Chapter Four – The Forbidden Library

The whispers didn’t die.

By the next day, they were louder, hungrier, like a fire licking higher every time I walked past. Every corner I turned, voices broke off into silence, eyes cutting into me like knives. I was a rumor now, walking proof of something none of them wanted to name.

Legacy. Power. Wrong.

The words tangled in the air, unspoken but sharp.

I clutched my books tighter, kept my eyes on the ground, tried to breathe past the weight pressing down.

“You know,” a smooth voice cut through, “the more you hunch like that, the more they’ll eat you alive.”

I stopped dead.

Cassian leaned lazily against the stone archway leading out of the hall, golden hair catching the lantern light, grin sharp enough to slice. He flicked a coin between his fingers like he had all the time in the world.

I tightened my grip on my books. “What do you want?”

“Want?” He pushed off the wall, falling into step beside me with too much ease. “Sweetheart, if I wanted anything, you’d already know. I’m offering you something.”

I shot him a wary glance. “And what’s that?”

His grin widened. “Answers.”

My chest tightened. “I don’t need your games.”

He tsked, shaking his head. “Oh, but you do. You see, everyone’s watching you, Lyra. Ronan, Vale, Malachai—hell, even the walls in this place are listening. You’re the shiny new toy, and trust me, shiny things don’t last long around here.”

I slowed, heartbeat skittering. “Why are you telling me this?”

He leaned close, lips brushing the shell of my ear. “Because I like keeping my toys intact. They’re more fun that way.”

I shoved him back a step, heat flooding my cheeks. “You’re disgusting.”

He only laughed, throwing his arms wide. “Ah, she has claws! Finally.”

When I tried to walk off, his hand caught mine—not tight, not painful, but insistent. “Come on, pretty thing. Let me show you where the real secrets hide.”

***

I should have said no.

But I didn’t.

Maybe it was the way his voice threaded through me like smoke, or maybe it was the gnawing ache in my chest, the one that craved answers I couldn’t find in classrooms or whispers.

Cassian led me up a spiral staircase tucked behind a roped-off corridor. The climb was endless, stone steps curling higher and higher, dust thickening the air. By the time we reached the top, my legs felt as if they’d been set alight.

The door was iron, locked with a chain.

Cassian jingled a ring of keys he definitely shouldn’t have had. “One perk of being me,” he said with a wink, slotting the key in.

The lock clicked.

The air changed.

When the door creaked open, the smell of old paper and dust poured out, thick and dry, settling on my tongue. The room beyond was vast, circular, with towering shelves climbing to a domed ceiling painted with faded constellations. Books older than the Academy itself lined the walls, their spines cracked, their titles half-erased by time.

My breath caught. “This is—”

“Forbidden.” Cassian’s grin returned, but softer now, something tired beneath it. “Which makes it fun, don’t you think?”

I stepped inside. The floor groaned beneath me, dust rising around my shoes. My fingers hovered near the spines, itching to touch, to know.

“Why are you showing me this?” I asked, glancing back.

For once, his smile faltered. Just a flicker. “Because you’re in deeper than you think. And because…” His eyes darted away, jaw tightening. “Because I know what it’s like to be watched by everyone.”

The words cracked something in me. The arrogance was gone for that heartbeat, stripped bare to something raw.

I didn’t push. I just turned back to the shelves.

And then I saw it.

A yellowed page was tucked between the heavy books, its faded ink still clear enough to read. My hand shook as I pulled it free.

The title was scrawled at the top in jagged letters: First Blood.

My eyes scanned the words, fragments only. Before wolves, before oaths, there was the First. Blood that commands, blood that binds. Not beast, not man, but both. The source. The curse.

And then—my throat closed.

The sketch.

A face drawn in black ink, hair spilling wild around sharp features. Eyes like mine.

No. Not like mine.

Hers.

My mother.

I stumbled back, the page trembling in my hand.

Cassian stepped closer, peering over my shoulder. His usual grin was gone. “Well,” he murmured, “that explains a lot.”

“Explain what?” My voice shook.

But before he could answer, the door slammed open.

Ronan.

He filled the threshold, storm-eyed, chest rising hard with each furious breath.

“What the hell are you doing here?” His voice cracked through the silence like a whip.

Cassian spread his arms, lazy smile back in place. “Reading. Learning. Expanding young minds—”

“Don’t.” Ronan stalked forward, eyes locked on him. “You know damn well this place is off-limits.”

“And yet here we are.” Cassian winked at me. “Funny how rules don’t seem to stick around her.”

Ronan’s gaze snapped to me, fire blazing in those gray eyes. “He’s endangering you. You don’t belong here.”

Something in me broke.

I straightened, clutching the page tighter. “Stop saying that.”

He froze.

I stepped forward, anger sparking hot in my chest. “From the second I walked through those gates, all of you have been telling me what I am, what I’m not, what I can’t be. I’m done. You don’t get to decide where I belong.”

His jaw clenched. “You don’t understand what you’re playing with.”

“Then explain it!” My voice cracked, echoing through the shelves. “Stop circling me like I’m some puzzle you get to solve. If I’m dangerous, then say why. If I don’t belong, then tell me where I do. But don’t you dare stand there and pretend I’m nothing when you’re all acting like I’m everything.”

The silence that followed was heavy, charged. Ronan’s eyes burned into mine, searching, furious, shaken. Cassian’s grin was sharp again, but there was something approving beneath it.

And then—

“Enough.”

The single word cut like steel.

Vale stood in the doorway. His presence settled over the room—steady, yet overwhelming. His eyes found me, dark and unreadable.

For a moment, I thought he would drag me out, call for punishment, strip me down in front of them both.

Instead, he just looked at me. Looked at the page in my hand. And then, voice low enough to feel like a secret, he said:

“Your mother tried to burn those records. You shouldn’t have seen them.”

The floor swayed beneath me. The page slipped from my fingers, fluttering to the ground.

My mother.

Always silence. Always shadow.

And now this.

I couldn’t breathe.

Vale’s eyes lingered on mine for one last, searing moment. Then he turned, his coat brushing the floor as he left the room without another word.

The silence he left behind was louder than any scream.