Isadora
The room smelled of rain and bloodshed.
I sat on the edge of my bed, fingers pressed to the cold nightstand, as lightning stitched its jagged seams across the black sky. Thunder rolled in like a war drum, and with it came the groans and wails of a world that had been shut out until tonight. Banshees howled somewhere in the distance, their cries sliding down the stone walls like knives. The Academy’s wards had fallen, and everything I’d been told was legend now stalked our halls.
I felt it all in my blood, in the strange power that pulsed beneath my skin like a second heartbeat. My stomach churned with hunger—not for food, but for something else, something darker. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe.
The door burst open.
Kai stumbled in first, pale as chalk, his coat torn and
