I should have pressed my mother harder, insisting that Briony not be allowed to come with us. The danger is too great. This mission is too risky. This isn’t some trial, cooked up by the academy to test students. This is the real world with all its perils and threats.
“You ready to go?” Thorne asks beside me.
In my head, I run through the supplies we packed hurriedly in my apartments, trying to discern if there is anything important we’ve missed, if there is anything else we need.
It’s hard to know. I’ve stepped beyond the boundary of our realm into the Wastelands where the demons lurk several times now, but I’ve only ever ventured far enough to push them back into their territory or wipe them out completely. I’ve wandered no further. I don’t even know what it will be like. What we will need. How many demons we will face.
I go to nod my head and then I feel it. That tug. Like the one I felt in the weapon room. Like the tug Briony described she felt with the egg.
I must be imagining it. But as I dismiss the sensation, it pulls all the harder.
I peer back at the palace, all lit up tonight for the state banquet. They’ll all be in there – reliving the night’s entertainment in blow by blow detail, gossiping about the four of us.
That means the rest of the palace will be quiet and empty.
“There’s something I’ve forgotten,” I tell my bond brother. “I need to go back for it.”
“Should I wait here?” he says, not asking me what the object I’ve forgotten is.
“No, come with me,” I say.
If the guards find our conversation suspicious, they don’t show it and we aren’t followed back into the palace. I stride quickly along the corridor.
“This isn’t the way to your apartment,” Thorne says.
“No, we’re not going to the apartment. We’re going somewhere different.”
Thorne peers at me with curiosity but asks no more and a minute later we reach the weapon’s room, guarded as usual. Like last time, one glance at me, and I’m let through, dashing insidethe darkened room. I cast a shadowy light and Thorne glances around the room in astonishment. Then he frowns.
“There’s bad magic in here, Beaufort.”
“You feel it too?”
Thorne considers for a moment, tilting his head to one side. “A dark magic. It’s calling to my shadows.”
“Then let’s get out of here quickly.”
I march over to the hanging swords and snatch the Thunderstrike sword off its mount, attaching the scabbard to my belt.
“Are you allowed to take that?” Thorne says.
“No,” I tell him. “Let’s go.”
Displacing from inside the weapon’s room probably isn’t the best idea. The guards will grow suspicious when we don’t leave the room after some time. They’ll go in and check and they’ll find us and the sword missing. The alternative is trying to smuggle the sword out, but it’s huge and even Thorne with his great height wouldn’t be able to hide it down his pant leg.
No, this is the only way. I’ll have to deal with the consequences later. But it will be worth it to keep Briony safe.
Besides, the sword called to me, didn’t it?
And so we displace the hell out of the palace.
Halworth is a desolate piece of scrubland right at the edge of the realm at the very east of Slate Quarter. No one lives out here, no vegetation bursts through the hard earth and icy snow blankets the landscape.
The brutality of the cold wind smacks me in the face as soon as my feet hit the ground and knocks the warm air from my lungs.
“Fuck, that’s cold,” I mutter, lifting the collar of my jacket and then blowing on my fingers.
Day won’t dawn for several hours yet but the sky hangs clear and the nearly full moon and the littering of stars illuminates the landscape. I peer around. Right in front of us lies an old guard post, a scruffy wooden hut that even from here I can tell is empty; beyond that, the border. To an untrained eye, it’s invisible. Nothing marking where the realm ends and the wasteland occupied by the demons begins. But I see it. The slight shimmer in the air. The magical shield that protects us from invasion. A shield that has grown weaker over the decades and centuries. Or perhaps the demons have grown stronger. Either way the shield provides less protection these days and demon intrusions into our realm have become more frequent.
