Chapter 14
Fourteen
- LYRA -
The birds chirping outside are not enough to ease my anxiety this time.
It stirs in my gut like a storm, no matter how hard I try to tamp it down.
Even as I glimpse the gardens, trees swaying gently in a breeze and carrying me back to my conversation with Cyrus about gardening, I can’t distract myself from today’s reality.
It's the first day of trials.
When the lady’s maids arrive and deliver a ribboned box I’m to open, I skip a breath when I remove the lid. Inside is a set of black leather clothes. The torso is armored with what looks like red dragon scales, and matching red trim lines the seams of the suit.
“What is this for?” I ask in a trembling voice.
The lead lady’s maid shakes her head, either unable or unwilling to answer. Wordlessly, she and the other two work on dressing me, braiding my hair back into two plaits. Once they’re done, they turn me to face the mirror.
I look like someone else entirely.
Not someone fighting for the mere chance of marriage—but about to fight in a war. My hands begin to shake, and I turn a wide-eyed gaze back to the women. “Please. Can you tell me anything? I-I’m not very skilled physically. I don’t have any experience with weapons or—”
The lead lady’s maid squeezes my shoulder with a small smile. “He will not let you be harmed. This?” She teases the dragon scales overlapping on my abdomen. “These are dragon scales. Nearly impenetrable and fire-resistant.”
It does nothing to help. Instead, it kicks me up into a higher state of panic. “No. Whatever this trial is—”
“Shhh.” She brushes my cheek, then shakes her head. “He only told me to tell you to keep your head down, okay? Head down until the finish. Then back behind when you smell it.”
“I don’t understand what that means,” I whimper.
She and the other two lady’s maids usher me out into the hallway where the rest of the women buzz anxiously.
All of us are dressed in similar leather clothes. But rather than red dragon scales, we are an array of colors. Blue, representing water dragons. Green, for earth. And red, for fire dragons.
I find Aelia amongst the crowd, both of us moving to meet each other. She offers me a small smile, then squeezes my hand in encouragement.
“It’ll be alright,” she whispers as we all move like cattle down the hallway. Lady Bethany is somewhere at the front, while guards herd us from the back.
“I’m scared, Aelia,” I murmur, searching the other women’s faces. It’s a relief to me when I find eyes just as wide as mine.
“Me too,” Aelia responds, hand tight on mine. “But don’t you worry. We’ll be alright. Let’s stick together if we can.”
I nod. Aelia clenches her hand around mine again as the crowd bottlenecking the castle doors threatens to separate us. Aelia tugs me, and I follow her, apologizing under my breath to the women who I bump into.
As we spill out of the castle into the fresh air, the sun is warm on my cheeks. We pass the gardens. I longingly skim over them, wishing the trial was something that required plants instead of armor.
The rest of the walk is quiet but for the sound of our boots hitting the cobblestones as we make our way out and around the castle grounds.
The guards spread out, framing us on all sides.
Eventually, we cross a bridge over the lake surrounding the castle and over to the lands sloping up to the Serahaven mountains.
The closer we draw to the cliffs, waterfalls tumbling down the rocky edges, the colder it gets.
When I tip my head back to look up at the tips of the mountains, they’re dusted in snow.
We all stop.
Devin stands front and center of our group, facing us. His golden armor is nearly blinding in the sunlight. He motions behind him to where a set of stairs sink down into the earth. In the distance are more stairs, heading up to a top platform.
“Ladies, this is your first trial. Be quick. Swift. And we will see who makes it to the other side. The first one to finish shall have tonight’s feast with Cyrus and be immune to eliminations until the next trial.
Once you hear the bell, you may begin.” Devin then offers a stoic nod, and walks with Lady Bethany toward the distant platform.
The women around me exchange nervous glances, though a few have determined smiles. Half of us have dined with Cyrus. The other half have not.
Thirty women. One hand.
A bell rings, and we all race down the steps. I’m in the middle of the group, getting shoved around as everyone dashes down. The stairs dip into a long stone tunnel, though the ceiling is open to the sky.
Before us are stone pillars varying in size. Some as short as my knees, with others double my height. They’re sprinkled throughout the expanse between us and larger, square platforms wait beyond.
I look to Aelia, who drops my hand. “Perhaps we must jump from column to column?”
She nods. “What I was thinking, too.”
One woman elbows her way to the front, and as she takes a few strides into the tunnel, arrows explode from the side walls, grazing right in front of her.
Most of us scream. Others drop. The stairs we’re standing on begin sinking into the floor.
We’re trapped. Nowhere to go, but forward.
The woman at the front hardly seems phased, as she jumps left and right, avoiding the arrows threatening to impale her. A group of women rush forward, ducking, spinning, and hiding behind the stone columns as a relentless shower of arrows rips through the air.
Two women swipe fallen spears and use them to swat incoming ones.
Oh, I am not cut out for this. Not at all. I’m not fast, nor strong. I tend to gardens. Sing myself to sleep. Revel in silences. What previous skills am I not remembering that could possibly qualify me to compete like this?
Aelia grabs my elbow and drags me a few inches into the arena as the walls where the stairs were behind us turn into a wall of metal-tipped spikes pushing in slowly toward us.
“We have to get to the other side!” she screams over the chaos.
When I look to see how far off the set of square platforms is, the distance doubles. Then triples.
One woman spins to her left, narrowly avoiding an arrow—but putting herself right into the path of another. It rips right into her skull, the impact slamming her into the ground.
A gasp leaves my lips. All I can see is her on the ground, arrow protruding from her head. The only movement is the slow creep of blood seeping out from her skull.
Dead.
“Lyra!” Marcella smacks my cheek hard enough that heat explodes across my skin. “You stay here, you die. Move!” she roars, pointing ahead.
We are the last in the group to run. Some of the women still attempt to jump from pillar to pillar, only to drop when they realize they aren’t high enough to avoid the arrows.
Another woman gets hit right in the lower back, and falls face first to the ground in a puff of dirt.
A new set of arrows explodes from both sides of us. Aelia tugs me to one side of a pillar, though it does nothing to save us from the other direction. We drop into a crouch, narrowly avoiding a few arrows that land inches above us and drop onto our heads.
Marcella sweeps in right behind us. As we lunge forward to race to the next pillar for cover, a weight slams into the back of my head. Shoving my face straight into the dirt before the pressure disappears, and I try to lift my head.
“GET. DOWN!” Marcella barks.
I press my cheek flat to the ground, meeting Aelia’s wide eyes as she coughs in the cloud of dirt surrounding us.
When I stretch my neck to look at the path before us, my cheek still flush with the ground, we’re a few feet away from the woman who was struck in the back by an arrow.
She is dragging herself forward by the elbows.
Leaving behind a trail of blood in the dirt.
As arrow after arrow explodes from the arena ahead of us, I watch another woman get struck in the side of the neck. I feel a rattle shake the ground as she falls. A weight that sinks just as vividly in my heart.
Head down. The lady’s maid told me he wanted me to keep my head down.
“Now crawl the rest of the way!” Marcella shouts.
When I lift just enough to pull my elbows underneath my chest, Marcella crawls past me. Aelia follows after her, and then I do.
Did Marcella just save us?
I try to ignore the screams as other women are hit by arrows. Keeping my head down, I force myself to continue toward the finish line. Arrows whizz overhead, some stirring my hair with how close they fly.
We manage to crawl by the woman shot in the neck. My breath catches in my throat as I catch her distant, wide-eyed gaze. The pool of blood around her is large enough that my elbow drags through the edge of it.
I move faster, catching up to Aelia and crawling beside her. Marcella is a bit ahead of us as she approaches the woman who took an arrow in the lower back, struggling to drag herself to the finish line.
It’s hard to tell if she’s bleeding. Blood is splattered all along the dirt arena, with arrows littering the floor. But Marcella grabs the woman’s foot, shouting something I can’t hear over the explosion of arrows above us.
Aelia and I flatten ourselves to the ground, her blue eyes meeting mine. She must see the panic, the fear in my gaze. She grabs my fingers and squeezes tightly.
I nod, trying to force back the tears threatening to erupt.
Arrows fall on our heads, our backs, our legs. When the overhead assault stops, Aelia and I lift our heads.
Marcella lurches over the woman with the arrow in her back several feet ahead. Her knee slams into the woman’s upper back, and not even the chaos around us can deafen the woman’s scream as Marcella grabs the arrow and rips it out of her back.
The lead lady’s maid had said the armor was nearly impenetrable. Perhaps only enough to protect us from lethal hits. Though, it does nothing to stop anything from striking our heads, throats, or hands.