Semua Bab The crippled omega warrior girl : Bab 31 - Bab 40

*Isla*The blind corridor is harder to see once we are inside it.No path marks it. No broken branches. Only a strip of forest where the ward-stones hum wrong beneath the roots, sending every sensible instinct elsewhere. The trees crowd close, their trunks wet and black. My left leg catches twice on hidden roots. By the third time, Caelen has noticed the hitch in my step.He does not offer an arm, instead he moves ahead and cuts a low branch from the trail with the hooked knife, then kicks a stone away, leaving the ground clear enough for me to pass.I hate how grateful I am.Liora walks behind me with Tomas, her usual running commentary absent. Torven and Bran carry a fallen length of timber between them. Lark has the copied ward map held beneath his cloak, protecting it from the wet. Sena and Oren watch our back trail.Nightshade has learned how quiet fear can be.The corridor ends at a slope choked with thornbushes. Beneath them sits a stone door, half swallowed by earth. Its old A

*Isla* A thread runs from the cracked ward-stone behind Liora, through the chamber floor, beneath the dead warg, and out through the east wall. I can smell it, though smell is not the word. It is pressure beneath my teeth. A crooked current in the old magic. The broken chamber is a mouth, and the ward-light is trying to tell me where its throat leads. There is a passage behind the east wall. Narrow. Buried. Dry enough to keep scent. I turn toward it. Caelen follows my gaze. "There?" I scrape one claw across the floor. Tomas moves closer to the wall, torch held high. "There is no door." ‘There is,’ I think. My wolf presses forward. The answer becomes a growl in my chest. Caelen kneels beside a scatter of torn parchment near the wrecked barricade. The route map he gave me earlier is soaked through and ripped almost in half. He gathers it from the muddy stone, smoothing the edges against his thigh. Even now, with wargs at the door and blood spreading across the floor, he folds

*Isla*Heat rises into my face. "Do not start looking pleased.""I was not.""Liar.""I was checking whether you were cold.""That is much worse."His mouth nearly shifts i to a smile. There and gone.The rain drums harder against the high window. Outside, boots splash through the alley. Someone tries the door. Caelen is across the room before the latch moves."Occupied," he says.A pause."Fennec," says the captain from the other side. "The Council has issued a temporary order.""Then leave it beneath the door.""This concerns the transformed trainee."Caelen's hand settles against the wood. "Her name is Isla Ulvehjerte."The captain does not answer at once. "She will be examined.""When she agrees.""By Academy law, an unregistered first shift requires supervision.""By Academy law, a conscious trainee may refuse an unapproved procedure."His voice stays level, but I hear the blade under it.The captain lowers his own. "You are overstepping.""Then record it."Boots scrape away.Cae

*Isla* Nightshade's common room has become the safest place in the Academy by accident. The shutters are closed. A chair is wedged beneath the door handle. Tomas has drawn chalk marks across the window seams to show if anyone tries a ward-listening spell. Lark sits on the floor beside the hearth with three stolen archive books open around her, her damp hair braided badly over one shoulder. Nobody says the word custody. It hangs in the room anyway. I am at the long table with my leg stretched out on a second chair. The brace presses a red groove into my skin above the boot. My body is still weak from the shift, though I have spent the last hour refusing to admit it. The wolf sleeps badly beneath my ribs. Every distant footstep wakes her. Liora has gone to the infirmary to sit with Bran. She said she was checking on him. Then she called the healer a turnip and threatened to bite someone's hand off if they gave him poppy draught without food first. I believe both parts. Cedric i

*Isla* Liora steps inside with a basket hooked over one arm and a face like she has just threatened a surgeon. Behind her, Bran leans on a crutch, one arm wrapped hard against his side. He is pale under his freckles and furious about it. "What are you doing out of bed?" I ask. He gives me a look. "What are you doing out of bed?" "I am not the one with a hole in my side." "You were a wolf for the first time yesterday." "Technicality." Liora kicks the door shut behind them. "If either of you starts comparing injuries, I will throw you both down the stairs." Bran catches sight of the papers. His expression shifts. "What happened?" Tomas tells him. Not all at once. Nobody has the strength for that. A sentence here, a clause there. Veyr's harboring order. The trial. The choice that is not a choice. Bran lowers himself carefully into a chair. He avoids looking at me at first. When he does, his face has gone tight. "This is because of me," he says. "No," I answer immediately.