Page 31 of Monster's Reward

Everything came to a head mid-way through our semester break.

I’d just finished making myself a sandwich in the mess hall, when I turned and saw Jahrdran across the way, standing at the beverage station, serving himself one of hisspecialenergy drinks, made specifically to sharpen the senses and hunting instincts of the Varulvka.

Every single supernatural in the Academy had a special beverage created just for their kind. Everyone but me, that is.

No one could serve me the Drink of Shades, for it required access to ingredients only found in the shadow realm.

I knew this because I’d found a cookbook in the shadow-room titledRecipes from the Shadows.In it, I had found severalspecialdrinks, intended only for shadow-beasts. Unfortunately, they weren’t on offer at the Academy for obvious reasons.

Regardless, it made me furious to see Jahrdran standing alone by the beverage station, serving himself in a way that I never could.

Setting down my tray on a table nearby, I stalked over to stand at his side. “Must be nice to come from a long line of sanctioned killers.”

His knuckles went white where they were holding the glass and fur rippled along his arm.

He carefully set his glass down, then turned to face me. “What the fuck do you want?”

I drew in a deep breath, making a concerted effort to calm my racing heart. “I just think it’s interesting, don’t you? A shadow killer stalked the realms and killed millions. For that, an entire species of shadow-beasts were sentenced to death. Your people, the Varulvka, hunted them down, presumably killing millions in the process. Yetthosekills were sanctioned, and therefore, your people were heroes. And all for committing genocide against a species that may not have been guilty of the crimes they were accused of.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he growled. “Of course, they were guilty.”

“Were they? Was there any evidence? Did they ever figure out which shadow-beast committed the crimes?”

“It didn’t matter which one, the fact that they could access the shadow realm at all meant they were guilty.”

“Onewas guilty.Oneindividual who could access the shadow realm. That doesn’t necessarily say shadow-beast to me.”

“Shadow-Monster,” he corrected me.

“So says the victor. It’s another way to wash away the truth, to obscure the facts. Paint an entire species as monsters, then execute them for crimes they never committed.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know the majority—we’ll call themmillions—of those executed were innocent. I know that theonethey were hunting may not have been a shadow-beast at all and even if he was, it didn’t justify the genocide that followed. The victims literally became as bad as the killer they were hunting.”

He sighed. “Why are we even having this conversation, Kasi?”

“Because I know you’re wrong. I knowtheywere wrong. And I know the real killer has gotten away with murder ever since.” I turned and walked away.

That last sentence wasn’t really true. I didn’tknowthat, but after all my research and everything that I’d read, I wasn’t convinced the killer was dead.

I’d learned a lot about the shadows since finding the shadow-room and the most important thing I’d learned was how much of a dichotomy they were.

For those not born of the shadows, death was all that waited for them there. When thrown into them, they had a tiny window of time, no more than thirty minutes in length, during which they might escape with some of their inner light intact.

Depending on the strength of the person, their light might only survive a moment or the full thirty, but after they passed that time threshold, whatever it might be, there would be no light left to guide them through the endless dark, and they would be lost forever, their souls now twisted and dark.

For the shadow-born, however, the shadows represented both lifeanddeath. The shadow realm could heal the physical form, but that required re-entry into the physical world.

If re-entry did not happen, if a shadow-beast lingered too long in the shadows, they could lose their physical form entirely, doomed to roam the realms as nothing more than shadow and mist.

I couldn’t help but wonder if this had become the fate of the many hunted who had fled into the shadows to avoid persecution.

And if that were the case, it was only reasonable to also wonder if somewhere hiding within the shadow realm lay the remnants of a killer, waiting for his chance to kill again.

A clatter broke into my thoughts and Jahrdran dropped into the seat across from me, his tray of food in front of him.

I raised an eyebrow, trying not to show my joy at having my mate join me for lunch.

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