NOW, THE BLOOD #2
The eagle barreled through the three walls, spluttering through the hole in its gullet.
Its body was a jumble of singed feathers and mangled wings, shuddering as it fought to breathe.
Bal stumbled sideways with the shock of being alive.
His sweat-slick hands throttled her sword, his strangling grip a fist around her ribs.
He dragged himself though the hole in the wall to the creature’s body.
A crooked smile contorted his face as he straddled the beast. With eyes sparking like wildfires, Bal stabbed Esme’s sword deep into the eagle’s chest.
He hacked until he’d laid bare the beast’s quivering heart, then carved it from its ribs. He was so steeped in blood that it dripped into his mouth. He worked up a glob of pinkish spit and shot it in the eagle’s cavernous chest.
“Let’s see you come back from that!” Bal heaved, finally releasing Esme’s shadow sword, which dissolved before it even clattered to the ground. Then he retrieved his original sword and set his sights on the passage in front of him.
To the south, the rat was but one whisker twitch away from its men.
They made a smart turn, cutting west. As the man who was not a man blazed through his last bit of the maze, he cut across the other group’s path.
The men gave each other quick nods as the man darted around the second-to-last curve between him and the middle of the maze.
The group, however, ran right into a dead end.
They tried to turn around, but the rat caged them in.
The beast’s tail lashed down on a competitor’s back.
It slashed open his skin, and he collapsed in the dirt, hiccupping in pain.
The lion tamer, now but one turn away from the center, stopped in place at the shrieks of terror one wall away.
He lurched toward the end of the maze just as the rat sank its teeth into another contestant’s shin.
The man stopped again, then sighed and raced back through the maze to where the rat was grabbing another victim for a mid-massacre snack.
When the man who was not a man stepped into the dead end, the crowd roared so loudly that Esme’s vision blurred.
The rodent spun around to face him. Bloodstained paws washed down its tapered face and it bunched up its body—a spring seconds from exploding.
The man set his hands on his hips and raised a brow, and though Esme wanted to call him crazy for mocking a man-eating rat, she also knew he wasn’t a man and so wasn’t much at risk.
The rodent sprang, and the “man” dodged just in time to grab the rat from its leap.
He maneuvered the monster’s squirming body over his head, and Esme’s own arms ached in sympathy.
Then he gritted his teeth and brought the rat down on his knee.
The creature’s back snapped loudly and it gave a garbled shriek that was cut off by a cough of blood.
The man dropped the animal in a sniveling lump.
The other men gaped at the man-shaped monster dusting his hands of rat dirt. He turned to them and whirled his finger, drawing something out on his hand. The men nodded numbly, staring, still, as he turned and jogged out of the dead end.
He was just one turn from the center of the maze.
Bal was the same, though he trudged through the sand with a weak leg, his arm cradled close to his chest. The men who’d been saved from the rat wandered the maze like tourists, obviously on their savior’s order.
Janos was the last man sprinting through his portion of the maze, one curve from the center.
The stallion on his heels had torn through the rest of his group, leaving their bodies in a bloody trail.
When Janos tried to go left, the horse cut him off and forced him right.
Right was the correct turn.
Esme thinned her eyes and looked at Isobel, only to find the queen grinning behind her wine glass. That horse was trained.
The three men broke into the center of the maze within a second of each other.
Esme finally remembered the platform, covered with a sheet and balanced on rickety wooden stakes over a stone pit with something inside it.
She heard water slithering over scales. What did Isobel intend to do with a fishing pond?
“Oh, delightful!” Isobel cut into the tension with her projection horn. “Heirs, you’ve finally made it to your second trial!”
Esme’s stomach churned. Were the animals not enough?
“Now, let us all settle.” Isobel’s eyes landed on Esme. “No need for any big moves until the trial is through.” The Bond’s claws squeezed Esme’s throat, even at the veiled command. She tried to move, but she was frozen inside of her body. No matter how her soul thrashed, she couldn’t lift a finger.
“Heirs,” Isobel purred before noticing the last man, notably not an heir. She didn’t address him any further than a dirty look. “To be king is not just to be fair and kind. It is to be decisive. To be cruel when necessary. Because it is always necessary.”
Esme’s blood froze in her veins. What was she doing?
Isobel snapped her fingers and the sheet over the platform was whipped off. Esme choked on a scream her throat refused to let escape.
From the platform, Mina blinked against the harsh sunlight, a strip of filthy cotton tied in her mouth and a pair of cuffs on her wrists.
She was wearing her work dress still. Her skin was caked in dirt, her hair a knotted mess around her.
She thrashed around on the platform, and Esme was suddenly so aware of the thinness of those planks under her, of the pouch tied below the platform to a slat of wood that, if yanked, would send Mina into the pool below.
She became aware, suddenly, of the sizzling snaps crackling up from that pit.
“The test is simple. The heir who claims the pouch hanging below that platform shall win this trial. He will also send the woman on the platform into the pit of Wyvern eels below. She will die,” Isobel announced, staring straight at Esme, each word stabbing deeper into the Wraith’s chest.
Esme wailed behind a locked mouth, but the screams only shredded her throat.
Every plea to her body to please, please, please move!
was met with the Bond’s mind-splitting pain ricocheting through her.
The harder she fought, the harsher it tortured her, until she could feel her dress stick to her back and sides, soaked with blood.
Mina wriggled on the platform to turn to her, eyes bleary and begging for her to do anything.
She’d always told Mina not to worry, that she’d handle everything. She’d go out and get her hands dirty. But Esme’s filth was never supposed to reach Mina.
And now it was slathered across her cheeks, streaked down her dress. It mucked her hair. This was Esme’s dirt. This was Esme’s fault.
Mina would die today, and it would be all Esme’s fault.
“Get to it, kinglings! If neither of you gets it, we’ll just have to drop her into the pit for no reason!” Isobel clapped, and Bal flinched. He stared at Mina with trembling eyes. Did he recognize Mina? Did he know? He had to.
He could save her. Bal could grab her off that platform and save her. He would. That was exactly the kind of thing he did. That was why he was good. He would save her because that’s who he was. That was who Esme had put her faith behind, who she’d lied for and cheated for and killed for.
Janos’s attention whipped from his aunt to Mina. He backed up into a curve of the maze only for the stallion to push him back into the center.
The magic man found Esme again. She screamed for him, for Bal—fuck, for Janos, even—for anyone to save Mina.
But—
But if Bal got that pouch…
…he’d be king.
And Mina would be dead.
No matter who won today, Esme would lose.
Bal was the first the sink into his lunge, and the man followed him.
Janos hunched to his knees, seemingly just because the other two did.
There was no way to tell who would go for what, and Esme’s shadows were deaf to her screams. She was powerless.
Whatever those men decided to do would ruin her life forever.
Ojalla, if you’re still listening—
The men set out from their crouches into a sprint. Esme tried to pry her fingers from the railing they clenched, but her body refused to obey. Blood soaked through the front of her dress as the Bond tortured her for her useless tearing at its chains.
Ojalla, I know I haven’t spoken to you in so long—
All three of them, at the same time, moving through the air at half speed.
—and I’m sorry, but I need you to hear me—
Their fingers all touched the wood at once.
—I’ll do anything, please, whatever you want!—
With no hope of fixing this herself, Esme banged on the door of her goddess with her fists. She’d kick it down if she had to.
—Anything!—
One of them grabbed the pouch.
—Please!—
The man shouted something, and there was an explosion. Twisting fires ate through the platform and smoke swallowed the scene.
Esme didn’t know where it came from, but it threw everyone to the edge of the clearing.
A hole smoldered where the pit once was, pieces of eel and shards of stone blown into the stands.
The smoke and dust were blinding. Esme could only let it sting her eyes as it rolled past her. She had to find Mina.
Through the dust, she made out three figures: two normal-sized ones, and one large one—Janos and Bal, and the man, then. Mina had—
She’d—
Survived.