Elira's POV
The academy appeared through the trees at dawn.
I was walking for most of the night and my body was informing me of that fact with increasing directness for the last two hours, but the moment the tree opened and Northern Crescent Academy sat in the morning light ahead of us I forgot about all of it for a full thirty seconds.
It was nothing like I had imagined.
I don't know what I had imagined exactly. Something institutional, perhaps. Something that looked like authority and hierarchy and the architectural coldness of places designed to remind you of your position within them. Blackthorn's pack house had that quality. Stone and iron and a deliberate heaviness that pressed down on everyone who moved through it.
Northern Crescent was different.
It sat against the northern
