Starside

Chapter 1

This will kill me.

My sweaty palm curves around my dagger as I weave through the crowd of spectators. My blade is hidden up my sleeve, the sparkling metal cold against my pulse. One wrong move, and I’ll stab myself, but it’s better than having my weapon noticed this far from the front.

I lift to my toes to gauge my distance—and there it is.

The platform. A massive stone the size of a stage, black rock speckled with silver like a fallen slab of night. It’s beautiful, one of the last remaining shreds of magic on this side of a land halved.

Soon, it will be covered in blood.

Hundreds have traveled from every corner of Stormside, armed with the best metals and years of elite training, to fight for a place on that platform. Thousands have risked their lives traveling down barren roads, just to watch.

The Questral only happens every fifty years.

Fifty of us mortals will be allowed past the gates, into the land of the immortals, to undergo a deadly journey.

Only a handful ever return. Most are killed by legendary beasts or the ruthless immortals themselves.

But the prize at the end of the quest is worth the risk. A goblet full of something that can turn miles of ash to fertile plains, summon storms after years of drought, cure any disease, grant power or wealth or even immortality.

Magic.

There are just fifty coveted spots. Hundreds will fight to the death for them during the king’s mysterious Culling.

But to even qualify for the Culling, you must first reach the platform.

A ring of king’s guards surrounds the stone, their well-worn silver armor glinting beneath the blazing sun. I squint, trying to find the one guard I need to stay the hell away from, but he’s noticeably missing. Strange.

Relief slides down my spine. My chances are pretty much fucked as it is, but at least I won’t be going up against him.

The king’s eyes and ears, known only as the Watchman, stands just left of the stone, a gleaming silver hawk perched on his arm—one of the king’s coveted rarities.

Silver is the color of the gods. As the most powerful figure on this side, the king believes he’s owed everything in that hue.

Harboring creatures of the shade is a crime punishable by death.

Even so, I’ve seen the rare silver animal caged and sold in the illegal desert markets. They have to be caught young, when they can’t put up a fight. Because the older ones …

They themselves are weapons.

The hawk’s feathers shine like melted moonlight.

Its long talons look like curved daggers.

A chill sweeps down my arms, below the thick sleeves.

I’ve seen guts spilled across streets, because of those talons.

I’ve watched that hawk decapitate a thief, then fly off, head clutched in its claws like a damned trophy.

As if sensing my notice, the bird’s head turns sharply, dark eyes boring into mine, and I fall back onto my heels, heart in my throat.

Ten minutes. Once the hawk gives its first scream, I’ll have just ten minutes to make it onto that platform. Its cries will mark down each minute, until time is up. Any moment now, it’s going to open its beak, and all hell is going to break loose.

I’m still too far away.

I quicken my pace while trying not to attract attention, part of my strategy. It’s not just the king’s guard to worry about. Some spectators will take it upon themselves to cull potential volunteers before they even get close to the front, in a twisted way to ensure only the best make it on.

Today, murder is sanctioned. Celebrated.

So, unlike the circle of armed hopefuls at the front, already staring down the king’s guards, ready to fight, I’m trying to get as close as possible without being noticed.

I shoulder through the crowd, head low. No one stops me, assuming I’m just a fellow onlooker.

They must see the lack of muscle. Lack of sword.

Lack of height. Pale skin without the healthy flush of nourishment.

Hardly enough to go against heirs and warriors who have trained their entire lives for this day.

Volunteering for the quest, in their eyes, would be a death sentence.

They’re fucking right.

Someone slams into my back, sending me stumbling forward. Shit. I barely manage to keep my dagger flat against my skin as I topple forward, right into the woman in front of me.

She throws a scathing look over her shoulder that only deepens when I angle past her, apologizing under my breath. Judging by the thick, tightly woven material of the coat she now clutches in her hand, she’s a traveler from far north.

Almost every village has sent volunteers or witnesses to our town of Nightfell, named after the black rock at the center of it.

I slip past unfamiliar fabrics. All are faded, ripped, and covered in a layer of dirt, the tattered remains of something that once might have been beautiful, but is now only ruins. Just like everything else on this side.

A roaring has me wrenching my head back up. Next to the platform, a tower of flame shoots skyward, crackling in shades of shredded sunset.

I don’t have to wonder what it’s for—I know. The bodies that don’t make it onto the stone will be thrown into the fire, left to burn.

I swallow. It’s almost time.

“Looking to feed the flames?”

The gravelly voice comes from a slim, tall man with slicked-back hair, leaning all his weight upon a sword I’d bet my own dagger he can’t hold up properly. Metal is heavy. Most men who visit the forge want the biggest weapon they can afford, but few can get it off the ground when it counts.

At his statement, several heads turn toward us.

Fuck.

Though my tongue itches to ask the man if he’s looking to sharpen my blade, preferably between his ribs, I push my metal higher up my wrist and offer my most sheepish of smiles.

“Of course not. Just trying to get a better view.” My voice says That’s ridiculous. Me? Try to qualify for the Questral? That would kill me. It echoes what Stellan told me this morning when he saw the dagger in my hand.

“I didn’t fish you from the ashes to watch you die in the gods-damned village square,” Stellan said, yet there he is in the crowd, watching me from afar with narrowed eyes, his white brows furrowed in frustration.

He shakes his head, letting me know, until my very last breath, that he did not sanction this.

“You’ve trained me for this,” I told him in the forge, the place I grew up, the splitting of steel as natural as his endless whistling. He found me in the gutters of this world when I was just a child, an orphan with nothing to her name. Not even a name, really.

At that, his eyes lit with a fury so fierce it nearly diminished the forge behind him. Then that anger melted into something I had never seen in his expression before. Terror. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

Still, he didn’t ask for the dagger back, even though it’s the greatest weapon he’s ever made, crafted from a piece of a world so cruel and deadly, he’s refused to speak of it. Even to me.

Which is a shame, because the knowledge of how Stellan made it to be one of the Fifty would have really helped right about now.

No, he won’t watch me die. Not yet. I’m going to make it to the platform. First, though, I need to get past this man who is digging a hole into the ground with his sword. He’s still studying me far too closely.

I shrink into myself, as if unnerved by his notice. As if afraid of the sword he can’t even hold up. I take a shaking step back, shoe sinking into the mud.

The man smirks, taking his time to look me over, his gaze snagging on my clothing.

He must be wondering why I’m wearing long sleeves and fabric up to my chin in scorching heat.

He must be noticing the clear lack of scabbard and baldric.

He frowns when he reaches my worn boots, the fabric shrunken and split.

The people to his left and right turn back around, already uninterested.

But he keeps looking, taking in my brown hair that I carefully braided and pinned at the back of my head, to keep the long strands out of my face—and to keep others from using it against me.

It might be the most obvious sign that I’m here for something other than entertainment, but his stare just wanders, until it finally meets mine.

All at once, his interest grows. My eyes—they’re dark blue. A rare shade. Now, I wish they were a different color entirely.

I don’t drop my gaze. He tilts his head. Finally, he leans toward me, his metal leaning with him. “Don’t let me stop you.”

I smile my thanks and pass him by.

That’s when his hand slides down my body. Squeezes. I freeze.

Bile crawls up my throat, but I swallow it and the urge to cut his hand clean off. I can’t be noticed. Not yet, so many rows away.

I do what I’ve done for years. I bury the rage and keep moving.

That’s when a scream cuts through the crowd like a scythe.

The silver hawk. Its sharp beak is opened wide, emitting a piercing wail.

It’s time.

A flash of color snags my attention as a man hurls himself from a rooftop, attempting to get onto the stone by jumping. It looks like he might make it.

He almost does.

Then, just before his feet land, a guard’s sword goes through his gut. He slips in his own blood right off the stone.

His body is quickly thrown into the fire. The flames roar, then crackle.

Fire or stone. Death or life.

This is the Questral.

In a wave of weapons, the first ring of volunteers rushes forward, only to be met with a wall of king’s guards, all wielding the highest metal. Silver.

Metal is our last remaining magic—ore from the ground, infused with power. Some varieties hold more of it, making a weapon stronger. And silver is the strongest of all mortal metals.

They’re dead. I see their swords from rows away, and I know for certain they stand no chance.

Still, they lift their blades. They bellow as they lunge forward, ready to duel.

And one after the other, copper, tin, and aluminum swords shatter against higher metal.