Elowen walked.
She didn't know where she was going. Didn't care. She just needed to move, needed to put distance between herself and that classroom, that demonstration, that person lying unconscious on the platform while everyone took notes.
The hallways blurred together. Crystalline walls gave way to stone, then back to crystal. Floating orbs drifted past, their soft light doing nothing to ease the cold knot in her chest. She passed students in clusters—beautiful, laughing, normal—and every single one of them made her skin crawl.
Because they weren't normal.
They were predators wearing human faces.
And she was surrounded by them.
Her breath came faster. Shorter. The walls seemed to pulse with each heartbeat, the castle itself alive and watching. She turned down another corridor, the
