Chapter 20 - Trew #2
A scaled creature slithered up behind him. It wrapped around his legs and pulled him down, snapping his neck with one twist. People moved forward to remove the body as the beast rejoined the others.
The last recruit, an older woman with steel-gray hair and wearing a torn blue tunic and dark pants, remained in place, studying the beasts with a calculating eye.
A creature nearly three times her size, with iridescent white fur and a segmented tail with a spike on each tip, approached her.
The woman knelt, her hands trembling, and the bond formed between them.
She left the arena with her new companion, her back straight despite the lines of exhaustion on her face.
I watched each bonding and each death with a tight jaw, keeping my face carefully blank. Every loss felt like a personal failure. These were my people, and we needed every one of them to fight the Skathes.
But the ancient laws could not be broken. This went beyond even my role as Syllavar’s king. The beasts chose who lived and died. They decided if there would be a bond.
Not I.
“Too many lost this year,” Grayson said, his voice barely carrying over the murmur of the crowd.
My throat tightened, and I didn’t speak. What was there to say? The wasteland continued to spread, the Skathes multiplied, and our numbers diminished with each passing season. We needed every magic-wielder we could find, yet the beasts remained as selective as ever.
The third group entered and departed, all finding bonds.
By the seventh group, the crowd no longer gasped at each death.
Yet when the eighth and final group entered, whispers rippled through the stands.
“Six survived?” Coralee turned to me, surprise flashing across her usually impassive face. “No other group had that many survivors. This hasn’t happened in a long time.”
Grayson nodded, leaning closer to her. “The tall blonde in the center played a large role in their survival. I watched parts of the trial through my owl’s eyes. She has remarkable instincts. And the older man, the former commander, he’s—”
I didn’t hear the rest of his assessment. My entire focus narrowed to the woman walking into the arena.
Isi.
My chest tightened, my breath catching as if I’d taken a blow.
The sounds of the arena dimmed to nothing, leaving only the heavy thrum of my pulse in my ears.
Dirt streaked her face, and scratches marred her cheeks, but she moved with a regal bearing that even days trapped within the Rite of Bonds couldn’t strip away.
Every time I looked at her, I remembered the vow I’d made not to care.
And every time, I failed.
They entered as a unit, moving together with the synchronicity that came from facing death side by side. Their torn, sweat-streaked clothing hung on their frames, and dirt and weariness coated their faces, but they stood tall. Unified. They wouldn’t have survived if they hadn’t been.
Isi walked in the center of the group, her golden braid swinging across her back.
I’d commissioned that armor to keep her alive.
I hadn’t expected to notice how it hugged her body in a way that made my throat go dry.
Looking at her face didn’t help. Even streaked with dirt, she seemed to catch the light.
I couldn’t forget the silky feel of her hair that night I’d slipped the herbs into her pocket.
She shouldn’t have survived. And yet...here she was.
The beasts stirred. The female great cat watched from her position near the wall, her copper eyes passing across one recruit after another before drifting away.
A dragon with scales the color of twilight leaped off the floor and flew at the group.
They shuddered but remained in place. The large male landed delicately on the stones and lowered its massive head toward Lexie.
She gasped but then grinned, looking at Isi, who nudged her forward.
When Lexie touched the beast’s lowered snout, the air shimmered around them.
Shouts rang out from those watching, some smiling and nudging each other. Remembering the moment when they bonded too.
After striding around to the side of the dragon with joy transfusing her face, Lexie stopped by the dragon’s left forelimb.
The beast dropped onto his belly, and she scampered up his leg and leaped, landing squarely on his back.
After she’d settled between the beast’s spine spikes, the dragon erupted from the floor, his wings snapping out.
He soared up and through the open ceiling hatch.
The crowd cheered, their voices echoing off the crystal walls.
Maddox stepped forward, pretty much swaggering out into the center of the arena. He stopped, his posture defiant, as if he was daring any beast to approach him. To accept him or kill him.
The audience tensed, a few covering their eyes with their hands, others leaning forward in horrified anticipation.
A hybrid creature with the body of a mountain cat and the head of a direwolf eyed him warily before leaving the group to circle him. This species was notoriously selective, rarely bonding more than once in a generation.
Kira stiffened, an almost gleeful expression on her face. She enjoyed watching the fatal side of the selection process a bit too much.
The wolf-cat stopped in front of Maddox and bowed its head.
As gasps echoed through the arena, including one from Grayson on my left, their bond formed.
His fist lifted, Maddox rode the creature from the arena to well-wishes from the crowd.
Derren, Lexie’s muscular boyfriend, stepped forward, his sharp gaze scanning the beasts.
A towering black bull with molten cracks across its horns snorted and approached him.
Steam rose from its nostrils as it lowered its huge head.
Derren placed his palm between the bull’s eyes, and the air shimmered around them as the bond solidified. The bull led him from the arena.
Kerralyn, the scholar with the journal, drew the attention of a serpentine avian half the size of a dragon. It swooped down from where it had been hovering above and landed in front of her with a graceful flutter of scaled wings.
The creature’s rows of intelligent black eyes assessed every detail of the woman before it tipped its head back and shot flames toward the roof of the arena.
Kerralyn reached out, barely touching its brow, and the bond formed around them. She walked beside it from the arena, already deep in conversation with her new companion.
Only Bryson, the former commander, and Isi remained. Bryson whispered something to her, his face creased with concern. She nodded, and he squeezed her shoulder before stepping forward.
A thickly furred, antlered bear strode over to him, studying the man with ancient eyes.
They regarded each other for a long moment, silent understanding passing between them.
Then Bryson placed his hand on the creature’s massive forehead, and the bond locked into place.
The bear nudged him with his snout, and they left the arena together.
The crowd murmured in growing astonishment.
“Will all six bond?”
“It’s impossible!”
Isi remained partway across the arena, studying the beasts who watched her in return. This went on long enough that people started shifting in their seats.
“Is she being rejected?” someone whispered nearby.
“It could be too late. These beasts may not want her.”
I scanned the assembled creatures, my pulse throbbing in my throat.
The female firecat no longer stood by the wall. She’d vanished.
I stiffened against the pang in my chest. It didn’t matter. I’d been wrong about—
A flicker of movement at the far end of the arena caught my eye, near the shadowed gate. Tiny. Likely a scrap of fabric caught in a breeze.
My mouth curved in a slow, slick smile. Heat surged beneath my skin, a rush of something dangerously close to exhilaration. I dug my fingers into the stone armrests and made myself loosen my grip before someone noticed.
I glanced toward Isi.
Our gazes locked across the arena, the distance between us collapsing until it felt as though we stood chest to chest. Recognition passed between us, a shared secret that neither of us had chosen but both understood.
Her eyes held mine, daring me to blink first, to look away from what we both knew was inevitable.
The challenge in her gaze sent a jolt through me that was half irritation, half something I could not deny.
I didn’t care who was watching. I didn’t care about duty or kingdoms or the wasteland creeping closer. All I cared about was the woman standing in my arena, the one who refused to be cowed, the one who’d survived despite the odds.
The one who belonged here, whether either of us wanted it or not.