Chapter 39
39
A storm was coming, and because of that, food was being restricted in Ashguard. The island was preparing for something, it seemed. I overheard the servants chatter that the prisoners weren’t receiving their normal rations of food at the prison over breakfast in the palace—where we had plenty of food.
After I was escorted back to my chambers, I decided I was tired of being holed up in Saltspire while my friends starved in the prison.
The servants and guards were distracted, boarding up windows and running around to stoke fires in all of the royals’ rooms to keep them warm, tending to those who had traveled to the Saltspire Palace from allied kingdoms across the seas. They were too busy to see me, the King’s favored and the supposed Siphon from the prophecy, as I ducked through the halls and out through the servants’ hallways.
There was enough chaos to allow me to slip out unnoticed into the windy afternoon, the sky darkened with clouds heavy, full of unshed rain. I darted along the treeline with a pack I had filled with cloaks, blankets, and all of the food I could take from the kitchens.
I hid in a bush as the King’s guard walked by, eager to return to the palace and swap out for another patrol as the temperatures dropped.
So eager that they barely pretended to scan the path ahead and behind them.
I made my way to the metal doors that protruded from the dirt that led down into Ashguard. The guards were gone, and I was hidden under cloud cover as the afternoon began to turn to an early night.
As I placed a hand on the cool metal handle to wrench open the doors, I heard a rustle in the forest behind me.
I froze, slowly turning my gaze to the dark trees and bushes behind me.
Nothing. Or, nothing that was willing to show itself.
I took a breath and yanked open the door, dropping inside the stairwell and closing it as quietly as I could.
The chill of the prison cut through my bones as I descended into the heart of Ashguard. After being away for a few days, I had forgotten how the dank, musty smell of the prison reeked of despair and loneliness.
I had an idea of where Rachelle’s cell was, and when I reached the fourth floor of the silo, I began to weave through the dark cells, guessing that with the strength of her power, she wasn’t on the lower levels. With so many already killed in the trials so far, the cell blocks were mostly empty.
I had covered most of the wing that I knew Rachelle to be in when I heard a soft sobbing in one of the cells to my left. I slowed to a stop, peering through the dark lit by a single torch. There, crying in her cell, was the fire sprite, Priscilla. She rocked back and forth on the stone floor of her cell.
I took a step toward the cell, and she raised her tear-stained face.
“Here,” I said, reaching into my pack and handing her one of the cloaks followed by a loaf of soft bread and fresh apples from the palace.
She took the cloak, draping it over herself, and ripped off a piece of bread, shoving it into her mouth. “Why?” she asked, her mouth full.
“I…” I searched for a reason. Why was I feeding my competition? But I couldn’t really come up with a reason other than… “I wanted to.”
The fire sprite gulped down the bread she was chewing and reached out a slender hand through the bars. “I’m Priscilla.”
“Saffron,” I said, shaking her hand. I had known her name, but maybe she had written me off before learning mine.
“I remember you from the earlier trials,” she said.
“I do, too,” I said softly. “Where’s your sister?” I asked, looking around to the other cells around her.
Priscilla wiped away some of her tears. “When we both got captured, I knew only one of us would make it. I just had hoped it would have been her. So I wouldn’t have to be left carrying the loss.”
Her twin sister . The two fire sprites had been inseparable until the second trial, when only Priscilla had returned.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Priscilla smiled sadly. “I’m sorry for all of our losses. The fourth trial is soon, right?”
My breath caught in my throat. I knew it was coming, I just didn’t know when. “Yes. I’m here to visit Rachelle and Callum. Do you know where they’re being held?”
“Yes,” Priscilla said, and gave me directions to both of their cells.
I thanked Priscilla and rose, feeling so weary and heavy. I was so tired of death, of the fighting that tried to turn us against each other.
I wouldn’t let it. Not until my dying breath in this arena.
I finally made it to Rachelle’s cell. Before I could even approach, I heard her humming some sort of sea shanty, and when I arrived, I saw her stretching into a backbend. She swiveled her head, seeing me and jumping to her feet with an incredible agility.
“Saffron!” she said, jumping to the bars. “You’re here.” She wrinkled her nose. “Why?”
I laughed, and handed her a heavy wool cloak and a paper bag of food. “The palace had pastries?—”
“NO!” Rachelle gasped, and snatched the bag out of my hands so hard she almost tore it. “You didn’t!”
I smiled as she shoved a tart in her mouth and her eyes rolled back in her head. “Better than sex.” But as the dim, flickering torch light hit her face, I saw that she had a black eye.
“Rachelle, your eye,” I said, stepping forward to her cell.
She tossed her hair. “Don’t worry, I won.”
“Are the prisoners fighting?”
She shrugged, a little too nonchalant in her dismissal. “Everyone’s getting antsy as we start to get closer to the end, that’s all.”
Guilt twisted in my gut. “I should be down here with you?—”
“No,” Rachelle said, her tone hard. “You’ve got too much to worry about.”
“I met Leah,” I said softly, keeping my voice down.
Rachelle’s eyes widened. “Leah’s… here?”
“You didn’t know?”
Rachelle’s bottom lip trembled slightly. “She shouldn’t be here. She should be back with our people. Back at sea.”
“At sea?”
Rachelle wiped a stray tear on the back of her arm. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth before. I’m from the Kingdom of Tidereign. I gave up a life of living in underwater palaces for land the moment I realized that I was a shifter and I could grow legs.”
I stared at her. “You don’t normally have legs?”
“I normally have a tail, actually,” she said. “But the legs are my most used form, so I can keep them even with these on.” Rachelle held up her iron bands. “My power, just like yours, can divert the iron cuffs just enough. But Leah… she would only be here to try and help me. Keep her safe, okay? And far away from the fighting?”
“I will,” I promised.
Rachelle nodded. “She was never supposed to be dragged into all of this.”
“None of us should have been,” I said, sighing, and then stilled at the sound of guards’ footsteps. Rachelle and I tensed, waiting for them to grow closer…
…but the footsteps and the voices passed the hallway adjacent to the one I was in, and they faded.
“I’ve got to go find Callum,” I whispered, tossing the pack back over my shoulder.
“Stay safe,” Rachelle said. “He should be two blocks over.” I nodded as I darted down the hallway, waiting at every hallway intersection to listen for guards.
I slipped past the second cell block to find Callum pacing in his cell.
“Callum,” I said, and I ran to the bars.
His face lit up, so boyish and youthful as he looked me. “You’re alive.”
“I am. I brought things for you.” I handed him the bag of food and the extra cloak I had packed just in case.
He took them, setting them down on his cot before turning to me and taking my hands through the bars. “I have something for you as well.”
I felt him place a small round object in my right palm. I took it, and withdrew my other hand to pry it open.
Inside the case was a single white pill.
“You should have a choice in what happens to you,” Callum said softly as horror dripped through my veins.
“This is…”
“A fast-acting poison pill. Now that the King knows what you are, there’s no telling what ways he’ll seek to use you and your powers. I wanted you to have a choice.”
I shivered, the poison pill seeming to sear into my flesh as I closed the case and pocketed it in my cloak with a shivering hand. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t force out a thank you .
“Is everything okay up there?” he asked
I swallowed, remembering the other reason why I had come to see him. “The King had me take Tristen’s powers and search his mind for information about the rebels. And in his memory, I saw the day that Riverleaf was attacked. It looked like it was Luminaria forces who torched our village, not the rebels.”
Callum’s expression was unreadable. “Of course he made it look like that. Because it wasn’t the King’s men, it was rebels dressed like the Luminaria army.”
But the pieces didn’t add up. “In his memory, Tristen was fighting to save the villagers. The Luminaria men were attacking him. If they were rebels, wouldn’t they have recognized Tristen as the Shadowfire Assassin and helped him?”
Callum gripped the bars of his cell with white knuckles. “He’s poisoning your mind, Saffron. You can’t let him win.”
“Win what?” I asked. “What exactly awaits the winner at the end of all this?”
Callum hung his head. “I don’t know.”
My head spun as I wove through the forest’s edge as the winds whipped around me. I snuck through the garden entry to the palace, the large windows already boarded up in preparation for the coming storm.
Guards were placing sandbags at some of the doors, moving furniture, and ordering the handmaids around. It wasn’t hard for me to slip through the servants’ hallways and wind the way I came back up to my room, which had been left laughably unguarded.
I slipped inside my room, closing the door behind me.
“Have a nice date?”
I whirled to see Tristen lounging on my bed, one head propped up by his elbow.
I flushed. “What are you doing here?”
“You left. I was curious where you went.”
“I went to visit Rachelle,” I said, crossing to the hooks by the fireplace, going to hang up my now empty bag.
“No one else?”
“No,” I said. Tristen raised an eyebrow. Annoyed, I hung up my cloak with a flourish, but in doing so, the small container I had stashed in my cloak pocket went skittering across the floor.
Before I could blink, Tristen was on his feet, crouching down to pick it up.
I stepped toward him, but he grew angry, cold. “What is this?”
He opened it, and my heart skipped a beat.
“Callum wanted to give me a choice,” I said.
Tristen’s face turned icy. “Death is not a choice, Saffron. You are no powerless maiden. You do not bake bread for villagers. You fight . You fight for your people. You fight for the good of the continent. You fight for the good of our world. You do not choose death for yourself.”
Before I could protest, he tossed it in the fire, and it went up in a quick puff of smoke and crackle of fire.
“Get out,” I said through gritted teeth.
Tristen stepped closer to me. “Now that your easy way out has been eliminated, are you sure you don’t want to hear what I know about the next trial?”
I sighed, and sat at the small loveseat at the foot of the bed, crossing my arms. “Fine.”
Tristen settled beside me. He faced me as one arm rested on the top of the couch, and there wasn’t much space between us. I felt a pull within me to move closer to him, but I resisted it. “How much do you know about mermaids?”
I stilled, thinking about Rachelle and her and Leah’s secret of their lineage. “A little,” I said. I hadn’t read much about them in the library, only that they had once ruled a great underwater kingdom. “Some of them are shifters?”
“That’s right. But most of them are monstrous creatures of the deep. They’re territorial and can rip apart any being with their sharp teeth. They covet a variety of shiny, beautiful things, and love to make deals that will result in being able to chew on your eyeballs.”
“They sound like nice company.”
“Good, because the fourth trial starts tonight. And you need to figure out whose power you’re about to steal, because you can’t swim and I can almost guarantee you this trial is underwater.”
My blood ran cold. Beyond the stone walls of my room, I could hear the howling of the wind as the storm continued to grow in intensity. “The trial is tonight?”
“Yes. I overheard the King talking to his advisors, mentioning that there were sightings of the mer-people on the shores. They must be involved somehow—my guess is that the island summoned them to be the arbiters of this next trial—especially if this storm is any indication of an upheaval in the seas.”
“What do I need to know about them?”
“The Cimmerian Sea is known for its creatures who covet what does not belong to them. They will try to make a bargain with you. Don’t take it.”
“But I can’t swim. You’re sure?”
“I am. If there’s anyone who has powers that might help you?—”
“I can think of someone,” I replied. If Leah was Rachelle’s sister…
“You should take this.” Tristen handed me a single iron spike, sharpened at the tip. “Some of the creatures of the deep can’t be killed with a blade. The iron will help. You have my dagger still?”
“No, the guards took it from me.”
Tristen pulled out another dagger from his boot and handed it to me with its sheath.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I have plenty where that came from,” he said, but his eyes were humorless, his jokes flat.
“Of course you do,” I said, curious just how many weapons he had managed to keep hidden on him.
Voices and the sound of boots sounded in the hall. “You should go,” I said. Just as the words left my mouth, the door opened and Leah slipped in, holding a small golden shell.
Tristen raised an eyebrow, but Leah just stared him down in her deadpan way. “You can stay and keep secrets, or you can leave,” she said.
Tristen leaned back, crossing an arm. “I can keep a secret. And Saffron can, too.”
Leah’s gaze swung to me. I sighed. “He can stay.”
Leah stepped forward, holding the small golden shell to me. It was ridged and textured yet smooth to the touch. I turned it around in my palm, feeling its cool weight.
“If you need help from my people, open this shell underwater and think of the message you wish to send through the tides.”
I took it from her. “Thank you. Rachelle told me—about where you come from. Do you miss it?”
Leah’s expression softened. “I look forward to returning home with my sister when I’m able to save her from these trials.”
“Thank you,” I said, holding up the shell.
But Leah was already holding up another small bag I hadn’t seen her bring into the room. “I also have this, which you should put on now to make sure it fits.”
She withdrew a shimmering black bodysuit, made of some sort of stretchy black material that had a slight iridescent glow as if it were made from scales.
“This will help keep your core body temperature as close to normal as possible when you’re underwater.”
“It’s stunning,” I said, taking it from her and feeling the durable yet silky texture of the thing.
Leah nodded to the small divider, and I ducked behind it to change. Moments later, I stepped out wearing the bodysuit.
Tristen’s eyes flickered in surprise—and then shifted into something a bit more coveting as he took in what I was wearing. “Impressive,” he said with a whistle, his voice low and rough.
“It is,” I said as I stepped in front of the mirror, Leah fussing over me and checking the fit. The bodysuit clung to all of the right places of my body, highlighting my feminine curves. It was dark but shone just slightly, tossing a rainbow glow onto my face that reached my bright blue eyes. Wearing it made me feel as warm as if I were standing right next to a roaring fire.
“How does it feel?” Leah asked.
“It’s perfect.”
“Agreed,” Tristen said, stepping forward, barely able to keep his eyes off of me. “Leah, you mentioned you were a shifter? There’s one more thing Saffron could borrow from you.”
The guards came for me half an hour later. The fourth trial was here, and I was fully decked out in my bodysuit and a pair of skintight boots, with some hidden daggers strapped to my body in clever pockets and sheaths that had been fastened into the suit.
Before the first three trials, I had felt cold terror. Now, all I felt was a blunt uneasiness. A small improvement marked by more time spent training. Or were my emotions reduced to this numbness after the constant threat of death? I wasn’t sure, but I tried to keep my mind clear as I was led out of the palace, past the gardens, and up a steep hill to a cliff overlooking the rocky ocean below.
The other prisoners were already gathered, some of them shaking and cold in the wind as the eye of the storm approached. There were less than ten of us left, our numbers severely whittled down after the last trial and the encounters with The Foggy Forest.
I smiled as I saw Callum, Rachelle, and the fire sprite, Priscilla, wearing the cloaks I had snuck out for them.
King West stood flanked by several royal guards, wearing thick furs as a fire wielder kneeled by his side, keeping the King warm with continuous burning fire from his hands. Behind King West stood his court, also dressed in warm furs.
I was the last to arrive, and I stood next to Rachelle. Her eyes glittered as she took in the King and his court. A promise of death in them.
King West just looked on at us, and addressed his court.
“We are here to bear witness not only to the competitors who still remain, but also to see the word of the gods be fulfilled. Step forward, my favored, and be recognized as the one who will fulfill the prophecy.”
Murmurs rippled as I realized I was the one he was talking about. Eyes pivoted to me, and I took a tiny step forward, trying to keep my head high as King West’s court watched me.
King West grinned. “May Illumia be with you,” he said to all of us—but his gaze was only on me.
Then, an unnatural, magic-scented gust of wind struck us, lifting each of us off our feet as our iron bands dropped to the ground.
In one powerful gust, we were blown off the side of the cliff and toward the roaring ocean waves and sharp rocks below.