Free Daegan (The Age of Alandria: A Companion Novella) by Morgan Wylie

asked.
    “Not particularly, sir. You?”
    “One more of the same,” he sighed. Daegan turned partially back to see his uncle’s face as he waited for him to continue. “Meetings and noise around here, it never ends. I feel much older than I am, lad. So very tired... She used to enjoy my company, used to laugh at my jokes,” he trailed off quietly. “Ignore me, my boy.” He smiled at Daegan. “Enough about me...” Wren looked at Daegan again, really looked at him, then stood and approached him slowly. “Are you well? You seem distraught, sad even. This is not like you.”
    Daegan thought for a moment that he would tell Wren everything that had happened to him. All the strange things, everything at the shifter camp, and how he thought the darkness was taking him over. He wanted to hear his dad tell him he was not going to give in to the darkness... that he was strong enough to defeat it and to protect his home. But this was not his dad, and it was not going to happen that way. At one point, Daegan would not have questioned the relationship, but now his uncle had his own weights to bear and he did not need Daegan’s as well. Daegan looked his uncle in the eyes, seeing the weariness that lay underneath his strong exterior, and nodded.
    “I will be well. It was a rough day training.” He left it at that. Wren seemed to see through his words or lack of words and with a spark of sadness in his own eyes, he turned and looked distantly into the fire, leaving Daegan to his own thoughts.
    “Goodnight, Uncle Wren.” Daegan bowed his head slightly toward his uncle as he turned to leave the library.
    “Goodnight, my boy,” he heard his uncle say as he began to head down the corridor toward the main staircase to his room.
    Before he went too far down the hall, he felt something compel him from the opposite direction. There was not much down the opposite direction except the end of the hallway and the rarely used servants’ staircase leading upstairs. There was a pull drawing him closer. He was not sure if he should let it lead him or not, but his curiosity was piqued. It was a similar pull to what he felt drawing him to the mountain earlier, but this felt dark and dirty... sinister even. He had to find out what could have this feeling in his own home.
    It was leading him to the staircase. It was an old gray stacked rock wall at the end of the hall with an outcrop that went out several feet to encase the spiral rock stairs that were built to be a part of it. What he had not seen before was the dark doorway hidden behind the staircase. How could he not have seen this before? He and Halister had explored and played all over the castle as they grew up.
    For whatever reason, the darkness in the doorway was calling to him, beckoning him to enter. He did not feel the compulsion as before, but he needed to know what he was dealing with and so he got as close as he could without actually entering it.
    Daegan felt around the wall next to the entrance to see if he could feel anything unusual, but nothing stood out. He studied it. He listened carefully with his extra-sensitive hearing, and still nothing. Daegan took a deep breath, gripped the hilt of the dagger at his waist with one hand, and held out the other to guide him along the wall as he walked into the darkness.

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    Cautiously, Daegan stepped into the darkness. Only a couple of steps in, the stairs began leading him downward. Daegan pushed his magic out from his core with the thought “ light. ” Fire sprung to life on torches every five yards or so along the wall following the curve of the wall as it spiraled downward. He did not know a lower level of the castle existed in this wing. There was one in the other wing under the throne room that had been used as prison cells at one point. Though he had not been down there in quite some time, he was sure Maleina did not keep prisoners in the castle for fear of Halister finding them and setting them free. He was