Reign Shadowfell's Arc

Chapter 4 of 29

Behind him, stone groaned. Reign turned in time to see the mouth of the tunnel narrow. The rock slid down like a slow jaw closing. Lux darted back from the threshold as the gap shrank to a hand's width, then to nothing. The pressure that had been reaching for Reign cut off mid-breath. The three hooded figures had not moved. "Wait," Reign said. He stepped toward the sealed wall and put his palm on it. It was warm. "Open it." No one answered. The imp came to stand at his heel, small and panting, horns tipped forward, tail lashing. Lux would not meet his eye. Reign understood then that he was locked in with strangers, and that the imp had known the door would close. Then his blood moved. It started low in his gut, a heat that climbed his spine and spread down his arms. His hands shook once and steadied. The lantern light in the chamber grew, though no one had touched a wick; his eyes were drinking more of it. The seams in the stone sharpened. He saw the weave of the hoods, the wet on the floor, the pulse in the throat of the smallest figure. His shirt pulled tight across his shoulders. Muscle filled in under the cloth like water filling a bag. A hunger opened in him that had nothing to do with food. He wanted to bite down on something living. He took a step back and hit the sealed wall. The smallest figure lifted her hands and pushed the hood off. She was young, close to his age, with a shaved scalp and a mark inked behind one ear. She watched him change and she smiled. Not cruel. Pleased. Like a woman who had bet on a horse and won. "There you are," she said. "We were starting to think they'd bled it out of you." Reign's throat worked. "What am I." "What your mother was," she said. "What your father agreed to hide. That's why they left you at those gates. The house you grew up in would have killed you the day it showed." She nodded at the sealed wall behind him. "We closed the door so you could open without running. You can hate us for it later." The other two figures pushed back their hoods. An older man. An older woman. Neither of them was his. He knew it the way he now knew the pulse in the girl's neck. The hunger in his gut settled into something he could carry. He was not safe. He was not among family. He was among people who had waited twenty years to see if he would survive his own blood, and he had. That was the deal he had walked into. He let his hand fall from the wall.