Shadowblade Academy 1: Darkness Calls by KC Kingmaker

Author:KC Kingmaker [Kingmaker, KC]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: KC Kingmaker
Published: 2022-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

AN HOUR OR SO LATER, my tears had dried up. My spirit felt weak and my heart felt hollow. With my shoulders slumped and my head bowed, I aimlessly wandered the Crust.

I realized I was making my way, however subconsciously, to Jose’s Ranchero. Probably because I need to drown my sorrows in booze.

Jose’s was the scene of my twenty-first birthday—the catalyst, when everything changed in my life. It was where Sunny had first tried to capture me in the alley, like a crazed stalker, but I had fought off his advances.

Now I’d found myself in the exact same place, sent back by the same man. Fucking fool, that guy.

Unless this is all just a test? The thought perked my head up. What if the Academy knows I’m here, and they’re just seeing how I react to being plopped back into the human world?

A second later, I scoffed at the idea.

No, Sunny Conway doesn’t have that much foresight. He was just trying to bully me, as usual, and fucked up this time.

I passed by Madame du Mond’s psychic parlor, which was closed. As I walked by, I found myself trying to think back on the woman’s eerie prophecy. I hadn’t thought about it in a while.

It took just a few seconds to recall the omen:

“Six dark ways to reach the abyss.

Five knuckles to complete the fist.

Four years’ time to slit the wrist.

Powers and troubles come in threes.

Two twin souls miss the forest for the trees.

One dark day to be tainted and free.”

Once I replayed it on a loop a few times, my eyebrows jumped. I slowed my sad, leisurely walk, realizing some of it made sense now. Where I had once thought of it as a jumbled mess of nonsense, now the Madame’s words fit into what I knew about Shadowblade Academy.

“Five knuckles to complete the fist,” I said aloud. It takes five “Knuckles,” or students, to make a “Glove,” or team.

“Six dark ways to reach the abyss.” That must be alluding to the different schools of shadow magic—shadow manipulation, shadowwalking, and others I haven’t learned about yet—that allow you to draw on the Shadow Realm.

“Four years’ time to slit the wrist.” Alarm pulsed through me as I repeated that line. The “Wrist” is the professor-leader of each Glove. Such as Jace Hudson. The words sounded foreboding. Does it mean something bad is going to happen to Jace in four years? I needed to ask him or alert him.

For the moment, I still couldn’t decipher the second half of the omen. But it made me giddy and antsy to know I had possibly uncovered some of it.

I poked my head up from the street and saw Jose’s Ranchero was only two blocks away. I had made it.

“Coralia.”

The voice behind me stopped me cold.

I slowly turned to find Venn Gable twenty paces away, his hands shoved into a fluffy jacket. The hood over his head not only hid his lilac skin, but made his expression unreadable. The man struck quite a dramatic figure in the New Orleans night, with orange lamplight highlighting him like a statue.

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