Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Jacinth
Hours spent wandering the Forest of Discontent left me just as damn discontent as it was.
I couldn’t make heads or tails of a direction, and having to run to dodge the mist anytime it came near left me wildly off course whenever I thought I was making some progress.
The creaking of branches in the wind, the snaps as they cracked, the animals scurrying around the forest floor, making bushes and dropped leaves sound about ten times more intimidating than they should be, all of it left me desperate to get out of this place and back to the palace.
I was clearly getting soft. Ula would kill me if she could see me now. A few weeks in a nice palace and suddenly I couldn’t rough it anymore.
It was a good reminder, at least. All of this was temporary, and once it was over, I would go back to living far away from the palaces and politics I was once meant for.
I arrived at an intersection with four different paths converging into a little clearing. I looked around, knowing that anything could be coming from the other directions, but I couldn’t see anything that stood out. I stepped a foot forward when the sudden sound of shuffling feet made me pause.
I slunk back behind a tree, watching to see who would emerge. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed; the lack of sun breaching the treetops made it impossible to track. It could have been any number of the ladies who went through the course after me.
I doubted anyone else was stupid enough to come in here. It wasn’t exactly a place people went for fun.
The footsteps slowed as they approached the clearing, and I was just able to make out the purple hair from where I was hiding. Amatista, then. She wasn’t the worst person to come across, at least. Had it been Zumra, I’d have run in the other direction.
Amatista came to a full stop, looking around the clearing. I hid further behind the tree since my hair was so brightly colored, and I didn’t exactly have a hood to cover it up. A sharp crack rang out, and I cursed silently, picking my foot up off the stick I’d broken.
Amatista’s head whipped toward me, and I sighed in defeat, slinking out from my hiding place. She looked me over with narrow eyes and a sharp eyebrow pitching upwards.
“Why were you hiding?” she asked suspiciously, and I appreciated that she wasn’t concealing it.
“I didn’t know who it was at first.” I defended, putting my hands on my hips. Alfrikr’s warnings about the cutthroat nature of this competition still rang in my ears, and this way, my hand was close enough to unsheathe my dagger if I needed to.
I was sure Zumra wanted to be queen desperately enough that she’d try to take me out at the first opportunity, but I had no idea about Amethyst’s competitor. She remained frustratingly elusive.
“Plus, I don’t exactly trust any of the ladies here,” I explained, watching her closely enough to see her lips twitch upwards before she straightened them.
“You do seem smarter than the others,” she said evenly, leaving me feeling vaguely insulted despite the seeming compliment.
“I certainly like to think so,” I responded, and got another almost-smile from her.
“We should go together.” She nodded, her tone decisive, as if she’d decided for both of us.
“And why would I go with you?” I asked her skeptically, internally weighing my options.
“Because two heads are better than one when it comes to getting out of here,” she argued, blinking as if shocked that I would argue.
“We’re both smart, and you’re different from the other ladies.
Take Zumra, for instance. We both know she’d step over us to get to the palace first. I’ve been watching everyone closely, and you don’t have the same entitlement the others do.
You befriended Faiza right away, despite many seeing her as the weak link due to her position.
So, I trust you to have my back should the need arise, and I’ll have yours in return. ”
“Why would you bother having my back when we’re supposed to be competing against one another?” I asked her more for clarification than for argument's sake. I didn’t see why she would trust me when logic said the opposite should be true.
She sighed, frustrated, as she ran a hand through her voluminous amethyst hair. Her tie had come loose at some point, leaving the purple waves to fall around her face and down past her shoulders.
“My father insisted I enter this stupid thing,” she admitted, looking down at the ground and avoiding my eyes. “I couldn’t tell him the truth.”
“The truth?” I questioned, my eyebrow raising.
“That I’m in love with someone else,” she said quietly, as if her father might hear her from here. “He wants to marry me off for the biggest advantage he can get.” She scoffed, shaking her head. “But I have no desire to win and be forced to marry High King Azurill.”
She smiled, her hands coming out and flipping to show me her palms. “So, you see? We have no real reason to have any enmity between us. We might as well help one another out of this damn forest. Despite my lack of desire to win, I do want to live.”
I couldn’t help cracking a smile at that and sighed in defeat, nodding my head in agreement. “Alright, any ideas then, Lady Amatista?”
“Please, call me Tista.” She smiled proudly, “And as a matter of fact, I do.”
“Okay, Tista,” I said, feeling a bit off balance to be seemingly making more friends among the nobles. More people who’d be hurt when this was all over. “What are you thinking?”
“I’ve been heading East for at least an hour, and this is the first intersection of its kind I’ve found,” she explained, grabbing a stick to begin sketching in the dirt. “I know the palace is Northeast, so I think if we veer North, we might have the best luck at finding a way out.”
My eyebrows flew upward, impressed by her navigational skills. I had no idea what direction the palace was from here. She was from Amethyst Court, though, known for its scholars, and she’d already proven at the talent competition that she had followed that pursuit avidly.
We began to turn Northeast when the hair on my arms stood on end. I paused, grabbing Amatista’s arm and bringing her to a halt.
“What?” she asked, looking around with alarm. “What’s wrong?”
I wasn’t sure what, but something was definitely wrong.
It was then I spotted it, spitting out a curse as the mist flooded through the trees, heading straight toward us.
The mist looked like regular fog, but I had no desire to find out exactly how it differed once you were inside of it.
So we immediately began running Northeast, hoping to outrun the swirling haze that seemed to be chasing us.
Amatista kept up with my fast pace admirably, only panting a bit and lagging a step or two behind.
Our heads were both constantly swiveling behind us to track the mist as we ran, branches and leaves swatting us in the face as we tried to keep heading in the right direction despite the mist trying to force us off the path as much as possible.
“Fuck,” I swore, watching the way the mist determinedly kept after us, sweeping over the forest in the exact direction we needed to continue in. It seemed to be speeding up too, and I knew with a certainty that I felt in my bones that we wouldn’t be able to avoid it swallowing us into its depths.
“It’s coming straight for us!” Amatista practically yelled, the sound of the mist surprisingly loud as it loomed closer. As if an unnatural tempest existed within it.
“We’re going to be swallowed in it!” I shouted back to her, a branch slapping against my thigh as I veered to the right. I swore as I stumbled, but kept on, not letting it slow me down further.
We both took deep breaths as the mist nipped at our heels, readying for whatever was about to come. With an almighty roar, the mist rolled over us, shrouding my vision in white and grey.
“Tista!” I yelled, my panic increasing with the lack of visibility.
“Still here!” she replied, her voice shaking a bit. I reached over to where her voice came from, finding her hand and interlocking our fingers.
“Hold on, and don’t let go,” I instructed her. Something about the fear in her voice made me determined to get her out of here.
The noise seemed to still for a moment, leaving us in a disturbing silence, like the eye of a storm. And then in a rush, the sound came back. Not just rushing wind, but a screeching sound that had me covering an ear with my free hand, hoping to dim the noise even the slightest bit.
“Jacinth!” Amatista called, her voice and hand both shaking equally.
“Keep running! We just need to outrun this and we’ll be fine!” I replied firmly, but not unkindly.
Only it was then it began, like it saw my determination as a dare.
The Forest of Discontent had earned its name, I thought ruefully, as branches and vines began snaking up from the ground, hitting my limbs with loud thwaps, digging into my skin with their thorns, and leaving trails of blood running down from the punctures.
I tried to keep running, but was yanked back by Amatista as she stopped moving. I turned to yell at her, only for her scream to ring out instead.
“Jacinth! It has me!” she cried, and dread pulsed through me.
“What do you mean?” I asked frantically, unable to see what was happening through the heavy fog.
“The vines wrapped around my ankles and won’t let go.” she replied shakily, and the tears breaking through her usually composed demeanor were all too obvious.
Before I could do anything, she was yanked away, my hand slipping from hers with the force of it.
Her cry of fear told me everything I needed to know: the forest was trying to take her.
I moved to help when a vine caught around my ankle.
I unsheathed my dagger quickly and sliced the damn thing.
It let out an unnatural screech but backed off, and I shivered in repulsion.
What the fuck kind of forest was this?
I rushed to catch up to Amatista, closing my eyes and focusing so I could listen closely.
I could hear the telltale sound of her being slowly dragged across the forest floor.
I ran forward, but I couldn’t see more than the slightest impression of her shape through the heavy mist that blanketed the ground like thick morning fog.
I brought my dagger down hard on the vines and branches digging into her, ripping them away from her.
After a few minutes of working away at them, she was finally released from the forest’s claws.
Her blood soaked my hands by the time I was done.
While it wouldn’t kill her, I’d feel much better if we got her to a healer sooner rather than later.
I knew potions weren’t permitted in the competition to prevent anyone from having an unfair advantage, but I resented that it now meant limping our way out with bloody wounds riddling our bodies.
Blood now coated my face, my legs, my arms, and even my back.
Amatista had it even worse. We needed to get out of here before the damn forest nicked something important and we bled out, capturing us permanently.
Erodite knows I refused to die at the whims of a damn insubstantial mist or a rogue branch.