Page 41 of Every Shade of Shadow

Lying on the floor, facedown, is a brunette’s body. Her curly hair is splayed out over her upper back, lush tendrils covering both of her cheeks. The oyster-gray silk of her night shirt is torn, riddled with holes and splotches of dark red, a pool of congealed blood around her a perfectly still, crimson mirror.

My stomach twists, the air tainted metallic.

Whatever happened to her, she’s very dead now.

Nauseous, I bring my fingers to my mouth, turning and elbowing my way back through the throng.

I can’t unsee it.

The crazy part is how no one is screaming or freaking out here over the obvious murder scene, because there’s no way she did that to herself. It’s like this is more of a curiosity, an art installation.

I continue down the hall and hit the stairs, spiraling up them and bumping into someone in the process. I catch her swaying to the side out of the corner of my eye, but I can’t stick around to mumble apologies. I have to get the fuck out of Dodge.

I move up the steps, clearing more students, my calves beginning to burn. My ears also pick up the name of the unfortunate girl on the floor. It’s Stephanie Something-Ton. Not that it makes any difference. She’s still lying down there full of holes.

The air thins further as noises from below begin to fade in my ears. Finally, I find myself standing on the top landing with a closed, glass door across from me. Mercifully, it’s unlocked. I go through it onto the roof of the castle—the chilly air a welcome reprieve.

A glorious mix of scents rushes through my nostrils, my eyes savoring the sea of greenery and the soupy sky around the castle. Hundreds of towering trees fill my gaze as I recognize balsam, fir, and cedar. Dark clouds loom over the forest, a gust of cold wind sending leaves tumbling across the roof.

The nausea fades, but the shock remains. It’s not every day you come across a corpse.

When I found Gran in the bathroom her skin was pasty and off-color, but for all intents and purposes she was otherwise peaceful enough there save for the fact she was dead.

But that girl down there? Stephanie?

No one deserves that.

There are footfalls behind me, light. “Saw you bussing up here. You okay?” It’s Lily. She pulls up beside me at the short wall running around the perimeter of the roof, a neon pink dressing gown about the brightest thing in the entire castle. “Shit it’s cold out here.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

She eyes me. “You’ve got newbie written all over you. You know that?”

“Newbie?” I pitch my voice higher. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Your reaction,” she explains, her voice surprisingly calm. “You should know it’s not uncommon for students to go missing or run away here, even die at the Academy. Everybody who’s been here long enough knows that. It’s just Lumina. People know what they signed up for.”

I fucking didn’t. “I’m not sure I signed up to be stabbed to death and left in the middle of the hallway for everyone to gawk at.”

“Stabbed?” Lily queries. “You think? Injuries looked more magical to me.”

I pivot from the wall, eyebrows dipping. “You think someone used magic to do that?”

Lily shrugs, pulling her dressing gown tighter around herself. “Not everyone’s here with honorable intentions, you know. A kid was expelled last year for torching his girlfriend after he caught her screwing someone else. He came into her room one night, Ignis Fluctus, and that was that.”

“Shit.”

“Is about right, yeah.”

Lily nods past the forest. “The world out there, inanis? They have no idea of the fucked-up shit that goes on behind these walls.” She pauses, expression blank. “Not everybody can take it. They leave, disappear.”

“But that Stephanie girl,” I begin, pointing back at the door behind us. “She didn’t go missing. She’s dead—stabbed to death, magic murdered, whatever. You can’t stand here and tell me it’s only natural for someone to get fucking butchered like that.”

“Not natural,” Lily shakes her head sideways once. “It’s just not…unusual. There are already rumors swirling as to the perpetrator—who, or what.”

“This is insane,” I say, unable to reconcile this all. “That girl just died and there are people speculating who did it? Isn’t that a bit callous?”

“Like I said, for most students, this isn’t their first murder.”

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