MAEVE POV
The silence in this camp feels like a blade ready to slice through skin. After what happened in the cave with Alaric and Dorian’s warning in the tent, a suffocating sense of unease coils tightly in my chest. I can feel the stares from the other students. Some are filled with hatred, like Welden’s, others with dangerous curiosity.
But what unsettles me the most is the looseness around my chest.
The white silk binding that hides my identity is gone, replaced by strips torn from my linen shirt. And once again, they don’t sit right. Every time I breathe, I can feel the fabric slipping another inch.
If I don’t fix it now, my disguise will fall apart because of a piece of cloth that failed its only job.
I slip out of the tent, moving quietly through the shadows of the trees tow
