Page 5 of Serpent and Shadow

Mrs. Bones

Walls of stone blurred past my eyes.

I couldn’t fathom whether my feet and legs were moving up the steps under my own power, or if they were being pulled that way by one of the two wizards at my sides. The grey surface curved as I ascended a staircase that felt impossibly narrow with the two hulking figures holding me firmly between them.

They didn’t look at me, or speak.

They wore all black, insignias on armbands and capes, and while I had some awareness that one was my cousin, Valor La Fey, he felt as faceless and empty as the black-clad soldier across from him.

As for me, I’d never felt so weak, or so depleted.

I was like a mechanical toy whose battery had run down.

I supposed that, technically, at least, part of what I was experiencing might have been shock, but I didn’t have enough left in me to puzzle out the difference between that and having my magic wrung out of me like a sponge. If they let go of me, even for a second, I was reasonably sure I would collapse.

Fighting them was out of the question. I couldn’t free myself from their hold, so it made sense to focus on other things.

Like what I would do next.

Assuming I wasn’t about to be thrown in prison, or locked up in some chamber inside the Magical government offices, I needed to think about what I would do now.

He was gone.

My breath cut out before the thought fully landed.

A pain rose in my chest, branching outward like snaking vines.

The truth of what happened out by the forest’s edge tried to settle somewhere inside me, to force an acceptance, but the rest of me revolted so intensely my real reaction felt like being slowly strangled while being stabbed in the heart.

I could even decide how to name the feeling screaming inside my chest. Panic? Rage? Grief? Loss? Anxiety? Terror? Devastation?

None were right. None were enough.

A darkness tried to swallow me I couldn’t quantify, couldn’t describe. No words fit that emptiness. The feelings grew intense enough, I couldn’t stand to remain still. My body couldn’t stand the pressure. My mind couldn’t move in logical lines. Adrenaline ignited in my blood, trying to wring a last burst of juice out of my depleted magic.

Something in my posture or demeanor must have changed.

Either way, the two mages with me definitely felt it.

The soldier on my left gripped me tighter in his black-gloved hands. A creature with an angry, human-like face flapped leathery wings from his shoulder, glaring at me with glowing red eyes. Pain writhed through my arm and down my side as his grip grew punishing.

“Don’t even think about it, half-breed,” he warned in a cold, vicious voice. “I feel so much as a spark off you, cur, I’ll drop you so hard it will make what we did to you in that field feel like a blown kiss. I’ll cut off your breath before you can speak a single one of your black incantations––”

“Enough!” the soldier on my other side snapped. “She’s in shock. She’s also probably the only reason you’re alive, so a little gratitude wouldn’t be amiss.”

“Gratitude?” The first one scoffed. “If we hadn’t stopped her, she would have turned that black fire on us!”

“Nonsense,” the second one growled. “She went after Bones herself. And Calvarias. That took guts. And she never once aimed her magicks at any one of us.” His voice dropped to an angry mutter. “And you hit her too hard, Grablen. You wonder why she’s irrational, when her own side––”

“Dragon piss. You can’t protect her this time, V. You saw what she did––”

“I said shut it,” the other growled. “And it’s not my call. Nor is it yours.”

Before I could look up long enough to make out either face, an opening appeared in front of me. They half-dragged, half-shoved me through.

For the first time since I’d been pulled through the front doors of Malcroix Mansion, a flash of light greeted my eyes that wasn’t torchlight. We’d reached the top of the tower after that endless number of steps, and I blinked at a tall glass window framed in iron and heavy purple and gold curtains. I recognized the space, but I was too tired and out of it to give it a name.

The light outside that window wasn’t bright.