Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Iwanted to scream.
A nauseating mixture of anger and bloodcurdling fear rose up my throat, turning my tongue to lead so I couldn't utter so much as a whisper.
All I could do was stare with the rest of the kingdom at the trembling servant and the beaming king who stood beside her.
I'm going to kill him.
My feet moved on their own, but I only made it a half step forward before the wild buzzing on my finger made me pause. I tore my gaze away from Mara, catching Atlas’s stern glare from across the crowd.
“No.”
He tapped the word over and over again, warning me not to let my emotions take charge. I glanced back at my guard, who was still watching me, then bit my lip, forcing my legs to stay still despite my urge to run over and hang the king on his own crown. That was exactly what he wanted.
The king’s smile pierced through the crowd, making my veins curl.
He wants me to act out. He's baiting me.
The crowd didn't welcome Mara nearly as warmly as the rest of the contestants. Hearing the name Ivalon spoken so clearly seemed to leave the audience stunned, but once they saw the pitiful girl representing the kingdom, the heckling broke out in full force.
They laughed, hurled insults, and held nothing back as they degraded the girl in red. Mara looked like she was on the verge of tears, her eyes wide and hands clutched to her chest as she jumped back to avoid being spat on.
It made me sick to watch. That was my servant they were insulting, my friend…
My kingdom.
I looked down at my blue sash with murderous disdain. The king hadn’t dressed me in blue to avoid addressing Ivalon; he’d done it to turn Ivalon against me.
The servants who had offered me silent loyalty from the edges of the room now looked as disgusted as I felt. They couldn't tear their eyes away from Mara, from her red sash…Mara was clearly marked as one of them, so what did that make me?
I hated blue.
The crowd finally died down as the king moved toward Mara. A hush fell over the room, chilling my blood as he stood behind Mara and placed a spindly hand on her shoulder. She visibly winced, and I felt the urge to shudder with her.
“Now, now, let’s welcome our final participant,” King Septimus scolded the crowd in a soft tone that was somehow twice as intimidating.
“I, for one, am delighted to have Lady Mara join us. After all, every competition needs an underdog, just as much as they need a champion.” He squeezed her shoulder and Mara gasped softly, catching my eyes from across the room.
Her fear tormented me. She had put her faith in me as her princess, and now she was pleading for help from the enemy’s clutches.
She's going to lose.
She was barely literate and didn't possess any of the essential skills needed to survive among nobility. It was painfully obvious that she was destined to die—that is, unless someone fell behind her and took last place.
It all made sense now. The rule about last place, the way he’d disassociated me from Ivalon only to introduce Mara…
If I win, Mara dies, and Ivalon will watch me sacrifice one of my own. I could only win Aemastia at the cost of Ivalon.
But he didn't want me to win.
“Now that our competitors are all present, let’s not let the excitement die down so soon.” The steward regained the crowd’s attention, reminding us all that we were in the midst of a grander event. “Competitors, you will each be handed a journal by your guard; in it is your first test.”
Already?
The guard thrust a leather-bound journal in front of my face, nearly stabbing me with a graphite pencil as he shoved it in my hand.
“You have ten minutes to complete it, starting now,” the steward said, not giving us even a second to comprehend that the challenge was beginning. “Everyone else, please enjoy the show as you see fit; distractions are perfectly acceptable.”
The other girls started opening their journals, but I was barely keeping a hold on mine.
This was all happening too fast. Mara seemed equally frazzled, dropping her pencil through her shaky fingers.
She scrambled to pick it back up, and the crowd laughed at her fumble.
A few spectators circled around me, and the pressure compelled me to open my journal and look inside.
Math equations?
Rows of math problems lined the page, the scattered numbers tangling into my frantic thoughts and jumping off the page. I had thought I was prepared for this challenge, but Mara’s surprise entrance had killed my ability to think.
I stared dumbfounded at the equations, trying to calm my thoughts for even half a second so I could read through the first one.
Come on, it's math. You're supposed to be good at this.
Except I wasn't capable of the impossible, and right now I couldn't read a single number while all I heard was laughter coming from Mara's direction. I looked back over at her, my heart twisting as I saw sweat bead across her forehead and drip down her scar.
Could she even count high enough to know where to start? I knew she could read and write, but I had never asked her what level of education she had. Could she multiply? Or at least add?
The sound of scratching pencils echoed around the room, and I looked around to see the other competitors writing out answers in their journals—even Mara was marking in hers at this point. I was the only one who hadn't started.
What should I do? Rush through a few problems? Or should I leave it blank so Mara didn’t get last place?
The first problem wasn't on the paper, but heavens, it was a monster to solve…
At some point, an hourglass had been placed in the center of the room, sand flowing into the bottom to mark the time that had already passed. It had only been two minutes at most, but each grain of sand mattered when I was wasting them so foolishly.
“Why isn’t she writing?” one of the noble ladies whispered a little too loudly as she watched me. “She can read, can’t she?”
“Of course she can; she’s an honorary Aemastian,” a man said in a rather prickly tone. “The king wouldn’t appoint her as such if she couldn’t read and write.”
“We know she’s at least a capable fighter,” another shrill voice chimed in. I couldn’t see who was speaking anymore—they were all just a blur of jewels, feathers, and silk. “Let’s see if this honorary Aemastian can wield a quill as well as she can a sword.”
Their comments muddled together, and I found it easier to avoid their scathing eyes as anger blinded my own view. Mara had a similar, though much smaller, crowd hovering around her. But there was one vicious spectator who had chosen to watch from directly over her shoulder.
Mara looked ready to faint, her quill clutched in a white-knuckled grasp as King Septimus kindly watched her work from six inches behind her.
I nearly snapped my pencil in two, only stopping when I caught the corner of the king’s beady eyes.
He wasn’t obvious about it, but he was definitely keeping an eye on me, tracking every nerve he struck so he knew how to snap it again.
Hatred wasn’t a strong enough word for what I was feeling, but I bit my tongue before it could test out any replacements.
The sand continued to trickle down. I was letting my time slip away.
He wanted nothing more than to emotionally uproot me so he could thrust me into a game requiring a level of focus I couldn’t muster.
Clever.
It was a masterful attack, one that nearly did me in, but I couldn’t give him the first victory. There was more at stake here than just Mara’s life.
Cedric caught my eyes next, his calm assurance steadying my fury and reminding me of what I needed to do. He knew more than anyone how suited I was to handle this challenge. It was time for me to prove that I could run with the wolves.
“Forgive me, Mara,” I whispered to myself, blocking out all the distractions around me as I let the first problem finally come into view. “I’ll figure out how to save you later, I promise.”
First, I need to counter the king’s attack.
I solved the first problem.