Page 4 of Breaking Isolde
I let go. Watched him collapse onto the stone, blood pooling under his cheek.
“Don’t bother calling me out on assault. No one will give a fuck.”
After a minute, I wiped my hands on his jacket and walked out, closing the chapel doors behind me.
No one stopped me. No one even looked up as I crossed the quad. I kept walking until I reached the dorm, where I stood in the lobby for a long time, waiting for Casey’s ghost to show up and tell me what to do next.
For the first time in a week, she didn’t show.
I spent the rest of the night in my room, lights off, listening to Bam and Julian box each other and wondering how much of myself I’d left behind that night. When the sun came up, Ishowered and changed, then put on my uniform and went to class like nothing had happened.
The blood washed off easy, but it took three days for my hands to stop shaking.
The wind is up again, barreling across the quad and stripping the last leaves from the sycamores. It’s the kind of cold that comes from underneath, forcing itself through wool and skin and bone. I lean on the sill of the tower’s window, watching the students below brace themselves against the weather.
Most walk in packs, heads down, hands buried in pockets, boots churning up last week’s snowmelt. The only ones who walk alone are either too stupid or too dangerous to care.
She falls into the second category.
I know who she is before the secretary even says her name. Isolde Greenwood. The Board could have assigned her to any house—sent her to a lesser dorm, like they did Ophelia, kept her out of sight, maybe even waited a year or two before letting her back onto campus. But they put her in Archer House, same as Casey, and scheduled her arrival for the first day of the newsemester. No subtlety, no attempt at a buffer. It’s either a test or a trap.
Either way, I’m ready.
She crosses the quad with a measured stride, hair flaming in the light, backpack slung with precise indifference. She wears the uniform like armor, pleats knife-sharp, tie loose enough to suggest nonchalance but never actually ask for forgiveness. The purple pin on her lapel catches the light—Casey’s old color, reissued for the next of kin. The symbolism isn’t subtle. The Board loves their little cruelties.
I track her progress through the window, pulse kicking faster than I want to admit. It’s not attraction, not exactly. More like the buzz of a lightbulb, the certainty that if I touch her, I might finally feel something other than regret. She moves with intent, every step calculated, as if she’s already mapped the perimeter and logged the choke points.
The only moment she hesitates is when she passes the trophy case on the south colonnade, where the red silk banner is still stuck on the same jagged edge. She slows, barely perceptible, then moves on.
I watch until she disappears into the entrance of Archer House. Then I stand very still, counting the seconds until my heartbeat returns to normal.
It doesn’t.
That night, I take my dinner in the faculty lounge, which is quieter than the student commons. The walls are lined with portraits of dead donors and living disappointments. The food is better here—real silverware, wine instead of watered-down soda—but the company is worse. I eat alone because no one is gonna say a fucking word about it, scrolling through the days debriefs. My phone buzzes at the top of every hour with notifications from the Board, each message more bland than the last.
After the third glass, I put the phone down and close my eyes.
Casey’s ghost is waiting. I don’t try to resist.
This time, she’s not in the lobby, or the river, or the chapel. She’s in Isolde’s room. The room I can see when I stand in the library and look out across the quad. Shamelessly, I snatched a pair of binoculars from a bird watching nerd on my way here when I figured out I could watch her from afar.
The sheets are white, boring. Ghost-Casey stands in the corner, watching as Isolde unpacks a single suitcase onto the bed, folding each item with care, never looking up.
Isolde moves through the room, closing drawers, aligning books on the desk. At one point, she pauses and runs a fingertip along the frame of a picture—the only personal item she’s unpacked so far. I can’t see the photo, but I know what’s in it. I know who.
The moment dies, and Casey vanishes.
It doesn’t take long before I’m back in my bed, staring up at the ceiling, ignoring the guys trying to convince me to party. To forget that it’s my turn to hunt next.
The old hunger is stirring, not just in my chest but in my hands, my jaw, every part of me that remembers the Hunt and what it feels like to own something so completely it stops being a person and becomes a function of your own will.
The way Isolde is every bit as similar to her sister, and yet worlds apart, burns away the pain at remembering my failure. I already know that’s who my match is. A redo. A chance at redemption.
Casey was a lesson. Isolde is a test.
Either way, I won’t make the same mistake twice.
This time, when the Night Hunt begins, I’ll be ready.
