Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
“Well now, this is an encouraging sign, isn’t it?”
I startle awake at the sound of Gareth’s voice. It takes me a moment to orient myself; I’ve spent the past hour caught somewhere between dreaming and waking, convinced I must have been imagining the strange world around me.
But no, I’m actually here—resting against the side of a dragon, trapped in the shadow of the Mouren Palace, still wearing the dirty clothes I fell asleep in during my impromptu visit to the arena last night.
I scramble away from Blight, combing my fingers through my hair and rubbing my eyes, trying to make myself look somewhat more presentable as I stand to face Gareth.
“You two must be getting closer if you’re cuddling up to sleep together,” he comments.
“Or maybe I was just exhausted,” I mutter with a yawn.
He turns away, his reply more to himself than me. “Yesterday was an exhausting day…and night…for many of us.”
“For you too, huh?”
“Yes.” He doesn’t elaborate on his absence, or on anything that happened—nothing about the business in Dunnal that I heard the king mention. My mind spins with questions, but I know he won’t answer them now; he’s always pure business at the start of any given training session.
I stretch and move a bit, and it’s then that I notice the trial taking shape around me—at least twenty stone-faced soldiers are arranged strategically along the length of the arena. Every one of them is armed with a bow, full quivers ready at their hips.
I swallow a groan.
Gareth clearly has no intentions of going easy on me, regardless of what kind of terrible night either of us just endured.
“A firing squad?” I joke, scanning the line of archers. “Does this mean you’ve officially run out of patience with me?”
“They’re blunt-tipped arrows.” He rolls the tension from his neck and shoulders. “Well, most of them, anyway.”
“…Most of them?”
He shrugs. “If you avoid them all, you won’t have to worry about the ones that aren’t blunt.”
I exhale a long, slow breath, trying to keep my pulse even.
Make progress, or your friend is doomed.
Kestrel’s words have haunted me since she spoke them yesterday evening. Repeating them to myself gives me the courage to scan the arena again, to prepare myself and start making a plan. Whatever Gareth throws at me…I can do this.
I have to do this.
There are barricades set up between the archers, as well as sections where the arena’s sand has been purposefully scraped or built-up, creating uneven terrain.
It’s a whole damn obstacle course. I have no idea how I slept through all of this being set up; I must have been even more exhausted than I realized—or maybe it was the odd, otherworldly warmth that surrounds Blight, making me sink into a deeper slumber.
Gareth is busy arming himself with his favorite practice sword, clearly intending to be another obstacle. “Here’s your task,” he says, casually lifting the heavy wooden sword, pointing toward the far end of the arena. “Make it to the top of that platform without dying.”
Said platform is two stories up, with temporary steps erected before it—extremely narrow, rickety looking steps. It won’t be easy finding my footing on them. Especially not with one eye…and while being mercilessly bombarded with arrows.
The number of archers is even greater than I first realized, too; there are more stationed in the tiered viewing areas above us. So they can fire at me from every direction, all at once.
I know why Gareth is doing this: He’s once again exploiting my weakness, my lack of full vision.
When it’s only a single projectile or two, I can usually rely on my agility training, on my hearing and on my other senses, to dodge things.
I’ve learned how to pick off enemies as well, to isolate my battles so I’m not surrounded.
And I rarely engage in any sort of sustained combat without someone—usually Briar—to watch my blindside.
But this…this will require me to be aware of far too many things at once. It’s perfectly constructed chaos. My worst nightmare. A weakness that I can’t overcome through sheer stubbornness alone.
Not that I don’t plan on trying.
“Ready?” Gareth asks.
I'm not. But I nod anyway.
“Begin.”
The first volley comes the instant I break into a run, arrows whistling through the air from at least six different directions. I dodge left, duck low, feel one graze my shoulder as I sprint toward the closest barricade. My heart is already hammering, adrenaline sharpening my focus.
I can do this.
I have to do this.
Another volley. I throw myself behind the wooden barricade, wincing at the sound of arrows thudding into it a breath later. I risk a glance around the edge, and I notice several archers trying to reload at once, leaving a clear path to the next barrier if I move now.
I run.
I make it half the distance before something slams between my shoulder blades, hard enough to knock the wind from my lungs. An arrow from somewhere up above. It’s blunt, but it still fucking hurts. I stumble forward, forcing myself to keep moving, because stopping just means getting hit again.
Gareth appears from nowhere, his practice sword swinging toward my legs. I leap over it—barely—and an arrow catches me in the thigh mid-jump. Blunt again, but the sting radiates through my entire leg, numbing it and nearly making it crumple beneath me.
I grit my teeth and keep running despite my tingling, wobbly leg. I just have to make it across this open stretch, then I can catch my breath—
Three arrows hit me in rapid succession. Ribs, shoulder, hip. The one that glances across my hip doesn’t feel blunt; it tears through my clothing and leaves a strip of white-hot agony in its wake. The pain is enough to finally bring me to my knees.
“Again,” Gareth calls the instant I hit the ground, pointing me back to where I started.
Cursing, I push myself up. Blood is slowly soaking my hip, oozing down my leg. Every breath sends pain lancing through my ribs.
“Again,” I agree, walking stiffly back to the other end of the arena.
Blight lets out a low, uncertain growl.
I nearly glance her way. Whether to tell her to be quiet, or to reassure her that I’m fine—I’m not sure.
Then Gareth says, “You’re useless without the dragon. Why can’t you just admit it?”
Stubbornness flares anew in my heart. I ignore Blight’s continued growling as I brace myself for my second attempt.
This attempt doesn’t go much better than the first.
I make it farther—almost to the steps—before an arrow I never saw coming slams into the side of my face. Blunt, but it still splits my lips, and suddenly I'm on the ground again, the world spinning, warm blood trickling down my chin.
“Again,” Gareth barks.
I stagger upright and prepare to start yet again, not hesitating long enough to let any negative commentary in—either from myself or him.
I’m vaguely aware of Blight pacing anxiously in the background, of her chains dragging and rattling.
I still don’t look at her; I have enough obstacles to confuse me as it is.
I try a different route this time, moving faster, more erratically than before. Chaos to match the chaos that’s being thrown at me.
But speed without accuracy is useless; in my wild haste, I misjudge the distance between myself and one of the wooden fences, and I end up clipping the edge of that barricade at the exact moment an arrow catches me in the throat.
My sprint turns into a crooked stumble, then a hard crash that has me skidding several feet through the dark sand. More arrows follow me down, pelting my body and the ground all around me until Gareth finally holds up his hand and makes them stop.
My hand shakes as I press it to my neck.
My eyes water. It feels like my throat is caving in—like I can’t possibly take another breath—but I can’t stop the sob of frustration that rips out of me, nor the sharp, excruciating inhale that follows.
The pain is so intense I end up curled into a ball against the coarse sand.
And for the first time since I stepped foot in this palace, I truly want to quit.
I want to curl up tighter and tighter until I disappear, until I’m nothing but another bloodstain left behind by the Mouren crown.
Through the ringing in my ears, I hear Blight's distressed growling. It soon turns into a roar, and even though some quiet part of me knows it isn’t out of aggression, that it’s actually a cry of concern, and for me, at that…it doesn’t matter.
It still triggers the familiar, nightmarish memories.
I’m still back there for a moment, doubled over on the ground of my burning city, screaming as my life is ripped apart and burned to ashes.
Get up, I tell myself. Get up, get up, get up.
Gareth comes closer. I see his shadow overtaking me, though it takes my dazed mind a moment to realize who he is, to bring me back to the present.
I don’t know why I stand up to face him again.
Maybe it’s just what I do, at this point.
I’ve been knocked down so many times, kicked and beaten within an inch of my life so often that it feels almost routine.
And there have been so many times when I probably should have just stayed down, should have saved myself the pain that comes with trying and failing over and over and over again.
The pain, and the humiliation of knowing I’m not good enough to fix things, to rise above my circumstances, and that I’ll never, ever be good enough.
Gods, it would be easier to just stay down.
Instead, I rise on shaking legs, spitting out a mouthful of blood, and I whisper, “Again.”
Gareth hesitates, eyeing my bruised throat, my bloodied mouth.
“Again,” I snarl.
He nods me toward the starting point.
I don’t remember much of my fourth attempt.
I only know it ends with pain, with me dragging myself back to the beginning yet again, and then a cruel realization: I'm probably going to die here.