Beastward Academy: Reborn, I Claimed My Sister's Serpent novel · Chapter 5 of 32

Chapter 5: Hungry

"Nothing," I said. "I stopped."

The whole ring heard it.

Leofric's face went white under the gold.

For ten years he'd been raised on one blood. Mine. Every night, without fail.

It had been four days since my last drop on his stone.

He'd been living off ten years of savings, and he'd just spent them all in one fight.

Aveline pushed through the crowd at the rail and grabbed his arm.

"You're tired," she said loudly. "That's all. Come on. You can have mine."

She dragged him out of the ring.

They found out that night that he couldn't.

I heard the whole story at breakfast from three different tables.

Aveline had cut her palm in front of his house students and held it out to him with a gold cup underneath.

He'd taken one mouthful and spat it on the floor.

"It tastes like rust," he'd said.

Twins. Same face. Same mother. Same blood, everyone always said.

Not to him, apparently.

"That's what you get," Kerensa said, buttering her third roll, "for picking the one who never fed you."

Morvran was eating eggs off my plate as well as his own.

"I could have told him that," he said. "Blood isn't a family name. It's a habit."

"A habit?"

"Ten years of the same drop at the same hour. You don't just taste that. You become it." He looked at me. "He's made of you. He's going to starve without you."

I put my fork down. "Good."

Kerensa whistled.

"Am I wrong?" I asked her.

"No. I'm just used to you being nice."

"I was nice for ten years."

Leofric came for me on the fourth night.

I was alone in the menagerie, checking a fox with a burned paw, because the night orderly had a cold.

The lamps were low. The beasts in the pens were asleep.

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