Chapter 43 | Magnus

Chapter 43

Magnus

I LICKED MY LIPS, TASTING the essence of Ravinica on them.

When I had leaned down to kiss her forehead before leaving Eir Wing, I had picked a specific spot to kiss. A bit of subterfuge, I suppose. I had kissed her where there had been a scabbing gash on her forehead, with a bit of dried blood caking the wound.

Having access to Ravinica's blood was all I needed to suit my purposes.

Now, when I tasted the hint of her life-blood on my tongue and lips, I used my bloodrending to recall memories of where she'd been. I closed my eyes, focusing, and fragments of pictures sprouted in my mind.

There were lesser-known bloodrender traits I hadn't told Ravinica about. Skills bloodrenders could tap into, though rarely used. The ability to scent blood and form skeletal memories from that blood was incredibly powerful. If the academy supers knew I could do it, they'd have my head on a pike by sunup.

Even as an initiate, I had to keep a low profile at this damned school. It was just as dangerous for me as it was for Ravinica—maybe more so, because I knew they wanted to test me and steal my power.

I wouldn't fucking give it to them. Not willingly.

I walked away from Eir Wing in a hurry, once the vague memories had populated in my head and I had a better understanding of where she'd been before getting attacked.

Vala Chamber. Near it. In the longhouse village, creeping through the alleys. A shadow jumped out at her. Then another. She spoke with Astrid Dahlmyrr.

From there, the memories grew hazy as the blood dissipated on my tongue. They became even murkier once I caught the free-for-all melee involving Ravinica and Astrid's thugs. When Ravinica was knocked unconscious, the memories faded completely.

I didn't have the whole understanding. Just enough to work with.

From Eir Wing, I made the short trek to Vala Chamber and the nearby longhouses. The attack had been on Saturday night. It was late Monday, which meant there had been classes today.

I frowned when I came to the longhouses and noticed the many footprints. There were too many treads to count—too many to properly track. I would need Grim to do that bit, with his heightened senses.

I left the longhouses feeling sullen. I tightened my trench coat around my body and made for Nottdeen Quarter. Once I got there, I stayed in the nearby trees, stalking, and watched.

Women exited and entered the dormitory in a slow trickle. This late, past midnight, the number of students coming in to sleep far exceeded the number leaving.

I only needed one.

Hers was a face I recognized from Ravinica's memories. A flash of a snarl from a shadow. A cudgel in her hand. I didn't even know her name.

It didn't fucking matter.

When I saw the young woman leave the mess hall, say bye to her friends, and walk alone toward the dormitory along the cobblestone road, I made my move.

I snuck out of the trees like a ghost and hurried up behind her when she reached a bend in the road. She looked over her shoulder when I was five feet away, too late—

I closed the gap with a lunge, wrapped my arm around her neck, and cupped my hand over her mouth so she couldn't scream.

"Shh," I said into her ear as she struggled, madly screaming into my palm. "Quiet yourself, or I crack your neck."

She stilled, her arms no longer flailing. She was a slight woman, easily breakable. I was ready to make good on my promise.

"I have one question for you," I whispered into her ear, keeping my hand on her mouth. We were only fifty feet from the entrance of the dormitory. There was no one else on the road right now.

"Where is she?"

The girl's eyebrows arched helplessly. She didn't know who I was talking about—I didn't need to hear her say it to know what that look expressed.

"Astrid Dahlmyrr. Is she inside Nottdeen Quarter?"

The girl gave me a quick headshake. Her body jolted as she tried to resist again. I held firm, keeping her body in place, arms wrapped tight.

"Tell me," I said, "and don't scream, or you know what I'll do. I'm not in the mood for games."

Slowly, with an expectant nod, I lowered my hand from her mouth.

The girl looked terrified. "S-She has a special lodge, as the Tomekeeper's daughter. Doesn't stay at Nottdeen like t-the rest of us."

"Where is it?"

The girl hesitated.

I tightened my grip on her neck.

" Where is it ?" I growled in her ear.

"Southwest dwellings! Third house from the bottom of the village there."

I knew the area. It was where many second-year students stayed, including Eirik Halldan and his gang. And apparently one nepotistic silvermoor initiate.

"Good," I said.

"L-Let me go, dammit! I've told you what—"

With a sickening crack, the girl's body went limp in my arms as I twisted her neck, snapping her spine.

She became dead weight in my arms, and I dragged her off the road, stuffing her into some bushes.

Looking down at her corpse, feeling nothing for what I'd just done, I said, "You hurt my girl. No one gets to do that."

I couldn't let Astrid get a warning from her friend that I was coming for her, now could I?

Corpses couldn't tell secrets.

Unless that corpse is me.

I waited for hours on the fringes of the southwestern longhouse village. It was built in a similar blueprint as the one near Vala Chamber, where Ravinica had been attacked.

Many strong second-years stayed here, like Eirik. I couldn't play fast and loose like I had with the girl near Nottdeen. I needed to be patient, as painful as it was. I also didn't know who stayed with Astrid, or if she lived alone.

Dawn was beginning to creep into the sky. It was the gray hours of early morning when I saw the front door of the third longhouse creak open.

Astrid, dressed in an evening gown, was wiping her eyes and yawning. She wasn't dressed for class, which was still four hours away. She started walking away from the longhouse . . .

My eyes darted from behind the trees where I skulked. I saw where she was headed: a small well that provided water for the six longhouses here, not twenty feet from her front door.

I flared my nostrils and bared my teeth, unreasonable anger flaring inside me. I never felt a damn thing, unless I was with Ravinica, and this was an extension of that.

Seeing Astrid so calmly walk to the well, while my silvermoon nursed her wounds in a hospital bed, drove me to near madness. If I was a berserker, this would have been the time to let it rip.

I reached into my trench coat and grabbed a small knife, holding it by the blade. I stormed out of the trees onto soggy grass, making my way down the gentle slope of the hill toward the well, to cut Astrid off.

"Astrid," I called out when I was fifteen paces away.

Her head whipped over in surprise—

And I flung the knife at her. It whistled through the air and she lifted her arm with a cry.

My shot wasn't perfect, but it was enough to knick her in the top of the hand. Which was all I needed.

"What the fuck?!" she cried out, shaking her hand, dripping blood onto the ground at her feet.

I reached out, Shaping runes with my free hand, while my outstretched palm formed a claw in front of me.

Astrid's breath stopped short. Her squawking ended on an abrupt gasp as she looked down. Her entire body went taut as the flow of blood dripping from the small wound on her hand quickened.

The drip became a leak . . . and then a flood.

Astrid staggered where she stood. Her eyes bulged, watching blood stream out of her, pouring onto the ground at impossible speeds.

I Shaped the direction of the blood and let strands of the sweet redness curve and spin through the air in a double helix, toward me.

At the same time as I drew the woman's blood from her veins and called it to me, I stepped closer to her.

She looked at her hand, then up at my face. "W-What the hell are you doing to me?"

The energy was leaving her words. She couldn't shout for help any longer past her desiccated throat—not even the students in the nearby longhouses would hear her cries. No one would.

Her cheeks paled. I approached her. The blood in the air pulsed around me, stopping when I willed it to, like a horrid, nightmare-inducing sphere of gore.

I pulled another knife from my trench coat, slashing into my wrist, and then summoned the blood in the air to me. The strands of it pulsed and throbbed, finding its way into the sliver of flesh I'd cut. It didn't matter what blood type she was—mine had the ability to adapt and modify life-essence.

Astrid's blood filled me with power, lust, and greed.

She stared at me in sheer terror, eyes bulging into saucers. So confused, so lost. All the color drained from her skin while I siphoned her blood from her body. Her lively face turned ashy, then bone-white and sickly green from the throbbing, distended veins.

"You don't deserve a quick death," I told her, "for what you've put my silvermoon through."

We were mere feet apart now. Her face hollowed, cheeks going concave. Along her arms, the musculature failed, tightening against her bones to make her look like a leathery skeleton.

Astrid's internal organs failed first, even before her physical body.

I infused her blood into me wave after sweet wave.

It took less than five minutes.

When I was done with her, Astrid Dahlmyrr was a husk. A shell. Barely recognizable. Her dark green hair was one of her only identifiable traits when she finally collapsed onto the grass in a heap.

Most dreadfully of all, when I gazed down at her . . . she blinked up at me. She was still alive. Because I kept her that way.

I let her bask in her newfound position at my feet, hollowed-out and in hideous pain, for a few long minutes.

Until I drained the last bit of blood from her body, and brought it inside me for safe keeping.