31. You’ve got to be kidding me
YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME
ENORA
While I was a strong swimmer, I also knew firsthand how dangerous mountain water was—the way it held your body in the grip of its frigid claws; the way it stole the air from every crevice of your lungs; the way it made your heart stammer.
The frosty wind whipping off the surface of the lake and making my entire body tense served as a clear enough reminder of what was to come.
Sheets of ice drifted across the lake, swathes of white across water of such a crystalline shade, it was mesmerizing. I would’ve appreciated it longer, if not for the view it granted me of my final lantern.
At the furthest side of the basin, tucked at the very bottom, was a stone archway. The lantern was suspended beneath it like a blot of navy ink against glass.
There was no putting off the inevitable any longer.
The first piece of ice took my weight with a slight groan of protest, and I eased my way across its deceptively slick surface with deliberate steps.
Even though I knew I wasn’t in any rush, I had to stop there and remind myself to take a few deep breaths for good measure.
A slight leap carried me to a second section, then to a third, sending my stomach a little farther up my throat, with each slippery landing step jarring my already tense spine.
Halfway across the fourth and most sprawling section, a groan overtook the sound of my blood rushing through my ears, and the ice segments shifted a little too quickly.
As if to say, Fuck You Enora, they all pulled back towards the starting shore and brought me with them, leaving me floundering my arms like a baby bird in a panicked attempt to steady my balance.
My strategy of working across the ice as far as I could and only diving in when I had no other choice vacated quickly.
“Fuck me,” I sighed.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I took a deep breath, stepped off the edge of the ice shelf, and plunged into the lake.
The frigid water sliced into every inch of me like a thousand knives and forced all the air from my lungs as I slipped just below the surface. Despite the tension that grabbed my muscles immediately, threatening to cramp my limbs into uselessness, I forced myself into movement.
Short sweeps at first, just to breach the surface and carry me almost no distance at all, as I took the most controlled breaths I could, working my lungs back up to capacity. With how deep the lantern was, I’d need as much air as I could hold to get there and back.
From above, I must’ve looked like an injured frog as I fought across the frigid lake in short bursts, but I wasn’t worried about a critique of my form.
As if any of the spectators could’ve handled seconds in this frigid water without panicking right to a watery grave, with the weight of their soaked clothing pulling at them and every muscle in their body fighting them.
Even with how thin the fabric of my training layers were, it felt like I had another body wrapped around mine, fighting every movement I made.
When I was finally close enough to the submerged arch to ease a sliver of my internal protest, I tipped my face up and forced three painfully deep breaths in and out of my lungs. Against the chatter of my teeth, I held the fourth breath and sank under the water.
To my disappointment, but not surprise, the biting temperature only worsened as each flutter of my feet drove me deeper into the lake.
The light dimmed a little too, filling my periphery with pressing darkness, but my eyes were fixed on that damned lantern.
When I made it to the stone archway, crumbling and littered with carved runes, my lungs gave their first flicker of protest—a wisp of an ache that told me to get my ass moving.
My numb fingers fumbled a bit with the latch to free the lantern, but I got the damned thing in my hand and kicked with absolute fury for the surface.
CRACK.
Above me, the sheets shifted in a violent wave. Pieces crashed into each other, pulling in from all directions, and I realized too slowly what was happening. The light beyond the surface of the water clouded over, and my heart slammed against my ribs.
Solid ice. No opening. No air.
I swam toward it anyway, slamming my hand against the unmovable ice as panic exploded through my chest. My field of vision was limited, but ice sprawled as far as I could see.
I struck the ice again. Again. Again.
It did not want to yield, but I was a far more stubborn creature.
If a massacring fire at the hand of my own damned brother hadn’t taken me out, neither would water so reminiscent of my home. My lungs screamed for air, and a wisp of darkness wavered on the edge of my eyes, but I put everything into punching the ice once more.
The water itself shuddered, and cracks spider-webbed out from my fist.
Dark spots in my eyes multiplied as I struck the ice again.
It gave way a little more, and on my next desperate hit, the cracks finally shattered through to the surface as something that couldn’t have been my failing body propelled me upwards.
Air slammed into my chest as I crested the water, fighting away chunks of ice and coughing violently enough to make my ribs ache.
“Fuck you,” I rasped at the lantern as I tossed it toward the shore, shattering it in the process and sending the last pillar of nytefire streaking up into the sky.
The stadium erupted.
Raucous applause broke out in the stadium like the boom of a violent storm, sending a wave rippling across the glacial lake.
Fickle fucking spectators.
They would’ve been just as ravenous to see me drown.
With the last dredges of my rapidly fleeting energy, I hauled my frozen body onto the surface of the ice and crawled across the last stretch to the rocky shore inch by goddess-damned inch.
My legs wanted nothing to do with supporting my weight and my soaked-through clothing, but I fought my way up, chest heaving, and staggered towards the exit platform.
The few steps up took a short eternity to climb, and I nearly lost my footing at the top when the arena shuddered again and a gust whipped around me.
When I braved a glance over my shoulder, the alpine landscape had vanished.
My clothing was still sopping wet, though, and my hands still dripped blood at my feet. Funny how the illusion couldn’t possibly extend to any of my comforts either, and I had a sinking feeling it was only going to get worse.
A woman I did not recognize emerged from the doors that led back into the arena’s underbelly.
A shifter, if I had to guess, based on her light-brown skin, copper hair, and cream-colored draped layers.
Most notably, she did not have the towel or change of clothes I really could’ve used at that moment.
“If you’ll just follow me, please.” She swept her hand back inside the doors, and it wasn’t like I had much choice but to follow her in as I tried to wring some of the ice water from my clothes and hair with little success.
We traveled a short distance down an uncomfortably narrow hall, filled only by the echo of our footsteps, before spilling out into a common area. The woman veered to the right, cast a glance back to make sure I was still following her, and slipped through a small side door.
Before I’d even fully crossed through the threshold behind her, the ever-comforting sound of dry heaving greeted me.
Not just from a single poor soul, either.
The modest, infirmary-staged room had a row of small cots spaced out along its far wall, and close to half were occupied by other water-logged contestants with their heads in buckets or curled up on their sides.
No one looked in my direction.
Another cot was set in the center of the room, a small table beside it, and I was getting more confused by the minute.
I leaned against the wall to give my ardently protesting legs a break and shot a glance over at the woman who’d led me in, but she was standing with her hands clasped behind her back and her attention set on the floor.
As I opened my mouth to ask her what in the hell we were doing, the door swung open and left me even more confused.
Malakai, the shifter lord, strode in, looking every bit the arrogant ass I was learning he was after only a handful of interactions.
The longest was in the aftermath of the shifter incident in Embervale, when I’d never been both insulted and thanked so many times in a single conversation.
In his hand were three tiny, rounded bottles, all corked and with papers tied to them, and a fresh wave of unease bloomed in my stomach.
“My Lord,” the woman purred as she curtsied.
“Thank you, Sadie. As you were.” His pale-green eyes tracked her as she rose and hurried over to the ailing contestants. When his attention turned to me, I stiffened. “Miss Wynn. Lovely to see you again, and after such a triumph, too.”
“Save it.” I grasped my arms and squeezed them a little tighter to my body, but it did little good to stave off the shivers wracking my body. “What are we doing in here?”
Malakai’s eyebrows climbed, and he let out a quiet huff. “Your second trial, of course. Sit, please.”
There was no way he’d just said that.
I blinked between him and the cot he was gesturing me toward. “Excuse me?”
He smiled, placing the three bottles on the small table and motioning at me again. “You were told you’d be assessed on your knowledge, yes?”
“Of course I was.” I hadn’t moved an inch from the wall. “But we just…”
Malakai’s predatory grin only grew, as if he realized what I had pieced together.
I’d just run a goddess-damned trial that left me exhausted and freezing, with more wounds on my hands and bruises on my body than I could count, and now, my knowledge was going to be tested under the weight of that all.
I should’ve fucking known this would happen.
Moisture vacated my mouth entirely as I fought down a lump in my throat and took uneasy steps towards the cot. It gave a protesting groan as I sank onto its surface and covered up my shaky exhale.