Moonveil Academy: Trapped With The Five Kings

Elara:

When I finally looked up, I found Lorien watching me. He wasn’t looking away, pretending to examine another report, or distracting himself with his phone. He was simply studying my face in complete silence, and I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to understand what I was thinking or searching for some reaction I hadn’t given him yet.

”What’s going to happen next?” I asked, my voice sounding quieter than I intended.

He remained silent while his eyes stayed fixed on me. And for some reason, that silence immediately made a new fear rise inside me. I swallowed before asking, ”Do you think we are lying?”

His answer came so quickly that I almost flinched.

”No.”

There wasn’t even a second of hesitation between my question and his response. I stared at him, surprised by the certainty in his voice.

Lorien leaned forward slightly, his expression becoming darker as he continued, ”The fact that the investigation found nothing doesn’t mean the five men never existed, Elara.” His eyes hardened. ”It means someone powerful is involved. Someone who had enough control over this entire operation to erase the attackers’ traces and make sure they disappeared without leaving anything behind.” A chill ran through me as his next words settled heavily between us. ”Someone powerful is holding the reins of this attack, and that... makes this incident more than just a mere coincidental attack.”

I had already known this since the night of attack.

Someone had tried to kill me. Not scare me. Not humiliate me. Not teach me a lesson for crossing the wrong people at Moonveil Academy. But to kill me.

And now I had learned that whoever stood behind it was powerful enough - or careful enough - to leave the entire investigation team of Moonveil Academy with nothing.

I looked at Lorien for a long moment, my thoughts turning over one possibility after another as I debated whether I should finally tell him everything that had happened that night. The complete truth. The part I had buried inside my own mind and hidden from everyone else so far.

That those men didn’t just attack me that night, but tried to kill me.

My fingers slowly curled beneath the table.

No.

The decision came more quickly than I had expected, and once it did, I understood something else with startling clarity.

I was alone in this.

Myra didn’t know what had happened after she lost consciousness. She had already been knocked out before those men took me away, which meant there was no witness to tell anyone that I had been dragged somewhere else after the attack. No one who had seen me standing near the edge of that cliff. No one who had heard those men admit that they had been sent to kill me.

And when the seniors found us, they found both of us unconscious on the same road where the attack had begun. It had been easy for everyone to reach the obvious conclusion based on Myra’s statement. Five unknown thugs had attacked us. End of the story.

Except it wasn’t the end of the story.

My stomach twisted as I remembered waking up three days later and hearing the healer explain how a group of third-year students had found Myra and me lying unconscious on the road. At the time, I had been too weak and confused to tell anyone that they had missed the other half of the story. But once I pieced things together and was left with countless unanswered questions, I realized it was actually better to not reveal the other half.

Even now, I couldn’t think of a single reason as for why I was found on the road.

Those men had dragged me to the edge of a cliff. I had felt the ground disappear beneath my feet after they pushed me. I had fallen. There was no question about that.

So who had returned me? And why?

When I had given my statement to the academy authorities, I had already realized that everyone had assumed the attack ended exactly where Myra lost consciousness. If I suddenly told them that I had been taken to a cliff and pushed to my death, they would immediately ask questions I had no answers to.

How did I survive? Who brought me back? And the most frustrating question of all - why couldn’t I remember?

Because I indeed couldn’t remember.

Every time I tried to force my mind past the moment I had been pushed, the memories became scattered and painful. I could remember the rush of wind. I could remember my body falling. I could remember terror so sharp that I had been certain I was going to die.

Then bright, blue eyes glowing through the darkness.

And after that, everything came out empty. A part of me kept telling me that a lot more happened even after that, but I just couldn’t recall it no matter how hard I tried.

I had eventually decided that revealing any of it without proof would only make me look unstable. Worse, I couldn’t even be certain who was responsible for bringing me back to the road.

Had someone saved me from the fall and carried me back to the road? Had someone discovered me later and chosen to hide the attempted murder for some reason? Or had my attackers returned me themselves?

That last possibility made absolutely no sense. Because why would people who wanted me dead bring me back alive? Unless something had changed their plans. Or stopped them.

Either way, the evidence had disappeared before anyone could see it. The cliff was nowhere in Myra’s statement, nor was it in mine. And there were apparently no signs connecting me to any other location.

So I had done the only thing that made sense at the time. I had told the same story as Myra. It was the safest lie I could give because most of it wasn’t even a lie.

But sitting in front of Lorien now, knowing what I knew about that night, I considered breaking that silence.

For exactly one second.

Then I remembered the way he had looked at me after kissing me. The way he had stepped away as though touching me had been a mistake so terrible that he couldn’t even remain in the same house. And the way he had literally run away from me and left me standing alone in the rain.

Something inside me hardened.

No. I wasn’t going to trust him with something this important. Not when I no longer trusted him with anything.