Page 75 of Bound By Fate
He was still wearing his white suit from yesterday, but it was no longer pristine. It was stained with mud, wrinkled from sleeping in his office, and—most damning of all—still dusted with persistent, un-removable pink glitter.
He looked exhausted. He looked manic. He looked like a man who had spent forty-eight hours fighting a war against ducks and yodeling, and lost.
"This ends now!" he shouted.
His voice was amplified by a hasty spell, booming across the quad. But it lacked the smooth, oily confidence of his early speeches. It sounded thin. Desperate.
"I am the Dean! I am the authority! I demand order! I demand silence! I demand respect!"
"You demand a lot of things," a deep voice rumbled across the grass.
The crowd parted. It wasn't a fearful retreat; it was a respectful opening of the path.
We walked in.
Rhett was on my left. He wasn't in a suit. He wasn't in armor. He was wearing faded jeans and a leather jacket that strained across his shoulders. He looked like the Alpha of Northcrest, not because of a title, but because he vibrated with power.
Kai was on my right. He was barefoot, despite the slush. Where his feet touched the ground, tiny snowdrops bloomed in the gray mud.
Lucien was behind me, my shadow made manifest. He was wearing sunglasses (at 10 AM on a cloudy day) and looking effortlessly, insultingly bored.
And me. I was wearing my favorite hoodie—the one I had worn on my first day here. The one that saidI'd Rather Be Reading.
"Get off my campus," Marrow snarled, pointing a shaking finger at us. "Expelled! All of you! Expelled!"
"On what grounds?" Lucien asked. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried perfectly in the silence. He took off his sunglasses, revealing violet eyes that gleamed with amusement. "Wehaven't broken any rules, Dean. We've just... followed them too enthusiastically."
"You incited a riot!" Marrow screamed. Spittle flew from his mouth. "You turned the cafeteria into a garden! You glitter-bombed the exams! You turned my security detail into waterfowl!"
"Allegedly," Ivy called out from the crowd. She was sitting on the shoulders of the Minotaur from the football team, eating a bag of popcorn. "That glitter could have come from anywhere. It's mating season for pixies. They get very enthusiastic."
Laughter rippled through the students. It was a dark, bubbling sound. The sound of a crowd that had realized the emperor wasn't just naked; he was ridiculous.
Marrow's face turned a shade of purple that clashed horribly with the pink glitter.
"I am a Null!" he screamed. "I can strip the magic from your bones! I can leave you empty! I can leave you hollow!"
He raised his hands.
The air grew cold. I felt the tug—the familiar, sucking sensation of the void. He was trying to pull the static, trying to feed on the fear.
But he was empty. He had burned through his reserves trying to clean up the glitter (which was magic-resistant, thanks to Ivy).
Taking a step forward, I didn't flinch. I didn't raise a shield.
"Go ahead," I said.
"Lina," Rhett warned, a low growl building in his throat.
"No," I said, looking Marrow in the eye. "Let him try. Because here's the thing about being a Null, Dean. You're only scary when we're afraid to lose our magic."
I looked at the crowd. At the wolves, the vamps, the fae, the humans.
"But we figured something out," I said, my voice rising. "We don't need magic to beat you."
I signaled to the crowd.
"Yeah!" a voice shouted. It was a freshman—the one who had yodeled in the library. "You dress like a disco ball!"
