Page 139 of Serpent and Shadow

The college stood above me, the same as I remembered.

I was further down the grassy hill and closer to the river than I’d realized.

It now made perfect sense why no one had seen me from one of the dorm windows of Valarian, regardless of time of day. The steep hill rose in front of me, blocked by the tall grass and the steep slope. I hadn’t exactly had time to gauge where I was while I’d been running, tripping, and sliding, trying to get away from the five royals.

My wings were broken in several pieces on the hill itself, but they lay in shadow, also hidden from most of the dormitory windows.

But all of that I noted almost in passing, and only after I’d clocked the most important thing I noticed when I first opened my eyes.

I was alone.

Vlad Mordopast, Christian Orrin, Norrick Voltaire, Scar Maskey, and Pants Panzen were nowhere to be found.

29

A Safe Place

“Oh my goddess!” Miranda gasped when she saw me, her eyes widening as she flung her dormitory door the rest of the way open. When she’d first answered my knock, her expression appeared stony, her jaw hard.

All of that fell away the instant she really looked at me.

She instantly paled, her eyes widening.

“Leda!” she burst out in a panic. “What’s happened? What in the gods happened to you?”

She grabbed my arm and yanked me all the way into the room.

“JOLIE!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

I fought to speak past the vibration still hurting my jaw and tongue. I wanted to reassure her, to tell her I was okay, but I couldn’t manage to get out more than a few gasping breaths. My body still felt like a fuse box that had shorted out. I’d barely made it up to my old floor and room, and now that I was here, I could tell I was close to collapse.

I had no idea how I must look.

I had to conclude from their reactions it must be bad.

I’d ended my sloppily-cast invisibility spell only once I stood outside their door, and only after making certain I couldn’t see anyone in visual range from the aether.

My physical vision came back the next instant.

I just stood there, fighting to get air in my lungs while Miranda slammed the door shut behind me. She used a quick, practiced spell to lock the door, and I heard the bolt slide into place. When my eyes focused on the familiar common space, the same one I’d shared with Jolie and Miranda for the first half of the year, I flinched in surprise to see three more sets of eyes staring at me from the blue velvet couch.

Draken stood up first, followed by Nyx, and finally Luc.

Draken stared at me, his eyes wide in shock as he absorbed my appearance.

“Leda,” he said, at a loss. He paled as much as Miranda. “What in the gods––”

Yes, I must have looked bad.

I must have looked really, really bad.

Seeing all of their shocked faces, I realized I must look significantly worse than I’d realized. I knew I was shaking violently still. I fought against the shaking but that only seemed to make it worse, so I tried to relax, but that didn’t seem to help either. My head hurt. My tongue was swollen, making me think I must have bit down on it at some point following the repeated lightning spells, possibly multiple times. My arm was covered in blood from the copper knives Norrick threw at me.

Then Jolie was there, and her soothing but authoritative voice filled my ears.

“Right. Pick her up. We need to lay her down somewhere,” she instructed someone. “Yes. In there will do. Luc, come here and help him…”

Draken and Luc were on either side of me, then.