She rode all the way down with me. As a herd, we piled out and turned towards the atrium. The first thing I noticed was the bright green spray paint sprawling along the wall. Not the glass one, but the classrooms that faced the atrium.
"Summer Is Coming!" was the most obvious. That was huge, and written in the green I'd noticed, but it wasn't alone. One of the rooms had a black X on the door. Another had red that dripped down the front, along with "Winter Whore."
"I don't like this," I breathed.
Aspen grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the atrium. "I don't either."
"Bitch," Jack muttered, keeping his voice down as if he was disturbed too.
But on the other side, through the atrium, I could see the same thing. I was trying to make out what was written over there when the glass doors opened, and the guys shoved in.Allof them. Keir and Torian were in the lead, but Hawke and Wilder were close behind.
"What the fuck?" Torian demanded.
Aspen just jiggled her head in a negating but nervous way. "Tor, how could they vandalize the entire school?"
"Bigger question," Keir said as he moved to slip an arm around me. "Who would want to, and why?"
"'Who' is the same as the list of people who attacked Aspen," Wilder grumbled.
"The why part's what really matters," I said.
"Not our problem, though," Hawke pointed out. "Guys, it's probably some stupid prank."
"But what if it's not?" Torian growled.
Hawke clasped his friend's shoulder. "Then we do what we can, but really? If you were trying to take down the enemy, are you going to announce it first?"
"But they already fucked up when bashing Aspen's head in didn't work," Keir countered.
I heard them bickering, but I turned to look at everything around us. The atrium was massive. Some said it was nearly a full acre of fae plants. I didn't know if that was literal, but itsure felt like it, and outside three of these glass walls was the interior of Silver Oaks Institute. The other side looked out at the grounds.
To both my left and right, I could see words big enough to take up the entire hall. Before me was the main entrance, and that had also been painted. On a door was what looked like a snowman with a red slash through it. Green leaves and flowers were everywhere. All of that was bad enough, but when I looked towards the office, my heart stopped.
"Support Winter and die. The Prince demands his crown."
"Fuck," I breathed. "These people don't have a -"
The screeching of a woman cut me off. "Ivy!" Her voice was shrill with anger. "The whole first floor is like this. How did this happen with you in the building!"
The sound drew my eye to where Ms. Hawthorne was storming towards the office. She kept yelling, all but pushing students aside as she waded through the masses who'd come down here to gawk. When I looked the other way, I saw more teachers, and all of them seemed to be converging on the office, even if most weren't squealing like Pearl Hawthorne.
"Fucking stupid is what it is," Torian was grumbling as all the pieces finally fell into place for me.
"Terrorism," I said, spinning back to look at my friends.
"Rain?" Jack asked, twisting his head to look at me.
But that one word made the court fall silent. Keir groaned as the truth of it sank in, but Torian gave me a confused look.
"What about terrorism?" he asked.
"No, that's what this is," I explained. "The traditional type. The point is they're saying what they're going to do so everyone is terrified. They break the routines we all think of as normal, put everyone on high alert, and then their actions don't seem out of place. It all compounds, just like the wars in the Middle East."
"And I have been on Earth a matter of years, so I don't know all this," Torian reminded me. "Why would someone vandalize the school like this?"
I lifted my chin, refusing to look at my girlfriend. "To scare Aspen enough that she'll leave."
"And every other Winter magic user too," Keir added. "Tor, quite a few faelings have grown up here. We've heard all about the atrocities done in battle situations. Flying planes into buildings wasn't done to kill the people inside. It was meant to terrify the ones who survived. To shut down the country. Isn't this the same thing?"
