Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Three trials.
Three deadly games.
They are supposed to represent the journey of the fae king through the worlds, his origin, and his story of conquest and glory, one trial for each element he had to conquer, fight, and defeat.
Hideous creature.
He crossed over here three hundred years ago, while the world was reeling from the impact of the last Reversal which sent it upside down, killed most of the human, finnfolk and animal population and destroyed everything in its wake.
My point is… He’s old. I imagine him ugly as a frog, bent and decaying, surrounded by his lackeys and physicians. An overgrown baby, wrinkled and gray like the lesser faeries roaming the land—his creatures, brought along together with his High Fae, the nobility of his race, from his home world.
I barely slept a wink all night. Every creak, every noise had me on high alert. I wish I could have slept and rested, but despite the exhaustion, I stayed curled up, gazing at the Sea Palace and the Pillar. The music stopped as the sky turned an ash-gray in the early morning hours, and most of the lights were extinguished, except for those on the top floor of the palace.
Now I’m standing at the prow and imagine the old king there, gazing at the Pillar, like me. Thinking of the games, like me.
But that’s where our common ground ends.
I’ll kill him and finish his dynasty, his empire of fear.
This is what I was reborn for.
What I was crafted for.
I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.
I’m strong?—
“You, human, get out of the way.” A burly guard shoves me aside, marching toward the prow. “Whoever thought that allowing you on this barge was a good idea?”
“Athdara’s orders,” another guard mutters, casting me dark looks. “Look at her, she’s a tiny thing. In that bedraggled dress, barefoot, with that unkempt white hair, it will be a miracle if the telchin doesn’t throw her back into the sea as fish fodder.”
Athdara. Who doubled the number of the sacrificial victims. So many lives will be on his conscience. Wait, he probably doesn’t have one.
Why am I so rattled? I knew he was bad news from the moment I first saw him. He’s the enemy, more tangible than the king. Just because he saved my life and bragged about it, too, and because Tru likes him…
“Expect to be tested by the priests before entering the palace,” someone says nearby. “Standard procedure, of course.”
“Of course,” a deep voice answers.
A familiar deep voice, and then a familiar tall shadow falls over me. I control my instinctive jerk back, lifting my head to glare at him.
Speak of the arrogant bastard, and he doth appear.
He’s standing against the slowly brightening sky, his powerful body cutting a dark and pleasing shape.
He isn’t wearing armor, I realize, only clothes. Leather pants tucked into tall boots, a loose shirt, and a cloak, all of it black, matching the wild black hair falling in his blazing eyes. I don’t know why, but I want to touch his hair, feel if it’s soft or wiry. From the way it curls against his pale neck, it looks softer than silk.
As the light behind him changes, brightening more, the dark whorls and blooms on his cheekbones look… metallic.
A trick of the light, I’m sure, but I frown when I realize I’ve been staring at him. I’m angry with him, and not only that, but a petty part of me had dictated I should appear disinterested to pay him back with the same coin he paid me.
“Rae,” he says, and the sound of my name on his lips jolts me. “You must be cold. Here.”
I can only blink at him as he takes his cloak off and drapes it over my shoulders. It’s so warm and soft inside, and it smells of him, smoke, and leather. I draw a deep breath as it settles over me.
Then I shrug it off with a jerk of my body and resume glaring at him. What am I doing? I can barely stand to look at him, and yet I can’t look away. Ugh! What is this weakness?
Does he think my memory is so thin, thin like a sieve, allowing the knowledge of who he is, as well as the hurt from his cruel words, to seep out?
“How is your arm?” he asks.
I don’t want your kindness , I mouth at him.
A wince tightens his features, gone in the next blink, shrugged off just as effectively as I shrugged off his cloak, and although I’m not easily cold, I long to pull it over my shoulders again.
I fight the urge.
This is the fae king’s right hand, the fae male who gathers up humans and throws them into cages, then makes sure they are delivered to the Death Games. I wonder what he does for the rest of the year. Snuffing out rebellions, I’ll bet. Snuffing out lives. Kicking puppies for fun.
He may be less of a monster than his king, but he’s a monster nevertheless, no matter how pretty.
His hands clench and unclench at his sides, reminding me of the blood dripping from his fingertips before.
“You know what torments him.”
When he glances up, I follow his gaze as if mesmerized and find the darakin hovering over us, shockingly close. It gleams in the early dawn, the light shining through the light gray membranous wings, playing on the white scales of its neck. Darakins have no crest, unlike the draks, but they do have spikes on their wings.
At least, I thought so, but this one doesn’t seem to have any…
“His coloring matches yours,” he says softly, and I find his dark gaze back on me. “White and gray. It’s as if he belongs with you.”
He? I form the word.
“It’s a male,” Athdara says.
I wish he’d go away. He’s distracting me from my focus on the imminent games. I press my hand against the skirt of my ruined dress to feel the dagger. Hard, cold iron.
Yet I want him to stay. I want to be distracted.
He’s a wedge in my concentration. With those thick dark brows and the sharp cut of his jaw, softened somewhat by the long-lashed eyes and full mouth, with the long neck, tousled dark hair, and powerful shoulders, he’s any girl’s dream.
And yet, for all that perfection, he seems half-shade, half-magic and power, all swagger and disdain. A fire elemental, dealing in smoke and shadows. It makes some sort of twisted sense, I think, that fire and shadows go hand-in-hand, though he seems more shade than light, more night than daylight.
Can you… talk to him? I tap my lips, my ear, and then point at the small dragon.
“Yes.”
That has to be beautiful, but then I remember how much I dislike this fae man, how dismally he’s treated me, and I look away.
“Listen,” he says softly. “And you may hear him, too.”
I shake my head and scoff, my gaze reluctantly returning to him. I’m not a dragon speaker. Why even try?
Something flashes through his dark eyes. Disappointment? “What happened to your voice?”
I shrug. With my toes, I poke at the cloak pooled around me, then bend and lift it up for him to take it.
He does, his mouth flattening.
The guards who fell asleep on the deck and inside the hold are stirring, murmurs and soft laughter wafting up to us. Standing here with Athdara, with the Pillar glowing and the water splashing against the barge, it’s hard to think this may well be the last day of my life.
To think of what lies ahead and how to beat the odds.
“Be careful during your stay here,” he eventually says, slinging the cloak over one broad shoulder. “Keep your head low and mingle with the other human nobles. Stay away from the sacrifices and the games, do you hear me?”
I show him my teeth.
And now he looks amused. He leans over me, his mouth tilting up on one side in a crooked smirk. “You may snarl all you want, but you don’t really hate me. You feel the tug, too.”
Keep dreaming , I think, and I hope he can read as much on my face. I feel no tug whatsoever. None.
“I’ve seen how you look at me,” he goes on. “Do you like what you see?”
By now, I’m spitting mad, because I do, damn him, and his little exchange with the darakin crushed my defenses. It takes a lot to keep his beauty from destroying me.
He nods as if confirming something to himself, and turns to go. He tosses over his shoulder, “I’m Jaien, by the way. My friends call me Jai.”
But we’re not friends.
And now is not the time to be anything other than enemies.
Jaien. Another word for obsidian. A name as dark as the black of his hair and eyes, like the black swirls staining his cheekbones and the skin under his eyes.
Jai.
“I can’t wait to see you get thrown into some dungeon to die.”
“You, a human, bedraggled and infested with lice and worms. With death.”
He said those things to me. And meant them.
Remember the coldness in his gaze , I tell myself, the disgust and disdain, remember the bite of his voice. Remember what he has done to this world.
So what if he gave you his cloak and his name later?
Patchwork has never fixed a hole in the weave. It simply covers it. He has been violent and aggressive, and I’m not falling for this act of feigned remorse. I’ve seen it before. It’s what gets girls into loveless, violent marriages and ends with their deaths.
A man—a fae—like Athdara can’t be trusted. Especially a fae who obviously has no heart. No conscience. No real feelings.
And I don’t want friends. Don’t need friends. This isn’t what I’m here for.
I rattle the pearls in my hidden pouch and pat my dagger. These are the tools I need.
If I manage to pass off as a highborn lady, a lady with a steel edge, and get into the palace, then I’ll stab deep and hard.
Not all ladies are made of cotton clouds and sugar.
The oarsmen take their places on the benches, and the captain shouts out orders. The guards line the barge once more, hefting their spears. Some, I realize, hold crossbows.
This is the last stretch, and our convoy separates from the carved, tall boats of the fae aristocracy quickly.
They are headed for the palace, while we are headed for the Temple Island that is connected to the palace with the arching bridge, the place where the human sacrifices are supposed to make their last landfall before the trials.
I hadn’t known that we’d be separated from the rest, though I should have seen it coming. Yes, I shouldn’t be on this barge, in this convoy, if I wanted to pass off as a lady and go directly to the palace.
But there’s still the bridge to the palace. So there’s still a chance to cross.
Follow the plan.
Don’t overthink it.
No watersprights attack us on the way, and we finally dock at the island, the tall boats rowing past us, the fae onboard them sneering as they overtake us.
A foretaste of what’s to come.
I think it, and yet don’t fully realize what it means— a foretaste —until our barge bumps against the dock, and the guards rush to get off.
As I gather myself together and step off the barge, I see that the guards are hurrying to form a circle on the paved ground.
And before I figure out what’s happening, before the formation sinks in, I’m swept along by a sudden, noisy little crowd—grabbing hands, jamming elbows, kicking feet. I find myself yards away from the boat already when I realize what happened: the cages were opened, and the human prisoners surged out onto the shore with cries and sobs.
Jostled and pushed, I hiss and kick and shove back, but it’s no use. I’m dragged along, tackled by the guards, herded toward one of the two-story buildings behind the docks.
It’s not until I’m thrown inside and I stumble and fall, until I find myself on my knees, pressed between a number of cold, smelly bodies, that I realize my pouch is missing. It must have fallen in the jostling and bustling that landed me here, on this hard floor.
The pearls are gone.
My stomach sinks to my toes.
This was my one chance to get to my goal without entering the games, to buy my way into the palace.
Evaporated. Done.
I draw a deep breath and pat my side some more, relieved to find my dagger still in its leather sheath hanging from my belt, hidden in the folds of my dress.
Calm yourself. It was probably meant to be. The chances of passing as a highborn human lady weren’t high. Being allowed in the king’s presence even less so.
Now the question is, how do I become part of the twenty-four sacrificial victims when right now there are twenty-five of us crammed inside this house?