Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Dray
“There’s no way I’m being fucking executed,” I mutter to the other two. “There’s no way someone’s swinging an axe through this neck. I’m far too fucking beautiful to die.”
“It could just be a threat,” Beaufort says. “Aaron trying to scare us.” But there’s no conviction in his voice. He doesn’t believe that for a moment. He knows how ruthless his mother is. How many of her enemies she’s killed. She’s had us kill many of them for her.
I shake my head. “It’s not happening, Beaufort. Not today, not this week, not ever. If I’m dying, I’m dying in the arms of my fucking mate and nowhere else.”
Thorne is quiet. Beau looks at me like I’m freaking mad.
“You got a plan then, Wolf?” he snarls.
He never calls me that. Just goes to show how stressed out he really is. I guess an impending execution can do that to a man.
I let the side of my mouth curl into a smile. “Yeah,” I say. “Actually, I have.”
While the others have been moping around like a pair of love-sick poets, I’ve been working away at the binds.
Sure, it’s cut my arms, my wrists, and my hands to pieces – sure it’s fucking hurt – but it’s not like I’m going to have any use for these body parts if I’m dead, is it? And my persistence has paid off.
“What?” Beaufort says, sensing I’m keeping something from him.
I let my smile spread right across my mouth.
Then I tug. I yank. I groan. My shoulder – the bad one with the scar – clicks right out of its joint, pain spearing into the center of my brain and a whole host of curses flying from my mouth.
But that arm also slips right through the binds.
With a great deal of effort and pain, I hold my hand out in front of me.
There’s blood running down to my fingertips, my wrists slashed to shit, and I can’t move my arm like I should be able to.
However, I can also feel some of my magic running that way too.
I bring the other arm, with the bind still wrapped around the wrist, out in front of me, and with my shadow magic I blast it to hell.
“There we go,” I say, shaking out my relatively good hand as if the whole thing was fucking easy. Which, just to be clear, it wasn’t.
I examine my shredded wrists carefully, and use my magic to heal the wounds while the others both stare at me in shock.
I’m guessing they weren’t expecting that.
Then I take ahold of my shoulder and with a grunt and a grit of my teeth, haul my joint back into place.
It hurts just as much, white light streaking right across my vision.
When I’m convinced it’s worked, I stretch my arms above my head, groaning and leaning first to one side, then to the next, the pain making me nauseous – not that I’d admit it.
“Just fucking untie me,” Beaufort snaps, obviously tired of my little display.
I bring my arms back to my sides, wriggling my fingers. “Please,” I say.
Beaufort frowns. I tilt my head to one side and wait.
And wait.
“Please,” Beaufort mumbles eventually.
I wink at him and stroll toward my other bond brother, sending my magic shooting at the binds on his wrists and freeing him instantly.
“Dray,” Beaufort growls, “this isn’t time for fun and games.”
“There’s always time for fun and games, Beau,” I say. But sensing he’s definitely reached his limit now, I shoot my magic at his binds next, and they snap open, falling away to the floor.
Both my bond brothers copy my earlier movements – rolling their shoulders, stretching their arms, and feeling for the magic in their fingertips. Then we’re diverting our attention to the door. We don’t even need to say it. All three of us are shooting shadows at it in the next breath.
Only, of course, it isn’t that damn easy. It seems the door is made of the same stuff the binds were. It absorbs our magic like a giant sponge and stands there just as solid and just as fucking annoying as it always did.
“Shit,” I mumble.
Then my eyes dart to the window with its bars. I stroll that way and examine the material. It’s also made of the same shadow-absorbing stuff, but brute force worked before, and I think it can work again. I use my magic to tie ropes around the bars.
“What are you doing?” Beaufort asks.
But Thorne understands, quickly doing the same with his, and finally Beaufort catches on and copies us.
Then we’re all heaving the shadow ropes towards us.
At first, nothing much happens and despite the agony radiating through my shoulder, I keep on yanking at the rope.
Then there’s creaking, groaning, and the sound of metal grinding against stone.
“It’s working,” I tell them through my gritted teeth.
With relief, we haul with all the strength we have.
The frame of the bars start to shift in the stone opening.
A little at first, barely a quarter of an inch, then a little more, and then a lot more.
Then the whole damn thing comes crashing out of the window-frame and tumbling to the floor, nearly sending the three of us flying backward too.
“Shit.” I laugh. “That actually worked.”
I’ve always hated plans, but it seems sometimes they do actually pay off.
Thorne strides to the now-open window and peers out. “There are no guards down there,” he says.
“So what are we going to do?” Beaufort asks. “Shimmy down like Ra-fucking-punzel?”
I shrug. “Don’t see why not.”
Beaufort shakes his head. “It seems too easy. This place must be crawling with guards.”
“Possibly,” Thorne agrees, “then again, what do we have to lose?”
But I think these fuckwits underestimated us – expected us to rely only on our magic, forgetting we have other skills and talents too.
“Come on then,” I say.
My shadow magic still lies on the ground, a shimmering dark coil of rope.
I tie it to a hook on one of the walls, hoping it’s secure enough, and then I toss it out the window.
The window itself is fucking small and I have to squeeze, push, pull, and manipulate my body until I’m through.
I don’t know how Thorne is gonna get out – he’s even bigger than me.
I take hold of the rope in my good hand and then, just like Beaufort described, I’m shimmying all the way down until I’m a foot above the green slime of the moat.
Yeah… I guess I didn’t plan this bit.
I look back up the way I’ve come – my two bond brothers staring down at me from the open window above. It’s too risky to shout up to them and ask for help or suggestions. As usual, I’m gonna have to wing it.
I look down at the slime. Fuck knows what’s in there. Fuck knows what it’s going to do to me.
I lower the toe of my boot, half expecting it to sizzle away in the slime. But nothing happens.
Fuck it, I think, pinching my nose, closing my eyes, and letting go of the rope, falling into the green slime below me.
It’s cold and gloopy, more like jelly than water, and I sink through its surface as it swims around me and locks me in its glutinous embrace. I kick with my legs, still clutching my nose and having only one good arm to swim with.
Turns out, swimming through it is nothing like water at all. My limbs just slice through the jelly and I seem to sink further down to the bottom.
I risk opening my eyes. Everything is green, like a forest on a bright summer’s day. I tip my head back, searching for the surface above me and having no fucking idea where it is.
Then I feel it – a ripple in the slime. I swing my gaze to my side and see an ominous dark shadow gliding my way. It moves like a snake, except it’s much bigger, much more solid. It has two beady black eyes that pierce me with its gaze.
It clearly wants to make acquaintances. Either that, or it’s hoping I’ll be its next meal.
Fuck that. If I’m not being executed today, then I’m certainly not being eaten by some giant eel in a sludge of green slime.
I fire my shadow magic right into its face and then use my shadows to propel myself up to the surface.
I break through, gasping for air – the stuff in my nose, in my ears, in my mouth.
I kick as hard as I can for the grassy verge in front of me, peering down constantly at this snake-like monster now shooting my way.
My hand hits the bank just as the monster grabs my foot in its sharp bite.
I swallow down a cry. The monster is going to be the least of my problems if every guard in this tower comes running my way.
I kick – it holds my ankle tight in its teeth – and I kick again and again with my free leg, over and over into its face, until the green sludge is starting to turn black with its blood.
Still, it doesn’t let go, yanking and yanking until my fingers are sliding through the mud of the bank and I’m pulled back into the slime.
Beaufort and Thorne shoot their own magic down into the slime, but they can’t see the monster attacking me and their shots miss the mark.
I’m on my own.
It yanks me back under the surface. I realize shooting my shadow magic at it in the thick, jelly-like substance is almost impossible.
There’s only one thing for it.
I transform into my wolf, and then I’m scraping and snapping and tearing at the monster – the slime turning as black as night – my claws slicing through its scale-like flesh And finally, finally, it releases my leg and drifts away, motionless.
My wolf howls and scrabbles back for the bank, pulling itself up onto the damp grass and collapsing in a heap. I lay there panting, occasionally coughing up greenish-black slime onto the earth, my ankle and my shoulder both throbbing with pain.
I don’t see my two bond brothers descend from our prison, but I’m guessing they don’t make the same mistake I made – somehow avoiding the green slime and ending up on the bank next to me.
Thorne wipes slime from my face with his shirt, and Beaufort heals my ankle, before moving on to my shoulder.
I blink up at them both, now back in my human form.
“That was fun,” I lie, pushing Beaufort away. My shoulder – already fucked up by that shifter bite – is even more screwed up now and can’t be healed that easily.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Beaufort whispers. “What the hell were you thinking?”
I shrug. “I couldn’t think of another way down.” I peer back up at the Black Tower. “Did we get heard?”
Beaufort peers that way too. “I don’t think so,” he says.
I wipe more slime from my face and as I do, I catch a glance of something on my wrist. Thinking it must be the blood from that creature, I rub at it. But the mark is embossed into my skin like a tattoo.
I jolt and then I’m wiping gunk from my other wrist and staring down at fresh marks there too.
Fated marks.
“Fuck,” I say, thrusting my wrists towards my bond brothers, grinning despite the fact I’m cold, wet, naked, and everything hurts.
“I’m pleased for you, buddy,” Beaufort says, not sounding pleased at all. “But let’s not stick around admiring, huh? We don’t want to get caught. Come on. I think the academy is this way.”
“Can’t we just displace there?” I ask him, stumbling up onto my feet.
“No. I think they’ll be watching. Monitoring. It’s safer going by foot.”
I groan. The last thing I need is a trek through the icy mist. But it looks like a trek is exactly what I’m going to get. Hugging my arms around my body, cradling my injured arm and attempting to use my magic to warm me, I stumble behind the other two.
Soon the Black Tower is lost to us in the mist. It’s almost as thick as the slime in the moat. I can barely see my hands in front of my face. I understand why they built the Black Tower where they did. If you escape the Tower, you’re likely to lose yourself in this fog.
But most people aren’t Thorne Cadieux, my bond brother. His shadow magic is already racing away in front of us, cutting through the white mist and leading the way.
“What if Little Kitten comes for us?” I say. “And we’re not there?”
“She’s not come for us yet,” Beaufort points out.
“How do you know?” I say.
He points to his chest and taps the point above his heart. “I can feel it,” he says. “She’s nowhere near. But this is the right direction. Can’t you feel it, Dray?”
I look down at my wrists and nod. Yeah, I feel it.