All Chapters of The Girl the Alpha Academy Couldn't Break: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Neris's POV"There's a door that isn't supposed to exist."Lucien says it like he's already regretting mentioning it, sliding a rolled architectural blueprint across the table with obvious reluctance. "Beneath the west archive. It's not on any current map of the academy, but it appears on this one, dated almost thirty years ago.""Thirty years." My chest tightens. "That's before I was born. Maybe before my mother was even a student here.""Possibly during her time, depending on exactly when this was drawn." He taps the corner of the blueprint, unmarked except for a small, faded stamp. "This is a restricted archive seal. Whatever's down there was sealed by the same authority that erased her records.""Then that's where we're going.""Neris." Lucien's voice sharpens, uncharacteristically direct. "If Gideon is involved in whatever happened to your parents, and that room has proof of it, walking in unprepared could be exactly what someone wants you to do.""I don't care.""I know." Someth

Neris's POV"Ren Vashti doesn't just oversee bloodline enforcement."Cassian sets a stack of documents on the table between us, his expression grim enough to tighten my stomach before he even finishes the sentence. "She sits on the High Council itself. Three seats down from the Alpha Sovereign. She has authority over territorial disputes, succession disputes, and for the last thirty years, apparently, full discretion over which bloodlines are allowed to exist.""That's not a person," I say. "That's an institution wearing one woman's face.""Which is exactly why Gideon's warning matters." Lucien slides another document across the table, this one bearing an official Council seal. "I pulled everything I could find on her public record. She's credited with dismantling four separate bloodlines over three decades, all classified afterward as 'territorial stabilization actions.' Yours would make five.""She's done this before." Something cold settles in my chest. "Repeatedly. And nobody stop

Neris's POV"Move. Now."Cassian's hand closes around my wrist and pulls before I've even fully processed the sound of boots echoing down the corridor toward the entrance hall, security responding faster than any of us expected."How did they get here already?""Someone tipped them off to our timeline." Lucien's voice is tight, already moving toward the servant's passage he apparently mapped out an hour ago. "I have a guess who.""Ysolde.""Later," Cassian says. "Run first."We move through corridors I've spent a year memorizing without ever imagining I'd need them like this, ducking through the same passage I used the night I first met all three of them in a forest clearing, out through a service gate Evren wrenches open with more force than the lock deserves.The night air hits cold and sharp, and behind us the academy's alarm bells finally start ringing, too late to matter, too late to stop us from disappearing into the tree line at a dead sprint.We run until the academy's lights

Neris's POV"This is insane."Evren says it under his breath as we crouch behind the low stone wall bordering the academy's east grounds, the same wall I used to duck behind carrying water buckets nobody else wanted to carry, back when my biggest fear was dropping something breakable in front of Ysolde's friends."You already said that twice," Lucien murmurs, eyes fixed on the perimeter patrol making its slow circuit near the service gate."It bears repeating. We're an instructor's uniform and an entire attack squad away from a full manhunt, and we're walking directly back into the place that manhunt started.""Which is exactly why it's the last place they'll expect us to go," Cassian says, pressing a hand briefly against his side where the wound from the compound attack is still healing slower than he'll admit out loud. "Nobody hides in the eye of the storm on purpose. That's precisely why it works.""That's a very calm way of describing a suicide mission.""It's not suicide if we're

Neris's POV"I knew her."The voice returns before I've even fully caught my breath from Evren's hands still steadying my shoulders, sliding into my thoughts like it was never gone at all, only waiting for the room to empty enough to speak again."Neris?" Evren's grip tightens. "You've gone somewhere again.""It's back," I whisper. "It's talking again."I knew her, the voice repeats, patient, almost gentle. Your mother. Adaeze. I watched her carry the same fear you're carrying now, the night she first heard me."You knew my mother." My own voice comes out unsteady, torn between terror and a hunger for anything, any scrap of her, that I haven't already had to dig out of sealed records and dead men's last words. "How? Who are you?"A question for another time. Right now, there is something more urgent you need to understand."What?"You believe you have awakened. You haven't. Not fully. Something in the voice shifts, weightier now, almost pitying. What you carry now is a fraction of wha