Chapter 19
NINETEEN
ARYELLA
Fragile men have at least two soft spots: their ego and their cock. Strike one, and they’ll make you their enemy. Strike both, and they might try to kill you.
—FROM THE BUTCHER OF NYRIDA’S LAST KNOWN LETTERS TO QUEEN ARYELLA I
Stupidly, I didn’t swim right away but spun and froze to see hundreds of fish darting toward me, a mesmerizing mix of greens, blues, and grays, each roughly the size of a man’s palm with sharp teeth too big for their mouths.
There were so many of them. And at the speed they were moving? I only had seconds.
“ Water! ” Shera screamed into my mind. “ Use the water! ”
I had never wielded water while in it, but it was my only choice. I envisioned sunlight streaming in through iridescent stained-glass, stood at the center of the temple wheel and reached for cerulean blue.
“ Rainar, save me ,” I said down every mental pathway I could find.
“ Ary! ” Shera cried out in warning.
My hands shot up, wrists crossed to protect my face as I braced myself for thousands of needle-like teeth in my skin.
A whoosh of power slammed into me, folding me in half and thrusting me backward.
I steadied myself just in time to watch the fish slam into a wall of water that moved like a living barrier beginning on the lake’s surface and flowing down in a continuous loop.
It was mesmerizing, how the fish kept trying to breach the barrier, bouncing around like hail on a stone floor, I didn’t know how long it would hold, and I needed air again.
I touched my fingers to the rings around my neck again, assuring myself they were there, before propelling myself upward. Inside the ravine’s western wall, I found a small alcove above the water’s surface and hoisted myself up onto flat rock.
Once I reached safety, I stretched my hand toward the wall of water like I could grip it from here. The oscillating waves dispersed after one easy flick of my hand, and the fish scattered back throughout the lake.
The chilled air sent goose bumps across my soaked body as I sank back against the rock, lungs straining to recover from oxygen deprivation and panic.
“ Are you all right? ” Shera asked.
“I will be. Are you out of sight?”
“Yes.”
Shera was fine. A stillness almost as strong as the one I felt in Gavin’s presence washed over me when I looked down and took in the sight of the two rings, undamaged and bound together by the resilient chain.
They were back around my neck where they belonged.
I pressed them to my lips. The metal was cold and wet, but the contact made my chest warm.
And then, like I’d cracked open, a broken sob tumbled out of my throat.
I looked up to thank the gods, though all I found was the rocky alcove ceiling. Hopefully they got the idea.
“ Are you sure you’re okay? ” Shera asked again.
My eyes burned, and not from being in the water too long.
“Mm-hmm,” I hummed, struggling to form actual words, even in my mind.
I wasn’t okay. The longer I sat, the more I became paralyzed by the realization that I almost lost those rings.
Until today, I wasn’t sure I’d fully grasped how much they meant to me on a visceral level.
Ironically, I had Elias Winterton to thank for that.
“While you were down there, I’m pretty sure the blue and green teams both retrieved their banners and are now looking for you.”
Shit. I couldn’t afford to sit down here and mull over what almost happened. I hadn’t let it happen, and now I needed to press on.
“Okay,” I sighed out loud. No one could spot me tucked away in the rock down here.
Hiding away for the remainder of the afternoon and skulking back after nightfall did feel tempting, but I wouldn’t resort to cowardice.
I would find a way to win this alone. If I had to look at Elias Winterton’s annoyingly perfect face for a second time today, I would do so in victory.
I gave myself a few more seconds to rest before rising to my feet with a grunt. My hands were dry by this point, which was crucially important given I would have to scale twenty feet of rock to get out of this ravine.
Ignoring the sharp stone edges as they bit into my skin, cutting and bleeding in some places, I climbed up, nearly losing my footing only once on the way out.
A good five minutes later, my knees scraped through my leathers as I knelt in the same place I’d dove in.
I kept low to the ground and scanned the densely wooded forest in all directions.
I hunched even lower when I saw a group of seven or eight cadets jogging southward in a group.
“ I saw your friends’ red banner in a field to the east ,” Shera suggested.
The smartest thing for me to do would be to sneak back to the fortress and not give any of them the opportunity to try and capture me. I could win in a heartbeat. But now that my head was clear of panic, I couldn’t stop thinking about the reward cadets could receive for winning these challenges.
“ The winning team will earn their families a year in the finest suites in the Caves ,” Elias had said, “ and a slightly better chance of not dying .”
“Damn it,” I muttered, heading east. If Mavic and Mina’s team won, it would ensure them the best living conditions in the Caves, which meant the same for Caz, Marin, and their new baby. Probably Finn and Gemma, too. No way was I ruining that for any of them.
I kept my footsteps as light as possible to avoid being detected. If my clothes weren’t soaking wet, I would be drenched in sweat. Near noon, the sun was higher and warmer in the sky, flickering through the canopy above as I ran and breathed in the rich, earthy scent of the forest.
Low-hanging branches smacked me in the face, stung my skin, but I shoved through them. The faster I moved, the less likely other cadets were to catch or see me.
“ How far east? ” I asked Shera.
“I’d say about five minutes out at your speed.”
Sure enough, I soon saw flickering red over the edge of a hill beyond the tree line.
No one else moved in my periphery, so I broke through the line of trees at the base of the hill and came skidding to a stop.
I wanted to retrieve the flag and help the twins, but doing so would put me out in the open with little defense, and I needed to be aware of all angles. All four teams were still hunting me.
For the twins’ sake, the best option might be to wait for them to retrieve their banner and then show my face. The rings safe around my neck gave me the perspective I needed for this challenge to feel like a success, even if I let them take me to Elias.
Before anyone could see me, I climbed the nearest tree and hid among the dense, fresh spring leaves, waiting for the twins’ team to arrive and retrieve their red banner.
The wind was cold, even with the tree canopy acting as a barrier.
I straddled a sturdy tree branch, legs tucked beneath me so they weren’t dangling free for anyone to see.
Some time passed, and when voices drew near, I leaned forward, parallel to the branch, and wrapped my arms around it to blend in as best as possible.
I smiled proudly at the sight of two redheads moving swiftly through the forest, flanked by four other team members: a quiet, petite blond woman, a short but muscular woman with cropped black hair, a mousy young man in spectacles whose presence at the fortress had to be forced, and another with a darker complexion.
I’d seen him talking to Valda on my first day out of the prison cells.
“I told you we should have gone east first,” Mina told Mavic.
“Yes. I’ll never doubt you again, dear sister.”
“Yeah, right,” she laughed, then nervously paused. “Do you think Fera’s all right?”
My chest tightened, because she cared. Hearing it made me more emotional than I could afford to be at the moment.
“I’m sure she’s fine.” Mavic’s confidence was unwavering. “Probably kicking someone’s ass.”
I bit my tongue and repressed the urge to shout I’m right here! , but that would expose us to any cadets potentially lying in wait. It didn’t take Mavic long to climb the hill and retrieve the banner while Mina and the others waited at the tree line for him to return.
“Psst!” I hissed. Mina screamed, and six pairs of wide eyes looked up. “I have what I need,” I said in a harsh whisper. “And I’ll let you hand me over to the commander, but we should keep some distance between us.” I gave a sharp nod toward the fortress. “Go.”
Mavic rested his hands on his hips and frowned up at me like a reprimanding parent. “You go first. We’ll follow and make it harder for someone to sneak up on you.”
Mina and Mavic waited expectantly, but the others stared at me with distrust.
“All right.” I lowered myself and dropped to the ground in a squat, knees smarting at the impact.
Mavic winced when he saw me up close, still soaking wet and covered in scrapes and cuts.
I was an alarming sight, no doubt, but I stood tall and said, “Let me help you win this.” Then I broke into a light jog back to the fortress.
I made it roughly thirty steps before Mina’s voice rang out from behind me:
“Fera, look out!”
To the right, an arrow whizzed past my head. Then another on my left, so close I felt the breeze against the shell of my ear.
“Shit!” My jog went into a sprint. It seemed that some of the cadets might not be keen on following Elias’s no-killing rule when it came to me.
I zigzagged as I ran, hoping to draw the arrows away from the twins without becoming an easy target on a straight path.
I felt a sharp graze across my calf as a third arrow breezed by.
My steps stumbled from the sting, but the arrow never struck true, so I pushed through the pain and used it as a catalyst.
Deep laughter came from the right before I was barreled over into a mound of mud, mercifully soft. The body that landed on top of me was twice my size, and the impact alone jostled me enough that I had to fight to breathe.