Page 32 of Echoes From the Void
I drive the letter opener in again. And again. Until his grip finally loosens. Until his eyes go glass-dark. Until I’m sure.
The quartet never stops playing.
“Well,” Valerie’s voice cuts through the quartet’s final notes. “This is unexpected.”
I’m still straddling Sterling’s corpse, hands slick with cooling blood, letter opener dripping onto silk. My entire body trembles with exhaustion, with adrenaline, with the effort it took to kill him.
“Look at you,” she moves closer, heels clicking against marble. There’s something new in her voice. Something hungry. “I thought you were only good for breeding stock. But this...” She gestures at Sterling’s body, at the savage efficiency of his wounds. “This shows promise.”
I try to stand but my legs won’t hold me. The letter opener clatters to the floor as I collapse beside his body.
“Don’t worry about the mess,” Valerie says, already pulling out her phone. “We’ll handle cleanup. Though I must say...” She reaches down, tilting my face up to examine me. “I didn’t expect this kind of potential from you. Perhaps we’ve been approaching your training all wrong.”
Her smile is terrible in its pride. Like a mother whose child has finally learned to walk. Like a scientist whose experiment finally yielded results.
“Get her cleaned up,” she calls to someone in the doorway. “And double her food rations. We can’t have our little assassin too weak to play, can we?”
And I realize, as hands lift me from Sterling’s cooling body, that I haven’t won anything at all.
I’ve just shown Valerie a new way to make me useful.
The quartet plays on.
The blood dries on silk.
And somewhere deep inside, where shadows sleep waiting to wake...
Something darker stirs.
I jerk awake in the hospital chair, Finn’s steady breathing beside me. My hands are clean, but I swear I can still feel Sterling’s blood on them.
The thing about trauma is that it shows up unexpectedly.
But the thing about survival?
Sometimes it wears a monster’s face.
Sometimes it comes with strings.
Sometimes it means becoming what they made you.
Even if you don’t understand what that is.
Yet.
Chapter 12
Frankie
Something changeswhen I leave Finn with Tori, like a key turning in a lock I didn’t know existed. The twin bond settles, no longer pulling desperately at my power, and suddenly I’m aware of other hungers. Other needs that have been waiting beneath the surface, burning with an intensity that takes my breath away.
The void crisis has emptied Shadow Locke of all but our small group, leaving the campus feeling like a ghost town caught between realities. Moonlight cuts through broken barriers, casting strange shadows that dance and twist without direction. My wolves materialize without being called, drawn toward the training grounds where Bishop’s Guardian energy pulses through our potential bond.
My heart skips at the familiar sensation of his power. Bishop has always affected me this way, even when he was just my professor making me diagram shadow configurations. But now... now he’s something more. The rigid academic facade has cracked, revealing a warrior who chose love over duty. Who risks everything—position, power, tradition—for the chance to be ours.
The night air carries the scent of ozone—residue from his practice wards. Through empty corridors and past evacuatedclassrooms, I follow the trail of his power like a moth to flame. Guardian marks pulse against Dark Hall’s ancient stones, protection sigils he’s carved into every surface since the void began creeping closer. Each one might as well spell out ‘I love you’ for how clearly I feel his need to keep us safe.
A shadow beast howls in the distance, testing barriers that flare with Bishop’s magic. The sound sends my wolves into alert formation, but I feel no fear. Not here. Not where his power wraps around the campus like armor, keeping the void at bay through sheer stubborn determination. Through the force of his love made manifest in every ward, every protection, every broken rule.
