"I didn't need to hear the words to know danger was coming."
By morning, the poison had already spread through the Academy's corridors like plague through a besieged city.
I felt it the moment I stepped from my dormitory chamber-the weight of whispers sharpened into daggers, the careful way conversations died when I passed, the sideways glances that followed me like hunting hounds. Gideon hadn't wasted a single hour of darkness.
The great hall buzzed with morning activity as students filed toward the dining tables laden with thick porridge, fresh bread, and salted meat. Servants in rough-spun wool moved between the long wooden tables, refilling pewter cups with small ale and clearing away trenchers. But beneath the ordinary sounds of breakfast, I caught fragments of carefully orchestrat
