Brood of Vipers, Maggie Claire [e novels to read .TXT] 📗

peace and rest; everywhere I went, I saw you hiding in the shadows, haunting my mind with memories. So, I joined the patrols that ventured up high into the mountains to escape you. Terrible things happen in the Devil’s Spine, Helena. People—both Windwalkers and Cassians—are abused there. It’s nothing short of torture and mass killings. And I participated in it all, doing what I was told and feeling no remorse. I was angry at you, and I used my rage to fuel my hatred of anything and everything that landed in my path. I did unspeakable, horrible things, Helena, and I was proud of it all.” Ithel steps out of Helena’s reach, bracing his hands against a window frame, his shoulders sagging in defeat. “I felt nothing but hate during those days until they asked me to kill a child. A young, innocent girl.” His body trembles as he relives the moment in his mind. “She was the daughter of some high-ranking man in Cassè. The border guards had caught her and decided to send her back as a message—a defiled, deceased warning to her family. It was to be carried out by my hand at the king’s special request to prove my loyalty.”

“What did you do?” Helena places her hand against his muscled shoulder, already knowing the answer. The young unnamed child had belonged to her neighbors; she’d returned safely to her home after a couple weeks, unwilling to speak about wherever she’d been. How close had the patrols come to finding us? Helena realizes, feeling justified for keeping her child indoors as much as possible in those days. How easily it could have been my own daughter!

“I let the girl escape into the woods, with a pack of food and water and a general direction to travel to find her way home. When word got out that she hadn’t died by my hand, I was sent back to the palace in disgrace. I was immediately stripped of my rank; I became Alaric’s first slave.”

Helena’s lungs burn in her chest long before she realizes she has stopped breathing. “I’m so sorry,” she wheezes, wrapping her arms around Ithel in a tight embrace. “It was all my fault; I should never have left you behind. You have to know that I truly believed you would be safer in the guard. I didn’t want you to be labelled a traitor…like me.”

“I’d have followed you anywhere,” Ithel whispers, leaning back to kiss her forehead softly before slipping the blindfold back in its place. “Now go beat this trial, so we can finally be free.”

Inside, Helena’s very soul feels like a caged animal paces through her blood as Ithel leads her to the trial’s unknown location. Every heartbeat fuels her rage. She welcomes the darkness of the tunnel. Something primal and wicked is awake inside her now. Nothing will stand in her path.

Ithel carefully removes the blindfold. Helena’s eyes easily adjust to the semi-darkness of the cave. Though she knows the four other challengers are nearby, she cannot focus on them. Off to the left, a seat has been carved into the stone of the cavern’s walls. It is a crude throne, yet it serves its purpose well enough for Alaric. Helena’s furious glare is only for the king. He meets her anger with a smirk and a nod, too sociopathic to care about all the hurt he has caused.

“You will each run the tunnel separately. The order has already been arranged,” a guard announces from his place beside the king. Unsurprised, Helena shrugs when her name is called to compete last. No doubt to cause her the most terror, to watch helplessly as the others try and fail to beat an undefeatable test. “Your task is simple enough. Reach the other side, and you will go to Cassè to gain your freedom,” the announcer explains with a bored voice as if it is a simple feat to accomplish.

“What is in the tunnel?” the other female prisoner asks with a shiver. Silence greets her query as a guard steals up beside her. A quick slap with his metal-coated fist is enough to stop any further questions from us all as blood oozes down her chin.

“Dai, you’re up!” the announcer shouts. The skinny boy who’d shown his fear at the very beginning of our trial shuffles up to the front of the line. He glances at each one of his competitors, terror causing his eyes to well with tears.

“What now?” he trembles as he rasps, his voice more of a croak. The announcer points up into the ceiling. While most of the room’s ceiling is low enough to touch, there is a dark expanse right over our heads. A single rope ladder sways eerily, and Helena swears she can hear laughter echoing through the darkness overhead.

“That’s the tunnel?” the stocky male named Bryn shouts as his face pales. “I always thought of a tunnel as horizontal, not—”

A punch from a nearby guard silences his words. Immediately Helena finds Ithel’s watchful eyes from among the other enslaved guards on the right side of the wall. It can’t be a coincidence. How did he know the tunnel would require a climb? He’d made her practice vertical maneuvers all week long. Ithel’s face is impassive as he stares straight ahead, unwilling or unable to meet her eye.

The boy, Dai, barely survives ten minutes in the tunnel. A loud, terrified shriek fills the air as his body tumbles toward the cavern floor. A dull thud sounds on his impact, a crackle of breaking bones, then a gurgling choke as blood fills his mouth. Dai’s body is purple with bruises that had formed during his climb. Far too quickly to have been the result of the fall.

Helena cares not if it hurts her pride as she shields her eyes from watching the boy’s landing. Turning her face to the line of enslaved guards, she, unfortunately, stands witness as Dai’s guard falls to his knees. His eyes roll back into