Cassandra's eyes fluttered open. The chamber swam—white plaster ceiling, firelight dancing against carved beams. Her throat burned. A figure bent over her: Alfonse, his hand tight around hers.
"Sister?" His voice cracked with relief.
"Don't move," another said—Alistar, shadow looming by the bedside, eyes red-rimmed from sleepless nights.
She tried to sit, but her body protested. Pain stitched across her ribs, sharp and merciless. She sank back into the pillows with a gasp.
"How long?" she whispered, voice raw.
Alfonse hesitated. "A fortnight."
Two weeks. The words landed like a blow. Fourteen days lost to darkness. Fourteen days the world had gone on without her. Her brothers had ruled, rumors had spread, decisions had been made—and she had lain unmoving, absent from her own life.
Her fingers trembled against the blanket. "What happened to me?"
Alfonse's gaze flicked aside. "The story told is that an intruder made an attempt on your life while you were in the gardens."
She closed her eyes. A man. But she remembered claws, smoke, jagged teeth. The truth and the lie tangled until even she doubted her own memory.
"And what of Sir Leoleta?" Her voice cracked on his name.
Neither brother answered. The silence around him grew heavier with every heartbeat, like a door shut deliberately in her face. And yet his presence lingered—in the way both brothers clenched their fists, in the way Liaerin's eyes looked away too quickly. He had been there. He must have been. But no one would say.
And she remembered—
The garden split with light. His eyes glowing -. The storm gathering to him as though it belonged to him alone, lightning dancing between him and the beast. She had seen him fight—terrible and brilliant—lightning shattering stone, fire crawling the hedges. And then him falling beside her, bleeding.
How could they pretend nothing had happened? How could they tell her nothing, when the memory burned inside her?
Her chest tightened. "Why won't you tell me?"
Alistar's mouth opened, but Alfonse touched his arm, cutting him off. "Because he failed you," Alfonse said, voice hard. "And for that failure, he is being held to account. It is not your burden to hear the details."
Allistar went to her side, "Please rest Cassandra." He said gently.
Cassandra turned her head away and looked out the window.
Rest? How? When she had already lost two weeks to darkness.
The days that followed bled together. The healers and her brothers moved her to the hunting lodge on the cliffs, claiming the salt air would aid recovery. She was too weak to protest. Sunlight spilled across whitewashed walls; gulls cried beyond the balcony.
Each morning the healers unwrapped her bandages, tested her blood, and murmured over their findings. The salt air mended her body, but not the hollowness that grew heavier within.
Weeks passed like watercolor—blurring edges, softening time.
She should have been grateful for the quiet, for the chance to mend. But every day she woke with her body stronger and her spirit heavier. Dark circles gathered under her eyes, and she grew visibly thinner. The world was moving while she floated in still water.
Every time she asked after Leoleta, the silence grew colder. The void of his absence haunted her more than any nightmare.
The following morning had been quiet—gulls wheeling above the cliffs, the sea restless but steady. Then the air shifted, like the hush before a storm. A carriage door closed outside, voices murmured, and boots struck the lodge floor.
When Headmaster Verran entered, the chamber seemed to draw inward, its walls pressing close. His presence filled the space, calm as a blade laid flat upon a table—silent, waiting, inevitable.
"You appear stronger than when last I looked upon you," he said, his gaze falling to the open books scattered across her bed.
Cassandra smoothed the quilt with deliberate care. "I may walk to the balcony now, if that is your meaning. Yet still they treat me as though I am made of glass."
"You were near to shattering," Verran replied. His tone bore no cruelty, no pity—only the weight of fact. He regarded her long, as though seeking the lines of her father's face within her own.
"I have questions," she said quickly, almost sharply. "And none will grant me answers."
"Then hear mine first." He stepped nearer, his eyes unflinching. "You bear more than mortal flesh was meant to carry. Your power is of the divine. That is why the creature came. That is why it shall come again."
Her breath caught. "Divine?"
Verran's gaze did not waver. "You did not wake when the healers closed your wounds. The hellbeast's strike left dark mana festering in you, and mortal remedies could not drive it out. In their testing, they found what I already suspected—your blood bore a mark no other carries. We call such magic divine."
He turned then, clasping his hands behind his back as he began to pace the chamber, each measured step echoing against the floor. "The power that answers to no discipline of men," he said. "It is not taught, nor inscribed in literature or charm. It arises unbidden, bending itself to the heart rather than the hand. That is why such things are drawn to you—why they will ever be drawn—until you learn to command it."
"But—" Cassandra began.
"The Academy of the Arts shall teach you to wield it," said Verran. "Here, you will summon only death." He studied her a moment longer. "Are you able to stand?"
The words fell chill upon her. The estate, her father's halls, the cliffs she had always known—none of these could shelter her now. She rose with care, drawing a shawl close about her shoulders, as though it might shield her from more than cold.
"Show me," Verran said.
Her brow furrowed. "What would you have me show?"
"How you summon it forth."
"I do not summon," she whispered. "It stirs of its own accord—when my heart is moved."
He took her cup and set it upon the window ledge. "Command this glass. Bend it to your hand."
"How am I to do so?"
"By whatever means your gift yields," he answered with a faint shrug.
Cassandra extended her hand, trembling.
"What stirs it most strongly?" he asked, his voice low behind her.
"Fear," she breathed, unable to withhold the word.
"Then recall it," said Verran. "Call to mind the night you were assailed."
Her heart hammered. She drew the shawl tighter, but cloth could not bar the memory. The garden's shadows rose before her, the creature's laughter curling through the dark as her limbs betrayed her.
A vapour gathered in the chamber, thin as incense smoke at first, then thickening, coiling, shaping itself. It grew limbs, a grin, the monstrous frame she knew too well. The floor groaned beneath its tread.
Cassandra's tears fell hot upon her cheeks.
"Now, Cassandra!" Verran's command rang sharp as steel striking stone.
She flung her arms wide in desperation. Light surged from her hands, fierce and sudden. It struck the apparition, scattering it into smoke. The window burst open with a violent gust, and the cup was dashed from the ledge to shatter in the courtyard below.
Silence roared in her ears. She staggered, clutching at the bedpost to steady herself, breath heaving. The taste of smoke lingered, bitter and sharp.
"It was here," she gasped, voice breaking. "I saw it—I felt it—"
"It was not flesh," Verran said, his voice unyielding. "Only the shadow of your fear. You gave it form."
Her eyes blurred with tears as she looked to the open night. "Yet it seemed real. Its breath was in my ears, its weight upon the floor—"
"And so it shall be to any who face you, should you let fear command you." He strode to the window and closed it with a sure hand. "This is why you must depart. Power such as this cannot lie untutored; if it should break loose again, it will bring ruin."
She sank upon the bed, trembling, her hand pressed hard against her breast. Never had she felt so small, so helpless. To summon her own nightmare—what manner of being was she?
Verran's words fell quiet, but heavy as stone. "Your father shielded you as long as fate allowed. You must now stand in the open."
How could she ever hope to protect herself? She understood only fragments—of her power, of her place in the vastness of the world. To linger on such thoughts was useless, yet the truth pressed all the heavier for being set aside.
She was lost, and for the first time she feared she might never be found.