I don’t want to be mean, I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but being firm and angry like this, seems to be the only way I’m going to get him to stay.

  “Now you stay here or else … or else …”

  I give him my best angry face and at last he seems to get the message, although he watches us with those big golden eyes as we walk across the final few yards towards the strange ripple in the air that Thorne had pointed out.

  The edge of the realm.

  The border.

  The point where our realm ends and the lands occupied by the demons begin. The air shimmers violently right in front of us, sparkling and dancing with light.

  “Can we pass through it?” I ask.

  “Yes, anyone in our realm can pass through to the outside. It stops anyone from passing the other way, though, unless they have permission.”

  Which must be how they stop those who have been banished from simply sneaking back into the realm.

  “Does it hurt?” I ask, “to pass through, I mean?” I tip my head back and trace the barrier all the way up into the heavens and beyond.

  “No, it doesn’t hurt, but,” Beaufort rolls his shoulders, “be prepared. Things are different on the other side.”

  Without another word, Thorne passes right through the shimmering wall and out of the realm. His form is distorted on the other side as if I’m looking at him under water.

  “I’ll go next,” Beaufort says, “then you, Briony.”

  He steps through and for a moment I’m taken by how similar this is to a trial, waiting to pass through the great fence, not knowing what lies beyond and what challenges I will face.

  I don’t give it any more thought though; if I do, I’ll only be consumed by fear.

  I step forward.

  Passing through the barrier is like stepping through a rainbow, there’s a myriad of bright vibrant colors, a high-pitched hum and then I break through to the other side, Dray stepping out right beside me.

  Immediately, I understand what Beaufort means by this place being different. The landscape is suddenly darker as if the light and color has been leeched away and the sun’s power extinguished. Everything is gray and mute. A fierce wind sweeps across the landscape, brutal against my face and a howling sound mingles in its force.

  It’s as if what life had existed out here has been sucked away and nothing but shadows, dust, and death remain.

  And almost immediately a horde of demons comes swooping towards us, shrieking at us like a deranged flock of crows.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Thorne

  The sky erupts into angry cries and then they’re coming for us.

  There are scores of the things, filling the sky like a flock of grotesque birds.

  “There are too many of them. We’ll never get through,” Briony cries, alarmed.

  “Maybe not alone,” I tell her, “but together we can.”

  Usually stepping into this hellhole is enough to send me crashing towards the edge. All those twisted memories come rushing back, haunting me, blaming me, hating me.

  The force of my shadows. My mother’s anguished face. The carnage. My little brother’s motionless body.

  They are images, feelings, sounds that haunt me all the time. But when I step out into this wasteland, it’s much much worse. The memories are relentless, dragging me down, tearing me apart, ripping at my sanity.

  Not this time though. This time I have a walking ball of light beside me and she seems to lift the gloom and chase away all those memories. “Any plan?” Dray asks.

  “I thought you hated plans,” I say.

  “Yeah, I do, but you lot inflict them on me anyway.”

  “No plan,” Beaufort tells him. “We blast the heck out of those demons and then we run for that rock over there. It should give us some cover.”

  He pulls the sword from its scabbard and we all stare at it in disbelief. The blade is glowing a dull red color.

  “What the fuck?” Dray mutters. “It wasn’t like that before, right? Did you break it?”

  “No,” Beaufort answers, turning the sword around in his hands. “I think it’s the demons. I think it’s warning us they’re nearby.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Beaufort looks at us all sheepishly. “It’s like it’s talking to me.”

  “Fuck, he’s lost his mind,” Dray mutters.

  “I haven’t!” Beaufort scowls at our bond brother, looking like he’d happily stab him with the glowing sword. “It may sound ridiculous but–”

  “It doesn’t sound ridiculous,” I say. “It’s clearly a magical sword, maybe it has ways of talking to its owner.”

  “Except, Beau ain’t its owner,” Dray points out.

  “Maybe he is now. Stay close,” I tell Briony, as we huddle together ready to meet the demon assault, arms raised, bodies tense. The demons call to each other in their high-pitched squawking voices, squabbling in the sky, soaring our way, their scarlet eyes bleeding into the darkness.

  “Run!” Beaufort calls, and we all sprint, firing our shadows and our light as we do at the demons that drive towards us.

  Several burst into flame, one disintegrates into dust, but the rest dodge and swerve our attack, retreating away as we reach the shelter of the rock. We hunker underneath the protection the thick stone provides and catch our breath.

  “You’re doing well,” I tell Briony.

  She nods, although her face, even in this darkness, looks as pale as the moon.

  “Get ready, they’re coming again,” Beaufort calls out above the cacophony of noise as more demons come gliding either side of the rock, attempting to pincer us in.

  Beaufort works with Dray to eliminate the ones behind us, while I work with Briony to destroy the ones at our front.

  I’m concentrating on my own work, and yet I still steal glances her way, amazed at how much her power has grown, how the light obliterates all the darkness, driving the demons into retreat.

  My shadows have always been formidable, far more dominant than any other shadow weavers I’ve met – even Beaufort and Dray’s. And yet, beside the beams of light that radiate from Briony’s hands they look pathetic and useless, and I wonder if everything I ever heard about the old light wielders being weaker than us shadow weavers could be true.

  We take out a handful more demons, the others once again rushing away and we take the opportunity to rally.

  “Okay?” Beaufort asks Briony, stroking his hands down her sides. Her face is covered in grime, her hair shook loose around her face but other than that she looks unharmed. I sigh in relief. It’s short-lived, another swarm of demons bombarding us before I’ve even drawn another breath. There are many more this time.

  “We’re trapped,” I yell.

  “Bollocks,” Dray curses.

  However, Briony doesn’t hesitate, she sends her magic streaming up towards the demons, picking them off one at a time. I join her, sending my shadows racing to join her light, as Beaufort charges with his sword from out behind the rock, along with Dray’s wolf.

  The demons battle fiercely against our magic, a few swerve past it altogether, reaching down to us, and scraping and clawing at us with their deadly talons. One curls its talons around my arm, another pierces my skull with its claw, a third hisses right in my face, its breath rancid and foul. I blast them away, my shadows more wild and frantic than I’ve ever known them, determined to keep the woman beside us safe from harm.

  Behind us, I hear Beaufort grunting and the wolf whining and I can determine the fight is no more easy for them.

  And still they come, tumbling from the sky like monstrous hail, landing on the ground, kicking up the dust until it’s swirling like something possessed and alive. It flicks into my eyes, shoots up my nose, coats my tongue. I cough and splutter, my eyes watering. I don’t have time to wipe away the dirt, I keep firing my shadows, the world blurring in an ocean of grays, the taste in my mouth bitter and stale.

  I yell at Briony as a demon creeps up behind her, I catch one in a web of shadows, breaking it apart. I stare into their grotesque faces, their soulless eyes, and watch them perish.

  And finally, somehow, we’re pushing them back, forcing them away from us, and then I’m blasting the final demon into flames.

  Briony and I stand there side by side, shoulders rising and falling, breaths hurried and panted, sweat mingling with dust even in this bitter cold. We stare up into the empty sky, my magic running alongside hers. Shadows against radiance. Darkness against light. It would be easy to forget where we are, the hideousness of our surroundings. It would be easy to get lost in the beauty above us, in the wonder of it.

  I drop my gaze from the sky and down to Briony. Her face is illuminated by the light and she looks like an angel, like something mythical and otherworldly. My heart aches in my chest. I wish I had the words to describe how I feel in this moment, how incredible I find this woman, how much she has changed me and my life.

  Finally, she lowers her hand, retracting her magic back inside herself and my shadows do the same, as if they’re following her command and not mine.

  I open my mouth to say something but then her attention is caught by something else.

  “Dray,” she cries, racing away behind us.

  My bond brother lies on the ground, Beaufort crouched beside him. His chest is a bloody mess but his face contains his usual wide grin, even if it’s a little forced.

  “Hey Kitten, I’m fine. Just a scratch.”

  “A scratch?!” she cries, dropping to her knees and assessing the damage.

  “One of those assholes caught me with his claws. Nothing Beau can’t fix, is it?” Dray says.

  “You have no idea how many times I’ve patched this maniac up,” Beaufort says, allowing his shadows to crawl across Dray’s flesh, knitting the damaged flesh together.

  “Does it hurt?” Briony asks, her brow creasing.

  “Nah,” Dray says, totally lying.

  Briony watches Beaufort’s work.

  “How are you doing that?” she asks him.

  “It’s hard to explain. I’m letting my shadows feel for the damage, letting them find the broken skin and mend it together.”

  “Can I try?” she asks.

  Beaufort looks up at her. “Of course you can.”

  “Dray?” she asks.

  “Go ahead, Kitten. You mess up, I’ll happily wear a scar from you.”

  She frowns harder at that, clearly not liking the idea of disfiguring our bond brother. Then she shuffles closer to him on her knees, hovers her hands above his chest and lets her light envelop him.

  His face relaxes and swims with bliss and he sighs.

  “That feels so freaking good,” he moans.

  Briony chews on her cheek, concentrating. I can’t see if it’s working under the radiance of her light, but when she falls backwards with a huff and yanks her magic away, I see Dray’s chest is completely healed.

  “Well, look at that.” Dray strokes his hand across the perfect skin. “Even Beau’s never fixed me that quickly before.”

  “It was actually pretty easy,” she says, with a slight blush, like she finds it hard to admit her own talents.

  “And useful,” I say, thinking it is unlikely this will be our only injury.

  I sweep my gaze around, checking that my initial assessment was correct and the demons really have gone – for now at least.

  “They’re gone,” I confirm.

  “Shouldn’t we move on before more of them arrive?” Briony asks.

  “Yes,” Beaufort responds, “let’s move quickly.”

  “Where to?” she asks.

  “We move on to the fort and we hope Tudor is there.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Briony

  “Have you ever faced that many demons before?” I ask as we hurry onward on our journey.

  The landscape looks all the same to me. Only the odd mangled tree stump, the odd incline, the odd scuff in the earth. However, Beaufort appears to understand where we are and where we should go.

  “No, never that many,” Thorne says.

  I don’t know what to make of that information. Should I be feeling more hopeful? We saw off all those demons. We survived. Maybe we can find Fox and escape with our lives. And yet, I can’t help thinking the further we stray into their territory the more demons we will find.

  I wrap my coat tightly around my body.

  “Okay?” Beaufort asks me.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” I say.

  “What did you expect it to be like, Kitten?” Dray says with amusement. “Unicorns and butterflies?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just so …” I shudder.

  “That’s what this place does to you,” Thorne says, his dark eyes even darker out here, like the abyss itself. “It sucks the hope out of you. You need to keep your wits about you or it will drive you insane.”

  “Yeah, think happy thoughts, Little Kitten. Thoughts like sitting on my face.”

  As we continue our march across this barren land, I wonder if that’s going to be possible. The hopeless nature of this place encroaches on my mind. Dark thoughts creep into my head. My skin turns cold. My heart thumps in my throat.

  I chew on my cheek, trying to keep my thoughts light and happy so the dank gloominess of this place doesn’t infiltrate my mind.

  But there’s one thing I keep coming back to.

  “I don’t understand how the Madame is working with the demons,” I mutter out loud.

  “Because she’s as evil as they are,” Beaufort states.

  “No, I understand that. I mean on a practical level. They don’t appear to be able to talk. Can they think? Can they communicate?”

  “I’m not sure anyone’s studied them that closely, Kitten,” Dray says, finding my hand.

  The face Beaufort turns towards his friend is unimpressed. “Scholars have tried,” Beaufort tells him and me, “The demons are not like us–”

  “You don’t say!” Dray scoffs.

  Beaufort ignores that comment and continues.

  “What we do know is that they have some kind of hive brain and their actions seem innate.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask, wishing my education in Slate had moved beyond farming and woodwork skills and provided some actual knowledge of the world.

  “It’s like they’re pre-programmed.” I frown, still not understanding. “You ever watch ants hard at work or bees?” he asks me.

  “Of course.”

  “They seem to know what they’re doing, right? Collecting pollen from flowers, or bringing back material to the nest. But they don’t have brains like us. Their behavior is innate. It’s pre-programmed.”

  “Then who programmed them?”

  “Some people think it’s the gods or the stars, others the nature of the universe.”

  “And what are demons programmed to do?”

  “Kill,” Dray says, swinging our hands together like that isn’t the darkest comment ever.

  “They seem to thrive on death and destruction. I mean, look at this place,” Beaufort says, sweeping his hand across the desolate landscape, shuddering as he does. “Look what they’ve done to this place. It’s like they’ve sucked the sunlight away.”

  I shudder too, and Dray pulls me closer, wrapping his arm around my shoulder.

  “Enough miserable talk,” he says, “let’s’ talk about something more uplifting, like how damn good Kitten looked in that dress.”

  Drays spend the next fifteen minutes monologuing about just that. I’m not sure any of the rest of us are truly listening though. We’re all watching the sky and the horizon for any signs of movement. The only motion we register is the battering of the bitter wind across the barren landscape, lifting dust into the air and bending the few tree stumps that pock the earth.

  At one point, Beaufort stops us and takes out his map, studying the details.

  “Don’t you know where we’re going?” I ask, not loving that idea.

  “I’ve never been this far inside their territory before,” he says, which fills me with no more confidence.

  In the end, he leads us down a valley, promising we’ll find the fort on the slope of the other side. The gloom intensifies the further we walk down, and I find I’m straining my eyes in the darkness. I’m tempted to use my light to better illuminate our way, but that will probably act as a beacon to every demon out here so I make do.

  When we reach the floor of the valley, we all halt.

  Before us, scattered all across the floor of this great valley, are bones. Bones as far as the eye can see. Like a graveyard where no one has actually been buried. Only there’re not only skeletons of people. There are horses too. Horses and dragons – at least three of them, laid out across the valley floor.

  “What the fuck is this place?” Dray says, even his perpetual cheerful mood slipping. “Some kind of demon feeding ground?”

  Beaufort takes a step forward. “These are old bones,” he says. “Very old.” He takes another step forward, crouching down over a skeleton lying on its back, gazing up at the black sky with its hollow eyes. Alongside the bones lies a rusted sword, five bony digits wrapped around its handle. Beaufort examines this sword, then looks up at us all.

  “I can’t be certain,” he says, “but this could be the site of the battle of Hundersome.”

  “The what?” I say, allowing Dray to pull me even closer.

  “It was a great battle between the realm and the demons. The battle was lost, we conceded the land. It’s been in the demon’s’ hands ever since. It was in the aftermath of the battle and the subsequent fall out that the border, the academy, and the four Quarters were established to better protect ourselves from the ongoing threat.”

  “How long ago was that?” I ask, wishing I’d been taught more about this.

  “Just over five hundred years ago,” Thorne says, bending down to examine the sword. “That sword bears the mark of the emperor at the time.”

  “You’re all such nerds,” Dray mutters.

  “So many people killed,” I murmur, peering out across the valley of bones. “And our powers were stronger back then, we had dragons!”

 

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