Page 44 of The Bound Blood
She doesn’t flinch when my magic lashes toward her, flickering at her ankles like smoke. It touches her and dies. Then she launches herself at me, her arms going around me in a fierce hug. Her smile is wide and wild andproudwhen she pulls back.
“Student protest,” she says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re kind of the center of a revolution, babe.”
My lips part. “I—what?”
Nolan steps up beside me, chest rising hard with emotion. “They came for you, Lindsay. Even the ones who don’t knowwhat you’ve done. They’re here because they believe you should be allowed to speak. Tobe.”
“Nolan started the movement,” Tamsin adds, smug.
The chanting rises again, shaking the hall.
Let her speak.
My knees threaten to buckle. Kael shifts to catch me, but I wave him off. Just for a second. Because I need toseethis. All of it.
Every single face staring back at me. Not with fear.
But withhope.
The second I step fully into view, the chanting dies like someone flipped a switch. Magic pulses in the silence—alive and waiting—and I freeze, blinking into the hush.
No one glares or whispers.
There’s no edge of unease, no wide-eyed flinch like there was before the dance. They’re not watching a girl who broke the rules or might snap. They’re watchingme. And they’rehoping.
Something stutters in my chest.
Tears burn at the back of my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. I just stand there, choking on a hundred things I could say but don’t. Because what words evenfita moment like this?
So I do the only thing I can. I look at them. Every one of them.
And I let them look back.
My gaze snags on movement near the far column.
Auron. He tilts his head in acknowledgement and then steps back into the shadows, fading from view. Seeing him is unexpected after he ran from the fight at the dance.
But I move on quickly, hope growing inside my chest as I take it all in. Maybe I do belong here. Maybe the Council will have to answer to me now. Because what they did wasn't right.
NINETEEN
HEADMASTER VEYNE
The wards crackle faintlyas Headmaster Veyne steps through the arched entry of Veilborn Academy, the scent of magic clinging to his cloak. The silence that greets him is wrong. Too empty and brittle.
He was gone less than a day. Twenty hours, to be precise. Long enough to escort his daughter, Nyssa, back from the Fae border for her apprenticeship assignment. Short enough that he’d expected to return before the Council created any issues.
Apparently, he gave them too much credit.
A sharp flick of his fingers seals the main gate behind him, warding against intrusion from outside forces. The halls whisper of damage control—of power surged and stripped too fast. His boots strike the stone in a rhythmic echo as he passes faculty rooms and dorm wings now strangely quiet.
Too quiet for the middle of a school day.
When he reaches the Council’s private wing, he finds chaos thinly veiled beneath formality. The usual guards are gone. The chamber doors—one cracked wide open, one scorched at the frame—speak of something uncontained.
He enters.
Inside, five Councilors sit scattered at the crescent table like chastised children waiting for a lecture. Vemir is pale, eyes shadowed. Rennic won’t meet his gaze. And Welsh stares straight ahead as if he’s trying to unsee what they’ve done.
