Chapter 2 Devora
Devora
Thick tears fell from my cheeks and landed on the fur clutched in my grip. I pulled the dead creature tighter to me, burying my face in its red coat. Everything was stained with its blood. My hands, my clothes, the field beneath my feet.
“Get up, girl,” a cold voice behind me said. “We don’t have much time.”
I could barely see through the tears, but I’d know that voice anywhere. I slowly turned to take in those stern features, the arched eyebrows, the brown-and-gray hair coiled into a tight bun.
Lady Reaux looked at me with disgust, sharp eyes full of dismissal. “Quit your crying. Don’t forget, this was your idea, Devora. See it through, or we’ll do things my way.”
The dream shifted. I was standing before the skeleton of an enormous bonfire—easily three times my height. The fox dragged behind me, its weight making my muscles ache and my heart crack.
Every time was the same. I begged to skip this part of the dream, pleaded with my own mind to let me wake up.
It never worked.
I forced back choked cries as I hoisted the innocent animal onto a stake, its limp body giving way and falling back onto me. Once it finally stood tall, the fox stared down at me, golden eyes now lifeless and hollow. They swallowed me. Consumed me.
But the dream wavered once more. Blind panic crawled up my throat.
The image of the fox was replaced with dark onyx eyes. Long, wavy blonde hair cascaded over fair skin, with a crown of emeralds atop her head. The ends of her light hair were soaked in crimson. Blood seeped from her neck, turning her golden dress a fiery red.
Her dead eyes locked onto mine as a disembodied voice echoed around me. “How could you?” she cried, voice scratchy and rough to my ears. “You were supposed to be my friend. They’re going to kill me because of you.”
With a roar, flames burst from the firewood and leapt onto the stake.
“No!” I screamed, clawing at the wood. This wasn’t what happened—she was supposed to live—
This is your fault.
You did this to her.
How could anyone forgive you?
There was a soft tap at the door.
My eyes snapped open, and the book I’d dropped on my chest fell to the floor with a thud. Out of the corner of my eye, I could’ve sworn I saw several wisps of shadows retreat back beneath my chair, but when I looked closer, they were gone.
I struggled to catch my breath as the door to my room cracked open. “Miss Devora?” The young maid peeked her head in. A brown curl came loose from her bun and framed her face. “I have your dinner ready.”
“Come in,” I said, voice cracking. I quickly cleared my throat. She opened the door just wide enough to slip inside, then hastily shut it.
I didn’t know why she bothered. We both knew I couldn’t get out, even if the door was wide open. My captor had made sure of that.
I threw the blanket over the cream bedsheets. The sight still made me snort. I never thought my prison would have silk sheets, but here we were.
A shiver raced down my spine as the memory of the dead fox resurfaced. If I was being honest, I never thought I’d be in a “prison” at all. After what I’d done, I thought my future lay in the gallows.
Instead, I was here. In a locked bedroom at the top of a tower in a cold, gray empire full of magical strangers.
Don’t forget, you’re now one of those magical strangers.
The maid set a tray of soup at the foot of my bed. “I’ll just leave this here,” she said in her bright voice.
“Thanks, Rebekah.” I gave her a smile, which she returned with a slight curtsy.
We hadn’t always been on good terms. No, back when I first got to the Veridian Empire, I was a menace. On my first day meeting her, I attacked her with little wooden shards I’d scratched off the bottom of my bedside table, then bolted for the open door.
I’d gotten about a foot before I slammed into some invisible barrier. It knocked me to my back and left me dazed for several minutes, long enough for Rebekah to retreat and call for the master of the house.
Nox Duma.
My would-be captor and, in a strange way, my savior.
After all, it was thanks to him I wasn’t left hanging at the gallows or rotting in the dungeons of Mysthelm after I betrayed his empress and almost got her killed.
As a favor to the empress—and probably to get me out of the way—he’d offered to bring me back here to his province to serve out my “sentence.” I didn’t think he even knew what to do with me besides toss me in a room and hope I stayed quiet.
You deserve so much worse.
I silenced the voice with a wince and climbed onto the bed, leaning forward to see the murky brown soup on the tray.
“Bean soup again today?” I sniffed the air and grimaced. “Lovely.”
“He heard how much you disliked it last week.” Rebekah pinched her lips together. “He requested the kitchen make it as often as possible.”
“Of course he did,” I muttered. “Well, joke’s on him. I love bean soup.” I lifted the bowl, sucked in a greasy mouthful, and smacked my lips dramatically. “Mmm. Bean soup.”
Rebekah shook her head with a smirk. “I’ll be sure to pass along the message.”
She took a few minutes to tidy up the room.
I tried to tell her long ago that I could do that—I used to be a lady’s maid in my kingdom of Mysthelm, after all.
I liked having something to do with my hands.
A goal, a task, a purpose. Sitting here in this tower, I had no purpose.
No use beyond wallowing in my own guilt and imagining the life I was missing.
Perhaps that was the point of Nox’s punishment.
I padded to the window at my right and gazed onto the choppy waters in the distance. The blue waves crashing against the rocky cliffside were darker in the fading sunlight. Everything in this province was darker. Colder. Lifeless.
With a shiver, I sat in the wooden chair next to it and pulled a quilt around me. I’d been in Drakorum, the mountainous province of the Veridian Empire, for three months now, and I’d barely seen the sun come out at all.
Every day was the same. Wake up, find a plain breakfast of oatmeal and pomegranates already sitting at the foot of my bed, pretend to sulk and refuse the meal, then give in because a girl needs to eat—and nobody was there to witness my silent temper tantrum, anyway.
Then, I’d alternate between my many scintillating activities.
Pace the rug in front of the fireplace. Read one of the countless books on Veridian Empire history from the bookshelf.
Take a bath. Pick at the bottom of my bedside table until I’d chipped off those little wooden darts that I could throw at the door.
In Mysthelm, I’d gotten used to carrying a dagger at my thigh, just in case.
I became somewhat proficient at throwing, having grown up as an orphan on those dark streets.
But since the annoyingly arrogant dragon Shifter currently holding me hostage took my safety dagger, I didn’t even have that to target practice with.
Sure, my prison was luxurious. Strangely so.
But it was still a prison. Fancy sheets and golden bathtubs could only mask the truth for so long.
When you were the one responsible for betraying the empress of this empire, someone you had the balls to call a friend even as you shoved the metaphorical knife in her back… you deserved worse.
I deserved worse.
Fates, that had practically become my battle cry at this point.
I still didn’t understand why Nox kept me here. What was his endgame? To let me die alone up in this tower? Until he thought I’d learned my lesson? It seemed like all I did now was wait for the other shoe to fall.
I gnawed on my lower lip, which had grown chapped in the dryness of Drakorum. Even being stuck in this tower, I could feel it. The brittle air forcing its way through the cracks in the stone, sucking out the warmth and replacing it with a chill that settled into my bones with every breath.
Winter in the Veridian Empire was very different from back home in my kingdom, if I could even call it that anymore. I supposed the green, vibrant life of Mysthelm had never truly been my home.
A home was somewhere you could call your own. Somewhere that felt like yours. That welcomed you back again and again, no matter how long you were gone.
I had no home. Nothing to call my own. No friends, no family, no one to care.
That was all I had ever wanted.
Grabbing my glasses from my bedside table, I picked up the book that had toppled to the ground.
I watched Rebekah over the top of the pages as she flitted around the room, tidying my dirty clothes, folding the blankets on the bed.
When she stepped on her toes to dust the top of the armoire, I spotted a wrinkled piece of paper sticking out of her pocket.
With my glasses on, I could make out dark, messy script with the words “from your Milo” and a little heart next to it. Hmm. A love interest?
I wanted to ask her about this curious sweetheart of hers. It was the closest thing I had to entertainment in this dreadfully dull tower. But before I could, she gave me another curtsy and exited out the door, as quick and graceful as a bunny.
And that was the most exciting thing that would happen to me all night.
She was usually the only other person I saw, besides the strange horses and their riders barging onto the grounds beneath my tower at all hours of the night.
Sometimes, when I was up late reading by the window, I’d hear hooves and look down to see newcomers dismounting, small figures making their way to the front of the mansion and out of sight.
I liked to pretend they were spies. Maybe assassins, sent by some far-off villain. Or workers from a brothel coming to pay Nox a visit in his mysterious lair. My imagination often ran away with me. That, paired with my annoying curiosity, used to get me in trouble at the orphanage.
I turned my attention back to the book in my lap. From Peaks to Palaces: History of the Veridian Empire. Real riveting stuff.
But it had helped me learn a lot about this mysterious land I was stuck in. Drakorum. One of the six provinces in the Veridian Empire, each home to a unique kind of magic I had yet to discover. Drakorum was where Nox and anyone with a Shifter bloodline originated from.
Shifters were evidently massively loyal creatures. It came from their innate wild nature, since they had the power to shift into whatever their animal form was. I’d only met a handful so far—Nox, of course, as well as Rebekah. And Clarissa, who was a fox Shifter.
Fox.
The image of those dead eyes, the bloodied fur, the limp body slammed back into me.
Your fault. Traitor.
I took a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut to banish the feel of its fur beneath my fingers, then looked down at the book.
While Drakorum was where I currently resided, it wasn’t the province that captured my curiosity. One word rang out in my mind.
Tenebra. The province just west of here, home to the Shadow Wielders. People who could turn darkness into weapons, who could control and conjure shadows from nothing.
My guilt morphed into something else. A deep, quiet, hesitant yearning. The only emotion that could distract from the shame, the only desire strong enough to outweigh my need for absolution.
Tenebra was the province that held the most intrigue for me because, as I’d only discovered three months ago, it was where I was born. It was where my real family came from.
And I knew absolutely nothing about it. Only that I’d been torn from whatever life I might have had and flung onto the shores of Mysthelm as a baby, with no recollection of my magic.
My magic. Against all odds, beyond my wildest dreams…I wasn’t just an orphan from Mysthelm. I was a Shadow Wielder.
Knock.
The harsh rap on my door echoed for half a second before it slammed open.