ShadowBound: The Need For Power

After Liam finished speaking with Sheila, he did not return to his room immediately.

The conversation had taken enough from the night that hunger finally became more irritating than the cold. He made his way to the cafeteria, bought enough food to avoid needing to leave again, and carried it back to his dorm room without allowing himself to be dragged into any of the conversations still spilling through the hallways.

The second-years were still speaking about Beacon Hall, Eldervale, commander choices, the Warden, and the unpleasant possibility that the academy considered fourteen days a reasonable assessment duration. Liam ignored all of it. He had already spent too much of the day dealing with other people’s thoughts, motives, and looming disasters.

By the time he returned to his room, Mabel had not come back from her patrol.

That was fine. Her work was her work. His was finished for the night.

He finally took the shower he had delayed, letting the hot water drive out the cold that had clung stubbornly to him since his walk through the third-year wing. Afterward, he dressed in simple night clothes, sat at his desk, and ate in silence. The meal was not particularly remarkable, but it was warm, and that made it useful. He waited a few minutes after finishing, less out of discipline and more because lying down immediately after eating felt like inviting discomfort for no good reason, then moved to his bed.

For the first time in what felt like too long, Liam had handled everything that needed handling.

Chris had been confirmed as an active problem. Lucian had been pressed enough to speak. Isolde had been exposed privately and placed under warning. Sheila had been told enough to understand the danger without being given a target she was not ready to accuse. Edith had moved closer into Sheila’s orbit. Nyxie, Smoke, and Raven had been deployed. The Bastion Assessment had been announced. None of the problems were solved completely, but they were no longer shapeless.

That was enough.

For tonight, he had control over the position of the pieces.

He did not need to overthink them.

There was still the matter of the strange watching sensation. Mabel was somewhere in the academy, patrolling for signs of an assassin, spy, magical surveillance, or whatever else had brushed against Liam’s instincts during the day. Under ordinary circumstances, that should have kept him more alert.

Yet, for some reason, Liam only wanted to rest. His mind, which had spent the week cutting through one inconvenience after another, finally refused to keep chewing on possibilities with no evidence attached. If Mabel found something, she would tell him. If she did not, then there was nothing to act on yet.

’Tomorrow,’ he thought, closing his eyes. ’Everything else can wait until tomorrow.’

And so he slept.

The next two days passed with the academy continuing in its usual rhythm, though the atmosphere had changed.

Lessons went on. Instructors still taught. Students still trained, argued, complained, studied, and dragged themselves between departments as if the week had not become heavier. But beneath the usual structure, every year had shifted into preparation.

The first-years had received their own announcement about the assessments waiting for them. The third-years had received theirs as well, though the final-year students were far better at hiding panic beneath discipline and exhaustion. Across the academy, theory exams loomed first, practical assessments after, and the entire school had fallen into that familiar pre-exam pressure where even casual conversations carried the weight of future failure.

For the second-years, however, everything circled back to the Bastion Assessment.

The Eldervale field guide became the most-read book in their year almost overnight. Students carried it through corridors, opened it at lunch, marked pages during study periods, and argued over the meaning of entries they had barely finished reading.

Some focused on the maps. Some focused on Veyrhold. Some focused on the threat guide with the hungry attention of people who believed knowing names meant knowing danger. Others obsessed over the Warden despite Lucia making it clear that the only correct response to that entity was avoidance. The warning seemed to make it worse. Anything the academy told students not to fight immediately became a topic among the more reckless.

But even Eldervale’s threats could not compete with the question moving through almost every second-year mind.

Who would be commander?

And who would be vice commander?

The fact that they were allowed to choose those two roles before deployment made the issue immediate. If the academy had appointed someone, the students could complain while obeying. If the decision had to be made only inside the realm, they could postpone the argument until survival forced urgency. But choosing before the assessment gave them time to think, argue, align, and hesitate. It also gave students like Chris time to move.

Still, many already knew where they stood.

Sheila Granger had led them once before during the battlefield simulation in their first year. That assessment could not compare to the Bastion Assessment, not in scale, danger, or responsibility, but it had mattered. Sheila had shown a level of patience, organization, and awareness that many students remembered. She had not led by overwhelming them.

She had led by making people understand what needed to be done, by listening where necessary, correcting where needed, and keeping the group from breaking under pressure. Since Nalim, her position had only grown clearer. Her rank, her conduct, and the way students had slowly begun approaching her for guidance had turned her into the most natural commander candidate.

For others, the choice was less settled.

Some students stayed to themselves, watching the higher-ranked second-years and weighing what leadership might require. The top five drew the most attention: Sheila, Asher, Liam, Charlotte, and Chris. But when the question became command rather than strength, most students quietly narrowed the field to two names.

Sheila and Chris.

Asher was powerful, and no one sane questioned that. His blue flames had become one of the most feared and admired forces in the second year. But leadership was not simply strength, and Asher’s temper made the idea of him commanding a hundred students feel like preparing a fire near dry grass and hoping nothing sparked.

He was brave, direct, and dangerous, but he was also impatient, intolerant, and far too likely to call someone an idiot before they finished explaining a problem. Most students did not even bother associating him with the word commander for long.

Liam was stranger.

There were a few students willing to consider him. Very few, but they existed. They were usually the ones who had caught glimpses of what he could do during group assessments, students who remembered how quickly he saw through threats, how decisively he moved when the situation demanded it, and how his presence could change the direction of danger before others even understood it. To them, Liam Hunter as commander was terrifying, but not incompetent.

Most students rejected the idea outright.

Some hated him for being a dark mage. Some feared him. Some could not imagine following someone who looked at leadership as if it were a disease. Others simply did not want the weight of him standing at the center of their year, because obedience under Liam would not feel like unity. It would feel like survival.

Charlotte, meanwhile, was Charlotte.

The thought of her leading the second-years produced reactions that ranged from amused horror to indecent enthusiasm among certain boys who were better at staring than thinking. She was intelligent in her own way, perceptive, dangerous, and far more capable than many students understood.

But she also carried herself with too much shameless pleasure in discomfort, and only the stars knew what the second-years would have to endure if the proud, seductive, dark-skinned girl decided command was another stage for her amusement. The more logical students knew better than to let their eyes make decisions their lives would have to pay for.

That left Chris.

He had been vice commander during the first-year battlefield simulation, and many Tempestian students still saw him as a natural authority. He was a prince, polished, confident, well-connected, and capable of making himself sound like the obvious choice when the room wanted certainty. Even after falling in rank, he retained enough influence to matter. Those who disliked Crescent’s growing presence, those loyal to Tempest, those who wanted power near royalty, and those who simply preferred a sharper, more familiar command figure still looked toward him.

Sheila understood that.

So she made her move.

Over those two days, Edith Roswell began appearing beside Sheila more often.

Not constantly enough to look staged, but consistently enough that students noticed. Edith joined Sheila during study sessions, stood near her when groups approached to discuss exam preparation, and walked with her between certain classes.

When Sheila spoke to a small cluster of students about forming study groups around Core Myst and the Eldervale guide, Edith was there, listening, adding a few calm remarks, and making it clear without needing to declare anything that she was not merely present as a friend. She was part of the structure forming around Sheila.

It worked.

Students remembered Edith. They remembered the academy authorities praising her leadership during past group assessments. They remembered how composed she was under pressure, how she did not chase attention, and how she had a way of making decisions feel less dramatic than others made them.

Some began approaching her the same way they approached Sheila, not with the same familiarity yet, but with growing trust. Questions that might have gone only to Sheila now found their way to Edith too. That mattered. It allowed students to see that Sheila’s command would not be a one-person performance, and that if Sheila became commander, Edith was likely the one standing beside her as vice.

And Liam stayed out of it completely.

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