Reign of Shadows

  I flexed my hands around the bars, palms slick with sweat.

  She didn’t resist as they backed her to the pole. The solid length hit her square along the spine. I wanted her to fight, to run, even though if she broke free there was nowhere to go. An intense gray fog hugged low to the ground. The flat expanse of land that surrounded the walls of the keep was long eradicated of trees. In the far distance, the land finally gave way to shrubs and then trees so thick and dense it was impossible to determine what lurked within. She peered in that direction, gazing into the fleeting glow of midlight.

  With every passing moment my throat felt like it was tightening from an invisible noose. The dark would soon return to swallow everything.

  The guards made quick work of the rope, pinning her to the pole tightly, tying off the ends into knots she could never hope to loosen. They stepped back and returned to the wagon.

  The creak of wheels and the jingle of harnesses filled the air as they circled back around, the horses’ hooves kicking up earth. The drawbridge lowered with a rattle of chains, hitting the ground with a thud I felt vibrate through my bones. The wagon hastened into the shelter of the keep, wheels rattling over the wooden drawbridge.

  The gate descended with a clang, closing behind them. Everything inside me wilted as the drawbridge cranked back up and slid home with a jarring clank, shutting her out. Snuffing out that tiny flame of hope inside me.

  Silence fell, an eerie quiet after all the noise. She looked around, her head the only thing mobile. The immense, stone-walled keep gazed back at her solemnly. I shivered, very much feeling the cold in the cell.

  Watching her, I knew how she felt. I knew the loneliness. The king’s voice rang out, shattering the silence.

  My gaze found his robed shape standing atop the battlements. Hatred welled up inside me at the sight of his face. “May this humble token serve as a testament to our deference, to our limitless respect and awe . . .”

  The rest of his words faded into a droning buzz. I knew them by heart—had heard them all my life.

  She scanned the firelit faces, searching for one, her lips moving, mouthing what I knew was my name in a soundless plea. It was there, wordlessly humming between us. She clung to the feeble hope that I would come. That I would stop all this from happening.

  That I would keep my promise.

  I shook the bars with impotent fury.

  The king finished and silence fell again. The gray deepened to purply black and the fog melted, giving way for night again. I scanned the distant tree line. Dark shadows swelled from the thicket, black, growing claws stretching across the barren land toward her.

  My chest hurt. Each breath an agony. She held herself so still. Her gaze trained on the faces watching her. Family. People she’d known all her life. No one to help her.

  I’m here. I’m with you. I willed the words to her as though she could hear them.

  She couldn’t believe that I didn’t care She had to know. I had not abandoned her.

  At the first inhuman cry, her body came alive, struggling against the ropes. Just as I’d seen countless others do. I had always marveled at that, wondered why they bothered fighting when it was so clear they couldn’t escape. Now I knew. The will to live was a powerful thing.

  I screamed her name, shouting it between the bars until my voice grew hoarse.

  They were coming and still she fought, choking on terror. Even though she knew there was no going back inside the keep, she battled for life. The keening cries increased in volume and overlapped. She struggled, her hair flying wildly.

  Finally their horrible cries stopped. And so did she. She stilled.

  I watched, my throat raw, my eyes wide and aching as I searched the darkness, fear bubbling like acid inside me. I knew what it meant when they quieted. They were here now.

  My heart thudded a deep, rushing beat in my ears. I sagged against the wall, utterly broken, my hands numb on the bars as my eyes strained against the relentless dark—darting, seeking, searching for their shapes in the impenetrable black where they hovered.

  A single whisper escaped me.

  “Bethan.”

  The only answer I heard was her scream.

  I woke with a ragged gasp, hands gripping the sheets like they were the bars of the prison cell I had watched from all those years ago.

  It was the same dream. Except it had been a while since I last suffered it.

  I inhaled, steadying my heart rate and forcing the images away. Lacing hands behind my head, I stared into the dark. It had been a long time since I felt a bed beneath me. I had spent many a night staring into the dark, sleeping in far less comfortable accommodations, storing up my strength.

  I should have been sleeping a dreamless sleep. This was the most secure I’d been in a long time. I should have been taking advantage of that. Instead I was back in the old nightmare. I scrubbed a hand over my face as if I could rid myself of all thoughts of Bethan and that day.

  After a few moments I succeeded in rerouting my thoughts. They strayed perhaps in the most obvious direction. A pair of bottomless dark eyes that saw nothing and yet saw everything floated across my mind. Luna.

  It was almost as though her lack of sight made her stronger. Someone like her should be dead, but she wasn’t. She was thriving. Maybe a world of dark was best suited for the blind. I expelled a heavy breath.

  She’d made me laugh.

  I didn’t know the last time I had laughed. For a moment my chest had loosened. I felt lighter until I remembered that laughter didn’t belong in this world.

  A knock at the door brought me upright. “Yes?”

  The door creaked open. Perla stuck her head in my room, wisps of steel-gray hair floating around her. “It’s the boy.”

  I slipped from the bed, pausing to slide my feet into my boots, knowing nowhere was ever safe—including this idyllic tower.

  I followed Perla into the bedchamber. Madoc whimpered in the middle of the bed, his face flushed and sweaty. Dagne sat on the edge, wiping his brow with a cloth.

  Sivo stood in the corner, looking bleary-eyed. Luna was beside him, her arms crossed in front of her defensively as though she was trying to shield herself from me.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  Perla nodded to the boy on the bed. “His fever has spiked. I fear it won’t break. We’re losing him.”

  Dagne choked on a sob, burying her face against where his arm rested limply on the bed, her fair hair a pale banner of gold against the bedding.

  I searched Perla’s face, wondering why she was telling me this. If he was dying, there was nothing I could do about it.

  “That’s too bad,” I heard myself saying.

  If they were expecting sympathy, they weren’t going to get it. People died every day. This world was more about dying than living. The goal was that it just not be me lying fever-ridden in a bed—or becoming food for dwellers. Some days even that goal felt insignificant. Fighting for survival had become reflex and not something I even considered anymore.

  “You sound real shaken over that,” Luna’s voice chimed in. My gaze shot to her. For a girl without sight, she pulled off the scathing glare rather well.

  “Are you sorry for him then?” I challenged. “You just met him.”

  “I am sorry for him, yes. Any loss of life is something to grieve.”

  Dagne lifted her face, her cheeks wet from tears. “Would you stop it? He’s not dead yet. Stop talking about him like he is.”

  “I’m sorry.” Luna shook her head, looking truly morose.

  I snorted. Such a soft heart. She cared too much over one boy dying. Didn’t she know yet? You couldn’t care for everyone or you would spend your life in mourning. People you loved, the ones you cared about the most, they all died eventually. No one was spared. When you lost them, everything you had, all of your heart, was lost, too. It crippled you. Left you an empty shell, functioning on instinct alone.

  “You’re horrible,” she whispered, so sof
tly that I perhaps wasn’t supposed to hear her.

  My mouth kicked up at one corner. “You haven’t any idea what I think or feel. You live in your private sanctum. You don’t know what the world out there is truly like.”

  Even if I wanted to care about someone again, there was nothing left in the shell of me. My heart might beat, but that part of me was gone.

  Luna’s gaze rested in my general direction. “I’ve been out there—”

  “Have you ever been a stone’s throw from this tower?” At her silence, I knew she had not. “When things get messy you dive back in your hole, right? You’re fortunate. You haven’t had a taste of what it’s really like.”

  Color splashed her cheeks. “So if I did . . . I’d be as heartless as you?”

  “Yes.” He paused on a breath. “The heartless survive.”

  She inhaled a deep, rattling breath. I tried not to notice. Not this. Not anything about her. Still, my gaze assessed Luna. As slim as she was, she had curves that did not go unnoticed even by me.

  My gaze flicked to Sivo, noting the rigid set to his big shoulders. Protective fury hummed from him. I understood the silent threat. He’d kill to protect her. I nodded once to him, letting him know he wouldn’t have to worry about me.

  “You say that as though proud,” she accused. “How can you think that’s right? That being heartless is right?”

  “Nothing about anything is right anymore.”

  She shook her head. My words hung between us as I committed her to memory. Luna was all emotion, her face like a glimmer of daybreak amid perpetual night. She gazed at me, her eyes somehow fixed on me, her expression full of reproach.

  Silence hung in the room, the faint sniffling from Dagne the only sound.

  Sivo smiled in satisfaction. He closed a hand over her shoulder and squeezed gently. She offered him a weak smile.

  I hoped she meant that. I hoped she never left this place.

  “There’s a chance for the boy yet,” Perla offered with a heavy breath. “Nisan weed.”

  “Nisan weed?” I frowned, vaguely familiar with the herb. When I was a boy, my nurse had taken me with her to hunt for herbs at midlight. Nisan weed had been a prize find. I could still see her holding the little flower up to the feeble light, stroking its petals as though it were the greatest jewel. “Large red and yellow flowers with the dark centers?”

  “Yes.” Perla nodded. “It works quickly, which is what he needs with a fever raging such as this.”

  “I saw it on the way here,” I replied before I could consider what admitting such a thing signified.

  “You did?” Sivo asked. “Not near here. I’ve picked it clean over the years.”

  “Perhaps farther than you’re accustomed to traveling. It was about an hour’s walk from here.”

  “You must go and bring it back,” Dagne pleaded, her fingers desperately clenching her brother’s limp hand.

  I shook my head and faced Sivo. “I’m leaving at midlight—”

  “Please!” Dagne cried, her face deepening to an even brighter red as new tears poured down her cheeks. “Do this one thing before you go.”

  “You know the way?” Sivo pressed me.

  “I can create a map directing you to where I spotted—”

  “You said it’s an hour’s walk. Midlight won’t last that long. You could find the herb faster.”

  I sighed, unable to argue with the truth of that. Whatever map I left him, I could be off a fraction, costing him precious time as he searched.

  I looked around the room. A sick boy. An old woman. A scared, weeping Dagne. And Luna, a blind girl even if she was the most capable of them all. I choked out a dry, humorless laugh. If they lost Sivo, how well would they fare? And for how much longer?

  Luna pressed her lips into a tight, mutinous line. “What’s so amusing? Our request for help? Or that we’re even attempting to save his life?”

  She didn’t know me. Not at all. I could say yes.

  Her chin lifted a notch. It was uncanny, as though she read my thoughts and was challenging me to go against my avowal to leave this place . . . my determination to live a selfish existence.

  “I’ll go.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  I SLIPPED OUT a little before midlight, knowing that the task would take more than a full hour. I’d rather be making my way in the dark at the beginning of this errand than at the end.

  I studied the sky and then glanced around, feeling that familiar restless energy. The air always felt this way moments before midlight—when all manner of life, animal and man, was ready to burst free, and roam freely in the brief window of time that dwellers went to ground.

  A snap sounded behind me.

  I whirled, lifting my bow. I waited, staring into the gloom, my gaze darting over the terrain of trees and brush.

  I held myself still, ears straining.

  No other sound came. I didn’t hear the sloughing, wet breath of a dweller. No dragging steps. Not even the rotting, loamy odor that signaled they were close. But there were other dangers.

  A shape materialized, only slightly less dark than the ink of night. I pulled my arrow taut, the pull of string a sweet, faintly audible creak near my ear.

  “Don’t shoot.”

  A shock wave rippled through me. “Luna?”

  She stopped before me. She was garbed in trousers again.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded, my voice a low hiss.

  “Coming with you.” She actually smiled.

  “No. You’re not.”

  She propped a hand on her hip. “It looks like I already am.”

  I lifted my bow and pointed beyond her. Shaking my head, I realized the motion was lost on her. I dropped my hand. “Go back.”

  “No,” she answered evenly. “We’ve already covered this much ground, and it’s almost midlight. Why send me back now?”

  “Why are you even here? I said I would fetch the nisan—”

  “Because we need to know where it grows. After you leave, we may have need of it again.”

  “And you couldn’t have pointed that bit of logic out sooner? So Sivo could have joined me and not you?”

  At this, her smile broadened. “I could have.”

  “You said nothing deliberately.”

  She shrugged a thin shoulder. “I need to know these things for myself, too. I can’t rely on Sivo for everything.”

  I cursed. She blinked as though my colorful speech was something new, and I supposed it was. Her guardians had spent all these years sheltering her.

  I sighed and dragged a hand through my hair, scanning the horizon. She was right. They wouldn’t be around forever. What would become of her?

  I ignored the voice inside that reminded me this wasn’t my problem and snapped, “Fine.”

  She smiled again, her lips curving wide to reveal bone-white teeth. “Stop smiling so much,” I grumbled, turning away. She followed close behind me, moving noiselessly. “You walk like you’re part of the night.” The words escaped me like an accusation. It didn’t make sense to me. How could a sightless girl be so proficient at maneuvering this terrain?

  “I am part of it,” she replied. “Aren’t you?”

  “I’m not a part of anything.” Not anymore. I started to think about those days, but stopped myself from going there. I wasn’t that boy anymore. I couldn’t be him ever again.

  “Will you be a part of Allu?”

  My reply was immediate. “I have to be.”

  “But what if you’re not? What if it’s not like you think?”

  I held silent at the question, letting it drape over the night, sinking into the dark abyss through which we waded.

  “How do you even know this place is real?” she pressed.

  “Allu exists. It’s on every map. It’s always been there.”

  “Yes, I’m aware. I’v
e studied my geography and history. But how do you know it’s free of dwellers?”

  I hesitated before saying, “It’s all I’ve ever heard. Everything I’ve ever been told. That gives some weight to the stories.”

  “Have you met anyone who’s ever actually been there? And returned to tell of it?”

  “Who would ever wish to come back once they reached Allu? Why would they risk themselves?” It was ironic hearing myself use Bethan’s logic. She had been chipping away at my resolve near the end. I had started making plans for us to leave. A bitter irony now.

  “Hm.” There was a wealth of meaning in that single sound. She doubted. Just as I once had. “Childhood is full of fairy tales. I had my share, too. What makes yours real?”

  “I knew someone,” I snapped. “She believed. She convinced me.” And yet her faith hadn’t been enough.

  “Where is this girl? Why isn’t she with you?” Turning, I faced her. She stopped and tilted her chin, waiting for my answer.

  “She’s gone.” A flying beetle the size of my fist zipped over my shoulder, heading in her direction. She pulled her head to the side, dodging it as if it were nothing, as if she had seen it coming.

  Her throat worked as she searched for words. “You mean dead.”

  “Dwellers took her.” Which was as good as dead. Anyone dragged underground never came back. The details weren’t something I ever shared.

  “I—I’m sorr—”

  “If you apologize for every person I ever lost, we’d be here all day.” I swung back around. “Let’s keep moving.”

  “What was her name?” she whispered at my back.

  I expelled a breath and looked skyward. “What does it matter now?”

  “Her name?”

  I closed my eyes. It had been two years now, and the sound of her voice was a dim memory. She had been full of laughter. Even with monsters at the gate she could find happiness.

  I didn’t know what I was holding on for anymore. It was pure instinct that kept me moving. My lungs knew how to expand with each breath, and somehow I had mastered the art of not dying. Survival was an easy thing to accomplish when there was nothing left to live for.