Chapter 13
13
T he other prisoners scrambled for the edges of the throne room. Even Ajax couldn’t get away from the creature fast enough.
“I’m—I’m not—you can’t be,” I stammered.
My double just cocked its head, grinning as her blonde curls—identical to mine—tumbled down a shoulder. She even wore the same dress as me, but there was something evil in her eyes. The snakes and the slithering shadows still followed her like a whispering fog.
“What’s the matter, Saffron?” My double continued to make her way across the throne room to me, where I struggled to stay upright. “Don’t tell me you’re surprised to see me?”
I stumbled back, gripping the edge of the throne. One of Ajax’s men, who had been standing by the throne, wet himself and whimpered, running to hide behind a stone column.
My double turned and frowned. With a flick of her wrist, the column exploded . The man shrieked, covered in blood. My double rolled her eyes. She raised her hand, summoning a jeweled dagger from her shadows—and tossed it across the room, slicing him through his throat and cutting off his gurgled scream.
I did my best to stand upright by the throne, trying to keep my double from seeing my weakness. “You’re only supposed to challenge the most powerful. You’ve picked wrong. I have no power.”
A slow smile crept across my double’s face, and she didn’t slow her pace as she reached the stone steps and began climbing the dais toward me. Slow, measured, terrifying steps. “Oh, dear Saffron. Is that what you believe?”
The creature’s rancid smell flooded my nostrils, and this time I couldn’t help it—I doubled over and hurled my guts up at the feet of the throne.
“Haven’t you learned by now? Your fear will destroy you and everyone you love,” my double chided, leaning down as she finally reached me, her icy hand reaching out to caress my cheek and push away some of the blood-stained locks of hair out of my face as I panted. “Why do you believe what everyone tells you? Didn’t he tell you to trust no one?”
“It’s a bad habit,” I choked out.
I tried to pull myself to my feet, but my double just grabbed the back of my dress and threw me across the room. I cried out as I tumbled across the cold obsidian floor at the center of the throne room. A squelch of blood ripped from my wound at my thigh, and my whole body felt heavy.
Up. I had to get up again.
“Did you really think you could win these trials?” my double taunted, once again strolling back to me. “The Isle of Embermere created The Ash Trials to produce heroes . Those who can conquer their fear long enough to win battles and wars.”
I raised my head, placing my hands beneath me. I pushed, but couldn’t lift myself. I had to get up. Had to get to my feet. I wouldn’t die on the floor, not like this. I scanned the room and saw that my sword was discarded on one of the steps leading up to the throne, its pointed end facing me, but it was so far away…
“I’m not weak,” I said, coughing on some blood in my mouth that I turned to spit out.
Suddenly, my double appeared in front of me, grabbing my jaw with a strong hand. Her glittering blue eyes— my eyes, but these were so filled with malice—pierced my soul. She yanked me to a kneeling position, and my traitorous body let out a whimper of pain.
“You’re not going to win. Give up now and I’ll make your death quick.”
Out from one murderer’s hands and into another. Once again, I was facing my death. Once again, I was facing the depths of my weakness. Rachelle wasn’t coming to save me. Callum wasn’t coming to save me. Even Tristen with his stupid smirk wasn’t coming to save me.
But I refused to let my death be one of weakness.
“You’re pathetic,” my double said, sneering down at me.
“Go to hell,” I said.
In that moment, my rage boiled something within me. Something that was beginning to overflow. It started as a whisper beneath my skin, a flutter of molecules rearranging themselves like stars finding new constellations. Then came the pull, deep in my marrow, as if every atom of my being suddenly remembered a dance it was meant to perform. My body buzzed with an ancient undercurrent, a power older than memory surging through pathways I never knew existed.
Time fractured. The energy within me coiled tight, compressing against my bones until my fingers trembled with the weight of it. I raised my arms—not in surrender, but in recognition of something burning through my blood that demanded to be set free.
For a split second, I saw everything with impossible clarity. Dust particles stood suspended in space. The pulse of my own frightened heart painted patterns behind my eyes.
Then the power broke through, erupting through my body, not like an explosion, but like the first breath after nearly drowning.
Out from my crossed arms, a blast of bright blue light exploded into the throne room.
A shield.
Callum’s shield.
A shrieking noise sounded and was cut short—and as my ability to hold myself up flowed out of me, I fell to the ground.
I raised my head to see that my double had been impaled on my forgotten sword. Right through its heart. Callum’s shield had tossed my double right in the pathway of the Bluesteel Blade, ensuring her death.
Oh, thank God. Callum had come to save me. My vision continued to blur and eddy around me, and I felt myself being pulled back to reality, pieces of myself splintering like I had seen happen to Tristen and Rachelle.
But as I looked around the throne room, each shocked face was a mirror reflecting back something I wasn't able see, the truth assembling in my mind like pieces of broken glass being glued back together.
Callum was not here.
I had wielded his shield... without him.
The darkness pulled me under as I was whisked away from the second trial—I had won, but I couldn’t understand how it had happened.