Treason: Book Two of the Grimoire Saga (a Young Adult Fantasy series) Page 14

  Braeden shuddered. He’d encountered a feihl as a boy, when he’d gone into the grottoes on a dare and found a wounded one curled into a small cave. Something had ripped the creature’s right side open. Dark red blood pooled beneath it in what Braeden had assumed was its dying place. Even wounded and waiting to die, the thing had nearly taken off his arm.

  The feihl were ancient creatures, ugly as sin and just as mean. Their long, scaly bodies usually grew to about fifteen feet long on average, though rumor was they got bigger with each generation. Each creature had dozens of feet and poisonous venom in its saliva, but it was the thing’s face Braeden most remembered: two slits in its round head served as a nose that hovered over a lipless mouth with rows of endless, razor-sharp teeth.

  Little food ever roamed the old cave network, so most believed a feihl could make a meal last for days. It supposedly kept its prey alive until only the essential organs remained—dessert.

  Braeden had no intention of meeting one of those monsters again. Ever.

  If he remembered correctly, the creatures even made Carden nervous. That meant the caves would work as an undetected passage to and from the kingdom. Well, Braeden hoped so. It was still a pretty big gamble.

  Because feihl had no distinct smell, he’d never sense one coming. They could even crawl on the ceilings and could likely see in the dark. He was in their territory. His only warning would be the scuffle of their feet along the rock, and he wasn’t even sure what he’d do when he heard it.

  So he listened.

  He’d been traveling through the caves at a painfully slow pace, walking with such care that he couldn’t even hear his own steps. It was a tiring game that wore on his nerves, but he had little choice in the matter. Any faster and he would probably be dead within an hour.

  Braeden’s hand slipped into his pocket as he checked for the Stelian talisman again. The small black square brushed his fingers, cold as ever, but his heart slowed with relief as he touched the stone. The sharp detail from the thorns in the Stele’s coat of arms scratched his skin, but it wasn’t enough to break the surface.

  He took slow, steady breaths that went unheard on the air, but he’d still expected to hear shuffling, or at the very least, dripping water somewhere far off. Instead, the silence weighed in on him—so quiet, so still, that he occasionally toyed with the fleeting fear he’d lost his hearing.

  That quiet.

  Something was wrong. Sure, stealth came naturally to him, but he wasn’t that good. He shifted his mind off the growing unease by listening to the kingdom that would someday be his.

  The Stele offered all its subjects protection, but the grounds spoke to Braeden. He knew every inch of the black forest and every dead end of the caves through which he walked. It was instinct. He and the kingdom had always shared a connection, one he guessed it had shared with every royal before him as well—even Carden.

  As much as Braeden hated to admit it, the Stele was his home.

  His instinct drove him now, weaving through tunnel after tunnel with a sense of direction that didn’t come from experience. He’d never been this far into the tunnels before and only found their entrance by circling the Stele’s perimeter until the grottoes presented themselves. His plan was one of impulse, which meant he didn’t really have a plan at all.

  A nagging fear in the pit of his stomach brought his feet to a halt before he could question himself. Something shuffled farther down the tunnel.

  The patter of a hundred feet came from somewhere just ahead. A growl rumbled through the corridor, and it was all Braeden could do to not reach for his sword. If he stood still, the creature might think of him as an extension of the wall instead of food.

  The whispering shuffle of feet grew louder, and he swore his racing pulse would give him away. He took one last breath as the thing approached. His fingers itched to grab his sword.

  No. Be still. Wait.

  The pattering slowed until the last footstep echoed in the tunnel.

  Though Braeden couldn’t see in the dark caves, the hairs on his arms stood on end as if the creature hovered just out of reach. His skin prickled. The creature grunted, its breath a hot whiff of air that rolled over Braeden’s face.

  His fingers twitched.

  The beast grunted again…

  …and turned away down the corridor through which Braeden had just come. Its feet brushed over his as it passed, and Braeden stifled the impulse to groan with disgust. The feet continued, their claws digging into his boot as they passed. Still, he couldn’t breathe. Not yet.

  It wasn’t until the last echoing shuffle faded from the hall that he let himself breathe again. White dots spotted his vision, despite the darkness, as air returned to his starved lungs.

  He had to get out of here.

  An hour later, the first blink of light appeared to Braeden around a curve in one of the tunnels. He let out a shaky sigh of relief, despite the silence, and walked just a little bit faster.

  It was one thing to sense the exit nearby, but an altogether happier respite to see it for himself.

  Light glinted off something in the shadows to the right of the exit. He pressed himself to the wall and peered around the corner, unsure what he’d expected. More reflections danced down what turned out to be a side tunnel, light flashing off something in the darkness. Braeden paused at the tunnel’s mouth only long enough to let his eyes adjust.

  He gagged.

  Piles of ribs and stained femurs littered the tunnel’s floor. Centaur skulls and loose minotaur teeth jutted from crevices in the walls, and the tattered rags of clothing hung from splintered bones as if they’d been torn off as something dragged their owners deeper into the cave.

  This was a burial ground—likely for Carden’s prisoners.

  Braeden shook his head and turned to leave, but a piece of gray cloth caught his eye. He knelt to get a better look and kept his distance. The silver fabric reminded him of the uniforms Carden’s men wore when they’d ambushed the Gala—in fact, he could make out the thorny corner of the Stelian coat of arms on it.

  His stomach twisted, and he suppressed the urge to vomit. Not only did Carden feed his prisoners to the feihl, but he sentenced his own soldiers as well. No wonder the feihl hadn’t tried to eat Braeden—they were full.

  Focus.

  He forced himself to his feet. He wasn’t here to mourn those unlucky enough to cross his father.

  Braeden hugged the wall and peered out into the brilliant daylight, squinting as his eyes adjusted. A small clearing separated the caves from a forest. He scanned the tree line and tensed as two guards shifted their weight not far off. They stared into the caves, scanning the entrances as if waiting for something.

  He took a deep breath. These guards must have been assigned to watch the caves, no doubt to ensure no prisoners escaped after being thrown to the feihl. They must have annoyed someone important to get such a short stick in terms of guard duty.

  No matter. He would have to kill them anyway.

  His heart leapt. The thought breathed fresh life into him—a vigor that made him want to gag. Killing shouldn’t thrill him. It just did.

  The soldiers stared at the caves, but their eyes shifted out of focus as he watched. This would really be too easy.

  He lunged. The first guard snapped his head to look an instant before Braeden drew his sword and slid it through the soldier’s heart. Wind pooled around Braeden’s left hand as he summoned a blade from the air to finish off the second one in an identical manner.

  But the second guard didn’t try to protect himself. He ran. Braeden didn’t even have to chase him. He squared his shoulders and aimed, the magic dancing through his fingers at the soldier’s chest. Light glinted off the compressed air in his hand as it writhed, waiting for him to free it. He took one breath, narrowed his eyes, and shot the blade into the Stelian’s heart.

  The guard fell to the ground. Braeden grinned without meaning to.

  He grabbed the first dead soldier and
dragged the corpse into a tunnel before returning for the other one. A pang of guilt rooted his feet by the second guard’s legs, but he took a deep breath and finished the job. He couldn’t have anyone finding the bodies. Besides, the guards were already dead. At least he wasn’t feeding live subjects to the feihl. He was better than his father.

  …right?

  He shook his head. He needed to focus.

  Braeden still wore Hillsidian clothes. Even if he changed into his Stelian form, the uniform would give him away in an instant. He needed a disguise. Though most of the Stele knew his face, a Stelian was still harder to recognize than a Hillsidian.

  As much as he hated the thought, switching back to his natural form was his best bet. Though Stelian guards had no helmets to hide his face, he would still be able to blend in.

  He stole one of the guards’ uniforms and changed just inside the cave entrance. The fabric stretched as he pulled the loose cloth over his head, but it contoured to the shape of his body the moment it touched his skin. Such was a blessing of Stelian clothing—it was designed for their ability to change form. It would bend and stretch as he shifted. If it didn’t have the Stelian coat of arms on it, he would probably have worn the uniform everywhere.

  He threw his green tunic beside one of the dead guards. When the bundle hit the soldier’s hand, the corpse’s finger broke off and dissolved into ash.

  Braeden shivered. His instinct might always be to kill, but he hated seeing the aftermath—especially yakona. He’d never understood why his kind turned to dust so quickly, nor did he really want to.

  A bird twittered in the forest, reminding him of what he’d come to do. He cleared his head. With a deep breath, he closed his eyes and reached out with his mind to further explore the grounds. The castle called to him from the kingdom’s center only a mile off, pulling at his feet as if to lead him home.

  He sighed and released his instinctive hold on his Hillsidian form. His skin stretched. Heat shot through his arms. Sweat pooled on his neck, staining his collar as his body swelled to its natural size. The ground pulled away as he grew taller.

  The tension in his shoulders eased. His muscles popped and relaxed. Braeden looked down at his hands—gray.

  He cracked his neck. He couldn’t think about this.

  A breeze shot through the forest canopy as he stepped once more into the sunlight. The sun’s heat defrosted his skin after the still cold of the grottoes, its warmth reminding him of Kara’s touch, or—

  Focus, Braeden.

  He sighed and slunk into the forest, leaning against a tree in case a new pair of guards came by while he got his bearings. He took a deep breath and concentrated, listening to the kingdom as he searched for a way into the Stele.

  Logically, the Heirs and Queen Daowa would be in the dungeon. The problem was the halls in Carden’s dungeon twisted in a labyrinth of cells and interrogation rooms. The man liked torture. It was what he did best.

  If Braeden remembered correctly, Carden stored important prisoners in a string of cells beneath the throne room called the Cellar. Deep underground, these rooms had no windows and were by far the hardest to escape.

  He’d forced Braeden to torture Aislynn in the Cellar all those years ago. The royals had to be there, too.

  A memory flashed across Braeden’s mind too quickly for him to suppress it: Aislynn in a tattered blue gown. Streaks of silver blood stained her forehead. Bruises littered her face. One arm hung at her side, its elbow bent the wrong way. Her eyes darted to his. She screamed.

  Braeden took a deep breath and slid down the length of the tree, remorse making him sick to his stomach. She’d screamed because he’d been commanded to use the slivers on her: a technique that turned the shadows into smoky prods that could rewire a brain. They could only destroy, and the few who survived such a technique endured lifelong shocks to the brain that slowly corroded all sense of right and wrong. Braeden hadn’t been able to do it, of course—he wasn’t powerful enough then. Carden had taken over eventually, leaving Braeden to run back to his room in an effort to hide from Aislynn’s screaming.

  The slivers technique drove its victims insane. How Aislynn had escaped such a fate was beyond him.

  Escape! An idea sparked in Braeden’s mind. He grinned and let the remorse slip away as he processed a new thought.

  Braeden’s mother snuck Aislynn out of the Cellar, so there had to be secret tunnels or a trap door somewhere in the prison. She couldn’t have walked Aislynn through the halls without being questioned, Queen of the Stele or not. She’d hidden their escape carriage near the horses’ grazing pens—which meant the prison’s secret entrance had to be somewhere near that. Perhaps he could find a clue if he looked for something out of the ordinary by the stables.

  He stood and brushed off a few dead leaves from his pants. Another breeze swept past him as he started through the trees and made his way down a hill, following his feet as he set course for the castle.

  Despite the flicker of hope that he might actually find the royals, Braeden’s palms slicked with sweat. Getting to the Heirs would be difficult. Getting them out would take a miracle.

  An hour later, Braeden had canvassed the stables and nearly finished a full circle of the castle but still hadn’t found anything out of the ordinary. He’d kept to the forests, eyeing the pens and castle walls from as far away as he could manage. He searched for mismatched stones that might signal a door or misplaced decorations that might hide an entryway. Anything. But so far, the only problem he had with the black stone walls was that he had to be in the Stele in the first place to look at them.

  A line of Stelian guards crossed the open field beside the castle and turned toward him. He stiffened and shrank behind a bush, but they turned down a path near his hiding spot. He didn’t dare move as they marched in step with each other, three in a row. Each soldier kept his hand on his sword hilt and stared straight ahead, in his own little world when Braeden was close enough to touch.

  Braeden peeked around them. The castle towered over the small clearing that surrounded it, its closest wall barely twenty feet away. He scanned this section of the black walls again, just to be sure.

  The sweet zing of hay wafted along a breeze from behind him. His eyes stung from staring, and he nearly moved on before an out-of-place patch of green caught his eye.

  At the base of the castle near the forest line, a string of tall bushes covered an inward dip in the fortification’s wall. The edge of the shrubbery led out to the trees. If Braeden stayed beneath the greenery, he would have cover from the battlement above.

  He glanced back over his shoulder. Trees swayed in a growing wind, but glimpses of the stable roof broke into view every now and then through the bark and leaves. The beginnings of real hope burned in his stomach. This had to be it—the escape his mother used all those years ago. He and the royals would even be close enough to the stables to grab horses on their way out.

  Braeden took a deep breath and considered his options as the guards continued marching past. The soldiers’ footsteps crunched along the already-worn path, and he chanced another look around the tree as the last three guards in the line passed by.

  He tensed and hovered on the balls of his feet as the soldiers’ crunching footsteps faded. His fingers dug into tree bark as he examined the top of the castle, where guards blipped in and out of view. One, two—six guards made rounds within sight of him. He peered around the other edge of the tree, but saw only woodland. As far as he could tell, nothing watched him from the thick black depths of the Stelian forest.

  His feet made no sound as he inched through the woods. As soon as he made it to the hidden entrance, he would—

  A soldier sat on a dead log near the bushes. The Stelian picked at his nails with a dagger, his eyes focused on his hands rather than the woods around him.

  Braeden resisted the impulse to curse aloud. Well, a soldier only guarded what needed protection, so this had to be a way in after all.

  He hid behind
a tree and reached toward the ground beneath the Stelian. Tension pulled on his fingers. Dirt shifted beneath the guard at his command. Vines shot from the soil and wrapped around the man’s body before he had time to scream. Braeden tightened his fist, and the vines constricted around the guard’s neck, mouth, and arms. Something snapped. His eyes rolled back into his head, and his body slumped onto the dirt.

  Glee coursed through Braeden at his kill, but he shuddered to suppress it. He released the tension in his hands, and the vines retracted into the ground once more. The guard slumped backward into the forest’s underbrush.

  He listened. A bird tweeted. The wind rushed again through the trees, as if a storm brewed somewhere in the cold sky. No guards shouted. No alarms rang. He could continue.

  The bushes beneath the castle bent in the wind as he neared them. One of the guards on the battlement passed by and glanced over into the courtyard. Braeden shrank deeper into the tree line, his fingers digging grooves into the tree bark again as he waited.

  The guard on the battlement grimaced and continued his rounds. A second guard’s head appeared at the far end of the same battlement, his eyes scanning the forest a hundred feet away.

  Now.

  Braeden darted into the bushes, releasing the pooling tension building in his legs. Once underneath, he ran to where the bushes met the castle wall and paused only when he could touch dark stone. He waited for the sound of an alarm or yelling.

  Nothing came.

  He glanced up through a hole in the bushes’ leaves, but could only see the black stone wall towering in the sky above. No heads peeked over. Not even the shoulder of a guard leaning on the edge of a battlement for a quick break.

  Braeden sighed with relief.