The Guardian's Mate
Sophia Pov
The walk home had felt safe enough, at first.
It was still light out, the late afternoon sun stretched long and gold across the sidewalk, and after everything that had happened at the festival, the school had insisted no one walk alone anymore. So the three of us went together — Emma, Lily, and me — cutting through the quiet residential street that ran along the edge of the school's property, the same route we'd walked a hundred times before without a second thought. Emma's ankle had healed enough that she barely limped now, and she was in the middle of recounting, for probably the fifth time, the way Nathan had shown up at her house the night before with soup because her mom had