Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
D ray
“That’s her,” Beaufort says, leaning toward me and whispering into my ear as we line up outside the Great Hall.
“Her?” I say, following his gaze along the line of students, right past all the other shadow weavers, past the athletic kids who look like they might have some fight in them, past the ordinary kids to the freaks, losers and misfits right at the far end. My shoulders slump. “Fuck man, you can’t be serious.”
But one look at the frown on his face tells me he is. Beaufort rarely does anything but serious.
“But she’s so …” I groan. I’d had visions of our thrall being some curvy, pretty thing – an obedient and willing little pet. Fuck, I’d had wet dreams about it. Plenty and plenty of wet dreams.
The way that girl scowls at the air around her suggests she’d be anything but obedient or willing. I don’t even think she’d be fun.
“I was hoping we’d choose someone more … like her!” I say, staring straight at a stunning brunette who’s making eyes at me, blushing when I wink at her. She’s easily the most beautiful girl out here with a butt I want to slap and a chest I want to bury my face into.
“No, it has to be her,” Beaufort says, eyes lingering on the scrawny girl. Her dirty hair is scraped tight around her skull, her clothes hang off her puny frame, and her expression is so bitter I can taste the sourness from here.
Definitely nothing fun about her.
I sniff the air, hoping to catch her scent, something that would explain why Beaufort has his sights set on her. But there are too many other scents swirling in the air out here on the field. Shadow weavers and the plain old commoners as well. Even if I strain my nostrils, I can’t make out her scent. Not in my human form anyway.
I kick at the cobbled ground and adopt a sulk on my face.
Only the elite among the shadow weavers are awarded the privilege of picking a thrall to serve them during their time at the academy. And now it seems Beaufort wants to throw that gift away.
A handful of the other powerful shadow weavers are already making their way along the line, inspecting the other students, ready to make their picks. Kratos, Prentice, and Nathan stop right in front of the brunette. Kratos draws his hand down her arm, making her shiver as Prentice leans in, nose pressed to her throat and inhales her scent.
“Fuckers,” I mutter.
That’s the girl that should be ours. We outrank those losers. We’re more powerful than them. We come from better families. If we picked the brunette, they’d have to find some other student to be their thrall.
It doesn’t look like that is going to happen.
Freaking Beaufort would have to have other ideas.
The Smyte sisters have their hands on a young-looking boy, his hair golden, his features beautiful. Elaine and Dahlia are talking to a boy from Iron Quarter, so big you’d think he was the offspring of giants.
“What do you think, Thorne?” I ask, appealing to my other friend.
He’s glaring at Beaufort’s girl, his square jaw hard as stone, his dark eyes black as night. He doesn’t say a word.
I sigh.
“Can we at least give it some thought? I mean, it doesn’t look like she’ll last a week at the academy.” I scoff. “It doesn’t look like she’d last a night in my company.”
Which gives me an idea. Maybe I’m best playing along. She’ll be gone in a matter of days. Then we can choose someone better.
Or maybe I should trust my best friend. If he says it has to be her, then there is a reason for it. There always is.
“She’ll outlast us all,” he says cryptically in that way that really pisses me off.
“You want to go claim her now?” I mean, I doubt there’s any hurry. No one else is going to pick the girl as their thrall.
Beaufort doesn’t answer, he’s already strolling down the line, oblivious to all the girls fluttering their eyelashes at him and all the boys flexing their pecs. They all want him to pick them. Even the brunette is no longer focused on her admirers, smiling Beaufort’s way instead.
The only one not following his progress down the line, is the one girl he’s heading towards. Her eyes are trained straight ahead at the morning’s mist swirling across the stone walls. She seems oblivious to everything going on around her, lost in her own world. She doesn’t even register Beaufort’s presence when he stops right beside her, although she must feel him. His magic is powerful. It’s impossible not to.
All the other students are watching, a silence falling over the crowd.
“Hey, Dray,” Dallan calls my way, “what’s your pal doing down there with all the Slate scum? You do know they carry infectious diseases, right?” He chuckles, probably expecting me to join right in.
“Shut the fuck up,” I snarl, my eyes flashing at him. His gaze falls immediately to the floor. He’s always been weaker than me.
I return my focus to my friend. He’s stopped right by the girl, the distance between them mere inches – so close she must be able to feel the tingle of his powers against her skin. Skin that is bruised around her eye and scabbed along her cheek. Someone got to her last night which proves just how weak she is. I groan again and strain my ears to hear Beaufort’s words as he speaks to her.
“Be at our rooms by seven o’clock tomorrow night.”
She jolts as if she really has only just realized he’s there, then swings her face up towards his. Recognition, alarm and something I can’t read flickers over her face quickly, before she schools her features into something emotionless and void.
“Excuse me?” she replies. Her voice isn’t how I thought it would be. I expected the voice to match the expression – sour, screechy – like fingernails dragging down a blackboard. It’s not like that at all. Although she’s trying to sound tough, her voice is soft. As pathetic as the rest of her.
“You heard me the first time,” Beaufort says. “Do not be late.”
Beaufort doesn’t wait for a reply, he never does. He turns his back on her and strides right back up to his spot at the head of the line, ignoring all the other students staring open-mouthed at him.
“Seriously,” Ashleigh Pickford whispers beside me, “you’re picking her as your thrall? You could have anyone you want.”
“Yeah,” I say, peering back towards the girl whose name I don’t even know. “But we’ve chosen her .”