Page 43 of Shadebound
Rows of long wooden tables stretched across the hall in uneven lines, already crowded with students. They moved in cliques and packs, noisy and territorial. The buffet stood to the left along the wall, a crooked line of steaming trays and bubbling cauldrons. Behind it, hunched and scowling, were what might’ve been enchanted corpses or else the most overworked kitchen staff in existence. I couldn’t tell the difference.
Zayden peeled off right away, muttering about finding the table and how one of his wolves had his breakfast already. I wasgoing to make a comment about his Alpha-laziness, but he was gone before I could open my mouth.
Perhaps later, I could scold him for allowing his pack to act like his servants.
Or ask for more details to satisfy my curiosity about the students dying, and why Maya hadn’t made eye contact with me since we’d seen the body.
The food wasn’t much to look at when we were ready to be served. Just the standard bowl of slop, pale and steaming, waiting to be flavoured.
Maya grabbed a tray and said, “I think I’m feeling fruit salad this morning. Something with berries, maybe.”
I stared at her as she tucked a dark blue braid behind her ear. “Do they do a plain version? Like, no flavour?”
She blinked at me. “Sure. If you want to suffer more than we already are.”
I took my tray and kept the porridge plain when we could select its flavour. I wasn’t in the mood for anything else. Maya, on the other hand, stacked her tray with fruity flavoured slop as though it was nice.
She stared at me the whole time I filled my bowl, like I was a sociopath licking bricks for fun. Her eyebrows lifted in a way that said:what the hell is wrong with you?
She only stopped when we moved through the crowd, weaving between shoulders and trays and swinging elbows. I kept my head down but my eyes sharp, memorising exits, marking clusters of dangerous-looking students, scanning faces and expressions like I was building a map in my head. A plan for what to do with no magic if I had to keep my brother safe.
Or me. If Alessandro had managed to use his one brain cell to work out a plan to fuck me over.
A sudden crash stopped me in my tracks.
A few feet away, a girl had been knocked into, her tray scattered across the stone floor with a wet, ugly splatter. She stood frozen in place before the asshole who’d barged into her did it again.
It was the orange-eyed dragon bastard from my dorm. One of the ones on my list to kill. His friends laughed, and one called him Tyler. So I committed his name to memory as he walked away.
I was moving already, as the girl stayed motionless for a second too long.
Her limbs were slim, her features angular and pointed in a way that reminded me of a pixie—sharp chin, high cheekbones, a narrow mouth set in a tight line. Her hair was black, cut in a choppy bob that framed her face, and her eyes were just as dark. Deep enough to swallow the light around them. Pretty, in a quiet, angled sort of way. She looked a little younger than me and was very clearly on the verge of crying.
No one helped her. A few other students laughed. I saw Saphira stick her arm around Tyler’s waist and had to bite from making a bitchy comment about her being a walking cliché mean girl.
I hated crying, but I hated bullying more. It was such a pathetic thing to do. There were plenty of villains in the world to crush beneath your boot, without going after innocents and the weak.
With my tray in my one hand, I just crouched down next to the girl. As I reached for her arm, she flinched hard, as if she thought I might strike her.
“You should learn not to flinch,” I said, brushing a lump of porridge off her pale skin.
She looked up at me cautiously, dark eyes flicking over my cuff. “It’s a bad habit.”
My jaw tightened slightly as I helped her to her feet. “You should use your magic then. Teach pricks like that a lesson.”
She shook her head, hair swinging wildly. “Can’t.”
I tilted my head, annoyed that the cuff prevented me from figuring out what she was on my own. “Why, what are you?”
“A seer,” she said, voice flat. “And Tyler is a dragon. And his horrid girlfriend is a panther. Both of which could eat a seer alive.”
I knew what that meant. Seers had visions. Sometimes of the future, or glimpses of the past. They were unreliable at best. Dangerous at worst. But still, they were innocent enough.
Not the sort to usually be at a place like Mors.
She caught the expression on my face. No doubt jumping to conclusions that I hadn’t thought but were true all the same.
“Yeah, I know. What kind of seer can’t see someone coming toward her?” She gave a crooked smile, more bitter than amused. “That’s the problem. I suck at visions. It’s like I’m not actually a seer.”
