8. Leah #2
“Listen to me,” I say, trying to sound firm and in control, as if that will keep him from noticing I’m totally at his mercy right now. “If you don’t want your efforts keeping me alive just now to go to waste, I’m begging you to not do anything reckless.”
“You mean, like running off to a different realm full of killers who’d execute you the moment they knew what you really were—all because you got your feelings hurt?” His voice is ice, frosting up my veins.
I exhale, opening my eyes to see that the other fledglings are coming in to land, retrieving dropped weapons off the floor and searching for their friends. I hang back, nervous one of them will take one look at me and somehow guess the truth.
“What I really am?” I repeat.
“Mine,” he says, and I swear I can sense him staring back at me, daring me to disagree.
I swallow down my immediate answer. There’s no point arguing this with him—someone born a king and made a demon lord, who has always been able to claim whatever he wants. And even if there was a point, now is not the time or place to chitchat about what we are to each other.
“Just…don’t get me caught,” I say, dropping Bianca’s sword—it feels wrong to keep hold of it now—and moving toward the entrance to the arena with the others.
Once I’m alone, I’ll be able to push him out of my head again, but I’m sure he won’t go without a fight, so for now I just need him to lay low. Especially as someone lands clumsily beside me.
“Huh, look at that,” Filippa says, straightening up from her awkward landing. “We’re both alive.” She says it almost like a question, as if she doesn’t really believe it.
I hug her, which seems to surprise Filippa, but hiding my face against her shoulder for a beat gives me a chance to school my features into a vaguely normal expression. Normal for the situation, anyway. I settle for a combination of exhausted and dazed.
“Yep. Just about.” I sigh as I release her, as if I don’t have it in me to make conversation. It’s safer if no one pays too much attention to me right now. Unfortunately, Filippa notices the blood on my shoulder and my limp as we shuffle toward the gate.
“Is it bad?” she asks, looking me over more closely. I drop my gaze, still worried about her somehow spotting Syrus behind my eyes. At least he’s heeding my request and staying quiet, for now.
“Nothing major,” I say, shifting my shoulder with a wince. “I just landed pretty hard on my bow when I fell off the dermison.”
Her eyebrows shoot up so high I think they might disappear into her hairline. “You were on that thing?” She shakes her head. “I must’ve missed that. I spent pretty much the whole hour trying to stay in the air and away from any trouble.”
“Believe me, if I had wings, I’d have done the same,” I say, but Filippa gives me a skeptical look.
“No,” she replies, quieter than before. “I don’t think you would’ve. Climbing on that dermison is exactly the kind of crazy shit they love,” she jerks her chin up toward the spectator box.
There’s a brittleness in her tone, and I watch her face as she stares up at where our grandfather must be standing.
“I think you were smart, Filippa,” I say, trying to offer her some reassurance. “There’s lots who aren’t walking out of here today because they rushed in to prove themselves instead of thinking things through.”
Did Bianca rush in? Was that what got her killed? All I know is how it ended, not how it started. But I’ll probably never get the chance to find out. Like everything else about her that I never had a chance to learn, all possibilities are over now.
Hasteed and Baxir flank the gate we’re filing out of, the former checking what must be names off a sheet as we pass. I throw a glance over my shoulder, only to stop walking when I see that some of the fledglings lying in the dirt are still moving.
“What’s the holdup?” Baxir grunts.
“What about them?” I ask, gesturing to a fledgling with long brown hair who’s currently struggling to stand about five yards away. She has a hand clapped over her side where silver blood is trickling through her fingers.
“Those who make it back to the academy will be given the supplies they need to tend their wounds,” Hasteed says simply.
Filippa grabs my sleeve, trying to tug me along, but I only move a few steps, confused.
“You mean anyone who isn’t strong enough to walk out of here you just leave to die?”
Baxir is obviously about to say something cutting when Hasteed cuts him off, her calm, cool voice rising above his.
“Yes,” she says. “In battle, the Brigade can’t waste time trying to keep people alive who can’t keep themselves alive. You either bring yourself home or you don’t come home at all.”
And of course, I know this. I’ve seen it in action.
The battlefields usually hold fewer dead ephilium soldiers than demon ones.
The average Brigade warrior is more powerful and better trained than an Infernum one.
But I also can’t remember ever seeing an ephilium carrying an injured comrade off the plains.
My eyes fall to the thick line of knotted skin across Hasteed’s neck.
The ephilium don’t seem the type to flaunt their scars—they’re too into perfection for that, I think.
But that scar is different. To be wounded like that and manage to keep going…
I can’t even imagine it. Hasteed must be incredibly resilient and strong.
But how many strong and resilient soldiers were left to bleed out when they could have been saved? The fledglings we’re leaving to die in the arena could’ve been great fighters with iron wills. Sometimes fate just sends the arrow spinning your way and not someone else’s.
The ephilium obviously don’t see it that way though.
A presence shifts inside my mind, murmuring slyly into my ear. “This is the world you’ve chosen, Leah. These are the people you were so desperate to give everything up for.”
I ignore him, hurrying out of the arena before Hasteed or Baxir can notice something’s off.
When we’re outside, Filippa stiffens, and I follow her gaze to see that Garion is standing outside the Eyrie, talking with a group of other important-looking ephilium.
“He’ll be pissed if I don’t report to him,” she mutters, even though she looks like she’d rather go another round in the arena than talk to the general right now.
“Should I come too?” I ask, though my tone doesn’t really hide how I feel about that idea.
“No,” she says. “I’d be ignoring direct orders if I left without reporting in, but you can still claim ignorance. Go. Save yourself before he notices you.”
I thank her gratefully as I push forward to disappear among the crowd of fledglings. There’s enough exhaustion and injured wings that I’m not the only person opting to walk back.
I keep my head down and my thoughts quiet. I can still feel Syrus there, lurking, but maybe he’ll be content to stay like that unless I provoke him.
Except of course that would be too much to hope for. I inhale sharply at the sensation of him running a mental touch against my mind.
“So, you’re going to be an ephilium soldier now, are you?” he purrs disdainfully, the casual tone doing little to mask the deeper anger. “Is that the plan? To become a loyal member of the Brigade, taking orders like a good little pale-blood? I didn’t know you had such a thing for discipline.”
“I don’t,” I grind out. “And I’m not. This isn’t about getting into the Brigade, it’s about acceptance and—”
“Pretty intense first trial, huh?”
I look up quickly to see Rowan falling into step beside me.
He looks barely rumpled from the last hour of chaos.
There’s only a dusting of color in his cheeks and the windswept fall of his hair to suggest he’s exerted himself at all—that and the faint splatter of purple lammer bird blood across one side of his bronze breastplate.
I give Syrus a mental shove, not enough to kick him out of my head—I don’t have the focus for that right now—but enough to push him to the back of my mind.
“I’m glad you think so,” I say to Rowan, trying to act natural. “If you told me this was considered easy by trial standards, then I was about to be very worried.”
“And who is this polished moron?” Syrus murmurs. Obviously, I didn’t shove him hard enough.
“No need to worry,” Rowan replies, blissfully unaware of the demon lord insulting him just a few feet away. “They always keep details about previous trials vague, but from what I’ve picked up from my family over the years, this was definitely a tough one. That’s good though.”
“It is?” I say, just as Syrus scoffs.
“Yep, it means they think we’re a strong cohort this season. They want to really push us to see what we can do.”
“Typical bird-brain logic.”
I work hard to ignore Syrus, holding Rowan’s gaze. “And what about people like Bianca? You think they deserved to be pushed hard enough that they died?”
His face falls so fast it’s like a mask has dropped away. I realize Rowan was leaning into bravado to avoid thinking about that.
“I hate that Bianca didn’t make it,” he says, swallowing hard. I believe him.
“But people always die in the trials,” he continues, frowning at the ground.
“I’m not trying to make light of it, but it’s the price we pay to keep Aradis safe.
If we don’t make sure we have the best warriors for the Brigade, then the entire realm will be at risk.
You’re new here; you haven’t seen the kind of threats we’re up against.”
He says it like he’s thinking about something specific, and I recall a vague memory of one of the cadets talking to Rowan about things being bad in Aphelion. What did they mean, exactly?