Unlikely Symmetry

Rhett:

The wards are gone.

I can feel it in my teeth, in the marrow of my bones, in the way the night outside presses too close against the Academy walls. The protective hum that usually thrums through these stones—like a heartbeat beneath the floor—is silent now, gutted, stolen. And in its absence, every dark thing beyond the gates has scented blood.

The howls start first. High, piercing wails that shred the air like broken glass. Banshees. Their screams crawl under my skin, vibrating against my ribs until my wolf snarls in defiance. Then comes the rumble—the ground itself shuddering with the thunder of hooves. Minotaurs. Their musk of blood and iron already fouls the wind. And somewhere deeper, quieter, the scrape of claws on stone. Oni. Lurking. Patient. Monsters of patience are the ones you never see until their teeth are already inside you.

I stalk through the hallway, muscles tight, fists clenched. My wolf paces behind my skin, begging to be let out, to hunt. But this isn’t the wild. It’s worse. This is the Academy unbound.

At the end of the corridor, Kai materializes from the gloom, pale and sharp, his golden eyes burning like a candle guttering against the storm. He looks worse than I’ve ever seen him—hair damp with sweat, collar loose, shadows pooling under his eyes from nights spent digging through books instead of sleeping. He’s a prince of glamours, but the mask is slipping. The exhaustion, the cracks, the worry—all of it bleeds through.

“Rhett,” he says, his voice raw. “It’s chaos out there.”

“No shit,” I growl, though not at him. My chest is tight, every muscle braced for a fight that hasn’t yet arrived. “We need to get ahead of it. Seal what we can. Drive the rest back before they rip through the students.”

His gaze flickers past me, toward the tower where Isadora is. Even here, even now, I know he’s thinking of her. Always her.

My jaw tightens. “She’s with Lucian and Silas.” The words burn to admit. “They’ll keep her safe.”

He exhales, a sound half-relief, half-disbelief. “Safe,” he repeats, as if the word is foreign on his tongue. Then his eyes snap to mine, and for once, there’s no mocking smirk, no gilded charm—just iron. “Then it’s just us.”

It tastes like ash, but I nod. “Us.”

We spill out of the Academy’s side door, into the blackened night. The storm hasn’t broken—it’s raging. Lightning forks across the sky, painting the forest in jagged white scars. Rain slicks the earth, mud sucking at our boots as we sprint into the tree line. The woods beyond the school are alive with movement—branches thrash, shadows shift, eyes glimmer in the underbrush.

The banshees find us first.

They descend from the treetops like shredded veils, their mouths open in endless screams, their eyes pools of milky death. One swoops low, claws aimed at Kai’s face. He raises his hand, golden light flaring between his fingers, searing the thing’s translucent wings to ash. It falls, hissing, before vanishing into smoke.

Another claws for my throat. My wolf surges forward, and I catch her mid-air, my hand crushing her fragile ribs with bone-splintering force. Her scream rattles through me as I slam her into the earth hard enough to crack stone beneath the mud.

We don’t stop.

The deeper we run, the more the forest churns. Minotaurs break through the trees, horns lowered, their massive frames crashing through trunks as if they’re kindling. Kai throws up veils of light—walls that shatter under the beasts’ horns but slow them long enough for me to strike. I hurl myself at one, claws out, tearing through its throat, hot blood steaming against my skin. Another barrels toward Kai, but he ducks, flicking his hand, and the beast’s own shadow rises like a chain and drags it screaming into the earth.

For one surreal heartbeat, we move in rhythm. My force, his finesse. My teeth, his light. A brutal, unlikely symmetry.

And all the while, in the back of my mind, one thought pounds like a drum: Isadora.

Every blow I land, every beast I rip down, it’s for her. Every drop of Kai’s light that sears the dark, it’s for her. She’s the center, the reason, the pulse dragging us forward through the nightmare.

When the last minotaur falls, the woods go quiet in that wrong way—silence too heavy, too waiting.

Kai wipes blood from his cheek with the back of his hand, his chest heaving. His golden magic flickers faintly around his skin, less steady now, like it costs him too much to keep it alive. He looks at me, rain dripping from his lashes, and for once his voice holds no edge, no distance. Only truth.

“She’s the reason you fight like this, isn’t she?”

I bare my teeth, half-snarl, half-admission. “She’s the reason we all do.”

He laughs, but it’s hollow. “Then maybe she’ll be the reason we burn out, too.”

Before I can answer, the Oni come.

They peel from the trees like nightmares made flesh, their skin mottled, their teeth serrated, their eyes glowing faintly with a hunger older than the Academy. They don’t charge like the minotaurs. They stalk. Slow. Patient. One step, then another, until the shadows themselves close around us.

Kai’s hand lifts again, but his light sputters, dimming. He’s drained. Too much magic spent, too much fire burned too quickly.

Which leaves me.

I step forward, cracking my neck, claws sliding free. My wolf howls in my blood, ready. “Stay behind me.”

“Not a chance,” Kai mutters, voice hoarse but steady.

The first Oni lunges. I meet it head-on, claws raking across its chest, hot ichor spilling onto the mud. Another slips from the side, fangs snapping. Kai’s light flares just enough to sear it back, but the effort nearly drops him to his knees.

We fight. Teeth, claws, light, fury. The world narrows to survival—the sting of rain, the taste of blood, the endless snarl of the wolf in my throat. My body is fire, muscle and instinct, every strike fueled by the single thought: keep her safe.

By the time the last Oni collapses, the forest is a graveyard. Black blood seeps into the mud, the storm still howling above. My chest heaves, my hands drip red, my wolf still pacing, unsated.

Kai stumbles against a tree, his golden glow guttering out entirely. He looks at me, pale and fierce and broken. “If I don’t make it back…”

“Don’t.” My voice is rough stone. I grab his collar, drag him upright. “We make it back.”

His mouth quirks, exhausted and bitter. “Always so sure.”

“Always so stubborn,” I bite back.

Lightning cracks the sky, throwing his face into sharp relief. For the first time, I see him not as the polished prince, not as the rival wrapped in silk and arrogance, but as what he is now: a man half-broken, fighting anyway. For her.

For our raven.

We stagger back toward the Academy, through the wreckage of monsters and storm, through the night that feels more alive than dead. The wards are gone, the shadows are free, and the ground itself growls with something rising from below.

But she’s waiting.

And I’ll tear apart the dark itself before I let it touch her.