Chapter 10
Nyx
At first, when the room falls silent, I assume Thorian and I must have committed a terrible faux pas.
Perhaps we entered incorrectly, stood in the wrong place, or broke a sacred rule of palace etiquette I was never taught.
It is the only explanation that makes sense.
But as my mind races back over every step since we entered, I find no obvious mistake.
My next thought is far less comforting. Perhaps they’re staring at me, at the absurdity of a woman my size standing here with only a single man at my side, foolish enough to present herself as a serious contender in the trials.
Yet even that explanation begins to unravel as I study Thorian more carefully. There is something in his posture, in the sudden rigid set of his shoulders and the way his entire body seems to lock at the first low rumble of Valtor’s amusement.
He knew this was coming. Or at the very least, he understands it in a way I don’t.
Then Valtor begins laughing harder. The sound booms through the throne room, rich and thunderous, and the tension breaks at once as laughter ripples outward through the crowd. The hilarity is apparently such that even Soryn lifts one dainty hand to her mouth, a quiet giggle escaping her lips.
It’s humiliating, even though I have no idea what in the world the laughter is about.
As a girl, I would sometimes have nightmares about coming to a grand dinner with my parents and forgetting my gloves, or entering a ball and realizing I’d not even brushed my hair, let alone taken the time to put it in the elaborate braiding required for an event.
In those dreams, I would always burst into mortified tears at the realization.
Now, I stifle that feeling, biting hard at my tongue to keep the rush of tears from taking over me. The last thing I need is to start weeping before the gods, and show Thorian at our first test together that I’m not capable of standing up to scrutiny.
I channel my mother. I keep my chin high.
Mentally, I race through the past ten minutes, desperately trying to figure out what could have possibly caused a reaction like this.
Valtor’s laughter is grand and grating, a loud boom like thunder rolling over the hills and shaking all the crystals and China in the house.
It reverberates through the room and feels like an imposition, like the boastful clatter of someone at another table, speaking not for the benefit of their table mates, but with the hope that they’ll be overheard.
But that laughter is not directed at me. It’s directed at Thorian.
I glance at him, trying to read his reaction, but he stares straight ahead, his jaw ticking with such ferocity that I half expect him to crack a tooth.
Since we met, Thorian has done everything in his power to prepare me for the trials, for this and all that will follow. But right now, he doesn’t even acknowledge that I exist, let alone offer me some insight about the current onslaught of taunting, gasping laughter.
“Oh, that is good,” Valtor grunts out, his deep voice seeming to run the length of my bones.
He wipes a tear from his eye, much like he did when I approached him and asked him to return my sister from her place as the Courted Prize.
It makes me tense, this false show of mirth.
“Thorian, you return to us once more! Huzzah! Someone roll out the finest ale!”
My mouth is dry, secondhand embarrassment pooling in my stomach. Just an hour earlier flashes in my mind, the expression on Thorian’s face when he’d tried talking to me during dinner.
“Look, Nyx, there’s something—” he’d said.
But Thorian never got to tell me what that something was.
“When was the first time you competed, Thorian?” Aqualis asks, her voice less soothing now, a sharp, restless edge creeping beneath the words. She reaches out to rest a hand against Valtor as though they are old companions. “Do you remember? How many times now?”
“This will be the fifth,” Eryndor says matter-of-factly from the far end of the line. He lifts his pen and studies the tablet in his lap as though consulting a record. “Seven years ago was the first. With the warlock.”
“That’s right,” Valtor booms. “Oh, how the magic wielder wailed when he was consumed by that chimera. But you escaped, didn’t you? Not a tear shed.”
The words strike me like a physical blow. Thorian had competed before? My thoughts begin racing so quickly I can barely keep hold of them. Thorian has done this before. Not once, but four times. And he never told me.
Why didn’t he tell me?
“The second time was with a vampire,” Soryn says serenely, leaning back in her throne as she taps one jeweled finger thoughtfully against her chin. “That poor drinker bled to death. Ironic, really.”
“The third and fourth were both with teams of shifters. Big, strong things,” Terranis grunts, crossing his thick arms. Several leaves snap loose from the vines curled around him, drifting lazily to the floor.
He pays them no mind. “The fourth try, I’ll admit, even I thought the curse had broken.
I thought Thorian might actually win. I was almost rooting for him. ”
“Well, Thorian never truly loses,” Eryndor remarks, his shrewd gaze lowering to us. Then his attention shifts to me, and what I find there looks dangerously close to pity. “Only his partners do.”
A hollow sensation opens in my stomach. All his other partners died.
A thousand frantic thoughts crash through me at once.
Why would he keep this from me? Did he think it didn’t matter?
Did he assume I’d back out if I knew? Or worse, does he believe my death is inevitable enough that it wasn’t worth mentioning?
If this is his fifth attempt, if every person who stood where I stand now is dead, then what exactly have I walked into?
“I wish you’d stop embarrassing me, son,” Valtor says, but there’s cruelty in his voice.
At first, I think the word ‘son’ is casual, the kind of mocking familiarity an old man might use in a tavern. Then Thorian jerks beside me as though struck, and understanding crashes over me.
There is nothing casual about it.
“Really,” Valtor says, leaning forward, his massive hands gripping the arms of his throne. “You’d think a demi-god would fare better in such a simple little game. A son of mine. Shameful. If only you had inherited sufficient power. If only you weren’t born… weak and useless.”
“Two years was nearly enough for us to forget your repeated failures,” Aqualis says, lifting her goblet for a long drink. “But I suppose desperation has driven you back. And now you’ve found someone even more desperate to drag down with you.”
When their collective gaze settles on me, every instinct in my body screams to step back.
I force myself to remain still, even though my thoughts are spinning too wildly to settle. He’s a demi-god. He has competed before. His partners all died. And somehow, despite all of that, he chose me.
What does that mean?
When their gazes collectively land on me, I can sense their pity. Thorian has competed before, competed often, and his partners never make it out alive. Surely, this means they’re thinking of me as simply more fodder for his efforts.
I bite my tongue and stand as still and tall as I can. There’s nothing else I can do.
For entertainment, Valtor and the others conjure a projection of previous games, Thorian’s previous partners, all dying in increasingly gruesome ways before me. Screaming, writhing. The vampire leaking enough blood to fill a bathtub.
At the conclusion of their little show, I’m certain they’re going to look at me with expectation, hoping for me to cry or wet myself. Or perhaps turn on Thorian for this withholding.
Of course I’m upset that he didn’t tell me. But surely, with how desperate I am, Thorian should have known that it wouldn’t matter to me? I don’t exactly have other choices.
This revelation lands like a blade sliding quietly between my ribs, sharp in its clarity.
I had spent days wondering why a warrior as capable as Thorian would willingly tether himself to someone as untested as me, searching for a hidden reason I could not quite grasp.
Now I finally understand. It was never about believing in my strength or seeing potential in me.
He chose me because no one else would have him.
Because the curse, real or imagined by his history, hanging over him has made him untouchable, and I was desperate enough to accept the hand no one else would take.
Even as the bodies of his past partners appear and die, their limbs torn from them, one of them melting into a puddle of pink, gristle-y agony, my mind is working this into a different story.
One that Ivor would be proud of. I’m truly looking at the glass half-full.
Because if Thorian has survived this many partners, it doesn’t just mean he’s never won the Trials.
It means he’s done something unimaginable…
entered the trials five times and never once died.
It means he’s quicker, stronger, smarter than anyone else who has ever deigned to do it, including his partners.
I wish I could stop there.
I wish I could simply admire his skill and leave it at that.
But I can't. My mind has to work through the whole complicated thing.
His father cursed my family. Tried to force himself on my mother when she refused to become one of his countless lovers. Everything that happened afterward traces back to Valtor. Every loss. Every year of watching my family slowly unravel.
Logic insists that Thorian cannot be separated from that legacy. He is Valtor's son. The blood of that monster runs through his veins.
And yet...
I've always been good at reading people. Father used to joke that I could spot a liar before they'd even opened their mouth. Every instinct I possess tells me the same thing now.
Thorian isn't his father.
He's gruff. Irritatingly overprotective. Entirely too fond of barking orders at me. But beneath all of that is something solid. Honorable.
It's infuriating.
Because trusting the son of the man who ruined my family feels like the stupidest decision I could possibly make.
And yet I do.
“I’m not known for my mercy,” Valtor says, laughing at his own little joke as he turns to me, “But I’ll grant some to you now, girl.
Consider this permission to break whatever agreement you have with my boy.
You needn’t die for his little game, for his foolish, bull-headed, and falsely-placed confidence. ”
“I appreciate that,” I lie, shaking my head. It takes all my effort not to drop his intense gaze. Like looking directly into the sun. A sun that I hate with every bone in my body. “But I’ve made my decision, and I have chosen my team. I plan to fight with Thorian at my side.”
A shocked hush rolls through the room, and I catch him relaxing slightly at my side.
Not that he should really be that flattered.
It’s not like I have a sea of other partners lining up to risk their lives for me.
My feelings toward him are complicated right now, so I push them to the side, instead focusing on the gods.
Once the surprise wears off, they go right back to mocking us. Not that it affects me. The gods’ mockery means nothing to me.
“Alright, well, what should we name this team?” Aqualis asks, turning to Valtor.
“The Forsaken,” Terranis suggests, which makes Valtor laugh again, his meaty palm smacking against his throne.
“The Forsaken. I like it. How fitting. I’d wish you good luck, but not even a divine blessing could help you at this point.”
There’s more laughing, and the other teams join us on the floor, standing in their little huddles.
Part of me wants to look, to see if I can catch Fenric’s gaze again, but if I move I might lose my composure.
So I stay completely still as the gods go through the process of making their picks for who they think will win.
Terranis chooses The Ashen Hounds. Eryndor goes for the team of knights, and Valtor chooses the warlocks. Aqualis, apparently wanting an underdog, picks the Stone Serpents.
Only Soryn, god of the celestial realm, of light and sky, of the stars and moon, is left. She looks at the remaining teams with her chin in her hands, having skipped her turn twice already to let the other gods choose first.
Finally, with a movement that makes my body flush from head to toe, she turns her gaze to me. It feels like being imbued with a warm, glowing energy. It floods from my scalp down into the tips of my fingers, like my own magic but more effusive.
And then, to my shock, and to Valtor’s obvious displeasure, she speaks.
“My chosen team is The Forsaken. Thorian Valehart and Lady Nyx Nocturne, go forth and win with my name on your tongues.”