Page 88 of Shadebound
The screaming hadn’t stopped.
It had grown worse. The noise crawled through the walls like claws searching for something soft to tear into. My temples throbbed beneath my skin, pulsing in time with each wave of discordant screeching. Exhaustion sat heavy in every muscle, like I’d been buried under it for days. My stomach kept folding over itself, the emptiness gnawing, chewing from the inside out. My mouth tasted sour and metallic, and my eyes—raw, sanded, swollen from strain—refused to focus properly. Each blink dragged like I was scraping glass over my sockets. I couldn’t remember the last time I had stood without swaying. Everythingached. Everything buzzed. I wanted to lie still and fall into nothing, but even that escape was barred.
It was all delightfully torturous. I had to give Hightower props for how well thought out her methods of breaking down students were. If I had been mentally sound, I would have shattered already.
I lay flat on my back, the thin mattress doing nothing to soften the ache in my shoulders. The others were shifting, breathing hard, their bodies twitching with every shriek that echoed through the walls. The noise hadn’t let up for hours. It felt like days. It was impossible to tell anymore. Each sound scraped across my skull—the screeching like knives dragged over stone, the low murmurs like something wet and close, the high whine that made my molars throb. It wasn’t just sound. It wastorture.
And it turned out I wasn’t a huge fan of being tortured. I much preferred being the one doing it. This way was... long. Far too long. Especially when I was trying to work out a riddle with my brain operating on five-percent capacity.
My hands curled into the sheet as if gripping it would help hold me together. No one dared to speak. There was no room left for words in this place. Justsurvival. Only survival made people do things that were dangerous. They made them act recklessly and cruelly.
Something shifted beside me. A shadow. Then a rustle and a trickle of icy blue flames, wrapping around my body, locking my arms to my side. I sat up, head cocking, dark hair tumbling over my shoulders.
It was the witching hour. I knew that in my bones somehow. Not just because I’d been counting down the seconds until morning as I tried to work out the answer to my riddle. And true to witching hours form, a monster greeted me in the darkness.
Alessandro stood by my bed, hand reaching into my side table as he used his magic to keep me in place.
To keep Zayden and Maya in their place. As we all watched him, eyes narrowed. Maya had her teeth bared, and not the regular kind.
Thin rows of razor-sharp shark teeth jutted out of her gums. And I was sorely disappointed that I wasn’t able to see her in her true nature; biting a man’s head off. Even more so when Alessandro’s flames covered her mouth, hindering her siren song.
I didn’t move right away. My eyes stayed locked on his hand, watching it disappear like my mind was too fogged to stop it. For a second, I thought maybe I was imagining it—maybe the exhaustion had finally splintered my grip on reality. But the slow, creeping tug of the drawer said otherwise.
He pulled out the pouch of stones I’d hidden. The one full of my sister’s gift. My breath caught, and my attention started to focus.
“Put them back,” I ordered. My voice scraped out of me like broken glass. “Now.”
He tilted his head to one side, slowly, his mouth twitching with the kind of smirk that only ever came from cruelty disguised as charm. His neon blue eyes narrowed just enough to make it clear he wasn’t taking any of this seriously.
That he was here for a mission he’d made up in his mind, and he was not going to stop until he’d done it.
My stomach twisted up tighter, knotted and burning, because I knew that look. He wasn’t just being malicious. He wasentertained. Watching me squirm was his version of fun. And the more I glared, the more Zayden cussed him out, the more he enjoyed it. Like everything here—my exhaustion, my pain, my desperation—was nothing more than a game I was already losing.
“Shouldn’t have ignored my warnings,” he said. “Actions have consequences, Draconis. You took something I wanted, so I will do the same to you.”
I sat up straighter, fists curling. “I didn’t start anything. Your orange-eyed lapdog shoulder-checked me. Maybe you should teach your little pets some fucking manners, and you wouldn’t be punished.”
Alessandro’s smile vanished, and Tyler snarled in his bed. But before he could open his trap to insult me, my unwanted visitor narrowed his neon eyes.
“You’re just another broken thing looking for someone else to blame. We both know it’s your fault. You walk around antagonising people every time you flutter your lashes, and fill the room with your poisonous scent.”
“You’re one to talk,” I snapped. “Don’t act like you’re any better. All you do is throw tantrums when the world doesn’t bow to your oversized ego. I’ve been here for less than a week, and I’m already bored with you. It must be insufferable for everyone else.”
He didn’t reply. He just opened his palm and dropped one stone into his grip.
“I’ll hurt you.” I promised. “I don’t care that you hate me. That’s fine. But I won’t allow you to break what’s mine without consequence.”
Blue flames curled over his fingers.
“Alessandro.” I implored, hands clenched tight enough that my nails made my palms bleed.
His flames curled higher, licking across the ridges of his palm with eerie precision. The stone began to tremble, the surface cracking, tiny fractures spiderwebbing outward with a soft, sickening pop. Heat poured from his skin, dense and suffocating enough to make me sweat. A sharp hiss followed,and the stone blackened, darkened further, then crumbled—not into dust, but into nothing at all.
One blink, and it was simply gone. No trace. No weight left behind in his hand. Just absence, absolute and irreversible.
My heart stuttered.
Draven tried to lurch forward from his bed, the only other person in the room who could see just what was in Alessandro’s hand. But blue flames wrapped around him too. Ones bright enough that Maya’s creeping water could barely touch.
