Todos os capítulos de The Girl the Alpha Academy Couldn't Break: Capítulo 121 - Capítulo 130

Neris's POV"Give me one reason I shouldn't ship you to your sister in a crate."Alpha Dara Whitlock says it pleasantly, pouring tea into four cracked cups as if she were offering biscuits. Her hall in Coastal Reach smells of salt and tar. Through the narrow windows, grey waves hammer the harbor wall.Cassian's hand drifts toward his blade. I touch his sleeve."Because you haven't done it yet," I say.Whitlock's eyebrows lift. "That's your reason?""You've had three days to send word to Kestrel Hold. You haven't. I'd like to know why before I decide how afraid to be."She laughs, a short bark, and slides a cup toward me. "Sit. You're dripping on my floor."We've been on the road for nine days. Behind us, the academy infirmary holds Brannock of Greywater, still smiling, still blank-eyed, still reciting Selene's name whenever anyone speaks to him. Lucien sat with him for two hours before we left and came out looking sick. Ilsa Marrow's head is buried in the academy's east yard, under a

Neris's POV"There's no sea in it."I say it into the silence after the recording ends, and every head in Whitlock's study turns toward me.Captain Brask's grip tightens on the silver device. "What?""The sea. The harbor wind. When we first sat in her hall, the waves hit the wall so hard the windows rattled." My voice sounds thin to my own ears. "Her chambers sit directly above that wall. If she recorded this in the middle of the night, we should hear surf under every word.""She had the shutters closed.""Then we'd hear it muffled. We'd hear something." I look at Lucien. "That room is too quiet."Lucien doesn't answer right away. He's already moving toward Brask with one hand outstretched, the way he approaches everything, carefully and without asking permission he doesn't need. "May I?""Not a chance," Brask says. "That's evidence.""Which is why I'd like to examine it before someone decides it's the only evidence there is."Hesper steps between them, her scarred eyebrow lowered. "L

Neris's POV"Darius was going to send this tonight."I set the sealed letter on the kitchen garden table hard enough that Mara flinches. Dawn is a grey smear over the academy wall. She has been sitting here since before I woke, a shawl around her shoulders, both hands wrapped around a mug gone cold.She doesn't touch the letter. She doesn't need to read the front. Her eyes catch on the grey wax, and the color drains out of her face."Where did you get that?""From a man who wouldn't give me a name. Only yours." I stay standing. Behind me, near the garden gate, Cassian and Lucien wait without speaking. "Tell me how long."Mara's mouth works. For a moment I think she'll deny it, the way she denied knowing who started the fire. Then her shoulders sag, and she looks older than I have ever seen her."Two winters," she says. "Darius found me in the settlement. I don't know how. I'd spent thirteen years making sure no one could. He sat across my table and told me you were alive, that you wer

Neris's POV"Not particularly."I say it to a seventeen-year-old boy lying in the grass with my sister's smile on his face, and my voice comes out steadier than my knees.Tam's head tilts. "That's rude. I came all this way.""You didn't come anywhere. You're sitting in a fortress a hundred miles from here, borrowing his mouth.""Borrowing." Selene's laugh slides out of his throat, low and amused. "Such a small word. They don't lend me anything, Neris. They hand it over. Look around."I don't need to. I can feel them at the edge of the firelight, dozens of silent figures with empty faces, and my wolf is pressed so hard against my ribs it hurts."Let them go.""I will. When you come to Kestrel Hold and ask me properly." Tam's eyes stay fixed above my shoulder. "Until then, they're mine for as long as I want them. Enjoy the quiet, sister."The smile drops off his face like a mask. His body goes limp under Lucien's knee, and all around us the watching figures lower their heads at once, as

Neris's POV"You've been standing there for twenty minutes."Cassian's voice reaches me from very far away. My hands are locked around the basin's edge, my knuckles white, and the lantern has burned down to a stub. The light in the window has gone from gold to grey."I only just came up," I say."I knocked four times." He steps into the room slowly, the way you approach a horse that might bolt. "I came in when you didn't answer. You didn't blink, Neris. I waved my hand in front of your face."I look at the mirror. A tired girl looks back, mouth set in a flat line. She doesn't smile. I almost wish she would, so I'd know I wasn't imagining it."My reflection smiled at me," I say.He doesn't laugh. He doesn't tell me I'm exhausted. He crosses the room and takes my hands off the basin one finger at a time, and they ache where they've been gripping."We tell Lucien," he says.Lucien takes it the way he takes everything, with a notebook."Time, location, duration," he says, pen scratching.