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⊹ Book 1 of the Aldergrove Duology ⊹
After being told he has only six months left to live, Clementine decides to track down his sister's murderers, leading him to Aldergrove A...
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It had been a long day. More had happened than Clementine could have comprehended, and as much as he knew he needed to lay down and rest, he couldn't. Before sleep, he needed to try and work out what his white-haired stalker was. And that was why he had wandered up to the library—the same one in which he'd slain Harrison Darby. He figured that the best place to start and get a bit of quiet time would be a room full of books brimming with information.
He flicked through the delicate pages of a leather-bound book almost the size of his torso. He skimmed over the tiny, hand-written words, and every time his eyes started to feel heavy, he took a sip of his room-temperature latte.
Seelies, wolf walkers, cold bloods; the book had expanded his knowledge a little more, however, it hadn't helped him in his search for white-haired, golden-eyed humanoids. But he'd not give up yet. It wasn't very late; he still had time to read a few more pages. However, as he flipped the page to a diagram of a seelie, a distorted, screeching roar hollered through the walls.
Clementine lifted his head and stared over at the door. He waited, a murmur of trepidation spiralling through him. He'd never heard that sound before, and as a cold shiver ran down his spine, he began to feel as though there were hundreds of eyes on him. The walls creaked, the dust upon the shelves shifted, and the entire building seemed to groan in appeasement.
Whispers slithered through the woodwork, and as the temperature in the library dropped dramatically, Clementine wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. He exhaled deeply, his breath visible as it left his mouth. A similar roar rumbled through the ominous silence...and then, the cold relented, the whispers died down, and the library began to warm up again.
This wasn't like before. He'd heard the whispers; he'd felt the staring eyes...but that bitterness—that ominous feeling of the academy seething in delight. What the hell had just happened?
He didn't exactly want to stick around and find out. Whatever that roar belonged to sounded huge, and the last thing he needed to be right now was alone. So, he hastily slammed his book shut, snatched his backpack, and left the library, heading for his dorm.
But as he made his way through the corridor, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. He picked up his pace, and once he reached the bottom of the stairs, his power walk became a panicked jog. When he reached the forking hallway, though, he stopped—a faint crackling echoed down the corridor to his right...the infirmary was down that way...and Molly was alone.
He didn't really care about her. He was here to kill the Ravenblood before his time ran out...but he couldn't do that if he didn't have a group of people to hide among. He'd chosen Elliot and his friends, who cared about Molly. If he wanted to keep them close, then checking on her was probably the least he could do, right?
