Kyra woke up in darkness and for a moment, she couldn't tell the difference. She could feel cold earth beneath her, and feel the hush of chill silence. Throbbing around her throat; pain in her wrist. She reached her unharmed arm up with difficulty to her neck, probing, whimpering when she felt the tender skin, rubbed raw from the rough fibres of a rope.
She registered a moment later that she was touching bare skin; her necklace was gone. Sitting up with difficulty, she circled her neck with her fingertips again, her eyes scanning the soil-strewn floor; there was nothing.
Kyra let out a low, shuddering breath. She climbed to her feet, palms scratched on the cracked concrete, and pushed herself up, taking the few steps to the back door slowly. Cradling her wrist for a moment, shoulder hunched in, she peered over her shoulder into the musty shadows behind her.
Her heart, which had been oddly slow until this point, measuring out each long second with a deliberate thud that resounded in her fingertips, the pulse behind her ear, her wrist, picked up a frantic speed. She took off running through the darkness to the castle, tripping over flagstones and wet grass.
It was far past curfew by the time Kyra made it into the dungeons, the corridors empty and quiet. Their warm darkness, bound by thick stone walls, was comforting in its solidity. Paintings slept in their frames, the fire brackets dimmed to an ember as she crept past, holding her wand tightly. Her shadow looked warped and menacing.
In the common room, everything was quiet, the messy remnants of the party still strewn about the room in the shape of discarded bottles, cups, jumpers and one person asleep on the sofa. When she reached her dormitory, there was a strip of light under the doorframe.
She pushed it open, a flag of light falling into the corridor, and found Grace sitting up on her bed. Grace raised her head immediately, relief melting her features at first. She saw Kyra's dirty, tear-tracked face, her bloody and bruised neck.
"What-" Grace stammered as Kyra stood by the door. Grace slipped her legs from under the covers, coming to take hold of her shoulders just as Kyra collapsed into her, shaking with silent sobs, uneven and convulsed, the tears burning as they slid onto her neck.
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The Founders
FanfictionKyra Chen is beginning her sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry when a series of unusual events converge- a new student, a theft- to form a dangerous and intricate plot that entangles her and her friends and draws them deep into...
