3 | Kiandah
Shadow Keep
This is not my mattress. Mine may be lumpy and shared with Zelie, but it’s mine and it smells like lavender shea butter and old, old cotton and family. My family.
I feel a tugging in my chest, right over my sternum, like a needle pushed through a stiff piece of leather. Every direction I move, it tugs and pulls. “Cy…Cyprus?” I fight against lethargy, against whatever invisible bonds hold me back. I fight into the world of wakefulness and sit up straight.
My head spins. “Mom?” I wince as a dull, throbbing ache picks up in my back. I’m in a fog. My mouth feels like cotton and so does my throat. My head feels like it’s been stuffed full of cotton, too. I can’t see quite straight, but I still manage to find the edge of the bed and pull myself off of it and onto the floor. By some miracle, my legs hold.
I make it to the door and from the door, out into a hallway where I choose the breezy left corridor on instinct. I’m out of breath. I stumble and crash into stone. It’s a wall and cool to the touch. Beneath my feet that same stone feels icy. The world around me swirls in dark greys. There are no carpets here, no hallway runners, no torchlight. Only windows barely bigger than archers’ slits high in the walls. It must be night, though, because there is only the palest grey light shimmering through them. Only enough for me to see my hand in front of me. I keep it outstretched as I stumble along, the tugging in my chest becoming stronger and more insistent.
I feel like I’ve walked for hours, taking turn after turn, wandering mindlessly. Maybe I’m already dead. Maybe I’m lost in the Shallow Plains, the nowhere land that exists between the mortal plane and those where our ancestors walk for eternity. I should be with them, or I should be with my family. But I shouldn’t be alone. I’m never alone and I’m frightened.
I open my mouth to speak my sisters’ names, but nothing comes out. My throat feels raw and I’m too scared to talk even if I could’ve. Because there are sounds coming from up ahead…sounds of pain and terror. I round the next corner and see orange light emanating from an opening in the wall. In front of it, an iron gate hangs open.
Someone screams and I start to shake. I don’t like this. The tugging in my chest is telling me to go forward to the one place I never imagined because I refused to imagine it. Because this place…I’ve heard the stories…and it’s not for me.
Yaron may be a good boy, but I’m also a good girl. I’ve always been a good girl. I cook, I don’t take more than my fair share of the meal like Papa does, I don’t sneak sweets like Mama and I certainly don’t sneak around with boys like Zelie. I don’t spend hours in front of the mirror like Audet and I don’t ever ask for the expensive fabrics for my dresses or shoes like she does, either. I don’t lie…like Owenna sometimes does. I don’t cheat like Cyprus does at cards…or like he did on his ex-girlfriend once. I don’t want for more than I get. I shouldn’t be here.
But even as the thoughts come over me in waves, they don’t alter my reality. I am here, standing just a few feet from the dungeons, whose wide-open iron doors seem to be beckoning to me, calling me to them. They don’t know that I’m a good girl, or that I don’t belong here. Or maybe they don’t care because they know as well as I do, it doesn’t make any difference. I have to go forward.
Cold cuts through the soles of my feet and wraps its hands around my calves, tugging me back, the force strong but not strong enough to stop me from crouching down and moving to the very edge of the opening. I peek around the stone quickly, but the wide stone hallway ends in an opening that leads off to the left. I can’t see around it and the short hallway itself is empty except for a small table covered in blankets, two chairs shoved beneath it. A jug and two cups sit atop it — it must be a guards’ station. I wonder…if the guards are gone…maybe I can just sneak in…
I start to crawl down the hall when a sharp scream arrests me instantly. The scream is one I recognize. Audet. And then my father’s voice, “Hush now, Audie. Stay strong. It’s going to be alright.”
“It isn’t.” Yaron. His voice is unmistakable and my brain scatters at the sound, the deep tenor striking at me in ways that are devastating, because he isn’t speaking to me at all, but in threatening tones to the people I love most. I cower against the stone ground, but at the sound of my father’s voice, I crawl forward towards it.
“They’re just girls,” my father croaks, sounding like he’s in so much pain. My eyes water. “They’re innocent, my Lord. Believe me…”
The rattle of chains, the whack of something hard against something softer. A grunt of pain… “Just like the sixteen-year-old Alpha girl you murdered.”
Murdered? No. Yaron’s wrong. He must be…
But my father says nothing. I can’t…understand. Can’t…believe…
I keep crawling further down the hallway until I can’t go any farther without being seen. I hover at the opening, wondering if I should risk trying to reach the guards’ table, then realizing I’ll have to. There are footsteps coming from the corridor behind me. I have to move.
I glance around the corner once so rapidly all I see is the black smear of Yaron’s cloak and my family gathered around his feet. He’s alone. There aren’t any other Crimson Riders present. Facing away from me as he is, he can’t see me. I can make it. I see the guards’ table and hone every ounce of my adrenaline to keep my shaking limbs moving soundlessly over the floor as I crawl for it.
“My girls had no part in it,” Papa says abruptly, loudly. “I swear!” I glance up and though he isn’t looking towards me, I see several of my other family members are. He must know I’m here.
“You lie.”
My left calf is shaking, the muscle inside jerking with tiny tremors that I don’t seem to be able to do anything about. Just as little as I can control the ragged breath tearing in and out of my lungs. It tastes of smoke. It tastes of shame. Yaron is known to be a good lord. He wouldn’t make this up. He must be mistaken. Why doesn’t my father say anything?
“My Lord, you know I do not. I admitted freely to being the sole one responsible…”
“We are still interrogating the other Betas in your community…”
“It was us, no one else.”
“And now you say us. A moment ago, you said it wasn’t your children…”
My mother, frazzled in ways she never is, screams, “It was me, Reginald and Owenna, but Owenna was acting under our orders, doing what we asked because we asked out of love and she loves us. Don’t use our love against us, my Lord, I beg of you!” She sobs and her sobs shake me, but I hold firm as I lift a corner of blanket and slide beneath it under the table.
The darkness surrounds me, stinky but welcoming. I feel the breath shake in and out of my chest. I’m sure I’m making noise and quickly cover my mouth. I press my palm against my lips so tightly I’m going to bruise them, but I don’t relent. Instead, I duck my head, crouched on my knees in a ball so small, I hope it makes me invisible, and I peek between the legs of the chair in front of me.
I see Yaron’s cloak swish as he turns towards my mother, chained against the wall. My whole family is in chains, their arms splayed out to the sides. My brother is the only one standing, his chest bare. There are bright red abrasions against his brown skin. My father has blood all over him, whether it’s new or from when he was pierced by an arrow, I’m not sure. My mother’s scarf is untied around her shoulders and the tips of her short curls are badly singed.
“We cannot beg for forgiveness for ourselves, my Lord. But for our eldest, we must beg. She is innocent…”
“And what of your other offspring? You truly seek to claim their innocence when you were moving bodies beneath their feet for weeks? They may be your children, murderess, but they are not children. They are not blind and deaf and I do not assume them to be so stupid that such an aggression would go unnoticed for as long as it did.”
“We were careful,” Owenna says, clearing her throat so that she might speak louder on her second try. “My Lord, my sister Kiandah is a loud supporter of yours. She would not have let us continue had she come across our operation. She would have told someone, tried to stop us. She is too honorable…so, we knew that we needed to be discreet…”
“Where is she?” my mother shrieks. “Where is my baby?” She must not have seen me crawl here.
Lord Yaron advances on her and I freeze, fighting every instinct in my body to go to her, throw my arms over her and beg Lord Yaron for her life.
It’ll do no good. So I’m going to have to be no good, I realize. Lord Yaron wont be reasoned with. I’m going to have to do something more drastic if I want to save any of their lives.
“Do not make the mistake of thinking that because you are fools, I am equally foolish. The girl had her throat slit, the mother had been gutted and the father had been poisoned. Alphas. In their homes. Neighbors to you, separated by three streets’ distance. They were merchants. You traded with them. You knew them and still, you disgraced and defiled them.”Yaron’s voice rises to a deadly crescendo, made more terrifying by the fact that he doesn’t yell. He booms.
“We swear we didn’t know,” my father says, “The bodies were brought to us already dead. We simply were paid to wrap the bodies and prepare them for transport.”
“Prepare how?”
My father speaks after a short silence. “Embalmed. They wanted them preserved so they wouldn’t degrade when they were transported.”
“Transported to where?”
“We don’t know…we weren’t told that much. We were told very little…”
“And you did not think to ask more questions.” Lord Yaron’s voice is filled with disgust. “You simply did what you were told…and for what?”
Another pause, longer this time, until Cyprus interrupts, “Papa, say something!” Cyprus’s voice is hoarse. His neck is chained to the wall as well as his hands. “Tell him the truth — that you didn’t know…that you’re sorry…”
“Go on. Say the words. We both know that they are meaningless.”
“You…” My father sucks in a shaky, broken breath. “You’re right, my Lord. We…I… When the bodies were brought to us, we were told that they died of natural causes, but we…I saw the marks. The girl’s throat had been slashed and I…didn’t ask any questions. What Trash City offered was too good to refuse. I deserve this. I do. But don’t punish my family for my crimes, Lord. I beg of you. I know that the Shadow Lord does not take a mate, does not have offspring…but if you did, if you had…you would know that to have your children take your licks is the ultimate humiliation, the ultimate torture. I beg of you to spare me this, my Lord.”
“Daddy…” Zelie whimpers. I can tell she’s crying even though she’s twisted away from me, facing our parents.
“I really didn’t know about any of this,” Audet sniffles.
“She’s telling the truth. Spare her, my Lord,” my father says. “To spare our children is all that my wife and I can ask of you.”
There’s a hush, disrupted only by my family’s loud breathing. I’ve still got my mouth covered, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Lord Yaron could hear my heart, how loud it pounds. The tension in the quiet hall feels stifling, the air cold as a crypt’s.
Finally his boots scrape over the floor. He takes a step back, away from them and towards me. “I will check on the interrogations of your other co-conspirators and return with my verdict on your family’s guilt in due time. Should days pass and you perish from your injuries in the meantime, so be it. I will hang your bodies from the keep’s gates as a warning to any others who dare align themselves with Trash City. That is how killers are treated in the Shadowlands, regardless of whether you are an Alpha, Beta or an Omega. Your daughter lives for now, but if I find out she had any dealings with Trash City or ever so much as touched the mutilated body of a dead Alpha, she will hang just like the rest of you.”
His heels slam against stone as he comes to the table and sets something roughly upon it. Panic comes on so strong, I sway. And then whoosh goes his cloak as he turns into the next corridor. Clash goes the gate as he closes it behind him and clang goes the lock in the chamber as he traps us all inside. Then, the lightest flutter as he leaves us behind.
I wait until his footsteps have finally faded away entirely, and then a little longer than that, before I inch forward on bruised knees and push the chair out from under the table. I slide out after it, emerge and stagger upright only to realize that I’m entirely naked when my family’s heads turn my way and their eyes go wide.
“Kiandah!” my brother and Zelie say at the same time while I quickly grab a filthy blanket from atop the guards’ table and wrap it around my body.
“Are you…okay?” I say, my throat so dry as I stagger forward, tripping over the edge of the blanket every third step as I move further into the dungeon and realize that the conditions Lord Yaron has kept them in are worse than they initially appeared. They also haven’t been housed here alone.
My family sits in a small room with stone walls, a stone floor and a stone ceiling. Every surface is covered in what appears to be either shit or dirt or blood. There are several cells branching out of this room. In one sit six or seven rag-covered people. In another, Merlin hangs from the ceiling by her heels. In the shadowy darkness of her private cell, I can’t tell if she’s conscious or not.
“We’re okay, but Kiandah! Ancestors be, you look awful. Are you okay?” Zelie yells.
I swivel my head left and see her seated closest to me, chains shackling her arms over her head. She’s not fully seated, her butt just barely grazing the ground. Her legs are chained to a ring on the floor out in front of her so she can’t sit and she also can’t crouch. It must be placing incredible strain on her shoulders. That they haven’t dislocated yet is a miracle.
Meanwhile, next to her, Owenna has her arms and legs both shackled behind her back, forcing her into a kneeling position. Audet has her hands chained to her feet. Mama’s got her hands chained to her neck. Cyprus is chained against the wall, standing, but so high that his toes barely touch the ground. He’s choking already and he’s going to suffocate if I don’t do something fast. My father is the only one whose chains are bearable and I assume that’s only because the arrow sticking out of his shoulder hasn’t been removed. He’s going to bleed to death.
“I’m going…to get you all out of here…” I say, voice funny, chest heaving. It’s hard to breathe. I don’t feel well and am struggling.
I go to my brother first. His fingers are clenching uselessly and he’s got spit on his lips as he tries to talk. “Kia, are you…”
“I’m fine. Fine, just…just…tell me what to do.” I rattle the thick metal ring around his neck and hands, but it’s bolted into the wall.
He grits his teeth, but I don’t let my gaze linger over his face. I don’t assess the carnage. He’s covered in filth and soot. I can’t tell if he’s burned or bloodied. His eye is swollen and he’s got an abrasion in the distinct shape of a rod or leather strap across his chest. He looks like he’s dying. But he’s fighting.
“You aren’t strong enough to pull out the bolts. They’re loose, though…can you…with your magic…I think if you can get the bolts hot enough where they go into the rock, I can break them or…or pull them out.”
“Hot enough?”
His gaze pans to mine. He looks at me with such confidence, he gives me no choice but to feel it. “You took the fire away, I figure you can create it.”
“Create fire? Me?”
He smiles at me and his teeth are so white against the blood on his lips. “You can do it. I know you can.”
My lower lip curls down. His confidence in me makes my heart hurt. I try to fight it but the tears are coming… He shakes his head — tries to. “Don’t do that, Kandia,” he says, smiling — trembling out of the exertion it costs him to not choke to death, but still smiling. “Chin up. Don’t cry. Just try. Try for me?”
I nod, lip still curved all the way down to my chin as I fight valiantly against the sobs rattling through my chest. I secure my blanket and press my palms flat to the metal ring on either side of his hands. That’s where the bolts are. Nothing happens at first. I glance into my brother’s eyes, worrying my lower lip between my teeth. I can’t help him, but I can’t tell him that — not with him looking at me like I can do anything.
And then he screams. “Fuck!” My brother jerks abruptly forward, ramming straight into me as the bolts explode free of the wall. The bracket clatters to the stone and we land beside it, him on his back and me on my butt.
My family is all talking at once, but I focus on Cyprus as he pushes up into a sitting position. He kicks the bracket across the floor, closer to me. I flinch from it and Cyprus chuckles, “You did it, Kia. Fuck, I knew you could do it.”
“You really are an Omega,” Audet whispers.
“I can’t believe it. My baby…” My mama’s grinning at me with half of her mouth. The other half is sagging a bit, her upper lip busted. She’s missing a front tooth she wasn’t before the night started. Luckily, she doesn’t look like she’s been struck. Right now, she just looks proud of me.
“Alright. Alright, let’s uh…let’s do the others,” Cyprus says, standing to his full height. He limps once, then seems to walk a little more easily as he takes a few more steps around the dungeon. He rolls out his neck as he crosses the room and stops before Zelie. “Help me, Kia?”
I nod, so confused, but I use his surety for my own and join him at Zelie’s side. He grabs the chain attaching her ankles to the ring on the floor. “Can you heat up the ring? Where it attaches to the floor?”
No. “Yeah.”
“On the count of three,” he starts, and the ring grows bright, bright orange by the time he finishes counting us off. He pulls and, together, we break Zelie free. We do the same for the rest of my family and by the time we’ve finished unchaining our father, Zelie, Owenna, Audet and my mom are already gathered in the middle of the floor.
“Here!” Audet says, “come help us with this.”
I stagger over and see that they’ve gathered around a trap door. One that’s latched and barred shut but that’s made of wood, not metal. I nod and stretch my hands forward, pressing them to the wood. The wood starts to char, burn and then flake away. My brother catches me by the shoulder, keeping me from falling into the abyss that opens up beneath. I sway, feeling drained and depleted, too drained even to recognize my magic for what it is. Incredible.
“It…it should be enough for us to squeeze through,” Owenna says.
“It’ll have to be,” my father says. He leans further down, but lurches back up just as quickly. His large hand covers his mouth and nose. “Zelie, take this.” He takes off his shirt and starts tearing it into strips. “Tie it around your faces.”
I understand what he’s doing the moment I take my next breath — my first breath in minutes. “No.” I lurch up, bile rising in my throat, and vomit. I throw up all over the wall where Cyprus once laid.
“Zelie, go on.”
“You want me to go down there?” she squeaks, staring down into the void. “I think I see dead bodies.” That’s what it smells like, for sure. Bodies long dead.
“There aren’t bodies floating there. There wouldn’t be. The water is rushing. It’ll take us out of the castle,” Owenna says, shimmying past her into the cubicle of darkness, a wrapped cloth around her nose and mouth. “We have to go now.”
Cyprus grabs her shoulder. “You don’t know where it leads.”
“If water is moving it has to lead out, and out is our only chance for survival. He won’t let us live and if he does, it’ll be here. He’s going to skin us along with them.” Her chin jerks towards the two remaining cells. I feel my chest clam up as I notice that Trash City is still in their cells. They watch us with apathy, but don’t ask for help. They look resigned to whatever Yaron has told them he has in store. Or…maybe not so resigned. Perhaps, bored? As if, they’re waiting for something…
Owenna moves again towards the dark hole in the floor. I whisper, “He’s really going to flay them?”
“And worse. He’s preparing the poles for them to hang from outside of the gates. And her, he’s going to do even worse to.” She gestures to Merlin with her chin, her short Afro matted and charred and tilted askew. “He’ll keep her down here for some time before he hangs her with the rest of them. He has plans for her.” She shivers — shivers — and that’s what does it for me.
“Cyprus, help me.”
“Help you? Help you with what?”
I run to the first of the steel gates trapping the six Trash City members that Yaron has planned to flay and hang. “I can heat up the lock.” I can. Because my hands are miracles. They can save. “We have to bring them with us.”
“They’re criminals,” he scoffs.
“So are we,” I shout. I stare at him and he stares at me. Our standoff lasts until Mama says, “Please. He’ll be back soon. We need to hurry.”
Cyprus curses and rushes to my side. He places his hands on the bars near the lock while I use my palms to completely surround the place where the lock secures into the stone wall. “Count us down, Kia.”
Cyprus looks at me and I meet his gaze, and together, we break Trash City free. They stand together, smiling at us as they pass by. “Thank you,” a younger woman says to me. “I’m Angel,” she offers me her hand, then hesitates. “You’re not going to burn me, are you?”
I smile back and shake my head. “No. But you should hurry.” I don’t shake her hand, a little unsure of myself.
She’s not half so sure, and makes her way straight to the opening. Without hesitation, she jumps in, plummeting into the below where light cannot touch her. By the time the rest of Trash City has jumped into the abyss — all but one man who waits for their leader — Cyprus and I have freed her.
She’s in bad shape, badly beaten, slashed and sliced with what look like a Berserker beast’s claws, but she offers me a tip of her head and a smile to Owenna as she passes her. A wink, too, that I can’t quite make sense of.
“You’re a good kid,” she tells me as she turns to face me and slides her goggles, which she miraculously still has, from inside a pocket within her raggedy clothes and back onto her face. Her hair is entirely red with blood. “I’ll tell them to take it easy on ya.” She laughs, like she’s somewhere out in the light, not at all trapped in the darkest place in the world. “Not that they listen to me, though. Come on, Lou.”
“After you, Merlin.”
“Rendezvous point Z,” Merlin says, and the strangest thing about this entire miserable situation is that she’s looking at Owenna as she speaks.
Merlin disappears, followed closely by Lou. There’s a moment of silence, and then a splash, and then Owenna’s voice, “Let’s go.”
“Owenna, what was she…” Zelie starts, voice muffled from the bit of Dad’s shirt she’s got tied around her mouth. Mama hands me one and I’m slow to lift it as I watch and wait for Owenna’s response.
She doesn’t give it. Instead, she merely urges Zelie towards the opening and all but pushes her in. “Zelie, go!”
Zelie splashes into the darkness with a short screech, followed by Audet and Mama next. Cyprus helps Papa toward the opening and carefully lowers him into a seat on the opening’s lip.
“Come on, Kiandah. You next,” Owenna says. I go towards the hole in the ground, but I still hesitate.
“I…” think I should stay. My body wants me to stay. I can’t feel anything clearly, but I can hear the word in my head replaying on a loop, over and over and over again. Stay stay staystaystaystaystay.
And then another word, many of them, spoken out loud, in a voice that I’ve dreamed of, but that I now have no desire to hear for the rest of my existence. At least not in person. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Kia, come on!” Owenna yells.
But it’s too late.
It’s too late for all of us. But it’s not too late for them. Owenna tries to grab me but I dodge her hand and spin out of her grip, turning to face Yaron as he crosses the short, blood-spattered space between us in just two long steps. His gaze is pinned to Owenna and Cyprus at my back — until I start to run. I move towards him as fast as I can with both hands outstretched, and I feel it…a huge swell of sensation in both of my arms…
And then I trip. My feet stumble over the metal shackle on the floor that once caged one of my family members and I fall so hard that my feet momentarily leave the ground. I feel like I’m flying…directly at Lord Yaron.
His surprise is the only thing I register before our bodies collide. And in that final moment as his hand wraps around my upper arm, almost as if he’s trying to catch me and not kill me, the energy within me releases in a burst of blue fire and he goes flying into the stone behind him, taking out the entire contingent of his Crimson Riders.
They all fall, crimson coats catching fire. I fall, hitting the stone beneath me hard. It hurts. Everything hurts. My blankets gone. My dad and brother are calling my name but with every ounce of everything left in me, I look back at them and fling my hand out, sending one last cascading flare of energy in a burst of orange light towards them, knocking them both back into Owenna, who falls into the hole in the floor first, followed by the other two. I hear the splash some moments later and, moments after that, I look up into Yaron’s furious grey eyes.
“What have you done?” He’s kneeling right in front of me.
Right. In front of me.
“Yaron,” I whisper, the word so wrong, so informal, yet so automatic.
His eyes flash, and so does his hand. He strikes my cheek and I land hard against stone, rattling that fallen, forgotten shackle, unable to decide what, of my many ailments, hurts worst of all. All of them. Everything hurts worst of all.
I blink, look up and see him flexing his hand over and over. He’s staring down, tone icy and startling as he says, “Omega.” His nostrils flare, nose morphing seamlessly into that of an enormous beast before quickly shifting back. The whole thing lasts less than a second and momentarily makes me think I’m losing my mind. He reaches for me, probably to hurt me again.
“No,” I say.
He hesitates, hands flexing into claws, before he closes the distance and grabs me by the shin. He yanks me beneath his body and with his free hand cups the back of my head and lifts my torso off of the ground. His nose drags down my cheek, sometimes hard and angled, other times soft and wet. It’s still wet and cold and massive as it presses directly beneath my ear, stimulating senses I didn’t know I had. My toes curl. Desire and pain split me in two, but I have another thought that eclipses both.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” he growls. “You will pay for this. You will suffer. But first, you will track down the murderers you have freed.”
I don’t care what hes talking about. All I care is that he’s this close to me. “You really are a good boy, aren’t you, Yaron?”
He rears up and back and meets my gaze before letting it rake down my naked chest. His mouth opens, his fangs flash, he dips his head. “You call me Yaron again, I’ll tear out your tongue…” His palm slides up over my stomach to rest right between my breasts. I tense. “And rip your heart out of your chest.”
I may know that he’s a good boy, but I still don’t dare speak again.