Page 58 of Taste of Thorns (The Firestone Academy #3)

Chapter Fifty-Four

B riony

They’re not like the monsters that attacked Thorne in the last trial. Those were monsters of his own making and they were particulate – made from something disparate and dispersed.

These are demons – solid and gigantic. They howl as they charge towards us, the noise bouncing off the walls of the cave, echoing and amplifying into one horrifying cacophony.

Their wings crack the air, and their razor-sharp talons are drawn and ready to strike.

Their eyes shine a venomous red and horns twist around the tops of their head like distorted crowns.

“Demons!” Linny cries out, “how?”

And I understand her confusion. In all those books we read up about trials, in all the hours we spent scanning those pages, not once did they mention demons in a trial.

Demons are banned from the realm. The shadow weavers risk their lives to drive them from the borders.

It’s not possible for them to have infiltrated this deep into the realm. And yet here they are.

“Linny, run!” I yell.

But when we spin around to race the way we came, we find the tunnel sealed shut. Linny pushes at the space that was only moments ago an opening, digging her nails into the stone. But nothing gives and nothing happens.

We’re going to have to stand and fight them.

At least we have a hope of coming out of this in one piece. A shadow weaver and a light wielder. I think of all those ordinaries – of Fly and Clare. They won’t stand a chance. Not against demons.

“Come on, Linny,” I say, raising my hands, and blasting the light in my veins toward the swarm of demons. “What do we do? How do we fight them?”

She’s a shadow weaver. She’s been training for battles like this all her life (according to Beaufort anyway). The only monsters I’ve ever faced were Thorne’s, and those were not the same. I don’t know how to fight these creatures.

I expect Linny to follow suit, blasting her magic alongside mine, helping me to force back the demons.

I can feel them struggling in the light, pushing against it and then they’re breaking through, swooping over our heads, and I’m forced to swipe at them again and again to stop them from diving down towards us.

Linny does nothing.

I curse so loudly and so crudely, I bet even my mother in her grave is blushing in embarrassment.

Is this girl for real? This isn’t the time for one of her hissy fits. I need her help. Does she want to get us both killed?

Or is she hoping that I’ll be the one killed? She’s waiting for that to happen before she steps in and saves herself.

I glance over my shoulder at her, ready to give her another piece of my mind. However, she’s not standing there, watching me with one of her catty expressions.

The girl has sunk down to the ground. She hugs her knees tightly to her chest, and her face is buried in her arms.

“Linny!” I yell. What the hell is she doing? Obviously, not waiting for me to die after all. She’s shutting down. There isn’t time for that. “I need your help!”

Then I think of Thorne. I think of what happened to me when the Madame verbally abused me that time in the classroom. Does this girl have demons like the rest of us? Is she paralyzed with fear?

“I can’t,” she sobs.

“Yes, you can, Linny. I know you can. Together, we can fight them off. Get up. Come on, you can do it. We can do it!”

She shakes her head from side to side, her body trembling. “I can’t help you.”

“Is that what someone told you?” I say, narrowly swiping with my light at a demon who swings so close, I see the hatred in its gleaming eyes and its forked tongue in its mouth.

“Did someone tell you that you’re not allowed to help me?

Was it the Madame? Or your sister? Because you have choices, Linny.

We can work together. Help each other. You don’t have to do this. ”

A demon comes hurtling right for her. She screams, scuttling backwards on her bottom, fear and desperation written all over her face.

“No!” I scream, driving a strand of powerful light right into the demon’s belly. Instantly, it explodes into flames and withers away, like flash paper caught alight.

And I understand.

It’s not that she won’t help. It’s that she can’t.

All the pieces slot into place. Clear as day. How had I never seen it before?

Linny has never used her powers in front of me. Not once. Not in class. Not that time on the field when Henrietta struck me. Not now in this trial.

Because Linette Smyte has no powers. She cannot shadow weave.

I swing my gaze back up at the remaining demons circling us in the cave.

I know their weakness now. The soft undersides of their belly.

I strike two quickly, obliterating them from high above us before they see what’s coming.

Then they cotton on. Darting away from my strikes, weaving this way and that so that I can’t hit them, and every so often hurtling towards us.

I’m so busy tackling one, I miss a second and its talons scrape painfully at my face before I react and blast it away.

Another taunts Linny and I have to scream to divert its attention to me, before striking it too.

Then there is only one left. The biggest and, frankly, the ugliest. The thing looks like it stepped right out of a book designed to scare the living shit out of its readers.

It narrows its beady eyes at me, hissing like a serpent.

I lift my hands, widen my stance and brace my body.

I scream, sending as much light as I can the thing’s way; but before the light reaches it, the fabric of the air slices apart, creating a hole in the atmosphere.

The demon darts straight through. I yank back my light, as the hole disappears from sight, leaving just a red tear in the air and the hissing of the demons still ringing in my ears. The same word over and over again.

“Youuuuuuu!”

But that can’t be right, can it?

“Are they gone?” Linny says, her voice shaking.

“I don’t know,” I say, wiping away sweat from my brow. “Did you see what happened? That last one, slipped right through …” But I don’t even know how to describe what happened and Linny is peering at me like I’m half mad. “You have no powers,” I say to her.

She meets my gaze, the fear leaving hers and replaced by that usual haughty determination.

“If you tell anyone …”

“Of course, I won’t,” I say. “But you can’t keep it hidden forever. What are you going to do?”

“Do?” she says, rolling up onto her feet and brushing the dust off the seat of her pants.

“They’re going to send you to Granite or Iron.” Which is, by all accounts, a hell of a lot better than Slate Quarter, but will still be one stomping great shock for a pampered girl like Linette Smyte, raised in the luxury of Onyx.

“I already told you,” she says, patting at her hair, “they’re not. I’m staying in Onyx.” I could argue, but the smile on her face makes me stop. “You think people don’t know about my little problem? Of course, they do.”

“But–” I start but my next words are interrupted, because the air inside this cold cave is disturbed and then standing before us, her black cloak wrapped around her shoulders, is the Madame.

In her hand she clasps a silver egg, the same shape and size as the firestone from which Blaze hatched all those weeks ago.

“Congratulations,” she says, “you have completed the trial.”

She throws the silver egg in a looping arc towards Linny who reaches out her hands and catches it neatly, hugging it to her body.

“That will be all, Linny. Thank you. I’m so sorry your partner did not make it out of the cave.” Confusion fills Linette’s features. The Madame swirls her right arm around in front of her and before she has a chance to protest, Linny vanishes from view.

And then it’s just me and the Madame in the vast dark space of the cave, the remains of demon ashes scattered about our feet.

“I am going to make it,” I say, lifting my chin.

“We’ll see,” she says, clasping her hands together in front of her. “So it is true, you do possess powers.”

I stare back at her. I’m hidden deep within the mountains of the Highlands, out of reach of Blaze’s help. I’m not at the lake like Fox expected. And who knows if the Princes have been able to track me; if they’ll be able to find me in time.

I’m on my own. Again.

I try to recall everything that Fox has taught me. I reach for the magic in my blood. But truth be told, after that fight with the demons, I am exhausted, right down to the core of my bones, and my magic feels just the same.

Will I have the strength to fight the Madame?

I don’t know.

“You would have been wise to inform me of this as soon as you stepped foot in the academy. You would have been wiser still to have owned up to the truth when I questioned you in the maze.”

“Questioned?” I snort. Is that what she’s calling torturing me with lightning?

“Instead, Briony Storm, you’ve resorted to subterfuge and lies. You’ve hidden the truth from me and, therefore, the Empress. And you’ve even been creeping around with one of the teachers.”

I swing my head around. Are we being watched right now by the judges of this trial? Is our plan working? Can the Empress see us?

“The only one spinning a web of lies is you!” I snap.

“Me?” She smiles serenely. “What possibly can you mean?”

“You killed my sister!” I growl, stepping towards her, my hands tight fists by my side.

For so long I’ve wanted to know the truth, to confront the person who took Amelia from me.

I’ve bided my time. I’ve been patient. Now here she is in front of me.

I could make her suffer. I could obliterate her like those demons.

“What nonsense are you spouting now, girl? Your sister was killed in a very unfortunate accid–”

“No, she wasn’t! You killed her. Just like you killed Esme Jones. Just like …” The Madame’s serene expression melts away into something evil. “You killed all of them,” I yell at her. “Just like you tried to kill me that day in the maze!”

“Just like I’m going to kill you now!”

Her hands twitch by her side and a stream of shadows come racing towards me, but I’m ready for them and I meet them with my own light.

The two forces crash together in the center of the cave, twisting around each other and sizzling like burning bacon. Sparks are tossed high up into the air and the force of it slides me backward on my feet, across the cave floor.

“How delightful,” the Madame cackles, “she’s going to try and fight back. I much prefer it when they do. It makes things so much more interesting. So much more entertaining.”

“I’m not here to entertain you,” I hiss. “I’m here to stop you.”

In the distance, I see her lick her lips. “I’ve never drunk from a lumomancer before. I wonder how sweet your virgin throat will taste.”

“Not going to happen,” I grunt, thrusting my hands forward and sending her shadows tumbling towards her.

She screams in frustration, but then her shadows are storming back my way, this time with double the force. They hit my light with an impact that has my light splintering into a thousand shards and pain reverberates across my body, making me groan.

She takes her opportunity, thrusting her dark shadows towards me.

They’re not like Thorne’s or Beaufort’s or even Fox’s.

There is nothing beautiful about them. They are black and dense, like the darkest point of night.

They circle my body, so cold they burn my skin like ice.

I force more light from my body, trying my best to hold her shadows at bay, but the circle grows smaller and smaller.

I gasp as I’m enveloped in a cold so bitter it forces the air from my lungs and freezes it against my lips.

“Such a shame,” the Madame sighs, “I was hoping for a fight. But this was far too easy.”

I struggle to breathe as her shadows tighten around me, squeezing like a sinister snake. A sudden fear grips my soul. I’m not sure I have the strength to do this. I’m not sure I can.

So many times Fox told me that this plan was stupid. But I was pig-headed, determined to see it through, so wrapped up in my need for justice, I didn’t see all the gaping holes in this plan.

I have been an idiot.

But I’m going to be an idiot that goes down with a fight at least.

I summon all the light I have left and I blast through her shadows. Then I hurtle my magic towards her, screaming myself as I do, propelling myself forward and reaching for those chinks of shadows inside me, calling to the Princes, willing them to find me.

The force of my magic has the Madame hurtling backwards across the cave and crashing into the wall as my own body slams forward. For a moment, I watch her slither down the wall, then sway on her feet before she stumbles, dazed, to the ground.

She’s weakened. Now is my chance! But all the power and energy has been sapped from my body, and I have no more to give, no more energy to see or to stand.

I slump toward the ground, closing my eyes before I hit the earth.

The Madame’s cackle of laughter drags me back from the edge of oblivion and I strain open my eyes to watch her stagger to her feet and hobble towards me, the heel of one of her boots snapped off and her cloak hanging around her body in tatters.

Half her hair has come loose from her French twist and soot is smudged across her face as well as her lipstick and her eyeliner.

I search for the strength to lift my hands, to move my body, to roll away from her. But I have none. I can barely keep my eyes open.

The Madame’s eyes shine as red as the demons’ and her fangs descend into her mouth. Deadly sharp.

“I am going to enjoy sucking you dry, you little nuisance,” she says, eyes fixated on my throat.

“No,” I croak, but the noise is so quiet, so pathetic, I don’t think she even hears.

Instead, she lands a sharp kick to my ribs, one I can’t even roll away from. The pain wipes away my vision for a split second and when I open my eyes she’s kneeling next to me, her cold hand on my shoulder.

Her eyes are blood red and she looks more like a monster in these final moments than she ever has done before.

“Please,” I whisper, appealing to a compassion I know she does not have.

She hisses. I close my eyes. I don’t want her face to be the last thing I see. I think of my sister. I think of Fox. I think of Dray and Thorne and Beaufort. I think of Blaze. I want them in front of my eyes instead. I want all those happy fleeting moments skipping around in my head.

Laughing with my sister. Lying in Fox’s arms. Dancing with Dray. Walking through the forest with Thorne. Kissing Beaufort’s mouth.

Flying on Blaze’s back, high up in the sky. Away from all of this.

I wait for the pinch, the sting, the slice through my neck.

I wait for her to end me.

But then the air cracks.

A dragon howls.

Warm fire kisses my cheek.

A pair of strong arms lift me.

I open my eyes.

Beaufort.

“Briony,” he mutters before the world swims away.