Page 89 of Shattered & Returned

Sindy shifted under her quilt, her form still shivering. “Maybe I never should have accepted the invitation to this school.”

The witchlights dimmed one by one, leaving only the faint glow of the orb by the door.

“At least you got an invitation,” I said dryly.

She turned toward me. “Did I tell you Forsaken Academy sits atop the gate to hell?”

“Only about a dozen times,” I replied.

Fear had drained her. Within minutes, her breathing steadied, her auburn hair catching the witchlight in deep crimson streaks. The sight unsettled me. She wasn’t in any less danger than I was. If Angelina’s death was a warning, Sindy could easily become the next message.

I wouldn’t let that happen.

Crouching in front of the hellhound, I found one pair of eyes still open, watching.

“Will you protect Sindy please?” I asked. “Blink twice for yes.”

He did.

I buried my fingers in the hellhound’s thick fur, drawing comfort from his warmth as he leaned into me. The nightmare’s icy claws still prickled across my skin.

A darker thought took hold. What if these weren’t dreams? What if I’d been experiencing the final moments of those women, who wore my face but dressed in the fashions of other eras? I wasn’t them. But I’dfelttheir slices of pain, their chokes of terror, as real as my own breath.

The sheets twisted in my grip as chills settled in my bones. I needed to hunt this killer down, before my own death stopped being a vision and became the last thing I saw.

Chapter

Thirty-One

Bloom

Buried Truths

The curfew lifted like a sigh of relief, and with classes canceled for the day, Sindy and I slipped back into Umbra Grimoire library. She had agreed without much persuasion to help me search for answers. I hadn’t told her everything, only that I’d seen my death threaded among the other red-haired women and the killer was stalking the campus, hunting with a purpose we didn’t yet understand.

Sindy weaved through the labyrinth of shelves toward the newspaper archives. Forsaken Academy had no internet, no blinking screens or digital whispers, nothing like the mortal world. But magic had its own ways. Here, knowledge lived in the slipstream, a shimmering matrix of spells and memory. Sindy knew how to navigate it. That and her friendship with Mabel, thesharp-eyed witch who guarded the library’s secrets, gave us an edge.

While my friend sifted through reports and faded headlines, I turned my attention to the gods—their legends, their power, their hidden vulnerabilities. I had already mapped the magical hierarchy on my charts, tracing the threads of divine bloodlines. Kingsley, Sebastian, Stardust, and Ravencrux stood apart, direct heirs to the gods, while the rest of us carried only faint echoes of divine blood.

Sindy remained buried in her research on the fourth floor while I had other plans. A bribe, the wristband token Sebastian had bought me from Tabula Rasa, had bought me an hour in the restricted section. Mabel had taken it with a knowing glance, her fingers closing around the offering before she ushered me into the forbidden stacks.

My thoughts circled back to Persephone. Her name tugged at me like an arrow, pulling me toward the familiar shelves where her stories had once been waiting. But this time, nothing. The space where her books should have been was hollow, a gaping absence. The volume I’d pored over before sat in its place, pristine and untouched…except now, its pages were blank.

A cold prickle ran down my spine. I tore through every text on the Olympians, my fingers flying over spines, flipping pages with growing urgency. But Persephone was gone, not just missing, but erased. Even Hades’ records had been rewritten. No stolen bride, no queen of the Underworld. Just a solitary king, ruling in eternal silence.

Yet Iremembered.The truth flickered stubbornly in my mind, a lone candle refusing to be snuffed. Then somethingshifted.A whisper of power brushed against the edges of my thoughts like a thief testing a lock. My body reacted before I could question it. Fingers snapped up, magic flaring to life as effortlessly as a drawn breath, just as it had when I’d firstgripped that dagger in the training hall, the steel singing in my hand as if it had always belonged there.

This magic wasn’t learned. It wasinborn.A secret even my mother had never known. Or perhaps it had lain dormant until Forsaken Academy’s shadowed walls coaxed it awake.

I gritted my teeth and shoved back against the invading force, my shield hardening like ice. The presence recoiled, then surged again, probing for weakness. But I clung to the memories of the red-haired victims, their faces, their stolen futures, and locked them away where no unseen hand could pry them loose.Remembering is survival.

The weight of eyes pressed down on me, unseen but undeniable. Wasthishow they’d always known my steps before I took them? Had they been watching, waiting, scrubbing every trace of Persephone from the texts I sought? Not the other gods. Only her.

Why?

Persephone had been a footnote before Hades claimed her, a minor goddess—overlooked, her power whispered about more in myth than in worship. She was spring’s fleeting touch, a queen forced into the dark. What threat could she possibly pose now?

Yet every trace of her had vanished. Not just from the pages, but from history itself. And as I stared at the hollowed-out spaces where her story should have been, a cold hollowness spread through me, as if part of me had been carved away too.

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