by Isla Frost
But far more bizarre than any of that were the twelve-foot topiary hedge cats that lined the edge of the manor grounds. Spaced at regular intervals, they sat on their leafy-green haunches and stared outward into the forest. As if they knew what lurked within. As if they were the guardians of this strange place.
My gaze was drawn along with theirs into the shadowy depths, and goose bumps prickled along my skin. I backed away from the window.
This sentient manor probably did have some kind of protection the city lacked. It was senseless for the beings behind the Agreement to go to so much trouble keeping humans alive only to allow the forest to take us now.
I just hoped the grudge Millicent was holding wouldn’t compromise those protections. My stinging finger made me imagine her opening the window in the middle of the night and sliding my bed toward it.
Feeling stupid, I whispered an apology to the wallpaper just to be safe. Then I pulled the heavy burgundy drapes across the glass.
The lamps on the wall brightened to compensate.
Ameline and I stared at each other in shared disquiet.
Bryn said, “That’s convenient,” and threw herself onto the bed nearest the window. “This one’s mine.”
I wasn’t going to argue.
Ameline eyed the remaining options. “Do you mind if I take the bed closest to the door?”
That left me with the bed in the middle, but I was used to sharing my sleeping space. “Sure.”
I walked over and absently poked the mattress. None of us had brought any more than we could strap to our bodies. It had seemed wasteful to take supplies from our families—especially when those supplies had been provided by the beings behind the runegate in the first place.
The same went for taking any precious resources we’d scavenged from the city. What was the point when for all we’d known we’d be dead by sundown?
Then again, from what Bryn had said of her family situation, maybe she just hadn’t wanted to bring anything else.
Now that it appeared we would live at least a little longer, I wished I’d brought some of my favorite books with me.
Bryn had stayed on her own mattress for less than thirty seconds and was now squatting by the fireplace, coaxing a flame to life.
I pushed my regret aside. “Want a hand?”
“No. I love fires.”
The way she said it made me nervous, but the room was chilly, so I opted for gratitude. With nothing else to do, I knelt to open the trunk at the foot of my bed.
The lid was made of polished timber with an intricately carved hunting scene depicted across its surface. Two men on horseback with cruel-looking spears faced down a snarling, winged lion. The image was arresting in a violent sort of way.
The heavy lid required some heft to flip upward. I’d expected to see the bottom, but the trunk was full. Rich black and deep blue fabric, soft and silky to the touch, occupied most of the space. Handling it gently, I lifted out the top garment, wondering whom it belonged to. Had the last person to use this room left it behind? I couldn’t imagine them doing so willingly. The feel and weave of the fabric was far finer than any I’d ever seen.
Ameline’s soft exclamation drew my attention. She was holding an identical bundle of midnight-blue cloth. And when we shook them out, they revealed themselves to be fitted shirts with Firstborn Academy stitched across the breast in golden thread.
Uniforms? Glennys had insinuated we were students before, but could this place really be some sort of educational institution? And if so, what the heck were we here to learn?
I went through the rest of the trunk, trying to glean what I could from the clothes inside. There were three shirts, three pairs of fitted black pants, one belt, underclothes, a set of sturdy boots, and a heavy, hooded cloak.
The cloak was a relief since the other clothes seemed far too thin to ward off the late-autumn cold.
I was less excited to find the crimson ties at the bottom of the chest. Seriously? We’d surrendered our lives to these unknown beings, and they wanted us to wear ties?
Oddly enough, the garments seemed sized to our different body shapes. Bryn’s were short, mine long, and Ameline’s a touch looser to fit her curves. Even the boots looked to be a good fit. As if they knew we were coming. As if they knew which beds we would each choose.
I shrugged off the tension gathering between my shoulder blades. It was probably a coincidence.
Then again, the wallpaper could feel, the building could bite, and I was in way over my head.
Chapter 5
A growl made me start—an indication of just how creeped out I was feeling because the noise was only Ameline’s stomach.
“You guys ready to look for the dining hall?” I asked. “Maybe we can find someone there who knows what the hell’s going on.”
Humans had been sending firstborns through the runegates for thirty-seven years. Hundreds or maybe thousands of kids. If we weren’t here to die, surely one of the prior year’s students could give us the lowdown on our new lives.
“That’d be nice,” Bryn commented. “It can’t be good that the golin avoided telling us anything about our new overlords.”
I wished she’d stop calling them that.
“Why be so evasive if they aren’t dreadful?”
The same question had been playing on my mind. Along with about a million others. But I didn’t want Ameline to stress any more than she already was, so I just said, “Let’s go and find out.”
As promised, the manor didn’t bite us on our way out. The door had stayed conveniently visible and opened just fine when we turned the handle.
Which left the problem of where to go.
The hallway continued in two directions, and we’d passed several intersecting corridors as we’d followed Glenn and Glennys. There were no handy arrows like the ones I’d seen still clinging to the walls of old office buildings either.
I peered closer at part of the wallpaper that had just moved. It was a strange half-goat, half-man creature, and he was making a very rude gesture.
I swung about in shock, wanting someone to confirm I wasn’t hallucinating. “Hey, this little faun thing is flipping me off!”
Ameline hustled over and squinted. “No, he isn’t. He’s just pointing right. Maybe he’s giving us directions.”
I looked again. Sure enough, he was pointing right. But he bared his teeth at me when I leaned close.
Shaking my head, I agreed to go the way he indicated. But only because he’d offered the direction to Ameline. I had a sneaking suspicion that if I’d been by myself, I ought to choose the opposite way any wallpaper figures directed me.
Millicent must not have accepted my apology.
We fell into a rhythm, Ameline leading the way and peering at the wallpaper anytime we came to an intersection. I pointedly avoided looking. And we were led to a grand and cavernous room filled with delicious aromas and… not much else.
While there were chairs and tables enough for two hundred, only a handful of teenagers huddled around two separate tables. Close enough for comfort. Distant enough to signal the two groups wanted nothing to do with each other.
Along the far wall was a serve-yourself selection of food and crockery. Ethereal music played quietly in the background, and no one was around to supervise, human or otherwise.
The walls were covered in wallpaper, of course.
Ameline’s stomach growled again, so we went to the food first. The individual dishes were covered by mesh domes woven of delicate silver strands. And either the food had just been cooked, or those domes did something to keep it fresh. Because every option looked and smelled amazing.
If only I was more hungry. The strain of the day had sapped my appetite. We served ourselves—Ameline and I dishing only small portions, Bryn heaping her plate high—and made our way to the nearest table.
“Is this seat free?” Ameline asked.
Back home, whenever we’d needed a favor, we made sure she did the asking. With her a
ngelic face and halo of golden hair, she always got better results than I did. Even before she’d grown generous curves.
The self-designated leader of the group—a boy with a square jaw and blue eyes that matched Ameline’s in hue but not in warmth—sized us up.
“For you it’s available,” he said with a wide smile at my friend. “My name’s Jayden, by the way.” Then he focused on Bryn and me. “You two can move along.”
We all moved along. I made sure to kick the leg of Jayden’s chair as I passed.
“Whoops, so clumsy of me.”
The purple fruit juice he’d been about to drink made a satisfying mess over his white T-shirt, and his curses followed me over to the other table.
I grinned.
The second group made room for us. Three guys and two girls, who were fresh arrivals like we were. They’d come from three other survivor cities dotted across America, and since stepping through the runegates, they’d had a similar experience as our own.
Except for the stabbing-the-walls part.
I was beginning to feel embarrassed about that.
A new guy entered the dining hall and made straight for the food without pausing to get his bearings. He was attractive in a hardened sort of way, with a lean, muscular build, hair clipped short, and the kind of face structure that spoke of strength and stubbornness.
But what interested me most was the way he carried himself, the way he moved. There was a surety to his actions the rest of us lacked. Like maybe he knew what was going on.
Or he was superb at bluffing.
“There’s room at our table,” I offered as he turned from the serving station.
But he shook his head and proceeded to wolf down his food still standing. He finished the meal in so short a time it didn’t seem possible, set down the plate, and strode out of the room.
Purpose. That was what his movements had that ours lacked. He’d moved with purpose rather than uncertainty.
I wanted to know why. But unless I was going to chase him down the corridor and tackle him to the floor, that would have to wait. Tempting, but no. First impressions might matter.
I turned my attention back to our tablemates.
No, they hadn’t come across anyone who’d arrived last year. Or the years before that.
No, they hadn’t been told any more than we had by Glenn and Glennys. Three of the five had barely been brave enough to speak to the “monster” at all.
And yes, they thought this whole setup seemed off.
Tension made their movements twitchy, their appetites small, and their desire to talk shrivel.
If only Jayden at the other table had been affected the same way.
“My dad’s the mayor of Lewiston,” he was telling the others. “And he’s going to send in a whole team of his best men with all the gear they’ve salvaged to get me back.”
“But you know what happens if someone breaks the Agreement,” one of his companions protested. “Even if they can locate you and then make it through who-knows-how-many miles of forest, your whole bloodline will die.”
Jayden sneered, revealing something green stuck in his teeth. “You reckon we haven’t thought of that, Wyatt? My dad has read the Agreement word for word, and it only stipulates seventeen-year-olds go through the runegate. Not that they can never return. So we’ll be honoring the letter of the Agreement, and whatever beasts think they have us over a barrel won’t have a leg to stand on.”
He shoved another forkful into his mouth and chewed for a while before adding, “The magic enforcing the Agreement isn’t smart. That’s why you have to send a firstborn through in their seventeenth year even if they died as an infant.” He chewed a bit more. “So stick with me, and I might let you lot come along.”
I didn’t know it yet, but Jayden would be the first to die.
Right then, I just thought he was an idiot. If it were that simple, someone in the thirty-seven years we’d been sending them would’ve returned by now. News didn’t travel fast anymore, but a story like that would spread.
Even so, I tucked the idea of a possible loophole into the back of my mind. I’d promised my own father I’d return if I possibly could. Maybe I’d have a chance to use it someday.
Gradually the other kids left the dining hall until Ameline, Bryn, and I were the only ones left.
I pushed away my plate.
“What do you think is really going on here? Are we at some kind of weird alien boarding school where attendance is mandatory and failure to show up means death for you and your family?”
I shook my head. “It makes no sense. And if this is some sort of academy, where the hell are last year’s students?”
Ameline nudged food around her own half-finished plate. “Nothing makes sense about this place.”
Bryn had been packing away her meal with zero sign of the suppressed appetite affecting the rest of us. “Tell me about it,” she said. “But at least it’s interesting.”
She speared a roasted root vegetable that had been drizzled with honey and salt. “And the food is wonderful. If you ask me, we should enjoy it for however long it lasts.”
I supposed I had asked her, and there was wisdom in her approach. But I’d come here with three purposes, and none of them were to enjoy myself.
First, I would pay the blood price for my family to live out their lives in relative peace and protection. If Jayden was to be believed, that part was done as soon I’d stepped through the runegate.
Second, I was here to protect Ameline. We’d vowed we would face whatever would come together. But she was good and kind and gentle, and I wanted with every part of my being to preserve that.
I wasn’t like Ameline. I wasn’t nearly as nice. I’d been born hard somehow. Perhaps more like my mother than my softhearted father. And I felt deep down in my soul that it was so I could protect the precious yet vulnerable people in this world.
Which led me to my third purpose for being here. The one I’d spent my life preparing for. The one I’d never admitted to anyone.
I was going to learn about the bastards who demanded the firstborn price. And I was going to take them down.
Chapter 6
The question at the forefront of my mind was whether we’d survive long enough to achieve anything besides my first goal.
Were the previous years’ firstborns already dead?
Was Fletcher—the boy next door who’d been as warm and wonderful as Ameline—lying motionless in some unmarked grave?
My heart twisted.
But I was trying not to jump to conclusions. I’d never expected to learn everything I needed to know my first day here. Patience, I chided myself.
We left the dining hall and spotted the golin leading a trio of girls down the corridor. On impulse, I jogged to catch up.
Glenn eyeballed me. “Is your room not to your liking then? Not enough holes in the walls perhaps?”
Glennys sighed. “What can we help you with, child?”
I ignored Glenn and tried to channel Ameline’s charming sweetness—the stuff that made everyone warm to her.
“Well, madam, sir, I mean, um—”
“Glennys.”
“Right. Glennys. Well, we were just wondering, where are the other kids? The ones that were sent last year? Or the year before that?”
The two heads shared a glance.
“You humans are so impatient,” muttered Glenn.
Glennys smiled in a way that was probably supposed to be comforting.
“Glenn’s right. For a rare change. You’ll have your questions answered in good time when the masters will it. Until then, don’t you worry about the others. Get some sleep.”
Glenn’s lips pulled back in a smile too, but I didn’t think his was intended to be comforting.
“You’ll need it.”
Well, that was about as useful as a car without fuel. Temporarily defeated, I jogged back to my roommates and filled them in on the conversation.
Ameline then made herself inv
aluable by asking the wallpaper’s directions to the girls’ bathroom.
A stack of towels and toiletries greeted us as we stepped through the door—which hadn’t even required blood to enter. We helped ourselves, relieved we hadn’t made a grievous mistake in leaving the supplies with our families.
I was also relieved to find normal-looking toilets and delighted to find they flushed. People back home had repurposed some of LA’s old water towers to give us a form of electricity-less running water. But only a few of the wealthiest family homes had access. The rest of us had to manually fill our toilet cisterns with buckets lugged from the nearest rainwater-collection tank.
Far more magical than the toiletries and flushing toilets, however, was the line of shower stalls. Ameline tried one of the taps, and water poured from the showerhead above.
She ran her fingers through the stream and gasped. “You’re not going to believe this. It’s hot.”
My jaw dropped. I’d grown up washing with a pot of water heated over the fire. It took forever to warm, and we had to repeat the process five times so every family member could take a turn.
I rushed into a second shower stall and stripped off my clothes. It sounded like Bryn was doing the same.
Ameline moaned in bliss, already under hers. “Oh my goodness, it’s amazing.”
I turned on the tap and danced impatiently for it to warm up.
It didn’t.
I tried the other tap.
Still cold.
In the stall next to me, Bryn said, “Mine’s not working.”
That’s when I put two and two together.
“Dammit, Millicent. I’m sorry about the wall, okay? I didn’t know!”
The water, if anything, grew colder.
Teeth chattering, I rinsed myself off as quick as I could, muttering about grudge-holding buildings.
Ameline came out of her stall with rosy cheeks and a smile she tried to hide. But she kindly offered her finger to the serpent so we could enter our dorm room without further bloodshed.