“Now, you will understand your freedom.”
“NO!” he roared, fighting against his confinements, and as their figures grew distorted, the shadows climbing and consuming, the lights were extinguished. Everything went dark, and he spiraled.
The first thing that he heard was the relentless pounding of hundreds of footfalls above him. A sharp ringing filled his ears, and blinking, he realized he was on his back, arms and legs splayed out. Disoriented, he looked up at the tunnel’s ceiling, dust floating down through the semi-darkness, lightly coating his face and clothes.
Stretching, he slowly stood, brushing himself off. Screams echoed around the Academy; the tunnel’s walls seemed to move as shocks shuddered down them. To his right, frost had slicked the walls, creating a distorted mirror. Tilting his head, he looked at his reflection in the ice.
A pink flush had crept into his cheeks, and for the first time in years, he felt alive. Leaning closer, the ice misted from his breath, and he took in his sweeping black hair, but he paused as a slow smile tugged at the corners of his lips. He took in his eyes next. His pupils widened, bleeding in the now black iris around them, all flecks of the dark brown gone. All traces of him, gone.
A deep chuckle passed through his lips, and he tentatively traced the outline of his features, growing more distorted with every second. Flicking the melted droplets off his fingertips, he murmured, “It’s time.”
Clenching his fists, he slammed it into the ice, and the impact should have shredded his skin and his knuckles, leaving a bloody print. Instead, the cracks split through the ice, racing up and through the sheets, and ice fractured around him. Adair flexed his unharmed hand, grinning viciously.
The ground shuddered beneath him and looking up, his hair stood on end with anticipation. The temperature continued to drop, and his breath outlined in front of him as he looked onward, to the war that raged above him. He could practically taste the ancient magic spurring through the Academy because it was the same that coursed through him, a gravitational force that wouldn’t let him go, couldn’t let him go.
And he would answer it.
Bowing his head, his body became magic and smoke, and soon, he was flying, cutting through the physical barriers of the school.
He was no longer a man, no longer just Adair Stratton.
The voices purred inside him, coaxing him onward, as he became destruction, chaos, and rage. He became the monster they claimed he was, the fear that was whispered behind his back.
And as he raced to escape the tunnels while, inside, Adair battered against his confinements, screaming, unable to do anything but watch as the magic sealed him within, overpowering and enhancing him.
He burned with one desire.
To end the Academy.
Chapter Eighteen
Brokk
For the first hour, he had screamed, gut wrenching wails, as he heard the Academy get ripped apart, stormed by Bresslin’s forces. There was no rhyme or reason to their destruction, and the smell of smoke and the harsh tang of winter cut into his face, as his head hung limply, the sounds of war clashing around him.
The metal bit into his wrist, a steady drip of blood slowly seeping onto the ground. He no longer wanted to hear the dabarnes shatter through the icy courtyard, the screams rising and falling. The Academy was caught completely unaware by Bresslin’s rage.
“First, I will make you beg.”
He cringed against the memory, slithering through his mind of Gortach’s sick whispers.
“Then, I will make you bleed.”
A whimper escaped him, and he clenched his eyes shut.
My name is Brokk Foster. I will not break. I will not break. I will not break.
He repeated this over, trying to shut out the increased sound of concrete being smashed, the roars of the dabarnes, the screams of the residents of the Academy. The singing of metal against metal, of ice crackling over everything, alive or not. The ground shuddered, and he was sure the world would split apart from the forces clashing together.
“Brokk.”
He squeezed his eyes tighter, and for the first time, he let his mind wonder what it would be like just to drift away from their government, from their politics. Like the raiders had done. And the Shattered Isles. Leaving Kiero to battle over an acclaimed crown.
“Brokk!” Defeatedly wrenching his gaze, he squinted through his non-swollen eye at Memphis, cringing at how true Bresslin was to her word. Memphis’s wrists and ankles where melded into blocks of ice, his body stretched taut, blood running down his arms, the chain collar tight around his throat. They were on the outskirts of the forest, left broken and beaten, their torture listening to their home falling into ruin, seeing enough but not all.
“We have to do something.” Memphis’s voice cracked.
“If you have any plans, I would love to hear them,” he rasped.
“So, we just give up, stay strapped to a block of ice? Brokk, Em is in there,”
“Don’t you think I know that? But what can we do against a bloody army of demons!”
Memphis’s face grew ashen as he spat, “We can try.”
Try.
Brokk wanted to laugh. How many years had he spent trying? Trying to figure out his past. Who his parents were, why they didn’t want to keep him. Trying to live up to the expectations of the Academy, to grow up to become Kiero’s guardians.
But he had tried to stay true to his heart and what he knew was right, and that’s all he could ever want.
Looking at the world around him, the hush of the forest snow was encrusted and timeless. His gaze drifted to the Academy, the smoke starting to curl up toward the sky. Was he ready to try, to potentially die?
His heart slammed against his ribs as he licked his dried lips. “Memphis, you know you
