Bound (Thrall #4)

by K.A. Riley

The broadcasts have become so cheerfully self-aggrandizing that most people don’t pay much attention to them.

The Culling is essentially the curated murder of a small segment of society. Perhaps even worse, almost everyone in the Peaks loves witnessing the event.

“Let’s not pretend it’s ever anything but winter, Eustace,” she laughs.

I was foolish enough to ask why Blades were all considered guilty before committing a single sin. “It isn’t their choice to be what they are,” I protested at the time. “No one asks to be a Blade.” “They have the devil in them,” Mr. Hurst insisted. “Which means they invite him in. Their kind feasts on cruelty, and it’s the devil who feeds it to them. It’s an abomination. Not to mention that every power they possess is stolen from an innocent Tethered. They’re overflowing with sin, all of them.”

The High Council realized long ago that an excellent way to make people feel important and powerful was to offer them a chance to bring others to their knees.

“Powers don’t make a person cruel. Cruelty does. A human being has no control over what gifts they’re given. All we can do with what little we have is try to be a force for good in an unbalanced world.”

There’s something almost familiar about him—a sense that he and I have met before, if only in long-forgotten dreams. It’s as if I know him.

There’s something in his face, his eyes, that is so alluring that I can’t quite manage to catch my breath. But he frightens me, too. In his eyes is the look of a man who sees all and knows all. A man who would stop at nothing to get his way. In spite of the clear danger he poses to me, some part of me wants desperately to speak to him, if only to ask how he came to be this way. How can I cease to care what the world thinks of me? How can I become like you?

I have no desire to be exceptional. All I want is to be a shadow of a person. A specter, unnoticed and unobtrusive. Give me a small home with a library, a comfortable chair, and little else, and I swear—I will be perfectly happy for the rest of my days.

For some reason, my confrontational manner seems to please him rather than piss him off. Which irritates the shit out of me.

I’ve grown so accustomed to being locked in a cellar that imprisonment has become a comfort.

I stop in my tracks, staring in awe as something in my heart stirs to life—a feeling of deep, wonderful nostalgia for a place I’ve never yet known.

“This land pretends to preach equality, but you of all people have come to realize that’s far from reality.”

“Tell me,” he interrupts, taking a seat next to me, his impossibly dark eyes fixed on mine. “What would you do if you found yourself bound by a promise that’s impossible to keep? One that might save a life—but would break you. Would you break it?”

Worrying about things that haven’t happened has never been a good use of anyone’s time or energy.

“Why do we need public murders to keep a society intact?” “Because a common enemy is crucial if we want to unite a people and keep the peace within that society.

“I’m sure the people would prefer to have plentiful food on their tables,” I protest. “Watching people be slaughtered for sport isn’t exactly essential to their survival.” “No, it’s not. But imagine if every person in the Peaks suddenly realized the Council was just an organization of wealth hoarders who do a piss-poor job of feeding and clothing them. Imagine, for a moment, that there was nothing to fear in this land but death by freezing or starvation. The Council would have daily riots on their hands, instead of adoration and praise.”