Page 112 of Black Wing and Shadows
“I don’t like it either,”he admitted. His voice softened, brushing against me with a warmth that cut through the chill of my chamber.“But pretending doesn’t kill you. Knowing too much might.”
I sank onto the edge of my bed, clutching my knees.“So, what do we do?”
For a heartbeat, his presence pressed closer, almost like his hand against mine.“We survive,”he said.“We keep our eyes open. Whoever’s doing this… they’ll make a mistake. And when they do, we’ll be ready.”
His certainty settled in me like an ember, not enough to burn away the fear, but enough to keep me from breaking under it.
And I couldn’t shake the thought. What if I was next?
The bell finally tolled, signaling the end of the lockdown and announcing that it had been lifted. My stomach clenched with hunger. I spent hours confined in my chamber with no breakfast, surrounded by silence and the echo of Lili’s warning that haunted me. Our floor was filled with other cadet leaders, so fewer of us rushed out of our rooms. I imagined the seventh-floor erupting into chaos.
The dining facility was already packed when I slipped inside, the noise jagged and uneven. No laughter, no casual chatter—a buzz of whispers, sharp enough to cut skin.
“They said he was an asshole anyway.”
“Got what came to him.”
“Always thought he was cruel in sparring.”
I froze in the doorway for a moment, listening.
They weren’t talking about what happened or who could’ve done it. They were talking about the cadet himself—the one who’d been sprawled across the courtyard with his eyes wide open and that blackened wound across his chest.
“He used to trip people in the obstacle course for fun.”
“Broke a first-year’s arm and laughed about it.”
“My squad hated him.”
The words slithered around me as I moved toward the food line, each one making my skin crawl. Relief. That was what I heard under fear. A twisted kind of satisfaction. It chilled me more than the body had.
If someone was truly out there killing cadets and everyone believed only the cruel deserved it. How long before they decided I should be on that list? I clenched my tray tighter, keeping my face blank as I sat next to Zane. His jaw was tense, his eyes steely, and he ignored the whispers as if they were mere buzzing flies.
But I could feel his bond brushing against mine, tense and alert. He’d sensed it too. Everyone was hungry and afraid.
And some of them—gods help us—were almost grateful.
I stepped into the sparring gym with Professor Gile. Today it was all of our platoon, a platoon from the Drusearons, and a group from the Sorcerers. The air felt different. Charged. Paranoid. Usually, sparring was sharp and competitive. Cadets were eager to prove themselves. Not today. No one wanted to turn their back.
We lined up in pairs for sparring. No call-outs today. My palms were slick, the steel of the sword tacky in my grip. Across from me, my opponent’s eyes kept darting past me, scanning the rows, like he was waiting for someone else to strike him from behind.
“Focus,” Professor Gile snapped. “Begin!”
Steel clashed. Boots scuffed. But every swing was half-hearted, tentative. Blades that should’ve been quick and clean—dragged, slow, as if no one dared to push too hard.
“Pathetic!” the Gile roared, weaving between lines of cadets. “You think the enemy will hesitate? Again!”
My opponent lunged, sloppy and late. I sidestepped easily, heart pounding harder than the fight warranted. It wasn’t him I was afraid of. It was the whispers in the mess hall, the smoldered wound on that cadet’s chest, the idea that someone among us could be watching, choosing who “deserved” to die next.
Somewhere down the line, two cadets went at each other too hard—panic bleeding into fury. One’s blade slammed into the other’s ribs with a thud that made everyone freeze. The cadet doubled over, coughing, spitting blood into the dirt.
Every face I looked at carried the same question in their eyes—what if I’m next?I clenched my sword tighter, chest burning. This wasn’t training anymore. This was fear, raw and dangerous, spreading through us like rot.
***
After dinner, half of my wing gathered in the small practice gym of the Alpha Wing, restless and too tense to stay in our rooms. It smelled of sweat and old leather. A few of us pretended to stretch, others tossed practice blades back and forth, but no one was really training. The air buzzed with whispers.
“They say it was a shifter,” one cadet muttered near the wall, voice pitched low but carrying in the quiet. “Figures. Can’t trust their kind.”
