The journey to Blackwood took most of the day. I spent most of it staring through the carriage window, watching the landscape change — the academy disappearing behind us, replaced by rolling hills, thick forests, and distant mountains whose peaks vanished into the clouds.
I should have been relieved. Instead, I couldn't stop thinking about the two girls. Two students were dead, and someone had written my name in blood.
And now I was going home. Home. The word felt strange. I had a home here, apparently — a family. A father, a mother, and a younger sister who knew me as Symon Wardreth. I knew almost nothing about them, yet some part of me did. That was the worst part.
Now and then, a memory surfaced without warning — a voice, a room, a laugh, a hand grabbing mine. They weren't my memorie
