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My flames retracted, barreling back into my form with such force, I went flying.
Somehow, Elliot, who’d already been heading toward me, caught me in his arms and held me tight.
Kasi hurtled past, Shadow at her side. They dove into the shadows and came back a few moments later with nine students Zowen’s shadows had managed to drag into the Shadow Realm before my flames had forced him to retreat.
Those nine students were shivering and shell-shocked. Two of them I immediately recognized for they had shared their memories of their time in the Shadow Realm once before.
My heart broke to know they’d been unlucky enough to have been victimized asecondtime by Zowen.
Still, all nine students were alive and none were in a coma, so Iwould call that a win for our side.
Then, Zowen tossed Leslie’s body out of the shadows.
She was withered and worn, almost unrecognizable, her light entirely extinguished.
I fell to my knees at her side and brushed back hair that had once been a pale blonde, that was now a smoky gray.
He’d clearly used every bit of her magic for his own ends and when she was no longer of use to him, he killed her.
Had I caused this?
When he discovered the fire shield I’d built and realized he could no longer enter my dreams, had he decided then that he no longer needed her?
Had he discarded her because of me?
I sat there at her side, Elliot’s armsaround me until they came to take her body away. When she was gone and we were the only ones left in the room, I turned into Elliot’s arms and broke.
The rest of the semester was a somber one.
We may have driven Zowen back again, but we’d lost one of our own. Though Leslie had walked a dark path at the end of her life, we still mourned her loss.
Headmistress Blackthorn notified her coven and the entire coven showed up for the service we held for Leslie. They took her body home, accepting her back into their fold as their one final gift to a young woman so lost she’d actually joined forces with the serial killer who ultimately took her life.
I found her diary a fewdays after her death.
I don’t know if it had been hidden by a spell that dissipated upon her death or if I’d just never noticed it before.
It was in her nightstand drawer, not even really hidden, and in it, many of our questions were answered.
Zowen first found his way out of the Shadow Realm the year we started at Blackthorn Academy—Kasi, Jasmine, Leslie and me.
He’d sought out someone vulnerable, someone he could turn, and Leslie was that someone.
She’d been turning dark since the moment she walked into our Academy and Zowen targeted her.
Kasi’s theory was that when she shadow-walked for the first time, she somehow woke the sleeping killer andmade it possible for him to shadow-walk as well.
The more she shadow-walked, the more he could.
Kasi pointed to spots in Leslie’s diary that coincided with turning points in Kasi’s life.
Leslie began seeing Zowen more frequently when Shadow came into Kasi’s life at the beginning of last year.
Things intensified between Leslie and Zowen again when Kasi discovered the shadow library several months later. This was when she began to spend extended amounts of time in the Shadow Realm, conducting research, potentially strengthening Zowen every time she visited.
Even though we now suspected that her trips to the ShadowRealm might be what Zowen needed to get stronger, Kasi couldn’t just stay away.
After all, Shadow was born in the Shadow Realm, which meant she spent a huge amount of time there.
