Beaufort
Once we’ve passed out of the vast entrance hall and into one of the smaller rooms that leads off it, I turn to my bond brother and ask him,
“Be honest with me, Thorne, are you back in control?”
He scowls at me. “If I wasn’t, you know I wouldn’t be here. I’d never put her in danger.” Then he scowls harder. “You made me hold her down.”
“We didn’t have a choice. You know what happens if you fail to remove the venom once the spell has started.”
He nods. “I’ve never seen it fight like that.”
“Yeah.” I drag my fingers through my hair. “For a moment …” I don’t finish my thought. The gloom of this place is infectious; it will drag you down and take your mind if you let it. Dwelling on how close we came to losing Briony just then is not worth it. “Where was this person?”
Thorne points above his head and together we climb the stairs.
The rooms on the next floor are smaller and more decayed. The walls are crumbling away to the ground and, in some places, the ceiling has caved in. We make our way through each room, one at a time, until we hear something. A scratching or a scrabbling?
“It could be a creature?” I venture.
Thorne shakes his head. He’s certain about this.
I extinguish the light and we raise our hands, then, quietly, we creep through into the next room. It’s even darker here and it takes our eyes several minutes to adjust.
The room stinks of decay and something more rancid.
Thorne never said if the person was dead or alive.
I sweep my gaze around the tight room, finding a bundle of gray blankets in one corner. Thorne spots it too and nods.
I send my shadows racing across the room, poking at the bundle. It makes a faint pitiful sound.
“Hello?” I say. But there’s no response, just another groan.
I use my magic to draw back the blanket and what I see doesn’t quite compute in my head.
Not Fox, the face that peeks through is much older, weathered and withered. For a split second, I think it must be a corpse. But it moans a third time and shifts slightly.
I exchange looks with Thorne. He’s clearly as confused as I am. Cautiously, we make our way closer, almost a foot away from the body, when Briony comes shooting past us.
“Fox?” she cries out as Dray comes hurrying after her.
“I tried to stop her,” he mumbles.
Briony halts by the figure and her body, alive with anticipation a moment ago, signals her disappointment in the next, her shoulders dropping and her chin falling down.
“You’re not Fox,” she says, “who are you?”
She’s peering down into the old face, a man’s face, a long white beard hanging limply from his chin.
The man opens his mouth and tries to speak but no words come out.
Briony crouches down beside him, despite the hand I place on her shoulder in warning.
“Are you hurt?” she asks him. He says nothing, staring up at us with milky eyes. “Water. He needs some water.”
Dray hurries from the room and returns with one of our rucksacks. He digs around inside and pulls out one of our water bottles, handing it to Briony.
“Should we be wasting our supplies?” I caution. “We don’t know who this is.”
