Chapter Twenty-One
Isit in shock as every pair of eyes in the room pivots to me.
“I—I don’t understand,” I finally manage to stammer.
“House Harkyn, one of five royal human houses in Aureon, has named you as their champion in a challenge to the throne,” Julian says, as if I hadn’t comprehended his words.
“But I don’t know who my family is. Why would this House want me to represent them in a tournament?”
At the other end of the table, Thornne stands up abruptly, shoving his chair back behind him. “Stop with the lies, girl. I’ve said from the beginning you were a traitor. This is the proof I was looking for.”
The guards standing closest to me step forward, menace in their eyes, but Julian raises a hand. “Wait!”
Stillness falls over the room, though it’s so taut with tension that it feels like the air is humming.
“Embyr isn’t lying.” Julian sweeps his gaze around the table, “And even if she was, it is strictly forbidden by the rules of the tournament to harm any champion before the tournament begins. Any house to do so forfeits.”
“Damn the rules!” Thornne growls, his eyes burning into me.
“The rules are bound by magic,” Julian adds hastily. “Very powerful, very ancient magic. The rules cannot be bypassed, and they cannot be broken, unless you wish to suffer a very dark fate indeed.”
Thornne curses loudly under his breath, sitting back down in his chair. “Convenient. I should have taken you to prison when I had the chance.”
“I’m not lying!” I snap, my fingers digging into the table in frustration. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“You can tell me a thousand times, and it won’t change my opinion of you,” Thornne responds with a grimace.
“I know for a fact she isn’t lying,” Professor Julian says.
“Oh, do you?” Thornne snaps, eyes glowing with hatred.
Julian presses on. “Professor Wyllora’s spirits have confirmed who Embyr’s family is. She cast a spell when Embyr arrived, and recently we received word back from those spirits.”
“And my family–they’re the ones summoning me to this tournament?” I can’t help the sting of betrayal in my voice. How long had Julian known? But he merely nods in response.
“Can’t Embyr decline to be champion?” Daemon asks, his voice sounding like a whisper compared to Thornne’s brash heat.
Julian shakes his head. “Once the tournament is invoked, all royal houses must participate, and whoever they name to be their champion cannot withdraw. Not without suffering the same curse that befalls anyone who breaks one of the tournament rules.”
My mind races frantically. “So…my family is one of the royal houses of Aureon?” I’ve searched for this answer for so very long, and now that I have it, I couldn’t be more horrified.
A sad smile from Julian. “Yes, Embyr. You are of the bloodline of House Harkyn. Otherwise, they could not name you as champion, and the spell wrought by invoking the tournament wouldn’t bind you.”
From his spot on my right side, Daemon’s eyes find mine for the briefest of moments, something that might be sympathy swimming in their depths.
“The men who have been pursuing you all these years…they are likely from House Harkyn,” Julian adds gently.
I shake my head, having trouble processing all the thoughts swirling through my head at once.
What Julian says makes sense, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel right.
The men who pursued me had always emanated danger.
They’d always seemed to be chasing me, rather than trying to rescue me. To bring me back home.
Hadn’t they?
Or had I misjudged the entire situation? Had I been running for nearly a decade from the family I sought so hard to find?
It’s too terrible a thought to confront right now, so I focus on what I need to know next.
“Okay. So, I have to compete in the tournament. I am bound by magical rules and have no choice. What exactly are the other rules?”
“That’s what I was researching before I arrived,” Julian explains.
“I was trying to determine if there is any way out of this tournament, and what rules we are bound by. The tournament hasn’t been held in over a thousand years because of the severity of the consequences…
once invoked, the spell which governs it does not end until the tournament has run its course, and a victor has been named.
In past tournaments, dire events have unfolded for those who tried to evade the guidelines.
I determined, as we already know, that there is no way around what has been done.
” He shakes his head. “These wheels, now set in motion, cannot be stopped.”
“Get on with it,” Thornne growls. “When does this thing take place and what else constitutes a breaking of the rules?”
Julian pins him in a withering stare. “The tournament commences in two days’ time.
Three days from when it is invoked, and we spent one of those days traveling back here.
It takes place at Corla Arnan Vor, the ancient site that has housed all such tournaments since the first. All royal houses must send a champion, who gets a second to help them in the challenges.
Once all champions arrive at the tournament grounds and the tournament has officially begun, there are no rules.
Champions can use any means necessary to win. And champions are no longer protected.”
“That’s the first good news you’ve shared all day, Julian,” Thornne says, his gaze on mine turning downright predatory. “That means we just need to wait until the tournament has begun, and then we’ll make sure Embyr and this ridiculous challenge are ended.”
Even for Thornne, the cruel casual nature in which he speaks of murdering me is a surprise.
“You’re forgetting an important fact,” Julian says, and the sharp edge in his tone draws every eye in the room.
“I have spent months caring for Embyr, because I knew she was special. House Harkyn trying to steal her out from under me is all the validation I need for what I suspected all along. And if you think I’m going to let you kill her, you are sadly mistaken, old friend. ”
The two fae stare at each other, the heat in their gazes enough to light the whole room on fire.
A sharp sound breaks the standoff. I jump as the blast of horns cuts through the air outside the castle. Every around the table begins talking at once, and several guards rush out of the room. They come back a couple minutes later, their expressions grim.
“House Harkyn is at the gates,” one announces.
Julian turns to look at me. “It appears they have come to collect their champion.”
The next few minutes pass in a blur.
I’m escorted to my room, by five guards this time, as if I’m a flight risk.
Which might very well be the case if it weren’t for the dire magical consequences that Julian had mentioned numerous times.
I pack what little clothing I have while the guards wait outside, and I say goodbye to Trix who mewls piteously as if I’m never coming back.
And she’s probably right. The only way I’m coming back is if I win the tournament, and there’s no way that’s happening.
Not me against dozens of royal fae houses and their very best warriors.
I’ve done magic once by accident, and while I can hold my own in a fight with humans, I get slammed nearly daily by Toryn and he’s not even a full Guardian yet. It’s laughable.
After I collect my sparse belongings, I’m marched back downstairs and out the front doors of the castle.
My heart is pounding in my chest, my blood racing in my ears.
I’m about to meet the members of House Harkyn.
My blood. The family I’ve been looking for all these years.
The answer to all the questions that have burned in my soul since I awoke that night eight years hence.
Except, something in my gut screams that this is wrong.
I don’t know why, but I’ve got the feeling this isn’t going to be some warm reunion with loved ones. Every instinct in my body is telling me to run the other way, like it did all this time. And if I weren’t magically bound to this, that’s exactly what I would do.
The giant portcullis is approaching, and I can see a small party on horseback gathered on the other side.
I can’t tell if they’re men or women, because they’re all wearing red cloaks pulled up over their heads, shadowing their faces.
I catch flashes of weapons in the bit of sun that peeks out from behind the steel-gray clouds overhead: the tip of a sword, the edge of an axe blade, a leather sheath of arrows.
Their horses are small and wiry, their coats thick as if they come from a colder climate.
The nightmare at the gate growls, the sound vibrating the air around me.
Its eyes glow, hunger gleaming in them as if I am an enemy.
I’ve been an outsider ever since I arrived, and months later, that hasn’t changed one bit.
A strong wind sweeps down from the mountains to the north, whipping my curls behind me, along with my green cloak.
Julian is waiting by the gate, as is Commander Thornne.
The former gives me a tense smile and a nod, as if telling me to be strong, and the latter eyes me like the nightmare did.
With grim satisfaction, and also a kind of certainty.
We lock gazes as I walk slowly past, and I can tell in his eyes that he has no intention of heeding Julian’s warning.
The moment the tournament begins, I’m fair game.
He’s viewed me as an enemy all along, and now I’m literally enemy number one.
A challenger to the crown, a threat to his Queen.
My death shines in his eyes, and I shiver because I know it’s not just him.
Every single house of the dozens present at the tournament will be planning the same thing.
When I reach the portcullis, the guard closest to me shoves me forward so hard that I stumble and almost go down in the mud.
But I grit my teeth and keep to my feet.
I will not give them the satisfaction of falling to my knees on my way out of this place.
And I will not face my new family in disgrace.
As I straighten and take another step forward, I can’t help but feel like a prisoner exchanging hands.
I am not walking to freedom. I’m merely changing captors.
I stop a few paces beyond the gate.
“Aye, girl,” calls one of the hooded figures. “Come here.”
But I don’t obey. Not yet. I turn instead and look back through the gate to Shadow’s Keep in all its glory.
The looming castle and the monstrous nightmare and the lush valley and the stark mountains in the distance.
The wind whips down again, blowing my hair and my cloak behind me.
My gaze sweeps across the small crowd gathered there, but I don’t see who I’m looking for.
Somehow, I thought Daemon would be here to say goodbye.
But he’s nowhere to be seen.
Sucking in a deep breath, I turn to face my family, and my fate.