The Beasts We Raise (The Broken Citadel #2)

Chapter 1 Mance

Mance

It’s been months, but I’m still not used to the feeling I get when I step into the dungeons and my own voice echoes up from the shadowy depths to greet me, screaming.

It’s like being hit with a cold blast when you walk outside, only instead of frigid air it’s a rush of bleak horror.

My limbs lock up. My scarred hands begin to tremble.

Something a little like guilt and a lot like fear curdles inside me, right in the empty space where the screaming girl used to live before a dead man’s magic allowed me to thrust her out.

Suffice it to say, I don’t visit often.

Even today, I have to force myself to cross the threshold. When the pitch of her shriek makes the hair stand up on my arms, I almost turn on my heel and leave, back into the warmth and quiet of the hallway. It would be so easy to simply pull the door shut again.

But then the sound of crinkling paper snaps me back into myself and I look at the letter I’ve just crushed in my fist. I remember why I’m here, remember that I need to find out what the crumpled words mean.

And whether they truly have the power to bind me.

So, shoving my hands into my pockets, I put my head down and descend, deep into the carved-out cliffside, those awful screams getting louder and louder the closer I get to the base of the wooden steps, underscored by a chorus of low growls, vicious snarls, and the scrape of claws on rock.

But when my boots hit the ground, the crack of my heel is as loud as a whip, and all the noise suddenly breaks off.

I hold still, like a mouse spotted by a hawk, my stomach in knots. My own creatures, the less dangerous ones, squirm and tremble within me, trying to burrow deeper into my guts to escape detection.

Some foolish corner of my mind hopes that she’ll just leave me alone.

Then metal bars clang as a body crashes against them and the voice that sounds like mine rises again, with vigor.

Instead of wordless rage, now the screeching girl flings insults, even obscenities, all cruelly tailored to cut me deep.

Because she knows me. She came from me, and she has devastatingly intimate knowledge of the wounds I hide from everyone else.

From the depths of those shadows that I refuse to look at directly, she stabs at them, ripping at their edges with her words in the hopes that she will get to watch me bleed, as her predators pace around her, howling their support.

I break into a run, covering my ears.

Because she’s not the one I’m here for today, and I don’t need to listen to her. I don’t have to take this.

My boots pound the rough stone floors until their echoing beat and my own harsh breaths are all I can hear, and then right before the row of cells veers sharply to the left, I double over, panting.

I need to get it together. I cannot do what I need to do today if I’m this out of control.

Wincing, I force my fingers to unclench. I wrench my shoulders back and thrust my chin up. I wrest my features into an expression of calm. And then I hold it, mercilessly, until my breathing slows down to match and the animals inside me whimper into submission.

Then, finally, I turn the corner with a slow, easy step, feeling the prickle of the mountain’s chill on my skin. Until I stand before the only other prisoner here, one who makes my stomach twist for completely different reasons.

My father.

He is seated, fingers steepled over his mouth, like he’s been waiting for me. And for a moment, we just regard each other. He’s lost weight and there are bags under his eyes, but he still holds himself with a military posture, as if he’s sitting on his throne instead of wasting away in a prison.

I’ve done my best to make his cell comfortable, although I know he doesn’t respect the effort. I had a nice bed hauled down, plus a table and a padded chair. Even a rug.

Nonetheless, when I study him, I see only contempt in his features.

I’m not sure what he sees when he looks at me, but I hope it’s the calm I’ve tried to construct rather than the fear behind my eyes.

“Mancella,” he says finally, lowering his arms. “To what do I owe the pleasure? It’s not every day that a prisoner gets a visit from a Prime.” He spits the last word, wrapping his disdain around it, and the last several months are a cavern between us.

He was the Prime once. If it were up to him, he still would be. But I stripped him of his power, first magically and then politically, and I took the throne for myself. Ever since then, he’s been stewing in this cell.

I could have chosen to kill him instead. In fact, for a terrifying moment, I almost did.

No, she almost did, which is why she’s locked up.

Suppressing a wince, I run my finger along the edge of the envelope, and my father’s eyes flick down to it, his brow creased.

I speak loudly to force his gaze back up to mine.

“Well,” I say, with a boldness I don’t feel, “you’re not so great with the note-taking, which has left several gaps in my understanding of our relationships with other realms. Which means that I am forced to come down here and ask you whether you could clarify a particular point for me.

Specifically, what does the Forest Realm—”

He barks out a humorless laugh, and the sound echoes around us in a mocking chorus, cutting me off. “You want me to help you? After everything you’ve done?”

A cold weight settles in my chest, and my casual facade slips.

Everything I’ve done, he says.

Like he’s never done anything to me. Never locked me in a room with a wild beast and refused to let me out until it was dead. Never forced me to use those same beasts to kill. As though he isn’t the person who drove me to “everything I’ve done” in the first place.

Irritation spikes in my rib cage and my creatures stir. I don’t know what I was expecting from him. I should never have come down here at all.

I turn to leave, even as panic claws at my throat and the letter burns in my pocket, but he stops me with a word. “Wait.”

Don’t show weakness, I tell myself. Don’t let him know how much you need this.

I narrow my eyes and cast a disdainful look back over my shoulder. He analyzes it carefully, as I feared, and I grit my teeth to keep it from cracking.

“A bargain,” he suggests finally. “There’s a certain book I’d like to peruse. I’ll answer your questions if you have it sent down to me.”

Slowly, I turn back around, searching his face the way he searched mine. “What do you mean, a book?” I ask. “Which book?”

“The Census. Let’s say . . . Volume 36.”

Alarm shoots down my spine. Not because I know what he wants the book for, but because I don’t. I don’t have so much as a guess.

What could he possibly do with a catalog of our realm’s citizenry? Not a recent one, either. Volume 36 would be a few generations out of date now. I doubt anyone in it would even still be alive.

“Why?”

“I don’t have much in the way of diversion down here.”

“The Census is not exactly peak entertainment. It’s just statistics. And why that volume?”

“You could pick a different volume if you prefer. Any one you’d like.”

This only makes my confusion worse. “Why the Census, though?”

“What’s in that letter that makes you so desperate to get answers that you’d come down here for the first time in months?” he retorts breezily. I bite my cheek to keep from replying and he smiles unkindly. “Just demonstrating that total transparency is not an aspect of our bargain.”

Mentally, I curse, because he’s demonstrating more than that. He’s showing me that he sees my anxiety, after all. He knows I’m not in as good of a bargaining position as I’m trying to pretend.

“I am picking a different volume,” I tell him. “And I’m going to have it searched first for any coded messages.”

He waves a hand, unconcerned. “Fine.”

“Fine,” I repeat slowly. I don’t like that I can’t understand his motives.

But he’s not wrong that I’m desperate, and if he sees that already then the negotiations would only deteriorate from here.

I pinch the corner of the envelope until my fingers go numb, and then I make a decision.

“Assuming the search goes well . . . I’ll have it delivered by the end of the day.

But you’ll have to answer my questions first. Now. Honestly and to my satisfaction.”

My father leans back in his chair, pleased. “It’s a deal,” he says. “Ask away.”

Again I hesitate, concerned about how smug he seems, how quickly he agreed.

But then Silver’s face flashes in my mind and I flinch.

It’s enough, more than enough, to make me push down the concern and cross back to stand directly in front of my father’s cell.

“The Forest Realm . . . ,” I start again.

Our history with them is a painful one. When I was a child, my grandfather thought they were getting too strong, too close to our borders, and he started a war.

In the end, that war cost him his life, and my father became Prime.

But instead of taking the change of leadership as an opportunity to broker peace, he doubled down on the war efforts, enlisting almost every able-bodied citizen we had, demanding most of their lives in the fight and leaving their children to be raised by the Academy as another generation of soldiers.

The Forest Realm surrendered, but neither of our realms has fully recovered from the aftermath, even though over a decade has passed.

I’m not here to question those actions today, though, so I push on. “When you negotiated the terms of surrender with them, what did they include?”

He frowns, surprised. “Not much. A ceasefire, a yearly financial tribute.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes. Why?”

I keep my expression schooled, ignoring the question. “And what have your relations with the Forest Realm been like since then?”

He shrugs. “Minimal. They send their tributes as required, and in turn I leave them alone.”

“But then why would they—” I break off suddenly, realizing what I was about to reveal.