Prison of Supernatural Magic

by Laynie Bynum

  A heavy silence fell between us. I knew what it was like to grieve a lost mother, and if I was given the chance to see mine again—I’m not sure anything would have stopped me. Not even my own conscience.

  “And that’s why you’re here.”

  He nodded slowly. “So, you tell me, Autumn. Am I loyal to the Guild?”

  “I wouldn’t be.”

  The hint of a smile appeared on his face. “You’re a rogue. You aren’t anyway.”

  I took his hand in mine, holding his gaze. “Bring them down with us, Xander. We can get out of here. Soon. There are people on the outside waiting to make this happen. There’s a chance at a revolution.”

  He lifted one of his hands to cup my face. “I belong here for what I did. But if you have the chance, you make them pay. For my mom, for your sister. For all that we’ve lost.”

  “Xander—”

  He dropped his hand as he shook his head. “Don’t worry about me, Autumn. I’ll be fine. I can hold my own. But, if you do get out, find my mom. Tell her I’m okay. Don’t tell her I’m here.”

  I squared my shoulders. I wouldn’t cry. Not over this. I refused to. “Do it yourself.”

  He shifted away from me. “I couldn’t face her. Not after what I’ve done.”

  “Then do something to prove to yourself that that isn’t who you are. Be the boy she knew,” I said as I gently turned his face back to mine.

  There was an energy between us, some sort of fire that sparked and crackled as the moments passed. His eyes drifted to my lips and then shot away. I wondered, if only for a moment, what we would have been like outside of these walls.

  If we’d met through some other circumstance, in some other life. Would I have been so ready to trust him, or was that desperation? Would the way his words sat lazily on his lips, drawing out like the last rays of sunlight, have sent my head spinning like they did now?

  He leaned a fraction of an inch further and my lips parted, drawing in a hot breath. And then… the buzzer went off and he pulled away.

  “It’s for the best,” he muttered as he stood up. “Good luck with your plan, Autumn Quinn. Be safe.”

  I tried to stop him, to slow his exit. To convince him to stay just a moment longer… but for what? What would happen if he lingered that extra minute?

  I didn’t have time to consider the possibilities.

  I’d just moved pick up my tray when my two shadows appeared above me, looming so stoically that they could only belong to the guards. I knew I wasn’t the last one to leave, so there was no reason for me to be reprimanded. Had they heard my conversation with Xander? We were careful to keep our voices low and our actions from attracting attention, but with his story, maybe my reactions had given too much away.

  But the two guards remained where they stood, watching me and keeping me from continuing towards the trash disposal line. I’d never seen them approach another prisoner like this before, not in the cafeteria, not even the stragglers. I’d never seen them work together. One was always enough to handle a single prisoner.

  “Stand up,” one of them said as he moved forward.

  I left my tray on the table and stood from where I sat. “What is this about? Do you want to check my uneaten biscuit for a razor blade or something?”

  I’d seen enough television to know that was a thing.

  One of them grabbed me by the elbow. “Come with us.”

  “Hey!” I shouted out in protest, but the guard continued to pull me through the near-deserted cafeteria.

  As we passed, the other guard reached out and took my other arm, and the two of them practically picked me up off the ground as they unceremoniously dragged me out of the cafeteria and away from the cell block.

  Chapter Ten

  The guards were silent as they brought me down a dimly lit hallway lined with metal doors and foggy windows. They didn’t stop until we arrived at the very end, an ominous door towering above me, its metal dark and rusted as if it had been dipped in blood and left to dry.

  One guard held me tight in what could only have been described as a bearhug while the other took out a set of keys dangling from a hoop as if we were earthbounds. Mages didn’t need locks. Our seals were stronger than any metal contraption could ever be. Whether it was a facade or a lie or legitimate, I didn’t have the time to consider it because I was dragged into the room before I could ask.

  The room itself was made of white stone and tile not unlike the cell that had been my home for… I couldn’t even remember how much time had passed. The difference was this room contained a table and two chairs placed across from each other.

  And one of those chairs was already occupied, by the dark stranger from that night in my house—the once who was injured, the one who was there when I was taken, the one allegedly named Hudson Frost.

  “Ms. Quinn.” The oddly familiar voice echoed off the bare walls as he stood from his chair. “Thank you for taking the time to meet with us.”

  “Us?” I looked over my shoulder for the two guards who had brought me, but they were nowhere to be seen. I hadn’t even heard the door shut behind me.

  “I’d like to introduce you to the Guild’s Master Interrogator, Draven Arthur.”

  The name sent a chill through me and I spun around. As if summoned, Draven materialized from the darkest corner of the room. He looked as terrifying as Xander had made him out to be. All bones, pale skin, and midnight black hair. His perfectly sculpted goatee covered a wicked sneer as his small, beady eyes bored holes into me.

  My throat was dry and my heart pounded with panic. “I… why…?”

  “It’s our understanding you’ve made some… friends… here in the Grey,” Hudson Frost said from behind me, regaining my attention. But the last thing I wanted to do was turn my back on Draven Arthur, especially after all Xander had told me about him. So instead, I positioned myself between them, back turned against the nearby wall. They hadn’t cuffed me or magically restrained me, so I was going to take advantage of my freedom while I had it.

  “No one has friends here,” I corrected.

  “Be that as it may,” Hudson continued. “We’d like to ask you a few questions about the… acquaintances… you’ve been interacting with.”

  I glanced over, peering at him slightly. If this was the mage Kai told me about—if this was the one who was going to help us out of here—I owed it to him to keep what I knew to myself, just as he owed it to me to keep me safe from whatever Draven Arthur had planned.

  A glowing orb materialized on the table before me, Kai’s smiling face beaming out of the center. Her voice resounded as if she was right next to me. “There’s people willing to help. Outside.”

  My own face showed in the orb, looking around, confused. I watched the scene, as if a memory was playing like a scene from a video recording.

  I remembered the conversation. The first time Kai mentioned being able to contact people outside of the Grey. When she’d told me about…

  My head whipped to Hudson, but he seemed calm and not at all worried about the ramifications of the conversation that transpired between Kai and myself. Had this all been a setup? What would he gain from this? We were already in the Grey. What worse could they do to us? Or was what I’d experienced of the Grey just the tip of the iceberg? Did the true terror of this place lie beyond the surface I’d experienced?

  The scene went static, like an old earthbound TV running out of signal, a rolling piece of film before another appeared.

  It was Xander and me in the cafeteria, his fingers working to initiate a spell, to test the theory about the using magic in the Grey.

  I felt faint as I recalled what was going to happen next.

  The black magic flickered against his fingertips and the ball of light went blank.

  “You can see,” Hudson said as the orb blinked out of existence, “that we know more than you think we do. And much more than you give us credit for. As comfortable as we try to make it, this is still a prison, Ms. Quinn, and yo
u are still a prisoner.”

  The man needed a dose of reality if this was his idea of comfort.

  I folded my hands in my lap to keep from fidgeting. “What exactly do you want from me?”

  Draven walked forward, placing one bony finger on my chin. “Information. That’s all. We want to keep the peace. To make sure everyone, both within these walls and out, stays safe. You can do that for us, can’t you? Just tell us what you all were planning. And you can start with your little dinner dates with Xander Williams.”

  I yanked my head away from his hand. “Or what?”

  There was no choice. I couldn’t say a word about what Kai and I had talked about without endangering all of us. And Xander… what was I supposed to tell them about him? He’d made it clear he wanted no part of our escape plans.

  “Oh come on,” Draven crooned. “I’ll find out one way or another. Best to keep this between us, yes? And not worry poor Xander’s head with such things. I mean, he did just lose his mother.”

  I tried hard not to let any emotion show on my face. After all, I knew that’s what Draven wanted. And I trusted Xander. Had his mother actually died, he would have said so. If they knew what Kai and I had discussed, clearly they would have known Xander told me about his past. Draven was just trying to play me… and I couldn’t let him know it was working.

  I turned back to Frost. “What do you want from me?” I asked again.

  “We told you,” Draven answered as Frost held his mouth shut. “Just a little information.”

  “I don’t have any more information than you do, clearly.” I waved my hand to where the orb was. “You’ve heard everything.”

  Frost paced across the room as he spoke. “Not everything. It seems there were… interruptions in the feed.”

  So he had covered his own ass at least. “And you want me to fill in the gaps for you? Why would I do that? What could I even get out of this?”

  Draven leaned forward in the chair across from me. His face was expressionless. A cold mask. “Knowing that your dear friends are alive and well should be more than enough motivation, I think.”

  The orb returned with Kai’s face on it again. But this time she wasn’t smiling. Her large, almond eyes stared back at me, panicked as tears escaped them and rolled down her cheeks. “Help!” she screamed into the blackness surrounding her. “Somebody!”

  I gulped and closed my eyes against the sight of her pain.

  I opened them again when Kai’s screams subsided, but instead of my friend’s face, I saw Xander sitting motionless in another dark, empty room, his hands bound in front of him, with what appeared to be a bloody gash across his forehead.

  “Okay,” I said weakly, unable to hide my misery. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Just… leave them alone.”

  If I wasn’t mistaken, a bead of sweat dripped down Hudson’s face. It seemed even he was starting to lose his cool.

  “That’s better,” Draven said as he waived the orb away.

  “No,” I said firmly. “Bring it back. I want to see them! Show me you’ve released them first.”

  The two shared a telling look, but the orb rematerialized, half of Kai’s face lit up with a beam of light that widened as we watched. A guard walked in and escorted her out into a bright hallway.

  The scene cut, moving to Xander as the cuffs on his wrists disappeared and he stood up. “Move,” a guard shouted on the other side, unseen from where we watched through the orb.

  It went black as Draven stood and circled my chair like a vulture homing in on his prey. “Now, you’ve got what you wanted. We’ve been more than cooperative. It’s your turn to give us what we want.”

  I thought about the first time I saw Kai, the shock of blue against the grey. Of how she’d pulled me in right away. What I’d learned about her in the time I came to know her. What she meant to Winter. How she was willing to risk her life for the rebellion.

  I could do that. I would do that. I owed her that much.

  Squaring my shoulders, I held Draven’s piercing gaze. “You wanted to know about Xander, right? About what we talked about? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but our conversations mainly consisted of complaining about the food and comparing notes about how best to clean our cells.”

  Draven grabbed one of the metal chairs and threw it at the wall. It took every fiber of my being to not flinch as the metal collided with the concrete. “Do you think we’re playing here, Ms. Quinn? People’s lives are at stake. Many lives. And lives that are much more important than yours or your friends’.”

  That was where he was wrong. Kai and Xander’s lives were as important, if not more, than anyone else’s the Guild deemed worthy. Which was exactly why they would get nothing from me. I clenched my jaw and watched Draven, conveying every stubborn emotion I could in that stare.

  Hudson placed his hand on Draven’s shoulder, a movement that simultaneously told the older man to calm down, and that he was taking control of the conversation. Even mages seemed to know how to play Good Cop, Bad Cop.

  “If there’s nothing of importance about your relationship with Xander, then tell us more about your relationship with the sprite princess. Even a rogue must understand the threat to magekind that a fouled alliance with the sprites would bring. It’s something we must be ever-vigilant of.”

  His avoidance at saying her name was obvious, as if acknowledging her would be too much for him to maintain his secret, like it would give him away for the spy he was as soon as it left his lips.

  “Kai is not a threat to you,” I said, my eyes now trained on Hudson, my answer intended for him specifically.

  “And these outsiders,” Draven interjected. “Are they a threat to us?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know what outsiders you’re referring to,” I said, trying to summon tears to embellish the facade. “I haven’t spoken to anyone outside of these walls since I got here. I’m just trying to make it through day by day without losing my mind.”

  Draven snarled. “Save us the waterworks, Quinn. We know you’re up to something. Just like your father and your sister after him. You can never leave well enough alone—”

  “Don’t you dare talk about my father,” I said as I stood, rising out of my chair before I realized what I was doing. Power crackled unbidden at my fingertips, the table almost trembling beneath my uncontrolled magic escaping from me. Frost’s eyes widened in alarm as Draven smiled.

  “Put her in the Hole,” the Master Assassin said as he left the room laughing. “Maybe she will be more cooperative after a little time out.”

  I tried to catch my breath as my fingers tingled with the remnants of magic. I pulled them from the table as soon as I realized what had happened. “What?” I gasped out, turning to Frost. “What does that mean? What’s going on?”

  He solemnly shook his head as he took my arms and clasped my wrists together. A glowing band formed around them. “There’s nothing I can do right now,” he said in a whisper against my hair. “They’ll come for you soon. Hang in there, Quinn daughter. Just a bit longer.”

  The tears that came to my eyes now were real as I was pulled down a hallway that led deeper and deeper into the belly of the prison. With Draven leading the way and Hudson behind me, we descended stairs that looked as if no foot had stepped near them in years, and I knew by the darkness alone why they called it the Hole. Knew this was where they had put Kai and Xander to break them—to break me.

  I hoped for their sake I was as strong as they both thought I was.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Autumn, it’s time to wake up.” Winter’s voice was as soft and sweet as it was when she was alive.

  When she was alive.

  I tried to wake myself from the dream. It wasn’t real. She was gone. I couldn’t let myself stay here in this pretend scenario. I knew it wasn’t real and I had things to do and people were counting on me and it was no time to be sleeping…

  But when I opened my eyes, surrounded by the blackness of the empty
cell Draven and Hudson had all but thrown me into, she was still there.

  “Well, aren’t you a sleepyhead,” she laughed where she stood in what I assumed was the center of the cell.

  I shook my head violently as I grasped it between my hands, screwing my eyes shut as if that would make her disappear. “No, you aren’t real. You aren’t here. You’re not...”

  Her ghostly form, dressed all in gauzy white that seemed to glow with its own source of light, kneeled in front of where I lay slumped on the floor. “Stop that. You’re going to hurt yourself. And what good will you be to Kai and Xander if they have to carry you out of here?”

  I wasn’t sure how many days it had been since they threw me in here. Or maybe it had only been hours. Maybe it had been weeks. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered anymore. I was no use to anyone in here, and chances were, they were continuing their plans without me.

  There was no sun or artificial light to guide my body through the hours. No regular meals or over-scheduled activities to look forward to. Just the dark, dank, blackness of the cell that contained nothing but a single mat on the floor. Or what I thought was a mat.

  It was so dark I couldn’t tell one side of the cell from the other. When I first arrived I tried to crawl around the perimeter of the cell to get an idea of where I was to better situate myself, but every time I thought I was close to a corner, the wall seemed to continue on endlessly. If I tried to turn around to retrace my steps, I was met with an unexpected wall that wasn’t there a minute before.

  I must have finally been going mad. The Grey was finally breaking me. I felt the pieces of my mind snapping slowly, one by one, like a pile of twigs being bent from both sides.

  “They aren’t coming for me. I’ll be lucky if they're still alive when I get out of here,” I said, more to myself than to the hallucination of my sister.

  “You always had so little faith in the unknown. It’s what’s holding you back from your true power. If you just… trust, Autumn. Trust the universe. Trust your friends. Trust yourself.”