Page 49 of Shadebound (Dark Fantasy #1)

The portal split open silently, with all the grace of a festering wound.

I stepped through without ceremony.

The first thing that struck me was the smell. Not blood, or herbs—those would’ve been mercies. This was something older. Wet stone left to ferment beneath moss. Copper hiding under tongue.

Mors had always been like that. A place full of ghosts even before anyone had died.

Behind me, Mortavia closed its jaws. The silver light died with it.

I stood alone on the gravel path, boots crunching against frost-tipped stones, eyes sweeping the grounds like I expected something to leap out of the shadows and bite.

Nothing did. But the place was watching.

I could feel it like a blade between my ribs.

And worse—so could my shadows.

They slid out from beneath my coat and collar like snakes from a disturbed nest, curling low to the earth, jittering against the seams of my trousers, brushing along the frozen weeds.

They’d been calm in Mortavia recently. Quiet.

Almost docile for a place made of nothing but decay and darkness.

But here, on this cursed strip of land, they bristled like they remembered what had been done to us last time we came through.

My shadow wolf, Cipher, appeared like smoke from my fingertips. His nose met the cold ground, hackles rising as he inhaled the stench of a place we both despised.

A long exhale slipped past my lips as I waited for him to scout the area. I reached into my long black coat pocket and pulled out the old voice recorder one of my mothers had given to me before my arrest. I clicked it on with my pale inked fingers, and a red light blinked awake.

“Field journal entry number two-thousand-and-eleven,” I said, voice scratchy from lack of sleep. “Mors is a cesspit for monsters, and yet it is ruled by them. They still pretend to roam the halls for good reasons, not spite and malice.”

I walked forward as I spoke, letting the recorder capture the rhythm of my boots and the breath of the world around me. Cipher kept sniffing his way around the decaying land, more at ease than I was.

“My shadows are... agitated,” I continued. “They know this place. Or they remember it. And I suppose for a thing like me, there’s not much difference. Shadebound don’t forget what hurts them.”

I paused. The wind was rising, tugging gently at the edges of the trees in the distance, where the academy rose like black spines in the distance.

“I used to feel at home here,” I murmured into the recorder. “Among the decay. Among the bones. But this place has soured even more in my absence. I can taste it in the air.”

I clicked the recorder off. It didn’t need to hear what I really wanted to say. That this place had once felt like sanctuary—and now it felt like bait.

I tucked the recorder back into my trouser pocket, fingers brushing the stitching I’d mended by hand last week after a shadow monster had tried to take a bite out of me during patrol. It was still the most polite interaction I’d had all month.

The morning hadn’t broken yet. The sky was an anaemic shade of violet, the colour of a bruise that never healed, stretched thin over the iron-black silhouette of the academy spires.

Light crept reluctantly along the gravel path in front of me, enough to show the bloody scarring in the stone where something—someone—had been dragged recently.

Down towards the beach where my least favourite professor still taught his mind rapes designed as lessons.

My eyes tracked it. My shadows did too. I moved forward, intending to investigate.

And then the wind shifted.

It wasn’t just a breeze, but the kind of displaced pressure that comes from something descending from a great height.

I turned my head just in time to see the white.

Feathers. Hair. Suit. Wings.

Hightower landed with the grace of something that had never once questioned its right to exist. She wore her power like a veil—visible only if you knew what to look for.

Her heels clicked against the path, a sound that should’ve been insignificant but somehow echoed.

Her white pantsuit was pristine as always, her platinum hair bound in a twist that defied wind and reason.

The wings folded behind her with rigid perfection. Not a single feather out of place.

Her eyes were darker than mine. A feat since mine were black.

“Ah,” she said, voice smooth like silk drawn over a blade. “Hemlock. A pleasure, as always.”

She smiled. I didn’t, because smiles were a hideous thing. That, and it was never a pleasure to see her, and she knew it. But I nodded, because that was how these things worked.

The trick to Hightower, was to pretend to be pliant. Pretend to agree with her, and do what she wanted.

Then plot the way you’d pluck her wings out, feather by feather, in secret. At night. When Death muttered nonsense in your brain and you stared at the ceiling until the world stopped moving.

“I’m thrilled you agreed to return early,” she continued, strolling forward with her hands behind her back, casual as if we were old colleagues instead of whatever we really were. “There’s a... particular case that could benefit from your unique skill set. I think you’ll find it stimulating.”

Her eyes flicked to the edges of my shadow, which was still twitching at my heels like a dog ready to bite.

“I wasn’t aware I had a choice,” I deadpanned as Cipher returned to my side, growling under his breath.

“Don’t be dramatic,” she said lightly. “I simply... made a request.”

I still didn’t smile, but one of my shadows curled tighter at my wrist, almost in amusement.

“We’ll discuss the details in my office,” she went on, already turning toward the academy’s main building. “I’d like to get everything settled before the first bell. Perhaps you’ll even stay for breakfast.”

I didn’t move to follow her yet.

“What about the girl?” I asked.

She stopped, looking over her shoulder with that foxlike tilt to her head that always made her seem seconds away from laughing at something no one else found funny.

“I’ve got a file,” she said. “Thick as my thigh. Full of charts, incident reports from her school days, behavioural breakdowns by the therapists she’s had.

Her history, her crimes, her potential. What we need from you is simple—observe, assess, and ensure she can be controlled. She is a stubborn little thing.”

I didn’t answer. Didn’t so much as breathe as I let the bitch speak her poison.

“Don’t worry,” she added. “You’ll have all the information you need to get her in line.

And Varl has already begun the process of sedating her, so she’s more pliable.

He said it was rather easy to get inside her head from the first lesson, and he predicts only a few more classes are needed to make her right.

” She grinned harder. “She is a Draconis. Good stock, it seems. You may have heard of her trial in the news recently.”

I nodded and with a whistle to Cipher, I fell into step beside Hightower, the gates of Mors rising in the distance like a set of hungry teeth.

I knew the girl she told me about. I knew the way her magic burned. The way her story twisted and why she’d done the things she did. I knew the shape of the shadows that curled around her shoulders like a crown she didn’t want to wear.

But I hadn’t needed any trial or news to know her. I hadn’t needed a file.

I’d been watching her far longer than anyone else had.

The end .