Page 58 of Shadebound
They hated that I was the personification of the same monsters that had slaughtered our people and ruined our land.
The projections shifted, showing the twisted creatures—spindly and skeletal—howling as they descended on screaming villages.
“Those who weren’t murdered by the shadow plague fled. Some to other magical realms. Most to the Mortal Realm, where shadows could not touch.” She paused, eyes roaming around the room until they met me. “At least, we thought that was the case. But we were wrong.”
Another beat of silence.
More eyes bore into me. Enough that, had I felt shame, I would have been red from it.
“Shadows found their way to every land we fled to, and though weaker, they still exist.” She stared at me. Face entirely blank. “They are still eager to feast on the magic in our veins, or the souls in our bodies, until there is nothing of us left.”
I already knew this. I’d been taught it, over and over, by my mother. She’d insisted on it, though I never quite understood why. She was a nature witch, with strange priorities and stranger interests—at least, to me. She always said I needed to understand what happened to Mortavia, even when I was too young to grasp the gravity of it.
Too young to understand why people I had grown up with looked at me likeIwas the plague.
So I learned. Reluctantly at first, then with grim determination after Bells died and half of the people who claimed to love her had refused to come to her funeral because I’d been there.
I memorised everything she left behind from the lessons my mother had taken with her too. Every book, every torn scroll, every half-legible journal. And even now, it lived at the front of my mind—ready, waiting for the day it would serve a purpose beyond telling me why I was a freak.
But watching it unfold like this, with Rayla’s voice cutting through the room, it hit differently.
She went on, her voice level but threaded with the kind of weight that didn’t need to be emphasised. “For the last thirteen years, our people have prepared for the expansion of the plague. Soldiers have been trained and deployed to our home, and we’ve attempted to reclaim what was taken. The effort hasn’t been fast. And it hasn’t been without loss.”
The illusion shifted again. Mors appeared.
“This is why Mors Academy changed. It’s no longer just a dumping ground for criminals. Now it opens its doors to the strongest students. The most promising minds. Even those who volunteered. We’re building something here. A force meant tofight. A generation trained not just tosurvive, but to end the war before it spreads further.”
The air in the room shifted. Some students exchanged glances, their expressions cautious, uncertain. Eris leant forward in her seat, her hands folded too tightly in her lap, shoulders held in a tense line. Her jaw was locked, her eyes fixed on the illusion still hovering over the board. She wasn’t blinking much.
This was how her family had died. I could not blame her for being uncomfortable.
Could not blame her for the way I saw her dig her nails into her palms until she bled.
Beside me, Maya’s fingers moved, twitching against her knee like she was holding back the urge to act. Maybe it wasnerves. Maybe it was instinct. Her lips were pressed into a thin line, but her gaze didn’t leave the front of the room.
She’d lost an older brother in the plague. Grandparents too.
I was surprised she even spoke to me after that.
I’d always presumed it was Bells doing. But now? Perhaps she just didn’t blame for something I didn’t cause.
Zayden was still drawing on the back of my hand. The pace had slowed; the pen dragged with a steady rhythm like he was deliberately stalling. It was almost clinical, the way he stayed focussed on those faint, looping shapes. He didn’t look up. Didn’t speak. Just kept going and going like he needed the distraction too.
I still didn’t stop him. I didn’t even think about it.
The room quieted, too still, like we were all waiting for a sound that hadn’t come yet. I stared ahead, but the warmth of Zayden’s hand anchored me in place, a constant pressure that I could track. It kept me steady. I wasn’t sure if he meant to do that. But I didn’t care to work it out.
And then I heard him again.
Death.
They like to pretend they don’t know how it started.
A small jolt passed through me, just enough to make my shoulders shift. I hadn’t been expecting his voice again, but I wasn’t unhappy to hear it more than I usually did.
My eyes stayed on the illusion at the front of the room, though my attention shifted entirely. I kept still, breathing evenly, curious now. Curious in the way I got when something important was about to be revealed. He rarely spoke without purpose, and when he did, it was never empty.
How?I thought, as my heart thudded.
