BOUND BY MIDNIGHT BLOOD

Chapter 3: First Hollowing

I did not sleep that night.

I lay on my thin bed with my hands pressed flat on my stomach, staring at nothing. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the rocks rushing up at me again, and my legs kept flinching under the blanket, even though I was safe now, or as safe as I ever got in this place. I could have called out, I could have cried until someone came, but I had learned a long time ago that calling out never worked, so I just lay there instead, alone with the shaking.

By the time the sun came up, my eyes were heavy and my stomach hurt from being too scared to eat the night before. I still had to go to training. There was no version of this life where I got to rest, not even for one day, not even after everything.

The training field was already full of students when I got there. Small groups of girls stood together, whispering and the moment I passed every one of them stopped talking, like my footsteps carried some kind of warning. I kept my eyes down and my mouth shut, because looking up only ever gave them something new to laugh at.

Professor Aldric found me near the edge of the field. He bent down like he was fixing my stance, but his voice was too quiet for that.

"Old blood is waking, girl," he said. "Do not let them break you before you understand what you carry."

Then he left, and I stood there with more questions than I had started with. Nothing about this place ever came with a straight answer. Not once, not in six years.

During drills, two girls from Liora's group bumped into me hard enough to knock me down. "Watch it, stray," one of them said, walking past like I was a puddle in her way. I lay there a second longer than I needed to, just breathing, half hoping someone might offer a hand, but unfortunately nothing happened. I got up on my own,like I always did. Nothing about this place ever offered help freely, so I had stopped expecting it a long time ago, even if some small part of me kept hoping anyway.

My arms shook every time I lifted them by the middle of the morning. My knees were raw and bleeding a little from the balance beams, thin red lines soaking through the fabric of my training pants. The drills never stopped for me. My tiredness went unnoticed, or if it was noticed, it did not matter enough for anyone to say so. I was starting to wonder if anyone here saw me as a real person at all, or just as something to use until it broke completely.

During a water break, Riven walked up and handed me a bottle without asking if I wanted one.

"Rough morning, shadow girl?" His grin was easy, like nothing in his life had ever been hard. "If they get rough with you, just say the word."

"I can handle myself," I said, my voice sharper than I meant it to be.

"I bet you can." He smiled wider and left before I could say anything else. My skin felt warm where his arm had brushed mine, and I hated that I noticed something so small.

Then soren appeared beside me, quiet, the way he always seemed to move. He did not speak, he just looked at me, and I felt something press gently inside my head, like fingers testing a locked door.

Pictures flashed through my mind that were not mine to share. The fall,and a hand around my wrist. My own heartbeat racing for a boy I barely knew.

I stepped back fast. "Stay out of my head."

"Interesting," he said, his face giving away nothing. "The paths around you keep changing."

I walked off before he could say more, my legs shaking harder than before.

The Ritual started too soon. A crowd had already formed, three rows deep, waiting to watch.

"Lyra Emberly versus Dorian Black."

Dorian stepped into the ring already smiling, sure of himself in a way that only comes from already knowing how something ends. My hands curled into fists without me telling them to.

He came at me fast. I dodged the first two hits, but the third one caught me hard in the ribs and knocked the air out of me completely. The crowd cheered, Liora watched from the front row, arms crossed, satisfied, like she had already spent this moment before it even happened.

"Stay down, stray." He grabbed my shoulder and pushed me toward the ground, and something inside me finally broke loose.

Shadow poured out of my skin before I could stop it. I slipped behind him, fast, and pulled some of his strength away. He staggered, I hit him again, and again, until he was on the ground with shadow curled around his throat.

"Yield."

He tapped out fast, his eyes wide with fear.

I had won. For one second, standing there in the middle of the ring with the crowd screaming my name for the first time in my life, I thought maybe that would feel good. I thought maybe, just this once, winning might mean something.

It did not.

The ground tilted under my feet. A memory ripped loose without warning, my mother laughing in a garden I had not thought about in years, her hands covered in dirt, her face turned toward the sun. It was gone before I could hold onto her face, gone the way smoke goes when you try to catch it. My chest felt hollow where that memory used to be, like something warm had been scooped out of me and thrown away, and there was nothing I could do to get it back. I wanted to cry. I could not even manage that much.

Liora pushed through the crowd, pale and shaking. "You cheated! You are a monster, Lyra! Father never should have brought you here."

Words came out of my mouth that were not mine, cold words I could not stop even as I heard myself saying them. "At least I am not the weak little puppet who needs a charity case around just to feel important. He only kept you because your blood is weak. That is why he sent me. To watch you fail."

Liora's face broke. She turned and ran, crying, and I stood there feeling empty inside, not even guilt for what I had just done to her, which scared me more than anything that had happened in that ring.

A hand closed gently around my arm.

Kael pulled me away from the noise, and when I finally looked up at him, the hunger from before was gone. Something else had taken its place.

"Lyra," he said quietly. "What is happening to you?"

I did not have an answer. My legs still ached, my chest still felt hollow in a way that scared me more than the pain did, and somewhere out there, Liora was crying because of words I had never wanted to say. I was starting to think this whole academy was full of people who could see me clearly for the first time and still not really see me at all.