Chapter 3 #2
There is only my sister. Only the sight of her struggling against those hands. Only the desperate need to reach her before it is too late.
“Nyx!” Just ten feet away, I see Lyra orient herself to me, her tear-stained face visible through the locks of her hair that have come loose and are fanning out over her face. “Help! Nyx, he—”
She cuts off when one of the men claps a hand over her mouth, stifling her.
From their clothes and steeds, the way they hold themselves, it’s obvious to me that they’re blades for the gods. Everyone knows who they are. And everyone knows better than to challenge them.
Hilda is a few steps behind, another of the men holding her arms behind her back in what looks like a painful embrace.
The rage boils through my body, like it’s bubbling up the back of my throat and coating my teeth. I can taste it, feel it itching up behind the backs of my eyes.
After everything, everything this fucking world has put us through, I cannot handle this. Not my sister in harm’s way the moment I leave the house for a second.
“Unhand her!” I scream, and the men must not have seen me coming, even with Lyra’s shrieks in my direction, because they turn, clearly surprised at my presence.
Perhaps “unhand her” was too dramatic, because it makes the man holding my sister begin to laugh. My magic, responding to the anger pulsing through my veins, begins to pool in my fingertips like blood desperately needing recirculation.
But I don’t want to recirculate it. I want to gather it and direct it towards the men who have dared to walk onto my land, to put their hands on my sister.
“Come now,” the man in front says. He’s wearing a gold piercing right through his ear, his dark eyes shining with mirth. He holds up his hands as though he might be able to reason with me. “We tried asking her nicely.”
“Nyx—” Ivor wheezes, finally having caught up with me, having labored under the weight of the bag and his old age. I put out a hand to stop him, my eyes fixed on the man at the front.
“What is the meaning of this?” I ask, flicking my gaze from him to the others.
These are not Shaw’s men. They’re not associated with the loan holders my parents borrowed from.
They’re too honeyed, too…cosmopolitan. Their smocks are creamy and unwrinkled, their skin smooth, their eyes lacking the hunger that comes from living in this part of the world.
In fact, their eyes hold a different hunger all together. One that’s been recently sated.
Vampires.
“We come bearing good news,” the man in front says, one perfect eyebrow arching up. “Lady Lyra Nocturne has been selected as this year’s Courted Prize.”
All that rage, in fact, all the blood, drains from my body and my breath leaves me.
When we were little, Lyra and I used to whisper about the Courted Prize beneath our blankets long after we were ordered to sleep.
To children, it had sounded like it belonged in a storybook.
Each year, one noble daughter was chosen by the gods and brought to the capital, draped in silks, showered in riches, and promised as the bride of whichever victor emerged from the Eternal Trials.
This made it so the winners of the Eternal Trials would receive not just all the other gifts from the gods when they won—lands, wealth, and minor godhood—but also so they could marry someone with a title too, elevating their position in the world.
Back then, we imagined glittering ballrooms and grand declarations, the sort of foolish fantasies little girls build from half truths and pretty lies.
We had not yet been old enough to understand what was really being offered.
Now, as women, we better understand the implications of being married to those not of your own choosing. To be taken from your home and sold as a prize to the victors. To then be forced to manage your husbands, especially if one or more of them was of poor constitution or, in many cases, cruel.
It was common, especially for ladies in this part of the world, to be signed away to an entire brood of husbands without their discretion.
Our mother made it clear that we would choose our own partners, after our education. After Valtor cursed our family, the idea of ever being chosen as the Courted Prize was laughable at best. Only families in favor could be considered.
“That’s right,” the man says, registering my surprise and meeting it with a congratulatory, sharp-toothed smile. With a brief glance back toward the manor, he mutters, “Might be the best thing to happen to this place.”
“She can’t go,” I insist, stepping in front of their horses, even as they swing up onto them without concern, their eyes seeming to look through me. “She’s sick.”
“The gods have chosen,” one says, practically rolling his eyes at me, as though he never would have thought to meet a lady so ungrateful for an honor like this.
I have no faith that the gods really did so much choosing as random selection. Or maybe this is a continuation of our curse? Who knows?
What I do know is that any sort of physical intensity will hurt Lyra. She might not even survive the horse ride to the capital, the jostling of the horses. The cool air and the poor meals. A hard knock or fall could end her life.
And that’s just traveling to the capital.
Whether Lyra is partnered to one or more husbands at the end of the trials, it won’t be good for her.
The shadow-touched should always be treated gently, with the utmost care, and things like childbirth were completely out of the question for them.
But if Lyra was forced off to the winners of the games, she’d have no say in the matter.
I can’t even bear the thought of her becoming pregnant.
Bile rises in my throat at the image of it.
Her belly growing, her skin pale. Losing my sister to childbirth before she’s even had a chance to live herself. Everything, always thrust upon us like this. A life of the cursed.
“Wait!” I cry, because like before, with Shaw and his men, I don’t know what else to do but use my words. I run to the leader, who’s now making moves to climb onto his horse, and take his forearm in my hands.
He turns to me with surprise, a flicker of emotion crossing his face before it's gone. I don't stop to figure out what it was. I plead with him, very unbecoming of a lady.
“Marriage will kill her,” I say, trying to imbue every word with the truth of it.
Now, behind me, Ivor is holding Hilda in his arms, and the two are looking on at the scene, just as powerless as I am to stop it. Knowing that disobeying the gods’ guards would be suicide for people of their station.
Magic surges beneath my skin as I throw myself toward Lyra’s horse, hot and frantic, clawing for release. It races through my veins in sharp, electric currents, rising in answer to my panic as I shove past the nearest rider.
My arms lock around Lyra’s waist.
For one glorious instant, I think I have her.
I pull with everything I have, trying to wrench her free without dragging hard enough to send the mare into a panic. Terror slices through me at the thought of the horse rearing and throwing her, of Lyra striking the hard packed road beneath its hooves.
The mare sidesteps sharply, tossing its head.
Lyra gasps through the gag as her body pitches toward me, and hope surges so violently through my chest it nearly steals my breath.
Then hands seize me.
One of the vampires catches me around the waist and tears me backward with brutal force. I scream, twisting wildly in his grip as my nails rake uselessly across his arms. I kick hard enough to connect with his shin, but he barely reacts.
“Let her go!” I shriek, thrashing harder.
The power inside me swells in answer, pressing against the restraint I have spent years building. Heat gathers low and fierce, racing through my body as it strains toward release.
Every instinct screams at me to unleash it.
Lyra is sobbing through the gag now, her wide eyes locked on mine as she reaches for me.
“Please!” The word rips itself raw from my throat.
“Enough,” the leader says.
The vampire restraining me releases me so suddenly that I stumble forward, barely catching myself.
At once, the frantic pressure of the magic pauses.
Hope crashes through me, cooling the rising storm beneath my skin as I stare up at the leader. For one impossible instant, I think I have reached him. That a shred of mercy has broken through whatever cold purpose drives these men.
I open my mouth, ready to beg, to thank him, to promise anything if he will only let her go.
He crosses the distance between us faster than I thought possible. Pain detonates across the side of my head. The world tilts violently. The last thing I see is Lyra’s face, her eyes huge with terror as darkness rushes in and swallows everything.