Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Beaufort
Time and space whistle around my ears, and then my feet hit down hard on moist ground.
I blink, my eyes focusing in on my new surroundings. The air is gray, the sky heavy with cloud, and before us crouches the Black Tower – squat and solid and sinister.
There’s the rattle of chains, the creak of metal against metal, and the old wooden drawbridge lowers across the grimy moat, the rusted iron door in its archway swinging open too.
The soldier who grips my forearm tightens his fingers into my flesh and pushes me forward as the drawbridge meets the earth, and I march across it, my head swinging upwards to gaze at the portcullis as we pass through the entrance.
There are many things I envisioned for my future, many places I expected to travel. In that future, the Tower was never one of them.
The Black Tower: a place for traitors, a place traitors enter and never leave – not with their heads still attached to their shoulders anyway.
“On whose authority have you brought us here?” I roar for at least the third time.
For a third time, none of the soldiers answer.
They are all members of the Empress’s elite guard; the gold braiding on their purple uniform indicating their elevated rank.
They’ve locked our hands behind our backs using deadening binds, which means as hard as I pull, yank, and jerk at my magic, it remains stuck in my veins like congealing blood, simmering and smoldering, desperate to break free but, for the time being at least, utterly useless.
Behind me, I can hear Dray struggling like a wild dog, growling, snapping his teeth and kicking out. He’s refusing to walk, and I can hear him swearing and cursing as the soldiers drag him across the drawbridge.
Thorne strides beside me, his jaw set, his gaze fixed straight ahead, his body rigid. None of the soldiers are brave enough to touch my bond brother. Instead, they surround him, each armed with a spear directed at his heart – powerful weapons that amplify a shadow weaver’s magic.
We emerge into a dingy courtyard, dirty straw scattered across the ground and damp stone walls lurching up into the gray sky.
They march us straight across, through an opposite doorway, and then up a stone spiral staircase that reminds me of the staircase at the fort out in the demon wastelands.
This tower must be as old as that fort – it’s existed for as long as the accounts of this realm have been written, a place where the ruling emperor or empress of the day has sent their enemies – sent their enemies to meet their deaths.
After everything I’ve heard, everything I’ve learned over these last few days, after my eyes have been truly opened to the truth of the world in which we live, it’s still a shock. Still utterly unbelievable that she would do this. My own mother. Is she condemning me to death?
We climb several flights of stairs, and then I’m forced into an empty room, Thorne following straight after me, and then six guards carrying a still struggling, thrashing Dray in behind us.
They throw him to the ground, where he lands with a thud, swearing once more but scrabbling up to his feet as the heavy iron door slams shut behind us.
There’s the sound of more metal grinding, bolts locking and securing, and then the boots of the soldiers fading away as they descend the staircase.
I run to the door, shouting through the wood. “You have no right to detain us, no right to detain us without charges, without representation. Do you know who I am?”
“I think they know who you are, Beaufort,” Thorne says quietly. “I think that’s why we’re here.”
I turn around and scowl at my friend. Then, at our shifter bond mate, “You said we could trust your brothers!”
“It wasn’t Dirk,” Dray says defensively. “It wasn’t the twins, either. They didn’t tell anyone. They didn’t tell on us. It was Danders. Fucking shithead dickwad bastard Danders.”
“Someone must have told him,” I say.
Dray shakes his head. “It was a lucky guess,” he says, kicking at more dirty straw on the floor of this bare room.
It stinks, and I dread to think what’s lurking in the straw over by the far corner of this room.
There’s one small window fortified with bars and, down below, the grimy moat is visible and beyond that the mist. I’m not even entirely sure where the hell we are.
I’ve never been to the Black Tower before.
I was never trusted with information about its location.
If I had to guess, though – judging by that swirling mist, the damp ground, the smell in the air – I’d say we’re not so far from the academy itself.
I snatch my gaze away from the window and back to my bond mates. “At least Briony got away,” I say.
The other two nod. Then Thorne shifts on his feet. “Of course she’s going to—”
“No,” I say. “Fox will persuade her otherwise.”
“Otherwise?” Dray says, rolling his eyes. “Like we managed to persuade her not to chase after him into the demon wastelands?”
“She knows this is a much more serious situation,” I say.
“Does she? Chasing Bardin out into the wastelands was pretty damn serious too.”
“What do you think all this means?” Thorne asks.
I sigh. “I don’t know yet, but it’s not good.”
Hours pass, the light outside the window shifting through the meandering mist. They bring us no food and no water, and the tower is eerily silent. No more stamping of boots, no more creaking of doors, and no more rattling of chains. It’s as if we’ve been left here to rot alone.
Soon the light is fading altogether, leaving us in impenetrable darkness.
Thorne stands silent, leaning against the wall, lost in his thoughts.
Dray spends the whole time battling and fighting against the deadening binds that lock his wrists, even though I tell him it’s hopeless, even though all he succeeds in doing is cutting and chafing away at his wrists.
He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to transform into his wolf.
But even that is impossible with the deadening binds.
“Fuck!” he mutters. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! There has to be a way out of these damn things. We’re three of the most powerful fucking shadow weavers in the realm; we must be able to think of a way.”
But I remember being taught this at school: how these binders work, how they subdue even the strongest of shadow weavers’ magic. I know there’s no way out of them. I sink to the floor. All we can do is wait – wait and see what she has planned for us.
None of us sleeps that night, although at some point Dray abandons his attempts to wriggle free of the binds and slumps down to his backside, sitting in the straw, muttering away to himself quietly.
I think about what I’ll say to my mother if she comes – what words I can use to convince her that we’re not a threat, that Briony most definitely isn’t.
That we can help her, that we can rid the realm of the demons once and for all.
Our powers combined are so strong that we made it through the shield protecting our realm from the demons; we saw off several attacks from the creatures, and, while we didn’t succeed in capturing Bardin, she didn’t kill us either.
I’m convinced we could protect the realm from the demons.
I’m convinced my mother needs us. The realm too.
But then Bardin’s words come rattling back into my mind.
It was the shadow weavers who created the demons in the first place.
I still can’t believe that’s true. The monsters we have been fighting all our lives, that claimed two of my half-brothers, that claimed others that we have known, were of our own making.
It makes me sick to my stomach. And yet, I can’t deny it’s the truth.
I’ve seen my magic against Briony’s. It isn’t truly dark, like the magic I felt in the weapons room or out there at Crow’s Fort, but it is dark – not like Briony’s light, bright and radiant.
Her light could never make anything so sinister as the demons, but mine, I think mine could.
“You think they’re gonna leave us here to rot?” Dray asks. He’s back to yanking on the binds, twisting and contorting his arms into all sorts of positions in a bid to free his wrists.
I roll my shoulders, aching from where my own arms are forced behind my back.
Then I rise up onto my feet and stroll back towards the window.
The thick mist still lingers across the ground, blocking out the view.
I peer down into the moat. It’s a dark green color and it looks suspiciously like slime.
“I don’t know,” I say.
I’m guessing they’re not planning to let us starve though, because at some point a little latch at the bottom of the solid door snaps back and three bowls slide into the room.
I’m rushing to that door straight away, bending down to yell through the hole.
“I need to speak to the Empress,” I shout. “I need to speak to her now!”
There’s no response, and the latch snatches back across. I kick at the door anyway, hard enough to bruise every toe on my foot. There’s still no response.
Dray looks down at the unappetizing slop in the bowls. “How are we meant to even eat those?” he says. “Our hands are bound.”
We leave them where they lie and walk back to the window.
“We can’t just stay here,” Dray says, moaning as he yanks his arms some more. His wrists are red raw now, bleeding in a couple of places. I can’t even offer to heal him, not with my magic trapped inside my body.
I close my eyes and think of Briony. Fox wasn’t with us when we were captured.
I don’t think the soldiers knew that he was with us; they weren’t looking for him.
Which means he’s there to help her. And for all the times I’ve doubted him, that I’ve suspected him, the fact he’s bound to us too, fills me with an immense relief.
He’ll look after her. He’ll keep her safe, although I have a suspicion that nowhere is safe in the realm now.
The slop in the bowls slowly congeals as the hours pass. Our stomachs growl with hunger, and even though there’s a crust forming across the slop, it starts to look more and more appealing as our stomachs moan.
“Could be poisoned,” Thorne says as he sees me glance towards the food for a third time in a row.
“Why would they poison us,” I say, “when they could just leave us here to die?”
“Which is strange, isn’t it?” Thorne says. “Why haven’t they killed us already?”
I shake my head. “It’s not her style,” I answer. “And besides …” I peer up towards that gray sky, as if I half expect to see the golden dragon soaring through the clouds. “I think she’s using us as bait, just like Bardin used Fox.”
“Then we have to hope,” Thorne says, “that she doesn’t come.”