Page 110 of Black Wing and Shadows
The cadets shuffled, but no one tore their eyes away. His gaze, glassy and fixed, looked like it still tracked us. The smell of burnt flesh clung to the air, thick and sweet, sinking into the back of my throat until I wanted to gag. Behind me, a girl bent double and vomited. Another voice trembled through a prayer, the words sharp against the silence.
Zane appeared at my side, his shoulder brushing mine. His jaw clenched hard, eyes gone dark with fury. I knew that look—he was already scouring the crowd, ready to fix blame. And gods help whoever he chose. “Don’t,” I whispered. My voice sounded foreign in my own throat.
He didn’t answer, but his hand brushed against mine, steadying me in a way he wouldn’t admit aloud.
Professors rushed in, robes sweeping the floor as they forced us back. One dropped beside the body, two fingers pressing against the cadet’s throat. His stillness told the truth—he was gone. Another professor scattered powder in a ring around him, muttering low and fast, the words laced with urgency. Not to save him. To contain whatever lingered.
“Back to your chambers,” the instructor snapped. “Now.”
But no one moved. Because we all knew the truth, whether they said it aloud or not, this wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t training.
Someone killed him.
And they wanted us to see it.
We didn’t go to breakfast. We didn’t go anywhere.
“Back to your chambers,” the instructor roared again, voice raw with something that wasn’t solely anger—fear. “Now! Move!”
The courtyard erupted into chaos with boots pounding and cadets stumbling into each other as we were herded like livestock. I followed, my legs feeling as if they were carved from stone. My eyes kept darting back to the body until the professors formed a tight circle around it, obscuring it from view. Lockdown. Morning lectures canceled. No drills, no training. Only the hollow echo of our own thoughts filled the quiet chambers.
I went to the seventh floor to check on my flight. The halls were chaotic. At first, no one spoke. We had all seen death before, but not like that—left in the open as some twisted message.
“They said accident,” one of the cadets muttered, voice thin.
“Accident?” I snapped before I could stop myself. “Did you see his chest? That wasn’t a blade or a fall. That was—” I cut myself off, throat closing.
“That was what?” someone challenged, eyes wide, desperate.
There was no answer, only the image of those blackened veins crawling from his sternum.
“It was murder,” another whispered.
The word silenced the chamber. Murder. Once spoken, it clung to the walls, impossible to scrape away.
I finally made it to my own chamber after encouraging everyone to get into their rooms. My mind kept replaying the way his eyes were empty, how his body had been left in the courtyard like a warning. The person who did this wanted us to be afraid. And it was working.
I’d been sitting on the edge of my bed for what felt like hours, staring at the same knot in the floorboards, replaying the courtyard again and again. The boy’s eyes, the blackened wound, the way the professors closed ranks around the body as though shielding us from the truth.
A sharp knock rattled the door. I jolted upright. No one should be visiting during lockdown.
“Auri,” Lili’s voice hissed through the wood. “It’s me.”
I rushed across the room and swung open the door. Her braid was half-loose, and her cheeks were flushed as if she had run here. She moved to come inside but hit the invisible barrier and bounced back. She looked shocked, but I reached out, grabbed her arm, and pulled her in. I closed the door behind her.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, heart hammering.
“We are gonna come back tothat, but I had to tell you.” She wrung her hands, pacing once before stopping in front of me. Her eyes were wide, fierce with a secret that wanted out. “This isn’t the first cadet they’ve found.”
The words landed like a punch. “What do you mean?”
Her throat bobbed. “It’s the fourth. Four bodies, Auri. The others were… removed before anyone else could see. Found quick and quietly. But this one—” she shook her head, voice dropping to a whisper, “they couldn’t hide it. Too many of us were already in the courtyard.”
Pure cold washed over me. “Four,” I repeated, as if I said it out loud, it would make sense. It didn’t.
“They keep saying it’s on a need-to-know basis.” Lili’s mouth twisted, bitter. “But how long can they keep lying to us? Pretending it’s simply an accident when it’s murder?”
I braced against the edge of my desk, knuckles white. “Why tell me?”
