted.

T he stone spiral staircase moaned beneath our boots, each step a reluctant descent into a day of lessons and forced socialising. Sprinkled with a bit of beige slop and awkwardness about the gift in my room.

Zayden kept talking, but I barely registered his voice.

He wasn’t saying anything important enough to get through my anger.

Not about the strange, unfinished moment with Maya upstairs.

Not about whatever tension that still clung to the corners of his mouth.

The only thing of note he’d asked had been about the flowers that a random girl had been paid to drop off.

“Did you order flowers or something?” he’d asked me, as the necklace now safely around my throat turned yellow.

The shade my sister claimed it turned when my hair was almost growing with how full of secrets my head was.

I’d blinked, pretending I wasn’t eager to read the note tucked into my combats. “No.”

A beat had passed. I hadn’t looked at him or Maya, but I had felt him slowing beside me.

“You’re not worried about someone sending them to you?” he’d asked, softer that time.

I shrugged, pretending they meant something casual. “They’re pretty.”

Another beat. Then, even quieter, he’d said: “They’re missing their heads.”

That made me smile. Just a small, crooked thing.

“Aren’t we all?” I’d replied.

And now he was just filling silence, and I was more in the mood for silence.

Or someone screaming. A little sprinkle of it just to darken my morning.

When we reached the foyer, Maya led us toward the cluster of heavy doors. She didn’t pause until the fifth one, and I finally paid attention to something other than my thoughts.

“This one also leads to the hospital ward,” she said, tapping the handle with a faint grimace. “Worse than the dorms, though. Try not to end up there unless you’re legit dying or injured enough to matter.”

“Sure.” I kept my expression neutral, but the idea of something worse than the dorms was unsettling. I couldn’t quite picture it, but my stomach didn’t enjoy trying.

What could have been worse than a room full of strange men breathing near me?

As we started walking again, something flickered at the edge of my vision. The statue of Death. I hadn’t meant to look. But there was something new nestled at its base.

Flowers. Ones I didn’t recognise.

Long-stemmed and black, their petals shimmered faintly—not with magic I could name, not with any light I could trace. They looked soft in a way that didn’t belong to this world. As if they’d grown from shadow and memory rather than soil.

I paused, eyes narrowing.

Shadeblooms, Death murmured, curling the word into my mind. Born from darkness. Watered with blood and fresh death.

A delightful chill traced down my spine, but I didn’t step back. I just stared at the flowers, lips pressed together.

So they’re something a shadebound can make? I thought back to him as Zayden stiffened beside me.

I turned to see what his issue was, but got distracted when Death replied, Yes. But only through death.

What kind of death? I wondered.

Death did not respond. But before I could get frustrated with the silence, something outside caught my eye.

The thing that had clearly made Zayden tense up.

Through the tall open doors at the front of the foyer, just beyond the wide stone steps that spilt down toward the iron gates, a small procession was making its way uphill.

Three figures in black robes, the same ones that had taken my case and greeted my brother and I the day before.

They didn’t hurry as they floated. They moved as if they had all the time in the world.

Like nothing they carried could possibly be urgent anymore.

And what they carried was long. Heavy. Draped in thick black canvas. It sagged slightly in the middle, as if it had a weight that bothered their spectral grip.

I tilted my head, recognition flaring. “Is that a body bag?”

Beside me, Maya stiffened. Zayden didn’t move.

He took a beat too long to answer.

“Training accident,” he said at last, tone light enough to sound fake. “Or a bear in the woods. Happens sometimes. This isn’t exactly the top place for personal safety.”

The robed figures disappeared from view, vanishing deeper into the trees.

Zayden tugged my hand, and I followed without another glance back.

Not because I didn’t think he was full of shit, but because I didn’t really care that a student had died.

Not when it wasn’t someone I knew, and not when we were in a place filled with monsters that probably deserved to be dead, anyway.

We stepped into the cafeteria instead of doing what I wanted, and running away.

It was massive—high vaulted ceilings that seemed to go on forever, crisscrossed with thick wooden beams and iron chandeliers that held floating lanterns.

Each lantern pulsed with a slow, ghostly light that tinted the air a soft green-blue, like the glow beneath deep water.

The scent was a strange mix: cinnamon from something baking, sharp burning herbs, and underneath it all, something metallic and sour that clung to the back of the throat.

The sound in the space echoed in odd ways, making every cough bounce like a warning and every laugh feel just a little too loud.

Rows of long wooden tables stretched across the hall in uneven lines, already crowded with students.

They moved in cliques and packs, noisy and territorial.

The buffet stood to the left along the wall, a crooked line of steaming trays and bubbling cauldrons.

Behind it, hunched and scowling, were what might’ve been enchanted corpses or else the most overworked kitchen staff in existence. I couldn’t tell the difference.

Zayden peeled off right away, muttering about finding the table and how one of his wolves had his breakfast already. I was going to make a comment about his Alpha-laziness, but he was gone before I could open my mouth.

Perhaps later, I could scold him for allowing his pack to act like his servants.

Or ask for more details to satisfy my curiosity about the students dying, and why Maya hadn’t made eye contact with me since we’d seen the body.

The food wasn’t much to look at when we were ready to be served. Just the standard bowl of slop, pale and steaming, waiting to be flavoured.

Maya grabbed a tray and said, “I think I’m feeling fruit salad this morning. Something with berries, maybe.”

I stared at her as she tucked a dark blue braid behind her ear. “Do they do a plain version? Like, no flavour?”

She blinked at me. “Sure. If you want to suffer more than we already are.”

I took my tray and kept the porridge plain when we could select its flavour. I wasn’t in the mood for anything else. Maya, on the other hand, stacked her tray with fruity flavoured slop as though it was nice.

She stared at me the whole time I filled my bowl, like I was a sociopath licking bricks for fun. Her eyebrows lifted in a way that said: what the hell is wrong with you?

She only stopped when we moved through the crowd, weaving between shoulders and trays and swinging elbows.

I kept my head down but my eyes sharp, memorising exits, marking clusters of dangerous-looking students, scanning faces and expressions like I was building a map in my head.

A plan for what to do with no magic if I had to keep my brother safe.

Or me. If Alessandro had managed to use his one brain cell to work out a plan to fuck me over.

A sudden crash stopped me in my tracks.

A few feet away, a girl had been knocked into, her tray scattered across the stone floor with a wet, ugly splatter. She stood frozen in place before the asshole who’d barged into her did it again.

It was the orange-eyed dragon bastard from my dorm. One of the ones on my list to kill. His friends laughed, and one called him Tyler. So I committed his name to memory as he walked away.

I was moving already, as the girl stayed motionless for a second too long.

Her limbs were slim, her features angular and pointed in a way that reminded me of a pixie—sharp chin, high cheekbones, a narrow mouth set in a tight line.

Her hair was black, cut in a choppy bob that framed her face, and her eyes were just as dark.

Deep enough to swallow the light around them.

Pretty, in a quiet, angled sort of way. She looked a little younger than me and was very clearly on the verge of crying.

No one helped her. A few other students laughed. I saw Saphira stick her arm around Tyler’s waist and had to bite from making a bitchy comment about her being a walking cliché mean girl.

I hated crying, but I hated bullying more. It was such a pathetic thing to do. There were plenty of villains in the world to crush beneath your boot, without going after innocents and the weak.

With my tray in my one hand, I just crouched down next to the girl. As I reached for her arm, she flinched hard, as if she thought I might strike her.

“You should learn not to flinch,” I said, brushing a lump of porridge off her pale skin.

She looked up at me cautiously, dark eyes flicking over my cuff. “It’s a bad habit.”

My jaw tightened slightly as I helped her to her feet. “You should use your magic then. Teach pricks like that a lesson.”

She shook her head, hair swinging wildly. “Can’t.”

I tilted my head, annoyed that the cuff prevented me from figuring out what she was on my own. “Why, what are you?”

“A seer,” she said, voice flat. “And Tyler is a dragon. And his horrid girlfriend is a panther. Both of which could eat a seer alive.”

I knew what that meant. Seers had visions. Sometimes of the future, or glimpses of the past. They were unreliable at best. Dangerous at worst. But still, they were innocent enough.

Not the sort to usually be at a place like Mors.