Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I didn’t stop running. I wouldn’t stop.
Every time I blinked, I saw Romy’s terrified expression through the window, her hand planted upon it as if she was pleading to get free. But it was the suddenness of how she disappeared that scared me. I couldn’t comprehend what she was warning me against.
I had to reach her.
Another toll of a bell rung out across the castle, which groaned back in response. It was as if Hekate herself scooped the building up in her palm, carving it from the bedrock it was built upon. The ceiling quaked, the floors tilting slightly, forcing me to fall into a wall at my side.
Pain arched up my side but I forced it down, focusing on reaching the room. Arwyn was behind me, shouting my name as portraits fell from their place on the walls. Dust fell like rain upon me, coating my black clothes in a thick layer of grime. I didn’t turn back to look for him, but I knew he was close. I could hear his breathing, the slam of his feet as he chased me.
I reached the door just as a violent shiver ran across the floorboards at my feet. Arwyn reached me, greedy hands grasping me.
‘The castle,’ Arwyn shouted over the ruckus. ‘It’s coming down.’
This had to be part of the Dreading. I should’ve cared, but all my mind focused on was finding Romy. And if the castle truly was coming down on us, then getting her out was of utmost importance.
My eyes glowed with light as I reached down for my Gift. In truth, there was no reaching required, because the moment I opened myself up to the power it exploded out of me. I reached forwards with invisible force, blocking chunks of ceiling from falling on us. Even as I rounded up the final steps to the bedroom, I didn’t feel relief. A blockade had formed where the door to the room had been. I blasted it apart with my Gift, shattering the wood into splinters and rubble. Arwyn threw up an arm up to protect himself from the debris that speared towards him.
The bedroom was empty.
‘No,’ I breathed, scanning every possible shadow. I clutched the ruined wall, using it for leverage as another tremor wreaked havoc on the castle. Something terribly loud crashed far off in the distance.
‘I told you she wasn’t...’ A structural beam fell just behind Arwyn, sending him careening forwards. Dust billowed in a plume of smoke which rolled over the corridor beyond the room. The dull light of the moon shone in, cutting through the destruction, revealing the gaping hole that was left in the floor as the beam crashed through it.
I scrambled towards Arwyn, heart in my throat. I wrapped iron fingers around his wrist and pulled him from the precipice, getting a good look down the hole which had just been created. I saw through levels of flooring, down deep through the midsection of the castle. Except where rubble, stone and ruin should’ve been at the bottom, was a roaring mouth of pure darkness.
It writhed and hissed. Demons .
Arwyn used my anchoring weight to pull himself away from the edge. I was so fixated on the fear of what waited below that I was immobilised, until Arwyn put his arms beneath mine and pulled me back. Just in time, because the floorboards where I’d been kneeling began to peel away.
‘I’m sorry,’ I gasped, watching as the hole grew larger, swallowing walls and furniture down into the pit of demonic shadow. ‘I thought I saw her. I thought I…’
Arwyn held onto me as if the simplest of breezes would take me from him. ‘It’s going to be ok. I swear, I won’t allow this to be the end.’
Even if I wanted to continue my search for Romy, there were no longer stairs to lead me back down into the castle. Hells, there wasn’t even a castle anymore.
‘None of this is ok,’ I stammered, watching as more of the floor broke away like ash. It forced us into our old room, stalking backwards, until the view beyond was of complete shadow.
It was what lurked inside the shadows that frightened me.
Arwyn threaded his fingers in with mine.
I admired his ability to stay calm as we faced the impossible before us. It was as if the darkness was pulling the castle away, layer by layer, as if this building was no more than paper. I could no longer see the rest of the castle outside the doorframe. It was only shadow, like the racing cloud that had devoured us at the beginning of the Enduring.
Arwyn pulled me to him, pressing my face to his chest. We stepped backwards until there was no room for movement left. The wall was at our back, the window I’d seen Romy at just to my side.
I never feared the dark before, until now. Now, that fear ruled me.
I looked up, into the reflection the broken window revealed. I saw my face, all wide eyes. Then the back of Arwyn’s head as he faced the impending doom. But it was neither of those details that I cared about. No. It was the remnants of a handprint in the glass. I lifted my hand towards it, laying my fingers over the shape, already knowing the print was far smaller than my hand.
Romy. She had been here.
Elation came thick and fast… and very misplaced. I spun around, ready to tell Arwyn, to prove that I was not crazy or seeing things. He clutched my hand without saying a word. His grasp was almost too hard, the bones in my fingers aching. But the only sound I made was a garbled scream as the floorboards beneath us dissolved to the particles they were made from.
I was torn from Arwyn’s grasp. He shouted my name, but like the castle, the darkness swallowed it up.
We fell. Like discarded twigs thrown into a lazy river of shadow.
My stomach jolted up into my chest, my heart forced into my throat. Weightless and tumbling, I looked up at the fading pinprick of light our bedroom had been. Then there was nothing but shadow. I closed my eyes, pinched them tight, preparing to face the clawing talons of demons.
I knew the feeling that ruled me as I tumbled, alone, in the dark that once protected me. It was failure. The very same sinking realisation I had as I listened to my parent’s death all those years ago.
I’d failed the trial.
Or at least that was what I thought, until I realised the Dreading hadn’t even begun.
‘ Hector .’
My name rang out from the darkness, a lisped hiss that was somehow both comforting and horrifying. I blinked away the wall of black around me, attempting to make out something—anything. All I was aware of was the physical press of a floor beneath me, although I couldn’t see it. One second I’d been falling, and the next I was standing firm. The transition between both was impossible to discern.
‘ Hector. I sense you .’
I knelt, feeling unbalanced without my sight. But my fingers reached beneath me and found the press of cold stone. I used my hands to map out what it was. Some sort of circular podium surrounded by damp, dewy…grass. Yes, grass. I plucked a strand, brought it to my nose and inhaled deeply. The aroma of fresh earth was welcoming in such a haunting place.
‘Hector. I swear on everything, if you don’t answer me I’ll pluck your eyes straight out of your skull.’
‘Caym? I spoke to the dark, aware that presence was actually in my mind. It had been so long without my familiar, I hardly recognised him.
Relief unravelled in my body like a spool of thread. Except the emotion didn’t belong to me. It was Caym. I held onto his presence, fisting it as though it was a tangible thing which couldn’t be ripped away from me again.
‘I can’t see you,’ I spoke to the dark, waiting to hear the flap on his wings, the pinching kiss of his talons grasping my shoulder as they always had.
‘ I’m getting you out of here ,’ Caym said with urgency, ‘ Your mother made me promise to look after you, and I will not make a mockery of that and let you risk yourself. ’
Caym was offering the same escape Arwyn had begged me to consider. My answer was still the same. ‘No, Caym.’
‘ It isn’t up for discussion .’ Caym was closer than before. I sensed his proximity as he cut through dark skies, searching for me like a point of light amongst the cloak of shadow. ‘ You do not know what you’re up against. There is power that even I cannot protect you against. This is the chance to go. To leave this behind and let others deal with the mess that is surely going to occur.’
‘Demons,’ I spoke the word to the dark, hearing distant noise that made my skin crawl. The slithering of bodies across the ground, the skittering of creatures and the deep breathing of monsters I’d seen only hints of. ‘That’s what you mean by danger, isn’t it?’
I waited for Caym to tell me I was wrong. He didn’t. ‘ This isn’t the time to discuss such matters .’
‘There is never a good time to discuss the reality of monsters,’ I shouted to the dark. ‘Mother knew, didn’t she? Mother made you protect me, not from witches, but from what they were hiding. What is this, some secret way to lead lambs to slaughter?’
‘ Not slaughter, ’ Caym replied, voice dripping with regret.
‘Then what?’
‘ Sacrifice and sustenance. But mainly, for freedom .’
Those words pierced through me. ‘Freedom?’
Caym’s voice came louder. It was urgent and demanding, just as I heard his wings cut through the still wind. ‘ I’ve found you. It’s time to go .’
When I refused Caym, it wasn’t by shouting the singular word. My Gift rose, rippled out of my body and cast anything near me away, Caym included. His talons had just reached out for me, ready to keep me hidden in these strange shadows. But I battered him away with my Gift, sending his black-feathered body tumbling away. ‘I’m not leaving this until I’m the victor. Until I’m the next Grand High.’
‘ No no, Hector. That was precisely what your mother was preventing you from doing.’
I swallowed down the rush of sickness, hating the truth of what I was to reply. ‘Well she’s dead, and sadly unable to give me this warning herself.’
‘ You don’t know who you’re up against, Hector .’
‘Exactly,’ I said, gathering control of my familiar as I previously promised Caym to never do. What came next was a command he couldn’t refuse. Because no matter what my familiar promised my mother, he was mine. He belonged to me. ‘Stay hidden until I need you.’
‘ Hector, please. This will only end in ruin .’
I faced the dark, just as it began to peel away. I looked up, watching a shape move out of sight of the moon. It was like Caym, except a cloud of crows… no, demons. This was an eclipse, but unnatural and wrong. Because as the flock of demons dissipated, it was to find a sky bathed in a crimson wash.
‘You’re right. It will.’ But not in the sense you think.
As the red light shone over the world, it revealed what else had been hiding in the shadows. I did, in fact, stand on a podium of stone surrounded by grass. Directly before me was a structure of wood and stone—a pavilion. In the distance, a towering wall of foliage rose. It wrapped around the entire space, thorn covered vines and shrubbery that reached skyward, blocking everything behind it.
We were trapped in a clearing, with no way out.
I looked back to the pavilion, taking in its importance. I knew it had to be crucial to the Trial because it was so misplaced here. It was the type of structure you’d find whilst walking through a park, but instead of holding a band playing music there was a bundle of weapons. Swords, knives, bows, maces. Weapons better belonging in medieval times—which was rather apt for how this felt. I shifted my eyes from the pavilion to the circle of witches standing around it. Like me, they stood on round stepping stones.
I drank them in, Caym’s warning ringing in my mind.
Directly opposite me, through the slats of the pavilion, was the witch who’d shielded me when I’d killed Jaz and her coven. Fear was etched into his expression. Directly to my left was Salem, with his striking jade-green eyes and scarred face. He was smiling, flashing brilliant white teeth as though this was enjoyable for him.
My instinct was to move from the stepping stone and kill him. But as my body shifted its weight, the blades of grass beside the stone rippled and sharpened to deadly-looking spikes. Whoever or whatever ruled this place kept me from him.
‘I’ve missed you,’ Salem said, grinning knowingly.
My lips drew back over my teeth as a feral hiss broke out of me.
In the dark of my mind I heard Arwyn’s voice. ‘Steady now, little kitty. ’
I tore my eyes from Salem, searching for Arwyn. I continued drinking in every detail, knowing the important of it to my survival. I sagged in relief when I saw Arwyn at a distance. His eyes were pinned to Salem, likely knowing the same thing I did—Salem’s clear desire to cause pain.
Then Arwyn lifted his eyes to me expectantly, the panic in them potent. He attempted to step off his stone podium.
‘Don’t!’ I screamed out, warning him just as his boots grazed the blade-like grass.
Arwyn drew back, fists balled at his sides. As much as I longed to continue holding his stare, I didn’t.
I had to work out what was happening. I had to find Romy.
I swept my eyes over the witches, counting nine in total, including me. Out of the hundreds that started the Witch Trials, we were all that was left. I almost passed over one witch, not taking in just how impossible her presence was. It took my mind a moment to catch up with reality to recognise who it was.
Jaz. She was alive and glaring at me with a vehement expression. She lifted a hand, except it was missing three fingers. In their place were stumps, hardly healed. Even her face bore the reminder of wounds left from shattered glass.
She waved at me, waggling her remaining fingers in something vaguely resembling a middle finger.
That would’ve been it for me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, knowing the promise of pain that lingered in her stare. A stare fixed on me . And in truth, I didn’t think I would’ve looked away at all, until a small voice chirped out my name.
‘Hector…’ It was muffled, as though spoken from behind glass.
I snapped to the last witch, the one directly to my right. They were last in this circular line.
‘Romy.’
She was here. And just like the glance I got at her in the bedroom window, she looked fucking terrible. Dark circles hung beneath her eyes. Her hair was lifeless and thick with grease. Even her skin had lost its vitality, giving her an almost grey tinge. My body moved without thought, but it was Arwyn’s warning shout which kept me from moving.
I knew, without a doubt, that Romy hadn’t left me as I’d first believed. ‘What happened, Romy?’
Before she could answer, a rush of violent winds crested over the thorn-coated walls, sweeping leaves in its wake. Caym returned to my mind with another warning. ‘The third Trial is about to begin.’
It was as if the atmosphere shifted. Peace lasted but a second before the grass around me withered and flattened.
I stumbled off the podium. All nine of us looked around in confusion, but that soon broke as witches started to run towards the pavilion. A chaos of shouts began, followed by the scent of blood caught on the breeze. It hadn’t been a minute, and someone was already dead.
The shield-conjuring witch lay on the floor, an arrow buried deep between his eyes. An arrow loosed by the bow held in Jaz’s hand.
‘The Witch Hunter…’ Romy said, snapping me out of my trance. She was before me, grasping my arms with a trembling hand. Between her shout, and the way Jaz turned around, cocked another arrow, and lifted the bow towards me, I couldn’t focus.
My Gift responded as I thrust a hand upwards. The arrow which cut through the air towards me was sent off-kilter. I watched it sail past me, disappearing into the wall of thorns and leaves.
‘It’s him, Hector. He’s the Witch Hunter!’
That stopped me. I looked to Romy, who didn’t notice the arrow or even care about the danger. She was looking over my shoulder, a finger pointed. Dread sunk deep in my stomach as I turned around to face Salem.
In a way, I prepared for a dagger to be stabbed into my back. But not like this. Because I knew that the direction Romy was pointing was not where Salem had been.
Like the needle of a compass, I knew she was pointing in the direction to where Arwyn had last stood.