When White Bleeds

The metallic taste of my own blood filled my mouth, hot, thick, and salty, a constant reminder that, despite all my efforts to hide behind an armor of indifference, I was still made of flesh and bone. Still human. Still infinitely vulnerable in a world that forgave no cracks.

“Is that it, cousin? It was almost pathetic, even by your mortal standards,” Selena laughed, twirling her yew-wood sword with an irritating grace, as if she had barely put any effort into this mock training.

I propped myself up on one elbow on the cold stone floor of the hall, feeling the skin on my palms burn from the friction. I ran the tip of my tongue over my cut lip and watched the red drop slowly fall, darkening the gray stone. In my chest, my heart was pounding like a wild animal caught in a trap, a dangerous mix of pure fury and that old, nagging restlessness that never left me, a cold shadow stalking my every step.

“Go to hell, Selena,” I whispered through clenched teeth, quietly enough not to trigger a formal scandal that she would have twisted to her advantage anyway, but clearly enough to wipe the gleam of satisfaction from her glacial blue eyes.

She merely giggled, a crystalline and false sound that grated on my ears. Selena and her twin brother, Vance, my fake cousins, were the bane of my existence. With their hair so light it looked almost white, shimmering in silver shades under the torchlight, dressed in impeccable white silk tunics embroidered with gold thread, and wearing delicate circlets on their brows that attested to their rank, they dominated the Alba Academy without caring for any rule of common sense.

Though, if anyone had bothered to read the ancient laws and the kingdom’s dusty family tree, neither of them had any legitimate blood right to rule this place. They were merely the king’s stepchildren, brought to the palace from a forgotten corner of the world. But at the Alba Academy, right was written by those who could crush skulls without raising their pulse, and they ruled through terror and enforced silence.

Their heritage wasn’t mystical or based on any sacred art—at least not yet. It was a brutal, physical power, a frightening biological perfection. They were faster, crueler, meaner. Vance was the truly dangerous one of the two, brute force masked by lethal elegance, a silent predator measuring his prey with his eyes, while Selena was weaker in raw power, but compensated with methodical cruelty and a sick desire to humiliate.

In just a few days, when they turned eighteen, they were going to undergo the Ascension. For me, it would be at least three months until then. The day we were meant to receive our true gifts from the gods, leave mortal fragility behind, and become immortals, unstoppable beings. That thought usually sent a wave of ice down my spine, choking me. What kind of gift could a being as rotten inside as Selena possibly receive? And, above all, what the hell was I going to become, considering the secrets I carried hidden in my blood?

Selena took a step toward me, the tip of her white boot touching the edge of my training pants, stained with the thick dust from the floor.

“Look at you, Briar. You’re a stain on our family’s reputation, an embarrassing accident that the king has been trying to hide for years in the dark corners of this castle. In three months, you’ll be just a faded memory or, with a bit of luck, an immortal servant scrubbing the floors you’re now soiling with your pathetic blood.”

“At least I don’t need gold dust in my hair and unearned titles to look interesting,” I snarled, trying to get up, but a sharp, burning stitch in my ribs forced me to catch my breath, making me hunch over slightly.

The silence in the hall was heavy, almost suffocating. Around us, the other recruits and even the weapon masters looked away, pretending to be busy checking their armor or adjusting the wooden targets. No one intervened. No one looked up. Everyone kept quiet and swallowed every humiliation the twins threw around left and right, because they knew the price of disobedience. The king loved them, or at least tolerated their absolute tyranny, and at the Alba Academy, their word was a sentence with no right to appeal.

Selena grimaced in disgust, her gaze dropping to the drop of blood that had just fallen from my chin to the floor, forming a perfectly round spot.

“Disgusting,” she said, shaking her head with feigned cuteness, turning on her heel. “You’re bleeding on my floors, cousin. And you know how much the servants hate cleaning up the mess left by helpless mortals.”

She took two steps away, giving a short, almost imperceptible nod to the man standing like a living statue at the edge of the hall.

Iura. Her personal guardian. A presence so sinister and silent that his very being seemed to absorb all the light in the room.

If Selena and Vance were dressed in white and gold, gleaming like arrogant divinities, Iura was the absolute exact opposite. He was the only one who struck a jarring, striking note in the entire academy with its white uniforms, dressed entirely in black, in a heavy, matte fabric that seemed to swallow the torchlight.

He wore a long black cloak with a deep hood pulled over his head, a fortress of shadows that hid almost his entire face. No one in the entire Alba Academy knew his true age, where he came from, or what past lay hidden behind his eternal silence. He was a living enigma, a mountain of muscle and latent danger who never uttered a useless sound.

Iura was completely expressionless most of the time; he did not hesitate, he displayed no anger or pity. He merely executed with relentless precision any order received from Selena, like a killing machine set in motion by a single word.

At her command, Iura moved. He stepped forward with heavy, slow paces, yet of a terrifying certainty. Beneath his deep hood, nothing of his face was visible, except for his strong jaw and lips pressed into a fine line, unfairly well-contoured. Not even a shadow of pity could be read in that jaw of stone.

Before I could pull myself back or grab the hilt of my wooden sword to defend myself, his large fingers, clad in thick black leather gloves, clenched onto my arm, right above the elbow. The grip was so sudden and strong that I felt my bones press against each other, a spasm of pure pain piercing my shoulder up to my neck.

“Let me go, you monster!” I puffed, trying to wrench myself away, to thrash, but it was as if I were fighting a load-bearing pillar of the castle.

Without a single sound, without a hesitation or the slightest sign that he had heard me, Iura practically lifted me off the floor. My feet dragged across the stone for a moment as he dragged me toward the exit with a frightening ease. I passed by the weapon masters, who instantly pretended to study the maps on the tables, completely ignoring my shouts.

A wave of hot fury flooded my chest, making me feel the air turn unbreathable. I hate this place! I hate their crooked rules, I hate the gilded falseness of the twins, and I hate the fear they impose through this silent brute.

Iura pushed the massive oak and iron doors of the training hall open with a single hand, as if it weighed nothing. The cold, sharp afternoon air hit me straight in the chest, smelling of rain-soaked pine needles, damp earth, and distant freedom.

Without slowing his pace, the guardian threw me forward. I flew a few meters across the wide stone steps and collapsed clumsily onto the hard gravel in the inner courtyard. My knees scraped through the thin material of my training pants, and the impact left me breathless for a few seconds of pure panic.

Iura stopped on the first step of the entrance. His black cloak fluttered slightly in the cold wind, while beneath the hood, the only visible part of him—that inflexible jaw and tightly shut mouth—remained as immobile as a funerary monument.

There was no satisfaction in his attitude, no joy in having done his job; there was only absolute indifference, a duty fulfilled by a creature that seemed to have forgotten what it meant to feel anything.

Without saying a single word, he turned on his heel, his black cloak spinning like a raven’s wing, and walked back into the training hall. The massive sound of the doors slamming behind him, followed by the thud of the heavy bolt, echoed in the empty courtyard like a sentence of exile.

I lay stretched out on the cold gravel for a moment, listening to my own ragged breathing and the furious pounding of my heart. I could feel the heat of the blood trickling down my chin and the merciless sting in my ribs. I truly hated them!

I sat up, with bleeding knees and scraped palms, and spat the remaining blood in my mouth directly onto their clean marble steps. I wiped my split lip with the back of my hand, leaving a red streak on my skin.

“To hell with all of you,” I whispered. “To hell with you fake immortals, along with your shadow guardians.”

I clenched my fists until my nails dug deep into my flesh, feeling the physical pain clear my mind. There were only a few months left until the Ascension. A few long and dangerous months in which I had to survive this hell of white and gold. But when that day came, I would make sure I was never again the one thrown into the dust.