Chapter 14 #3
Marcella stretches out her fingers near Moe’s boot, where blood slowly seeps out from the crack. “It looks like it’s just her toes.” She stands, her expression stilling into something serious. “We’re going to have to pull it out.”
Moe shakes her head as she lowers her face, still unable to form words through her cries.
Stella looks to the distance where our finish line is, the raised platform. “But—”
“It’s the only way!” Marcella snaps. “They’re not coming to save us. They won’t interfere in a trial. We pull her out, and get through the last one.”
I open my mouth as I stand. Then shut it. Despite her lack of sympathy, she’s right. I nod. Then Aelia, then Beatrice.
Stella looks to each one of us, then back down to Moe, giving her shoulder a squeeze before standing. “Alright.”
“Grab her underneath her shoulders and pull,” Marcella instructs, straddling the back of Moe’s legs. Squatting down, she grabs Moe’s ankle with both hands. “Ready?”
Stella braces her arms underneath Moe’s arms. Aelia and I grab either side of Moe’s thigh, and Beatrice grabs hold of Stella’s waist.
“Ready!” Stella answers.
We all pull. Moe’s screams ratchet up to a level that could crack glass. But her foot doesn’t budge. Marcella pauses, panting heavily before she shouts, “Again!”
We all groan as we try to pull her free once more.
Something slips, and we all tumble at the sudden give. As we rise, Moe’s foot is free from the wall—but a badly mangled, bloody mess. Crushed in a way that makes my stomach roil.
Beatrice and Stella help Moe rise, taking either side of her. We all turn to the last part of the trial.
The scattered A-frames.
Many of the women race up them, then down the other sides. Some are already climbing their way up the stairs to the finish line.
Wordlessly, the six of us race into the arena. Cutting left, then right around the A-frames, but slowed by Moe’s staggered gait. We pass one A-frame, and I glimpse a woman cowering there beneath it before we’re passing the next one.
“If we climb them, it’ll be faster!” Beatrice shouts.
“It’ll be too hard to climb!” Aelia barks back.
A click, click, click sounds.
Followed by screams.
Heat puffs over us in a cloud, the smell of rotten eggs in the air before my eyes widen.
Back behind when you smell it.
Cutting right, I shove into Aelia who piles into Beatrice. Knocking into Moe, and then Stella, with Marcella on the other side.
“Get in!” I scream, and we all collapse underneath the A-frame as flames explode over and around the arena. Engulfing the space in fire.
All of us are panting as the heat fades, watching the flames retreat.
“How did you know?” Aelia asks.
Blinking, I shake my head as I turn to face her. “It was…a guess. My grandparents taught me about the anatomy of dragons, and that many of them produce a nasty smell with their flames.”
“So there’s a dragon out there?” Beatrice’s voice quivers.
“No, we don’t know that yet. Wouldn’t we have heard it by now?” Aelia searches each woman’s face.
“The other women had already made it to the stairs. I doubt they had to make it past a dragon,” Marcella supplies.
“Well, we need to move if we want to get to the stairs, too. There’s no telling when the next bout of fire will come,” Aelia says.
We all rise, with Marcella peeking around the side of the A-frame to the arena beyond. Waving her hand back to us, she slips out from our shelter, with us not far behind her. Left and right we cut through the arena, with more women climbing over the A-frames ahead of us.
When the next clicking sounds, that smell wafting over us, we all duck into the closest frame. Waiting until the fire subsides again.
“Come on, we’re almost there!” Aelia jumps to her feet and slips back out.
We run after her, the bottom of the stairs peeking out between the last few A-frames in front of us.
Click, click, click.
Holes in the walls open up, and what look to be cannons slide out. A flare of orange appears in their center, that scent rolling over us again.
“Last one!” I call when the flames roar out of the cannons.
Everyone crowds into the closest A-frame, but as Marcella and I are the last, there are women from another group already in it. Leaving not enough room for the two of us.
We both realize it at the same time, turning to each other with wide eyes.
It’s my turn to play savior. I grab the back of her shoulder pad and shove her as hard as I can into the A-frame before she can protest.
“Lyra, no!” Aelia screams from the inside.
As Marcella whips around to face me, her eyes connect with mine for a split second as the flames barrel toward me.
Everything suddenly snaps into slow motion.
I rip my gaze away from them, spinning myself around to the back side of the A-frame as the flames explode around it. I drop down, covering my head with my arms and hands and curling into myself against the ground.
Heat rips over and around me. Everywhere.
The dragon armor around my body keeps me from burning, but doesn’t deter the heat boiling within it.
Despite clenching my teeth against it, a scream shakes from my lips as my bare hands are ravaged by flame.
Digging my forehead harder into the dirt, trying to tuck myself away from the flames, I’m lost to a sea of agony.
All consuming, every nerve in my hands alight with pain.
It could have been three weeks or three seconds. But when the flames stop, I roll over on the ground.
“Lyra!” Aelia’s cry is an echo in the distance.
Hands wrap around my shoulders, and someone hisses. I’m lifted off the ground, hardly able to balance myself on my feet. Everything is blurred by my tears. I still can’t think beyond the pain screaming in my hands.
When I blink, my sight finally focuses on the one who’s holding me up. Marcella. “What were you thinking!” she barks when she sees my hands.
Aelia tries to slip underneath my arm to help steady me, but her brows pinch and she winces. A smolder of smoke rises from my armor where her and Marcella touch me.
Marcella grunting slips underneath the other side of me, and together, we all hobble for the stairs. Moe, Stella, and Beatrice are in front of us, with several other women who were in the A-frame. The group of women hit the first step.
Click—
My head sags with each step, eyes threatening to close as the pain in my hands fades to total numbness.
Click—
Then Stella, Beatrice, and Moe make it to the stairs.
Click—
Marcella, Aelia, and I reach for it.
The cannons roar to life as Marcella and Aelia leap for the stairs, pulling me with them. My legs drag, unable to summon the strength needed to jump or land. As we fall onto the stairs, fire exploding in the arena behind us, both of them catch and steady me.
But darkness creeps in near the edge of my vision. Marcella and Aelia say something, but all of my senses begin to fade. I feel them lifting me, pulling me—
And then I feel nothing at all.