Blood Moon

At seven in the morning, the Pacific was a bruised, churning slate grey, and the narrow strip of wet sand connecting the mainland to the academy’s island was slick with kelp and minor curses. To my left, my sister Celestia was having a stand-off with her third-year Transfiguration textbook. The textbook, which had developed a predatory set of leather teeth over the summer, snapped viciously at her knuckles every time she tried to open it.

"Just cast a minor binding hex on the spine," I muttered, adjusting the straps of my satchel.

"I tried!" Celestia snapped, her voice carrying over the roar of the surf. She pinched her fingers together, whispering a low incantation. The book lifted about three inches, flipped upside down, and dropped open, pages-side down—or rather, teeth-side down—into the wet sand. "See? I’m aggressively average, Layla. In a family of magical overachievers, I’m practically a statistical error."

"You have magic, Cel. That automatically puts you above me in the food chain," I said, offering her a dry, humorless smile. I shifted my bag. Our adoptive father, Lunario, had spent three days custom-enchanting the leather straps to be perfectly shock-absorbent, ensuring my fragile, non-magical human shoulders wouldn't collapse under the weight of five hundred pages of Arithmancy. Meanwhile, he’d given Celestia a standard-issue textbook that currently looked like it wanted to taste human flesh. Favored-child status had its perks, even if it was born out of parental pity.

I took a step forward, misjudged a patch of black sea-muck, and my boot slipped.

Before my face could make violent contact with the sand, a sudden, sharp gust of localized wind caught me under the armpits. It hoisted me upright, held me hovering for a split second, and dropped me neatly back onto solid rock.

I looked at Celestia. Her fingers were still extended, glowing with a faint, residual violet spark. She rolled her eyes, wiping her sandy textbook on her robes. "Don't look at me like that. If you die on the sandbar, Dad will make me wash the self-washing teacups by hand for a month as punishment."

"Much appreciated," I said, brushing invisible dust off my jacket.

As we passed through the massive, spiked gothic gates of the academy, the atmosphere shifted from standard teenage misery to high-society magical tension. The courtyard was a sprawling labyrinth of grey flagstones, towering stone gargoyles, and cliques that could kill you with a glance.

But as I walked through, the crowd did something fascinating: it parted.

Vampires in tailored silk blazers stepped back into the shadows of the cloisters. High-born Fey students, whose hair literally shimmered with sunlight, paused their whispering to watch me pass. It wasn't respect. I knew exactly what it was. It was the clinical, terrified awareness that I was the faculty's resident anomaly. My mother was the Headmistress of the academy and my father was a witch of considerable renown, so the entire administration had made it abundantly clear to the student body that if anyone so much as hexed a hair on my non-magical head, the Headmistress would personally turn their entire lineage into decorative lawn ornaments. I was a fragile glass vase in a room full of hammers; they didn't respect the vase, but they were terrified of the janitor who had to clean it up.

"I’ll see you at lunch," Celestia muttered, eager to escape the radioactive aura of my social death zone. She vanished into the crowd toward the elemental wings.

I kept walking, aiming for the main hall, when a loud, metallic CLANG echoed across the flagstones, followed by the distinctive flutter of loose parchment.

A few yards away, an upperclassman—a high-and-mighty warlock whose family probably owned three duchies—had intentionally sideswiped a freshman. The freshman was a young, utterly out-of-place werewolf girl. She was small, wearing an oversized uniform that smelled faintly of wet dog, and she had been attempting to haul a massive, vintage velvet trunk across the courtyard.

Now, the trunk was flipped open. Hand-drawn star charts, brass astrolabes, and flannel shirts were scattering across the wet stones.

"Watch where you’re going, pup," the warlock sneered, not even pausing as his sycophants laughed behind him.

The girl was on her knees, frantically scrambling to grab her charts before the damp air ruined the ink. Nobody was helping her. In the Spire, low-status meant invisible.

I sighed, the heavy weight of my human audacity settling in. Walking over, I dropped to one knee right in front of her, planting my boot firmly on the edge of a stray star chart before the wind could take it. I picked it up and handed it to her.

The girl froze, looking up at me through a messy fringe of brown hair. Her grey eyes were wide, blinking in surprise. "Oh. Um. Thank you."

"Nice velvet," I said, nodding toward the battered, plush lining of her trunk as I helped her gather a stack of lunar calendars. "Very vintage. Very 'I belong in a gothic horror novel.' I approve."

A faint, awkward smile broke through her panic. "It belonged to my grandmother. I’m Clementine. Clementine Thorne." She took the charts, her fingers brushing mine. She paused, staring at my hand, then looked up into my face with sudden, intense gravity. "Your stars are very crowded, you know. I can smell the transit of Saturn on you. Which moon cycle did you say will bring your standard human doom?"

"I usually schedule my doom for Thursdays," I replied deadpan, shoving a stray brass telescope into her trunk. "Fits better with my study schedule."

Clementine let out a bright laugh, completely unfazed by my sarcasm. But before she could reply, a massive shadow fell over both of us.

The air grew instantly colder, heavy with the thick, suffocating scent of pine needles, iron, and raw predator dominance. The surrounding students went dead silent.

I looked up.

Standing over us was Dread.

Nobody knew his real name—or if they did, they valued their lives too much to say it aloud. He was a towering, broad-shouldered upperclassman, the apex alpha of the wolf pack whose reputation for violence was practically part of the curriculum. His uniform jacket was unbuttoned, revealing the edges of old, jagged silver scars across his throat. His hair was dark, his jaw set in a hard, brutal line, and when he looked down at us, his eyes caught the morning light, flashing a dangerous, predatory yellow.

Clementine visibly flinched, shrinking back slightly against her velvet trunk.

Dread didn't look at her. His yellow eyes were locked entirely on me, narrowing with an intense, simmering resentment. He reached down, his massive, heavy hand closing around the handle of Clementine’s trunk. With a single, effortless jerk of his arm, he hoisted the massive box into the air, resting it against his shoulder as if it weighed nothing at all.

"Get to the dorms, freshman," Dread said. His voice was a low, gravelly rumble that vibrated right in the center of my chest.

Clementine scrambled to her feet, grabbing her loose folders. "Yes—yes, sir. Thank you." She gave me one last, funky little wave before hurrying up the stone steps, leaving me alone on the flagstones.

I slowly stood up, brushing off my knees, refusing to look intimidated by the giant alpha currently blocking my path. "You know, standard manners dictate a 'good morning,' but I suppose the brooding-warlord vibe works for you too."

Dread didn't smile. He took a slow step forward, stepping directly into my personal space. The sheer physical presence of him was suffocating, but I stood my ground, relying on the invisible shield of my faculty-kid protection.

He leaned down slightly, his voice dropping to a fierce, quiet hiss that only I could hear.

"Don't think playing savior to the low-status kids makes you one of us, Hunt," he muttered, his yellow eyes boring into mine with cold disdain. "You walk around this castle like you’re untouchable just because your mom signs the checks and your daddy plays with kitchen charms so the faculty keeps you in a glass case. But out here? In the real world? You’re just a fragile little human playing dress-up."

He cast a pointed, contemptuous glance at my custom-enchanted leather satchel.

"This place has rules," Dread sneered, stepping past me, his shoulder deliberately brushing mine hard enough to throw me off balance. "And all the faculty privilege in the world won't save you when the tide finally comes in."

I watched him walk away, his massive frame disappearing into the gothic arches of the main hall. My shoulder throbbed slightly where he’d hit it, and a cold, unpleasant prickle of reality cut through my sarcastic armor.

He was right, of course. I was a human in a fortress built for monsters. And as I turned to head toward my Arithmancy class, the heavy stone walls of the Spire suddenly felt less like a sanctuary, and a lot more like a cage.