The Shadow Student (Wraithwood Academy #1) - Teresa Hann Page 0,58

up the token Arcturus had given me, and passed through unimpeded.

The holding area was brightly lit and shadowless, guarded by one of Arcturus’s vassals, a woman with an eyepatch who nodded at me. I nodded back, and turned my gaze to Cly and Aegis, chained up at the back of the space.

“You bitch!” Cly shrieked the moment she saw me. “What kind of mongrel does that to her own sister!”

I actually laughed. “You’ve never treated me like your sister in your life.”

I walked to Aegis. He was awake now, watching me as I approached. His own blood had dried on him, crusting over his scrapes, matting one side of his brown hair. He stood bound in a complicated metal harness designed to immobilize Spellbreakers, who could negate suppression enchantments and keep their lower magic. Bands of metal lined with spikes on the inside rested against his skin; any attempt to move, to flex against his bonds with enhanced strength, would drive them into his flesh. Fresh dots of blood punctuated the dirtied white of his shirt now.

I raised a hand, but remembered the new additions to his tattoos would block outside healing magic. I let my hand fall.

“What did my mother ever do to you?” I said at last.

Aegis said nothing.

A dull ache settled in my chest. He’d betrayed me first, chosen the Redbriars over me again and again. Seeing him like this felt terrible anyway. I’d never wanted my oldest friend bound and bloodied in front of me, because of me.

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

Aegis only looked at me dully.

“The terms of the prisoner exchange only says that Cly has to be traded back. It doesn’t say anything about you.” No one cared about you, I wanted to shout at him. Leda was too preoccupied with her precious daughter to even ask whether you were alive or dead. I struggled to keep my voice calm. “You don’t have to go back. You can stay here with me. You won’t have to serve anyone anymore.”

“Is it really a choice?” he rasped at last.

I gritted my teeth. “Of course you get a choice. I’m not a Redbriar. I won’t force people to stay anywhere they don’t want to stay.”

For the first time, a flash of emotion appeared in Aegis’s eyes. “No, that’s not what I meant. You’ve never understood. For me, there’s no choice but the Redbriars.”

Part of me had known. Part of me had seen this coming. But my heart lurched anyway.

“They’re going to punish you if you go back. You know that, right? Leda’s going to be furious at you for letting Cly get kidnapped.”

Aegis shrugged. He did it carefully, but pinpricks of blood bloomed on his shoulders anyway. “She won’t hurt me too badly. She needs my service, with the Nightfelds going on the offensive.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “So you have it all reasoned out. As long as Leda only torments you half to death instead of all the way, you’ll take it. You’ll take it, when you could have—”

“Have what?”

“Freedom! Not getting tormented half to death!” Me, I didn’t say.

“Cassandra,” said Aegis wearily. “There is no freedom. Not for people like us.”

“What are you talking about? Freedom is not being shackled and starved,” I spat. “Freedom is not having to live in fear, wondering if I’ll ever see my mother again.”

“It’s not over,” said Aegis, his blue eyes shadowed. “It’s never over. You’ve only traded one master for another.”

“I haven’t sworn myself to the Nightfelds,” I countered. “I’m not their vassal.”

“That doesn’t matter. You can’t stand against a Great House without a Great House of your own. Nothing’s stopping Arcturus from forcing you to your knees, right here, right now. Nothing’s stopping him from taking your mother after the exchange and locking her back up in Nightfeld Manor.”

Aegis took a pained breath. “Sometimes I think I’m lucky. For as long as I can remember, I’ve understood that I’m alone in the world, that everything I have is House Redbriar’s to give to me, and House Redbriar’s to take away. I grew up knowing my place. But you don’t, and you’ll keep suffering for it. You’ll break yourself, climbing for things you weren’t meant to reach. You’re wonderful, Cassandra. But that doesn’t matter. You’ll never escape a half-blood bastard’s place.”

“That’s right,” said Cly. “She won’t.”

She turned to me, chains scraping, poison in her eyes. “Here’s something for you to think on, bitch. Can you even return to school? You aren’t registered as a