11. Rorax
When the darkness was finally removed from Rorax’s eyes, she wanted blood. She felt a bit feral with how badly she wanted the men around her to die.
Two days.
Two fucking days they had kept a group of House of Dark soldiers constantly stationed on her.
From the moment she gained consciousness and had finally been able to crack open one crusty, swollen eyelid, at least one guard had been present at her side.
They had kept a thick, Dark Magick blindfold and ear coverings pressed against her eyes and ears, the darkness effectively blocking out all sights and sounds and dampening any ideas Rorax had of escape.
“Hello there.”
Rorax furiously tried to blink, ignoring the sting from her swollen, blood encrusted eyes, and attempted to comprehend who was speaking to her. Or anything going on around her.
She looked over her shoulder at the chains behind her back.
While she had been unconscious the soldiers had bound, loaded, then pinned her onto the back of a wooden cart.
Her hands had been shoved into two small spherical encasings made of iron. The spheres surrounded her hands and pinned them into fists, and the encasings had been clamped up high on her wrists to ensure they were out of range of her fingers.
Unfortunately, the encasings were very effective making it impossible for her to use her nails or fingers to claw her way out, or to pick the lock of the chains they’d wrapped around her.
The spherical encasings were connected behind her back by a short chain bolted down to a wooden seat. They were only unbolted when the six or seven soldiers who were her personal guard escorted her to the restroom.
Rorax’s bound ankles were also anchored to the floor, and she couldn’t move them more than an inch.
She felt her knife still resting in its sheath at her back, and it brought a sliver of comfort that the guards hadn’t found it and confiscated it. She blew a long strand of hair out of her face, squinting around as her eyes adjusted.
“Hello there,” the man repeated, and Rorax finally focused on him. Him. Singular. Only one of them was with her. She looked around wildly to double-check, but there was only one soldier remaining in the back of the cart with her now.
The guard they’d left with her had dark brown skin, with eyes the same color as the ocean. The black shield with a silver wolf embroidered onto the chest of his uniform confirmed that he was from the House of Dark.
Fucking fantastic.
The only other guard was the driver of the carriage.
At least he wouldn’t see his death coming.
“Here.” The guard in front of her leaned forward and quickly unhooked the gag in her mouth.
Rorax lunged forward, snapping her teeth at his throat; at the very least she could nip at his fingers. She would even bite his nose off if she was lucky enough.
The guard yelped, pulling his body away from her far enough that Rorax wouldn’t be able to get close enough to really draw blood. Her bound hands jerked her shoulders back, reminding her that she was still anchored to the seat.
Fucking fantastic.
She bared her teeth at the guard, listening to the metal of her chains clink together loudly. It would be the first kiss of luck she’d had in weeks if they were made of only iron.
Rorax lowered herself back down. The guard chuckled nervously before giving her a sad, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry ‘bout the chains. Guardian’s orders.”
Rorax bristled. If she could use her hands, feet, or even move forward more than a few worthless inches, she would beat that smile off his handsome face in the most brutal way possible.
“It’s nice to finally meet ya, Contestar. I’m Captain Lamonte.” The captain held a dark hand out to her before he seemed to realize her hands were encased in iron castings behind her back.
His hand dropped awkwardly back to his lap, and his friendly smile faltered for only a half second before it was back in full force.
Rorax narrowed her eyes and wet the inside of her mouth the best she could with her tongue before asking, “Where are we?”
Her voice was raspy, unused, and it made her throat ache. The captain must have understood her however, because he waved a hand to something over Rorax’s right shoulder. Her eyes followed to where he had gestured, and her stomach roiled.
K??n help her,she was going to throw up over the side of the cart.
A giant castle loomed overhead.
A familiar castle.
The Northern Castle.
The home of the Northern Guardian. The one place she had been actively avoiding for six months. They were here.
“Fuck,” Rorax hissed out from between her teeth, jerking against her immovable chains. She took inventory of where they were and what she could possibly use to escape.
She was in a nightmare.
They were in the middle of a long line of people pushing their way in and around the castle. Merchants with their own carts, people on horseback, even a few livestock pushed forward. She could see the flags of all twelve Realms attached to various carts or carried by countless soldiers or civilians.
Rorax hissed again as she took in more of the scene. Around the castle, the hundreds of yards of forest on each side had been cleared and now grew a carpet of freshly cut green grass.
Slowly that lush grass was disappearing though, under rows and rows of multicolored tents and throngs of people setting them up jovially. Tents and transportable buildings of every color and shape were slowly being erected on the grass around the castle, and people from every Realm in the country were already settling in, roasting pigs over the flames, laughing, and clinking their glasses together in . . . celebration.
They were happy.
Excited.
The sick feeling of unease and desperation in her stomach seemed so at odds with the throng’s easy joy.
“Have yeh ever been to a Choosin’ before? Ever been able to watch the Tournament of Houses?” Lamonte asked, resting his hands on his knees, and raising a dark eyebrow as he watched her, pulling her attention back to him.
“Never,” Rorax answered, her eye catching on a dark forest green flag with a silver Morningstar in the center that was being raised on a makeshift flagpole over a similarly colored green tent. The House of Alloy was here.
Rorax’s blood felt a few degrees cooler than it had before as the dark flag reached its full, glorious height and started flapping gently in the breeze.
“Pity that, lass.” Lamonte didn’t notice her growing unease, or he chose to ignore it, as he shook his head wistfully. “The people’ve been waitin’ a long time for you to show up. About six months I reckon. This gatherin’ will be the most fun the lot of us have seen since . . . well, since the last Choosin’, I suppose.”
Rorax flitted her eyes back to Lamonte and narrowed them as much as the swelling in her face would allow. His hands were still on his knees, relaxed, but a muscle in his cheek twitched under her scrutiny.
“Why are there so many guards in the trees?” she asked him, jerking her chin at the tree line over his shoulder. The Northern Castle was located in the middle of a red oak forest, and currently that forest near the tree line was teeming with soldiers, all in similar uniforms to Lamonte’s. They watched from the shade of the trees as the civilians set up their camps in front of them.
As Lamonte looked over his shoulder to what she was gesturing at, she used her ability to fling Glimr straight up into the air.
“Ah, noticed them, did ya?” Lamonte said, his focus returning to her. “Well, lass, they’re here for you.”
Rorax’s lips twitched in dark amusement, even as she sent her knife higher and higher into the sky. “Why?”
“The Guardian thinks you’ll be needin’ the extra protection . . . and the extra incentive to stay.” The captain shrugged.
Rorax tilted her head in agitation.
“Captain Lamonte,” Rorax purred, her voice straining just slightly with the effort it took to keep forcing her knife farther and farther into the sky. “Where is my comrade? And where are my weapons?”
“Your comrade was sent on ahead of us, along with your weapons.” Lamonte rubbed his hands up and down his pants, drying his palms on the dark fabric, but to his credit his face stayed calm.
“Lamonte,” she said, forcing her voice to be low and calm. “Where in the castle would they hold the rest of my weapons?”
The captain eyed Rorax, wiping his palms up and down on his knees again. “The Guardian will let ya know everything ya need to know once we arrive.”
Rorax took a deep breath. The little bloom of pain in her temples grew sharply as she sent her knife higher and higher into the sky. She rolled her jaw, trying to keep her anger and panic under control.
“Where is the Hunter now?” She didn’t give a fuck if the Hunter was just some old man, the Elder Elite, or the fucking Creator himself. She was going to shove her knife up through his stomach and rip it out from his throat.
Lamonte shrugged his shoulder. “I reckon he went home. The Guardian asked him to find yeh, an he did that. He doesn’ seem to like socializin’.”
There was no lie in the captain’s face, and she wasn’t going to get close enough to the Guardian to collaborate with his story.
So, with a big exhale of breath, she summoned her knife back to her.
Glimr halted its climb into the sky, flipped the point towards her, and dropped, barreling back towards the ground towards her at a breakneck speed.
“What a coward, not seeing me all the way here himself.” She leaned forward slightly and crossed her hands so that the chains overlapped, making an X behind her. If her knife had enough speed, and her chains weren’t enchanted—she prayed to K??n himself that they were made with only basic iron—she might be able to break both chains in one blow.
Lamonte’s brows furrowed. “I like the Hunter. A bit gruff, but I wouldn’ say—”
Rorax’s knife hit the chain, precisely on the overlap.
The speed of the impact created so much force it snapped through the two iron links that had been bolted down and barreled clean through the bottom wood of the cart.
As soon as she felt the tension on her wrists loosen, she lunged for Lamonte.
Her feet were still chained to the floor, but she could now move her hands and upper body.
Rorax threw one iron encased punch at his face, which he dodged gracefully, but he couldn’t dodge the swift uppercut she threw with her other hand.
The iron encasing her fist slugged against his nose so hard she felt it crack, but she didn”t stop to look at the damage.
Rorax summoned her knife back to her, and was about to punch it through Lamonte’s heart, when that familiar, sickening black magick engulfed her head, cutting out all sight and sound.
The magick surrounding her head made her hesitate, and that was all the time Lamonte must have needed to get in a blow of his own.
Rorax felt an impact, probably a fist, to the side of her ribs in the exact same spot where the Hunter had kicked her. Her ribs burned in agony. The force of the impact sent her toppling over and she couldn’t catch herself with her feet still chained to the floor. She found herself falling backwards—like a tree helplessly falling over on the forest floor—off the wooden cart with a loud thump.
She pushed herself up on the balls of iron attached at her wrists, ready to lunge the best she could at Lamonte, when a cloth sack was pulled over her head.
Rorax thrashed violently but tasted the sleeping powder.
In her last seconds of consciousness, she summoned her knife back to the sheath under her shirt before a different kind of darkness, a sleepy kind of unconsciousness, enveloped her whole.