🏆 SHORTLIST - OPEN NOVELLA CONTEST 2024 🏆
A misfit of an aristocratic family must find out who is behind the murder at his university before he is disowned and falls victim to the murderer.
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The campus infirmary was a lovechild between the Food Science Hall and the Conservatory. A frown pulled at the corners of my lips when I walked through the wide lobby of checkered slabs of ceramic and under the domed skylight punching past the central stairs' landing. Unlike the hospices detailing the city outside Lyllan University, the infirmary hall boasted an academic build, complete with medical laboratories and lecture halls reminiscent of the FSH. Still, my focus would be the solitary room with an automatic sliding door—the nurse's office.
Said room sat between two large lecture halls, one used by juniors and seniors taking up a direct Medicine Credence. I could have made it into the program, but opted out at the registration. I didn't need a headache of a career when I was all set even with a Food Science credence. Hell, my major has "medicine" attached to it, and my lectures were sometimes too much.
If not for my father's incessant cold looks, I wouldn't even have enrolled into a university in the first place. It wasn't thanks to him nor his money I was able to make a name for myself. Ranacrys would take me places, not the Crowhaven attached to me like a toothed leech I couldn't pluck off.
Chatter blossomed in my ears—a welcome distraction from the turmoil that were my thoughts. Alyson could be lying, or she could be telling the truth. She could be telling the truth and lying—all at the same time. It was her word against no one else's. I knew what I saw that night. She was in the dressing room, but if she hadn't cut the rope, then a more uncomfortable question sat at the back of my head: who did?
The possibility of two people conniving to get me was a journey into unknown territory. Even I had disposed of Ranacrys' enemies with a figurative back-hand, and they stayed down. Forever. Those had been ephemeral pearlcress on a barren yard—once here; tomorrow, gone. Never had they risen up against me with a coherent plan, and never had they started working together. But whoever it was, they knew I was an underaged kid wrestling against a behemoth. And the fact that the latest murder happened inside the campus was a message. A warning. They knew who I was, and it wouldn't take them long to come for me. No one—absolutely no one—would know the truth once I was done away. They already proved they could twist any lie to be the truth and any truth to be a lie.
But they forgot who I was. As long as the Crowhaven name was attached to me, they wouldn't ever touch me. Not a strand of my hair. Not an inch of my life. Because if they did, Father would go through hell and back clearing his name, cursing me to oblivion, and punishing whoever dared tarnish it. And if I wasn't alive to witness that, he'd bloody go to the next person to blame: my killer.
The one thing I inherited from that sodden man was that Crowhavens do not forget. We do not back down. And most importantly, we do not shame ourselves nor let ourselves be shamed.
I reached the room, and a loud, beeping noise bled past my rumination. My gaze trained towards a small box by the frame, a red pinprick of a light flashing with false urgency. It must have read my magic signature, scanned the student directory, and decided to let me in. The door answered my internal question with a silent hiss, the hinges roiling and creaking as it folded along the vertical grooves.
