Chapter 1 #3
He might be bigger, but I’m quicker, especially without armor.
I roll out of the way, and then my blade is through his shin, my superior metal going right through his, reaching bone, and he roars.
The rest of the Enders turn our way, allowing a crop of other competitors to make it through unharmed, including a girl with a whisp of red hair. Cheers erupt across the crowd.
Pagnus turns, eyes wide and gleaming with fury, his blade coming back around.
I haven’t injured him enough. Too late. I drag my dagger from his leg and throw myself through the air.
Time stands still as I soar, waiting to feel his metal through my skin.
The sun seems to wink at me, blocking my vision. My muscles clench as I brace myself.
My spine hits the hot stone. It burns through my shirt, but I barely register the heat; my every sense narrowed to the blade still hurtling toward my face.
It isn’t Starside steel, bronze is the lesser of even the mortal high metals, but with Pagnus’s strength, it might as well be.
There’s no time to move. All I can do is stare at the sword that’s about to cut right through my skull.
I’m on the stone. I’m on the stone. Any pride melts into panic as the bronze doesn’t slow in the slightest. We’re supposed to be safe here, under the king’s protection.
Pagnus is in full view of the Watchman. He’ll be disqualified. Or maybe he won’t.
Maybe the same rules don’t apply to him. Maybe he knows it. The fear of that bleeds through my chest as I brace myself for the death that already seems promised.
His blade stops just an inch from my face.
He snarls like a beast and says, “I’ll see you in the Culling.”
Then he steps up next to me on the platform.
Eighth scream.
Three minutes. I made it with three minutes to spare.
My ears ring. My heart batters my ribs. All I want to do is take a fucking breath, but I crawl away as fast as I can, knees nearly buckling as I finally get to my feet. I bolt to the center, next to the girl with red hair that nearly camouflages the copious amount of blood spurting from her skull.
She turns to me and smiles. I must look horrified, because she just shrugs. “I’m fine. Lovely eyes, by the way. Reminds me of home.” She extends her hand. “Kira, from Brambleside.”
It’s a town at the westernmost tip of Stormside, along the sea. As far as I know, there isn’t any magic left there. At least we still have the dregs of what once was, in the east. The farther west you go, the less you find.
The Culling hasn’t even started. To be among the Fifty, I might have to kill her.
Still, I find myself taking her hand. Shaking it. Saying in a voice eroded by relief and exhaustion, “I’m Aris. From Silverside.”
Her smile falters. Her green eyes widen. Shit. This exact reaction is why I haven’t told anyone where I’m from for years. Not that many have cared enough to ask.
I’m the blacksmith’s apprentice. Unworthy of notice. I don’t really know why I share the truth of my origins with her now.
“I didn’t know anyone survived from there,” she finally says.
If I forgot for a moment why I’m here today, this reminder slams into my very marrow. A blinding rage flares in my chest, a fire that burns brighter than the one crackling just feet away. “Most didn’t.”
Ninth screech.
Just two minutes left. Volunteers are starting to get desperate. Sloppy. Launching right toward the king’s guards, only to be slain and thrown into the fire.
Tenth scream.
Just one minute left.
Bellows, cries, and shouts of celebration reach a fever pitch. The guards grow in their brutality, reveling in the bloodshed, not stopping, even when the person is clearly incapacitated. Only two more make it through, and both are injured.
I can almost feel the seconds counting down, tension rising like the smothering heat of the flames.
Last chance. Someone makes a jump for it, but they’re pulled back by the hair, and slaughtered.
No one else tries. And now there isn’t any time left.
Sun beating against the crown of my head, I turn and watch the silver hawk open its mouth one final time.
But the cry dies in its throat.
And, as if their screams have been ripped away by a brutal wind, the crowd suddenly goes silent.
“No,” Kira whispers beside me.
No is right.
No. Fucking. Way.
The very people who tried to kill me now scuttle back in fear. They don’t just lower their weapons. The crowd fully parts down the center, making a path straight to the platform.
And a towering knight steps forward. A black hood and silver mask hide his face.
Not that it matters. We all know who he is, and what he’s done.
His silver armor is unmarred, because no one has ever gotten close to killing him. The only skin visible is his hands, white as bone. Thin, inky markings bleed across his knuckles and curl down each of his fingers.
He looks like a demon.
An enormous sword is tucked behind his shoulder. As he walks, his steps assured and almost casual, the slightest strip of silver is visible between the hilt and scabbard.
Sparkling, otherworldly silver, like melted-down stars.
Starside steel. An entire sword of it. It makes my own blade look like a toy.
His is the only one currently claimed this side of the gates.
Ancient, powerful swords choose their wielder.
This one chose a man who parts an entire bloodthirsty crowd with just his reputation.
Harlan Raker, head of the king’s guard. The most famed knight on Stormside.
A man infamous for lacking mercy. I should know. I begged him for it, and he remained as cold as he is now as he studies the challengers. As he studies me. I can’t see his face, but I can practically feel his notice. His disdain. By the set of his wide shoulders, he seems unimpressed. Bored.
Just feet away from the platform, Raker suddenly stops. Even the flames seem to still. He looks around, muscles taut for the first time, and I can almost imagine his eyes glimmering beneath that hood, just like my blade did, as if daring someone to come forward. As if hungry for bloodshed.
I almost wish for it, just to see that magnificent sword unsheathed.
But no one moves a muscle. All the guards bow their heads, staggering back. He steps onto the platform, unchallenged.
The hawk finally completes its final cry.
Murmurs spread through the crowd like wildfire.
Why would the head of the king’s guard risk the quest across Starside?
Lesser members of the guard have before, but never their leaders.
They already have what so many challengers want—a home, food, riches, glory.
The king gives them all they could ever need.
Still … I suppose there are things even the most powerful person on this side can’t give.
The Questral is a journey across Starside, to the Land of the Gods, to claim a goblet of magic.
Everyone has their reason for going. Drops of magic can be used for medicine, or sold for riches, or—if an entire cup is swallowed—turn a human into an immortal. If they survive the Turn, that is. More often than not, humans don’t, so most challengers don’t risk it.
No, if a Questral challenger actually returns victorious, they come back heroes, and relish every drop, spreading their magic over decades. Entire villages have been pulled out of poverty by a cup of magic—their residents live in splendor while the rest of us starve and steal to get by.
Most of the Fifty never return at all.
Stellan did—but with an empty chalice. All he had to show for his journey was the sparkling metal that made the dagger I now hold tightly in my palm.
People hated him, and questioned him, and so he became a pariah.
He moved, but his reputation followed. The only reason he has any work at all is because his skills are undeniable.
Still, he lives with little, when he could have returned with the wealth of the king.
I’ve always wondered why. I’ve asked him, of course, more times than I can count.
He’s never answered.
Kira jumps as the hawk unfurls its wings in a flash of silver. According to the Watchman, there are two hundred and twenty-six of us on the stone.
The ones who didn’t make it are strewn throughout the crowd, dead or dying. Their blood has turned the dirt into mud. Lesser members of the king’s guard start to throw the bodies into the flames beside us.
The man I cut down is one of them.
Bile crawls up my throat again as the fire rages.
Memories flash, choking me. I want to look away—I want to run.
I want to sink to my knees and retch. But I can’t be seen as weak.
Not now, when the competition has hardly begun.
I force myself to stand and watch as skin and bone and the flames themselves become nothing but heaps of ash.
The Watchman drags a bucket through the cinder.
One by one, he steps in front of each of the survivors—now, Questral challengers. I stand straight, gaze locked with Stellan’s, sweat spilling down my back, cursing all the fabric I’m forced to wear, until the Watchman finally reaches me.
“Will you participate in the Culling?” he says for the fifty-seventh time.
Stellan is still in view off to the side. This is my last chance to back out. My last chance to step off the platform and return to the forge. There’s work waiting for me. There’s dinner to be made.
His eyes are pleading. Don’t do this, they seem to say. Say no.
I break our gaze and say, “Yes.”
The major dips his hand into the bucket. His hot, sweaty thumb makes an arc across my brow, a crown of ash.
“In the name of the gods,” he says.
“In the name of the gods,” I answer.
He moves on.
And I look up at the sky. Right at those gods. I wonder if they can sense the fury in my bones meeting the heat of hope—boiling metal hardening into steel. A sword of vengeance being forged within me.
This is truly in your name, I think. This is for you.
Because I’m not going to Starside to get magic, or to kneel before our beloved gods.
I’m going to kill them.