Chapter 16
Nyx
The moment I'm clinging to the side of the cliff with numb fingers and shaking arms, I realize how absurd this has all been.
The wind tears at my clothes and hair, trying to pry me from the rock face.
Every gust makes my stomach lurch. The cliff stretches endlessly beneath me, disappearing into a haze of gray stone and shadow.
I make the mistake of looking down once and immediately regret it.
My hand slips. It’s a small thing, barely an inch.
Still, terror explodes through me.
My chest seizes. My fingers claw desperately for purchase. For one horrifying instant, I can almost feel myself falling. Feel the rush of air. The impact waiting below.
I press myself against the stone and force myself to breathe. All around me, the other competitors continue climbing down. Effortlessly.
Apparently, this is only hard for me.
A vampire several yards away practically descends the cliff like a spider. One of the shifters leaps between handholds that seem impossibly far apart. Even the human warriors move with practiced confidence, their bodies honed by years of training.
And then there's me. A noblewoman who, two weeks ago, would've considered climbing through the fields an athletic endeavor. Gods. I have no business being here.
Every person in these Trials is either highly trained, supernatural, or both. Meanwhile, I'm clinging to a cliff face trying not to cry while pretending I belong among them.
Sure, I have magic. But my abilities are limited, and every time I use them, I risk exposing what I truly am.
The thought twists uncomfortably inside me.
I want to believe Thorian wouldn't care what I am. That he wouldn't turn on me for it. But what if I'm wrong? What if I tell him and discover too late that trusting him was a mistake?
It’s an unsettling thought. And not one I can focus on right now.
I drag myself downward another few inches, every muscle in my body burning. My hands ache. My shoulders scream. Sweat trickles down my spine despite the cold wind battering the mountainside.
Somewhere below me, Thorian calls down instructions.
“A foothold to the left.”
“Don't look down.”
“You've got this.”
I cling to the sound of his voice as stubbornly as I cling to the cliff itself. Because the alternative is thinking about Lyra. Thinking about what happens if I fail. What happens if I fall.
My sister is waiting for me. She doesn't know it, but every painful inch I climb is for her. Every blister. Every bruise. Every humiliation.
I didn't come here because I believed I could win. I came because she has no one else. The thought steadies me enough to reach for the next handhold. Then another. Then another.
As though descending a mountain weren't difficult enough, a dense fog begins creeping upward from below. At first, I think it's drifting through the valley, but then I realize the truth.
We're descending into it.
The gray mist swallows the cliff beneath my boots and crawls steadily higher. The ground disappears from sight.
The realization makes my stomach turn. Because if I can't see the bottom anymore, my imagination is more than willing to fill in the blanks.
Even with all the fear clawing at my chest, I know I'd rather die here than walk away.
As I cling to the rough cliff face and force myself downward one careful step at a time, I think of Lyra. Not the Courted Prize. Not the girl carried away from our home.
Just my sister.
I close my eyes against the wind and picture her as clearly as I can.
Hold on, Lyra. The words echo silently through my mind. Just hold on a little longer.
I don't know where she is. I don't know if she's frightened, sick, lonely, or wondering whether I've forgotten her.
But I know one thing with absolute certainty.
I am coming for her. It doesn't matter how impossible these Trials are.
It doesn't matter that every competitor around me is stronger, faster, or better trained. It doesn't matter if I'm terrified.
I'll survive this. For Lyra. I'll climb every cliff, cross every cursed forest, and face every monster these gods throw at me.
No matter what it takes, I'm bringing my sister home.
“Nyx!” Thorian says, his voice rough with desperation. “Keep going!”
I realize he might think this stall is a sign of me giving up, and I nod, sliding my hands and feet down the side of the cliff-face and making my way toward him again. We might not beat the other teams down, but that’s fine.
We’ll make it through.
All it takes is the image of those shifters, or vampires, winning my sister as their prize, and I feel a renewed sense of motivation, a drive to do this thing. No way will I count myself out when so many of the others around me would do so.
I picture Soryn, and her warm gaze when she looked at me with favor.
“You’re good, you’re good!” Thorian says, and I realize with a start that we’ve reached the bottom of the cliff. My hands are bloodied and raw, the tips of my fingers and toes numb from hanging on, but I flush with satisfaction.
There… I’ve gone through the first trial, and I’m not dead yet. So there must be a chance for me.
“Come on!” Thorian shouts, and his hand wraps around my bicep as he pulls me away from the cliff and toward the mass of competitors in the center of the clearing.
He veers away from them, and I realize what he’s heading for.
A leather bag on the outskirts of the clearing, perhaps thrown or dropped by someone else.
Just near it is a sword, which glints in the light, the sun reflecting off the iridescent stone in the hilt. It’s nestled in the grass like a flower, something sweet to be plucked up.
We’re going to get these things and avoid the fighting altogether.
To our right, cries of anger raise up, growling mixing in, the clash of metal-on-metal grating to my ears. I realize that, other than my practice sessions with Thorian, I have never really been around fighting.
I’ve certainly never witnessed a fight that resulted in death.
We reach the stuff. I grab the bag and throw it over my back, trying and failing to suppress the oof that bursts out of me at the weight of it, while Thorian picks up the sword, taking only a split second to admire it before he slides the strap of its sheath around his waist and trousers.
“Let’s go,” he says, turning to me, but his eyes widen at something over my shoulder.
My senses open, and I realize I can smell the distinct scent of dog, and feel warm breath on my shoulder, hot and moist with the stink of a saliva-filled mouth, fangs coated in the blood of a recent kill.
One of the shifters must have come for me. I let out a panicked noise and try to roll to the side, but the pack on my back hinders me, and Thorian has to scoop me up before the massive shifter can snap its jaws shut on my head.
My partner yanks me to my feet.
“Run!”
I don't need to be told twice.
My feet are already moving before my brain catches up, legs burning as I sprint away from the thing that just tried to take a bite out of me.
“I didn't—” I gasp, risking a glance over my shoulder.
At first glance, it looks like a wolf. Then my eyes catch up with reality. It's far too large.
Its shoulders rise nearly to Thorian's chest, and every movement ripples with thick muscle beneath silver-gray fur.
Its paws are the size of dinner plates, each claw digging trenches into the earth as it charges after us.
Yellow eyes lock onto me with terrifying intelligence, and when it opens its mouth, rows of teeth flash in the sunlight, each one longer than my finger.
The beast shakes out its massive head, lets out a snarl that rattles through my ribs, and fixes an even angrier gaze on us.
“Can shifters really get this big?”
“They aren't shifters,” Thorian says, not breathing hard at all despite the fact that we've just raced across the clearing.
Still running, he reaches over, takes the pack from my back, and slings it over his own shoulder.
“That’s a dire wolf.”
Without the weight of the pack, I can move slightly faster, but my earlier realization sticks with me. I have no place here. The tiny amount of training I did with Thorian before feels like a joke. It’s laughable in the face of the strength and skill I’ll need to make it out of this alive.
Luckily, my life being in danger is enough of a distraction that I can’t ruminate on that for too long.
We round the pile of materials, most of which are ruined, trampled under foot, apples crushed, bread squashed, vials of what must be potions leaking, luminescent, out into the grass.
I force myself to raise my gaze from my feet and out into the wider area, and I realize the deeper meaning behind what Thorian was saying.
That thing that attacked me wasn’t a shifter.
It was a monster. And there are even more of them pouring in now.
The other teams have stopped fighting each other and are all engaged in battle with the various beasts and entities, swords swinging and axes arcing through the air.
It’s overwhelming.
As kids, Lyra and I would flip through my father’s books on the gods, on their specific abilities and monsters. According to those books, major and even minor gods liked to play with life, to create beings that more often than not turned out to hate humans and all humanoid creatures.
The gods’ abominations were never as compelling as people. Their souls could never quite flicker as bright as ours. And now, staring out at them, I realize the fiends I always assumed to be nothing more than fairytale fodder are very, very real.
There are more of the dire wolves.
Dozens of them.