The gates didn't just open for him.
They bowed.
I watched from the Tower window, four marks still smoking fresh on my skin, Lyra panting huge and triumphant inside my chest, as the white bone carriage rolled into the Academy courtyard.
It wasn't pulled by horses. It was pulled by six wolves.
They were bigger than any wolf I'd ever seen, bigger than Kade's shadow wolf form, their fur pure white, but their eyes... they had no eyes. Just smooth fur over where eyes should be. And their mouths were sewn shut with silver thread.
Silencers. The Temple's hounds.
The carriage itself was made of bone. Not wood painted white. Real bone, fused together, humming that same nothing-hum the Inquisitor had.
Every student, every professor, every Enforcer in the Academy had been forced to the courtyar
