Page 95 of Shadebound
Shadebound aren’t afraid of blood—we like the way it sings. There’s something holy in the break of bone, something honest in the scream. Pain tells the truth when nothing else will.
We were made in death’s shadow. It changed us. Left its hunger in our teeth, its cruelty in our bones. And we learned quickly that kindness won’t save you—but power might.
So we don’t pull back. We don’t break pace.
We tear. We wreck. We enjoy it.
And when it’s over—when the bodies fall and the silence returns—we don’t regret a thing.
We smile.
Because monsters don’t have to explain themselves.
And we stopped pretending to be human a long time ago.
Chapter Twenty Nine, Warning
The rest of the day blurred. That was the only word for it.
Time bled together, a cruel haze of bone-deep exhaustion and endless classrooms that reeked of mildew and stale air, each one as oppressive as the last. I couldn’t keep track of what we were meant to be learning anymore—everything was a smudgein my mind. History had been the worst kind of blur: something about the wars in Mortavia, faceless soldiers dying in mud and blood, but the words slid off me before they could sink in.
I remembered sitting there, lids heavy, blinking once, and somehow the class was over. Like drifting through a battlefield in a fever dream. Even Professor Varl’s lesson, with its sharp-edged mental intrusions and the parade of my ugliest memories, barely stirred me. The images came, jagged and cruel, meant to rip me apart, but they couldn’t get any deeper than I already was. I’d been living in that hollowed-out place too long for him to make it worse.
And I hadn’t even bothered to shower properly. My hair clung to my neck, the strands stiff with dried sweat and crusted blood. My skin was tight and grimy, every inch of me wearing the day like an old, unwashed shroud. The idea of rinsing it away seemed almost foreign—like I was too far sunk into the filth and fatigue for cleanliness to matter. I could feel the weight of it, but not enough to summon the will to move. Caring would have taken more than I had left.
My sister’s stones were ash. I had a riddle to solve. A killer to find. And nothing else could touch me.
To make it worse, hunger clawed at my insides. A dull, twisting ache that made the exhaustion heavier, the cold sharper, and every movement feel like wading through mire. The lack of food sank into my limbs and mind until even my thoughts felt brittle, ready to splinter. It was another weight on a day already built of them.
I had another note at dinner, slid into my pockets when students piled into the room. Ordering me to wake up, remember what I knew about spirit witches.
To remember what it was like to have them in my mind and why they were not as innocently useless as they looked.
Then Zayden yanked me into the corridor that led to the dorms after dinner. Hand clenching my jaw, and all at once my mind seemed to register what the fuck was going on.
What the killer had been trying to warn me off since my arrival.
“I answered your riddle.” He announced like it was no big deal. “It was map.”
I blinked at him. My brain felt cotton-stuffed and crumpled, like it had given up halfway through the day. My stomach was chewing on itself, my limbs aching like I’d been sprinting for hours instead of just surviving another Mors meal.
“What?” I croaked, head tilting.
He grinned at me. “I worked it out. I’ve been trying all day, and I figured it out. The answer’smap.”
I shook my head, brain taking a moment to catch up with what he was saying. “What are you on about?”
“I left a response to your killer riddle,” he said, like he hadn’t just said something insane. “On Death’s statue. Like the killer asked.”
My body jolted, finally catching up to the words. I stepped back, glaring at him. “Youwhat?”
“I left it there,” he repeated. “I gave them the answer. You were running out of time, and I figured I could do more to help you. So I did it for you. You’re welcome.”
My heart kicked up in my chest. Blood roared in my ears, drowning out everything else.
“You left a message?” I said, louder now, angling toward him like I might physically pull the words back out of his mouth. “You actually went and left a response for them?Are you insane?”
He just grinned harder, silver eyes wide. “I figured it out—”
