Page 83 of Every Shade of Shadow

“It’s a lot, I know,” the Headmistress nods. “But I’m happy to answer any questions you may have, though might I suggest we take a break, allow what you have learned here to sink in?”

Good fucking idea.

Get out of here before she tells me everyone’s a lizard person and the castle’s just a big ol’ breeding factory.

I nod, the Headmistress gesturing to the door.

I stand and give a simple nod back, turning for the door.

The moment I’m through it, I swing against the wall struggling for breath. Everything I knew, or thought I knew, is what? A lie?

Magical fucking assassins, like Darkwood? Did he know my parents?

Gran, at Lumina?

It’s insanity. This whole place is fucking insane.

And why even tell me? What purpose does that serve?

Oh, I’ve got questions alright, not that the Headmistress seemed in the mood.

I can try to dig into the past on my own, try and work out who or what killed my parents, why Grand kept her attendance to Lumina a secret, but it also seems kind of pointless. It’s all in the past. It would only be to satisfy my own, selfish curiosity.

I push myself off the wall, close my eyes and pull in a deep breath.

I shall not let this cloud my thoughts.

I want to be a blank slate for whatever exquisite torture the Professor has in store next.

I’ll find answers to the rest in my own time.

*

It’s basically impossible to concentrate the rest of the day. Even in the dining hall while Lily and Ava debate the greatest temporal mishaps of all time, I’m tuned out completely.

It’s seriously late by the time Lily and I make our way back to our rooms. This is after she spent the better part of an hour detailing to me in the common room the extremely complex web that is Lumina’s social structure.

She’s walking faster than I am. Always seems to be in some sort of perpetual rush. “Like I was saying, the elementals really don’t do shit. ‘Wow, I can make it rain, whoop-de-doo. But up here, this is the real stuff. It can fuck. You. Up. Last year, this girl Emma, they found her in her room sliced up into twenty pieces. She was aiming for Mors Obscurum.”

“Oblivion’s Embrace?”

“Right. I guess someone told her it was magical ecstasy or similar BS, and she got oblivion alright. And then that poor girl the other day, that boy…this place is cursed, I’m telling you.”

I pull up.

Something’s off.

The air is thick with tension, an eerie silence enveloping us. My breath catches in my throat as shadows slither across the floor, their movements unnaturally fluid.

"Ana," Lily whispers, her voice trembling. "You see them too, right?"

"Yeah. I think we're being followed."

"Shit, I think they’re rogue shadows. What are they doing here?”

“What do we do?” I ask. We’re too deep in the castle, and I don’t remember passing anyone.

She stiffens. “We get ready.”

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