Page 14 of Storm of Shadows

However, it doesn’t seem to matter that the shadow weavers spent the night torturing and abusing everyone else. The other students are still chattering excitedly about them as if they weren’t responsible for the torture last night.

“What do you think they’ll have us doing first?” Fly asks, chewing on his fingernails and ignoring the talk around us.

“I guess they’re going to start testing us straight away. See what skills and talents we have.”

“Do you have any? Talents, I mean?”

“Me?” I say laughing. “No. You?”

He shakes his head. “Except the ability to look good in anything including this shit.” He peers down at the uniform, curling a lip in disgust. He’s wrapped a belt around his lean waist. It gives the outfit some shape which is more than can be said for mine. It hangs off my frame exactly like a potato sack would.

We arrive at the Great Hall where we’ve been instructed to gather. It’s not a gymnasium hall like I was expecting, or like the halls in the factories back in Slate Quarter. No, this hall is more like a cathedral. It’s built from a yellow sandstone and around its high walls feature carved arches with no openings and long stained-glass windows.

Right outside the Hall’s entrance stands a magnificent bronze statue – a giant egg and around it three swooping dragons their wings spread wide, their jaws filled with rows of sharp teeth, their talons long and deadly, and their eyes alert. Even in today’s muggy light the statue glows, the egg itself seeming to brim with fire.

We all line up like we did on the platform, including, much to my surprise, the shadow weavers.

I see I was wrong. We’re not all in this together.

Their academy uniforms are not hideous like ours. They’re black not gray and the flames on the crest on their blazers flicker with life. The material is not the scratchy stiff kind our uniform is stitched from. It’s soft, holding its shape and hugging the form of every single one of them.

They stare back at the rest of us with smirks on their arrogant faces, whispering to each other and laughing among themselves.

I hate them. I knew I would and everything I’ve seen so far only confirms it.

They are a bunch of self-satisfied jerks.

I don’t care what I’ve been told. I’ve never believed it, and in this moment, I believe it even less so.

Because I see it clear as day – in their eyes, in their attitude, in the way they glare at us.

It was no accident. Whatever they did to her was deliberate. And I will discover the truth.

Chapter Seven

Dray

“That’s her,” Beaufort says, leaning toward me and whispering into my ear as we line up outside the Great Hall.

“Her?” I say, following his gaze along the line of students, right past all the other shadow weavers, past the athletic kids who look like they might have some fight in them, past the ordinary kids to the freaks, losers and misfits right at the far end. My shoulders slump. “Fuck man, you can’t be serious.”

But one look at the frown on his face tells me he is. Beaufort rarely does anything but serious.

“But she’s so …” I groan. I’d had visions of our thrall being some curvy, pretty thing – an obedient and willing little pet. Fuck, I’d had wet dreams about it. Plenty and plenty of wet dreams.

The way that girl scowls at the air around her suggests she’d be anything but obedient or willing. I don’t even think she’d be fun.

“I was hoping we’d choose someone more … like her!” I say, staring straight at a stunning brunette who’s making eyes at me,blushing when I wink at her. She’s easily the most beautiful girl out here with a butt I want to slap and a chest I want to bury my face into.

“No, it has to be her,” Beaufort says, eyes lingering on the scrawny girl. Her dirty hair is scraped tight around her skull, her clothes hang off her puny frame, and her expression is so bitter I can taste the sourness from here.

Definitely nothing fun about her.

I sniff the air, hoping to catch her scent, something that would explain why Beaufort has his sights set on her. But there are too many other scents swirling in the air out here on the field. Shadow weavers and the plain old commoners as well. Even if I strain my nostrils, I can’t make out her scent. Not in my human form anyway.

I kick at the cobbled ground and adopt a sulk on my face.

Only the elite among the shadow weavers are awarded the privilege of picking a thrall to serve them during their time at the academy. And now it seems Beaufort wants to throw that gift away.