Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
When you practice with blunted weapons, there’s always a point at which the armored body resists, or the other weapon stops yours. But these men are not wearing armor, and my blade doesn’t stop. It slices through a man like a hot knife going through butter. There’s a smooth, slight feeling of very satisfying resistance that is more like a massage to the blade, and that is it.
They can’t teach this in the academy. In later years, you cut through dead pigs, but the guy I just hit was alive.
I pull my sword free and a spray of hot human blood hits my face in an arterial spatter. The guard drops in front of me, bleeding profusely from the wound in his gut and making the worst gagging sounds I have ever heard as he clutches his stomach. He starts to cough up blood not a second or two later. It’s awful. He’s so vulnerable. He’s so hurt. He’s dying. And I did that to him.
I let out a sobbing gasp and drop my sword.
I can’t do this. I can’t see this. I can’t be this.
A streak of silver flashes over my head as someone strikes out and misses me because I am shifting, falling out of my human form entirely and taking animal form in pure panic.
Another cry of surprise goes up. My secrets are legion and layered inside me, but already two of my biggest ones have been displayed to all those present. I come from a bloodline that is not entirely human. I am a wolf. An animal. And I am frightened.
I run.
I am much faster as a wolf than I could ever be as a person, and I use that speed to escape back into the city. Wolves streaking through the streets are rare, so I will most likely be confused for a dog.
I still have enough sense to take the back routes, rushing into the poorest areas of the city where there is no surveillance because any drone or camera would be immediately stolen and stripped for parts.
There, when I am absolutely certain I am not observed, or followed, I nose around until I find some laundry being hung out to dry off one of the balconies. I feel bad about stealing clothes from a person who almost certainly can’t afford them, but there’s no choice. If I get caught going back into the academy in my wolf form—and I will be caught—there will be hell to pay. Shifting is strictly illegal if it’s not being done to protect the king. It’s so rare that a lot of the citizens of Eclipse don’t believe it’s actually real.
I take my human form, I put the clothes on, and I go as fast as I can back to the academy, trying to push the image of the dying man out of my mind. I am shaking from head to toe, feeling hot and nauseous with disgust at what I just did. Every time I take a breath or blink, he’s there, dying in front of me all over again.
“Darcy! What are you doing out here!”
A tutor from the academy snaps my name. I look up. It’s Mr. Bracken. He teaches first aid. Ironic. He’s looking at me with simple annoyance. We’re still several blocks from the academy, which means I am well and truly caught for the crime of being out of school. That really doesn’t feel like a big deal right now.
“Where have you been?”
“Nowhere.” I don’t bother to make up an excuse. My brain isn’t working well enough to fabricate one. I want to scream and cry, but I can’t because that would be suspicious as fuck, and I don’t want anybody to know I just killed a cardinal’s guard.
The only small bit of comfort is that I won’t be tracked back to the academy. My presence here is a secret. Female shifters all belong up at the castle. So if anything, they’ll be looking in the king’s harem for a secret shifter female fighter. Crazy.
“You were supposed to be in class, and then in detention. You’ve been missing all day. Don’t think we don’t notice. We do.”
God. Detention. I wish I had been in detention, instead of making the memory of what it feels like to have someone’s lifeblood spatter across my face.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have gone. I forgot.”
“You didn’t forget,” he says. “You did what you always do—whatever you wanted to do. It’s not good enough.”
I lower my head and I let him lecture me all the way back to the academy.
I feel terribly guilty for what I did, and for getting myself into the situation, and now I even feel bad for running. I just roached out of that fight, scuttled for my life like a cowardly invertebrate. I exposed my face, and my shifter form, and everything else in front of three strange men and a whole unit of cardinal’s guards, assuming any of them survived the fight.