Page 22 of Academy of the Wicked, Year One

Her skin itself seems to radiate a soft luminescence, as if she's absorbed some of my Duskwalker energy and transformed it into light. The effect makes her appear almost translucent, like the finest porcelain crafted by master artisans. Her slightly parted lips remain that striking ruby red, a splash of vivid color against her ethereal pallor.

But then I see it.

There, on the elegant curve of her neck, a marking that stops my heart mid-beat.

At first glance, it might appear to be just another of the glowing runes decorating her skin.But I know better.I've seen its like before, though never quite in this form.

My eyes snap to Mortimer's wrist, where I know he bears the traditional Duskwalker pledge mark — the symbol that binds him as protector to our line. He keeps it carefully hidden, as all such marks of servitude are, but I've seen it enough times to know its precise pattern.

This mark on her neck...it's both familiar and utterly foreign. The basic structure is the same — the ancient runes that speak of loyalty and protection, the curved lines that represent the flow of power between bound souls.

But where Mortimer's mark speaks of servitude, this one...

This one speaks of partnership.

Of equality.

Of a hierarchy I've only read about in the most ancient texts of our line.

A bond mark.

Not a pledge of servitude or protection, but something far more rare and dangerous. The kind of connection that hasn'tbeen seen in the Duskwalker bloodline for over a thousand years.

The kind that was supposedly lost when our line turned from light to shadow.

I feel my jaw go slack, the usually iron control of my emotions shattering like the silk cocoon that revealed her true form. One by one, my companions' gazes drag themselves away from the floating figure to fix on me with varying degrees of shock and dawning comprehension.

"Don't." Mortimer's voice cracks through the air like a whip. His face has gone even paler than usual, eyes wide with something that might be fear.

He's still processing the implications, just as I am.

A bond mark. An actual bond mark…

The words echo in my mind like a death knell.

This goes beyond matters of academy policy or Hexarch law. This threatens everything we thought we knew about the nature of Duskwalker magic itself.

And this woman just waltzed in here and ignited the impossible on multiple magnitudes.

The sun climbs higher in the sky, its rays painting her floating form in shades of gold and shadow. The mark on her neck pulses once, as if in response to my attention, and I feel an answering resonance in my own blood.

What have you done?

I yearn to ask her unconscious form the questions my soul desperately seeks answers to.

What are you?

But as dawn fully breaks over Wicked Academy, I realize we're far past the point of simple questions and answers.

Whatever she is or what this mark entails, we're now bound together in ways that even I, a prince of shadows and death, don't fully comprehend.

The game of our wicked lives has changed, and none of us know the new rules.

4

ECHOES IN THE DARK

~GWENIVERE~

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