Chapter 47
Chapter Forty-Seven
Aurelia
I pause to observe the patterns of the vines’ lashing movements, haphazard as they seem. I don’t have much time before the thudding of footsteps behind me propels me forward.
Fausta didn’t take long to recover from her stumble.
I leap over a few vines and dart from one side to the other, avoiding their twisting forms as well as I can. One hits the back of my calf. I heave forward a few steps, nearly tripping over another.
Only a few paces ahead of me now, Leonette’s foot gets snagged. The vine flings her to her knees.
By the time she’s scrambled up, we’re neck and neck. Fausta mutters a curse right behind me, her shoes scuffing frantically across the dirt.
It’s obvious this isn’t going to be a simple sprint to the finish line .
As we jump and stagger around the writhing vines, more of the court nobles reach this part of the path, many of them venturing ahead of us.
“Look at them dance!” someone calls out, followed by a raucous laugh.
Bianca’s arch voice quavers with worry as it carries through the din. “You can beat them, Fausta. Don’t let anything slow you down!”
The cleared route through the woods veers to the left, and I spot the end of vine territory several paces away. Pushing myself onward with a frantic patter of my feet, I manage to draw ahead of Leonette.
I leap over the last few vines and dash across the apparently safe stretch of path.
It only takes a few steps to reveal my error. The dirt gives way abruptly beneath one of my feet.
I have just enough wherewithal to throw myself forward so my hands and knees take the brunt of the fall rather than my ankle.
Glancing back, I see my foot has broken open a pit in the path, several inches deep and the same around. More than enough to sprain an ankle or even break a few toes.
Leonette and Fausta were racing after me. Witnessing my tumble, they slow to scan the earth.
I shove myself back to my feet, restraining a wince at the stinging of my knees and palms. Brown smudges of dirt mar the white silk of my dress.
I can’t make out any indication of where the rest of the path in front of us might be unstable. Whoever conjured the obstacles in this stretch of the trial laid their traps well.
“Go on, then,” Fausta says in a sneering tone.
She wants me to uncover the pits by stumbling into them myself so she knows where it’s safe to walk .
Before I can retort, Leonette strides ahead of us with an impervious air. She sets her feet swiftly but carefully—and hops to the side the moment another span of earth crumbles beneath her shoe.
I’m not going to look like a coward in front of the court. I hurry after her, imitating her method, narrowing all my attention on the feel of the earth under me.
If Raul and Bastien combined their talents again, perhaps they could crack some of the hidden pits to reveal them. But when my gaze darts over the crowd swarmed between the trees, I can’t find their faces.
There’s no sign of Lorenzo either. Did the princes decide they’d risked as much as they dared and leave rather than endure the rest of the trial’s horrors from the sidelines?
A chilly twinge passes through my gut, but I grit my teeth against it and keep moving. I’ve always said I want to win the trials through my own merits. Why should I expect them to help beyond preventing outright sabotage?
I’ll win through my own strength and perseverance as I always have before.
As I pull past Leonette again, a slight hitch beneath my toes gives me a warning. I shift my weight to my other foot and shove myself onward with only a brief wobble.
A moment later, Leonette crashes through a slightly larger pit, the ground swallowing her leg up to her lower calf. She pitches forward but keeps going with her mouth pressed tight. The hitch in her step suggests she’s at least temporarily wounded.
“That’s right!” one of the watching nobles hollers. “Stay on your feet for the emperor!”
We come around another shallow bend and find the terrain between the trees there is covered with a swath of jagged rocks. They jut up at different angles and sizes, some as large as my torso and others as small as my fist.
Fausta darts between me and Leonette, having dodged all the pits we knocked open. She clambers over the rocks, dipping here and there to catch her balance on the larger ones.
I rush after her and scramble over the uneven mess as quickly as I can. As I push from one flatter surface to another, avoiding the most precarious spots, my legs teeter under me.
It would really hurt to fall here—not just the risk of sprains, but the rough edges of the rock ready to scrape through our skin.
Fausta discovers that danger a moment after I think it, with the skidding of her shoe over a tilting stone. Her shin bangs another rock in front of her, and a breath hisses through her teeth.
She hurtles onward, a little shakier than before. Leonette and I both redouble our efforts to strip her of her momentary lead.
Whistles that sound more taunting than encouraging carry from the crowd. The energetic shouts of our audience are melding together into a blur of sound beneath the thudding of my pulse in my ears.
The rock-smothered path swerves once more, and all three of us falter at the sight of what lies ahead.
We’ve reached the outer walls of the palace grounds. The stone barrier looms up in some fifteen feet of layered blocks of limestone, unbroken other than a small doorway off to the side where palace staff are ushering the nobles farther along the course.
That’s not what unnerves me. Our route itself soars right up over the wall: a precipice of wood, stone, and glinting chunks of metal that rises twice as high as the wall itself.
We’re meant to climb right over.
My jaw has gone slack, but I can’t afford to let nerves take over for more than an instant. I charge toward the slope, already seeking out the handholds in the mottled surface.
I grasp one wooden protrusion and another, hauling myself up the steep incline. Then my hand starts to close around a spike of metal.
The sharp edge pricks my fingers. I jerk them away before the spike can pierce my flesh.
All right, I can’t climb with absolutely reckless speed.
As I take a closer look at each outcropping before reaching out, Leonette hefts herself past me, her gaze intent on the top of our perilous bridge. Fausta clambers at her heels, but my quick peek her way shows her porcelain face has turned even more wan.
Is she tiring? My own lungs are burning from the strain of the race, and I have no idea how much more the emperor and his heir intend to put us through.
As we pull ourselves higher than the level of the treetops, a wind whips over us that feels totally natural. If Bastien is still watching after all, I can’t imagine he’d think the warbling gust would help me.
I clutch the protrusions harder and keep heaving myself up. Fausta lets out a faint squeak beside me, her hair billowing with the breeze, but I don’t even look at her.
As we come up on the peak, the gaps between the handholds lengthen. I have to stretch my arm to reach the next, my pulse hammering even harder.
Then, just inches from the wooden knob I’m gripping, a chunk falls out of the edge of the slope and plummets. A crash reaches my ears when it hits the ground .
Fuck. We’re running out of time.
Leonette clambers even faster with a deftness I have to respect. As I scramble after her, I notice Fausta’s arm shaking as she snatches at an outcropping over her head.
In her haste, she clamps her fingers around one of the sharp metal shards. A yelp breaks from her throat.
I can’t help glancing over at my rival. Blood smears across the artificial slope as she scrabbles for other purchase.
Her pupils have blown wide with panic, her sallow forehead shining with sweat.
Leonette’s blue-clothed form vanishes over the peak. Another piece of the precipice breaks away from the edge nearest to Fausta. I shove myself higher, my legs trembling with the effort.
Fausta’s breaths follow me, turning more ragged by the second with a hint of a whimper.
Was she hurt that badly? She’s never let much distress show before, even when we had to handle those scorching-hot serving dishes.
I grasp the top of the makeshift bridge. At a glimpse of the other side, my stomach lurches.
The structure descends just as steeply there, down toward the rocky terrain along the shore of the broad river.
I’m just swinging my leg over the peak, which is barely as wide as my palm, when the entire precipice shudders.
More chunks tumble away from the edges—including a slab of wood beneath one of Fausta’s feet. She swings to the side with a shriek of pure terror.
I expect her to yank herself closer to the middle with her arms and the foot that’s still braced on another protrusion, but she freezes in place. When I hesitate, peering down at her, her limbs look as if they’ve locked up against the steep slope .
Blood seeps from her cut hand over the stone knob it’s wrapped around. Her eyes have squeezed closed, her breath coming in tiny hitches.
She is terrified.
Wouldn’t it be quite the joke if the woman who’s fought so hard to reach the loftiest position in the realms is afraid of heights?
It might be, but as I look at her, I can’t find any humor in the thought. Nothing remains of the woman who challenged me so boldly in the hunched, quivering figure clinging to the precipice.
She is still just a woman. Just a human being caught up in the machinations of the court, in a world that told her she had to prove her worth with the connections she could forge and the favors she could curry.
She fought me to win. She fought me because the alternative was death . And the ones who threw us into this lethal conflict, the sadistic emperor and his equally merciless heir, are the only real villains.
No matter what Fausta’s done to me in the past, nothing about this moment feels right. Tarquin has finally succeeded in knocking the fierceness out of her. He’s found a way to break her just like he’s broken so many others before, here and all across the continent.
With a rush of anguish, I extend my arm toward the other woman. “I’ll help you away from the edge. You have to keep moving before it breaks more.”
Fausta’s eyes crack open to stare at me. She sputters a laugh, but it sounds more pathetic than mocking.
She hesitates for a few seconds, obviously reluctant to trust me. Whatever she sees in my face must convince her that I mean it .
Or maybe she realizes she can’t get much worse off than she currently is.
She shifts her weight and leans toward me.
Our fingertips are just an inch apart when the slope lurches with another quake.
Fausta could still make it. One heave toward me, and I could grasp her arm, haul her out of the way.
But panic grips her with a flinch that sets her off-balance. She teeters and freezes up, her expression blanking and a whine spilling from her lips. Her other foot slips off into the air.
With the jerk of her full weight, her wounded hand slides from its blood-slick hold. She swings toward the edge. The snap of the impact shocks apart the fingers still clutching on.
Her fingernails rasp against the crumbling wood for an instant before her body tumbles away from me.