Chapter Thirty-Two
THIRTY-TWO
I wake to the sound of a latch clicking shut, and the tear of the wind at my skin.
It claws at the hair whipping my cheeks, lashing my arms with raindrops that feel as sharp as daggers. Cold doesn’t just sink into my bones—it’s already burrowed deep in the marrow, jolting my heart with the same shock as falling into icy water.
Both hands fly for my eyes—for the mask there, shifted so I can’t see a thing. I rip it off, gasping on the cold, predawn air, tingling with the taste of sea mist and lightning.
Old Ones, where am—
I make the mistake of looking over the stone ledge to my right.
Gray storm clouds churn above me, twisting and writhing in the angry skies. Hard stone digs into my knees and hands as I struggle up to all fours, and I’m soaked through with rain before the scream rips up from my throat.
Below me is nothing.
The lip of a turret ledge opens to the fathoms of nothing but mist-strewn air and a sweeping crowd below, hordes of them looking up this way from where they’re spread out in the wide expanse of the castle grounds. Horrifying understanding slams into me.
The High Queen could’ve killed me, easily.
But this court is cracking. Eavan’s execution on the Black Quay made sure of that. And now the High Queen wants the spectacle of my death in the finale of the Test of Strength. The distraction of giving the nobles something to cheer over, something to unite them.
Someone for them to hate more than her.
She’s giving them me.
The ragged rush of my heartbeat thrashes against my ribs, and the whole word narrows.
I’ve never been afraid of heights. Then again, I’ve never been anywhere this high.
Nothing in Quayside is higher than two stories, but this…
I must be at the top of one of the castle’s highest turrets.
Six, seven stories? A narrow ledge of rain-drenched stone is all that separates me from falling.
One roll to my right while unconscious and I would’ve tumbled over already.
My stomach lurches as I find the strength to stand, pressing my back against the cold stone of the turret wall, and for a moment, I can’t breathe.
Can’t think. Can’t see anything beyond the gut-wrenching plummet waiting for me if my feet so much as slip.
Fuck.
This is bad. Really, really, really bad.
Sour bile coats my tongue. I press my back into the stone so hard I feel the rough edges of it dig into each vertebrae.
Think.
My teeth clack, and I turn my face up to the churning skies.
My hands sting, but the worst of it is a dull throb from the antidote I swallowed down in my room. Thank the Old Ones I didn’t try to tough it out.
I force out a breath through shaking teeth.
I need to be as hard and unfeeling as steel now.
What was it the High Queen said, just before the Test of Wisdom began? I draw in one shuddering breath after another, nails digging into the stone so hard they crack. The Assay is our chance to cleave the weak links from the chain. It is our forge.
And I refuse to shatter.
Crawling, I inch across the stone, fighting the rising panic, and—shit.
A buffet of wind slams into me, and my scream disappears into the punishing storm.
If I stay here, I’m going to die. This storm will rip me off the ledge and smash my body into the earth. I have to push past the terror.
There must be a way down. My hands find the iron pane of a latch on a window set into the stone of the turret, but of course it’s sealed shut. Locked from the inside, and the glass is as thick as my hand. I ram on it, but it won’t break.
A clawed fist of fear wraps around my throat and squeezes.
Fuck, it has to be a hundred feet down to the ground. More, probably. There’s nothing to break my fall. Nothing to hold on to on the long, long way down.
Except—?
The wind lashes, slapping a length of thick, knotted brown rope against the stone. The force of it rams the heavy rope into the wall below the turret ledge with a brutal slam, and I nearly jump out of my skin. My eyes follow the deadly path of its length.
Someone’s taken the time to weave the rope around the crenellation of the very top of the turret in an elaborate tangle.
All the moisture evaporates from my mouth, and I think I understand—even though I would give anything to be wrong.
My gaze scans the length of the castle walls, hunting along the other turrets in the distance. The lashing rain turns them into a blur, but I can just make out the shape of a figure on each of the other turrets moving steadily down the walls.
Saraid.
Aisling.
Oona.
I draw in a ragged, shaking breath. Wipe the rain soaking my face, blurring my sight.
My heart beats fast enough to fly out of my chest as I grip the rope in both stinging hands and follow it to the ledge.
It seems sturdy enough. There’s really no way to be sure.
I could make it halfway down and feel it give—
I shut the thought down.
I can’t go there, or I’ll never do this.
And I will live—for Finn.
For everything the Whisperers are still working toward.
A free Eireann.
As long as there is breath in my lungs, I won’t give up on that dream either.
I crawl right up to the ledge and swing my feet over. I can taste the terror, the bright panic. Wind whips the rain into daggers, slashing across my cheeks. I grip the rope so hard my palms scream, despite the blue powder antidote I took just hours ago, and lower myself down.
Pain means nothing when the alternative is being dead.
I’m suspended, hanging over the ledge of the turret with nothing between me and the ground but the piece of rope burning in my death grip. A sob claws at my throat as gravity fights to pull me down, and the wind tries to help it, tearing at my gown, my hair, me.
My feet fight to find traction, searching for the knots on the rope. The muscles in my shoulders scream, and my arms shake so they feel like they won’t be able to hold on.
There it is.
My rain-soaked slippers find the knobby knot farther down the rope. And even with the lashing bite of the rain, the world around me fades beneath the deafening thrum of my pulse.
The space between heartbeats is the only measure of time. My reminder to suck in a gasping breath and lower myself another inch.
I exist caught in the space between them.
Hand over hand, one foot climbing down over the other, I descend the castle wall. Past slick expanses of rain-blackened stone and down to where the fresh, sweet smell of rain on earth and grass fills my shaking lungs. My palms scrape raw, the nerves shrieking.
Close. So close now. I have to be. Just a little bit farther…
Another drop, hand over hand, and my feet slip on slick—solid—earth. Relief slices deep enough to carve into my bones, and the sob waiting in my throat breaks free.
I did it.
I’m alive.
I close my eyes and tilt my head back to the deluge of the skies above.
The icy bite of a blade scrapes up my throat, and a cruel voice hisses in my ear. “And to think—my mother tried to convince me a Quayside rat could be a threat.”
Oona.
My hands grasp for the sheaths at my waist—thank the fucking Old Ones that whoever grabbed me didn’t take my blades.
The High Queen really does want my death to be a spectacle—a display of the noble daughters triumphing over me, a peasant.
Proof for this entire fucking court that even with a blade, I could never best them.
Fury ripples in a sizzling flame down my spine.
Watch me.
Oona digs her blade in against my throat, and I freeze. Her hand roams along my sheaths, plucking the blades and the short sword and dropping them in the mud.
She wrenches my chin up with the flat edge of her knife.
While she can’t be any taller than I am, her grip is pure iron.
A dull roar rises over the din of the rain and the wind as Oona holds me out to face the nobles.
Hundreds of them, thronging in the stands in their finery from the masked ball beneath banners snapping in the wind.
The gardens and castle walls are maybe two hundred feet away, blurring in the growing barrage of rain and that beating rising louder in my ears.
All it will take is an inch, and her knife will sink into the thrumming pulse beneath my jaw. I’ll bleed out right here in the dirt, just like so many other Quaysiders.
I won’t let them see me cower. I won’t beg Oona to spare me.
“Tell me,” I gasp out. “How’s it feel to give up everything and know you’re still only as good as a peasant?”
A hot line of pain bites where her right hand scrapes the blade against my flesh.
I struggle against her, try to pull back from the long dagger an inch below my pulse, but she steps back with me and keeps the blade locked at my throat.
“You peasants are all the same. Doesn’t matter how many tricks you pull to get here.
You’ll never understand how the real world works. What it takes to deserve power.”
Her grip tightens on the hilt of the blade, and I know.
This is it.
“I know exactly what you deserve,” I hiss, and pour every bit of grit and strength and rage into my muscles. I claw my nails into the tendons on the back of her blade hand so hard that her hot blood trickles down my neck.
Oona snarls.
Her blade twitches at my neck, drawing a fierce line of pain across the skin there.
Desperation surges in me, and I use my grip to wrench her wrist down and away from my throat.
In the same breath, I rip my elbow back to duck under her blade arm, and crank my grip on her wrist, jerking the lowered arm up viciously behind her back.
I throw my entire weight into the wrenching movement, keeping her blade arm twisted behind her, and slam the joint forward.
Her shoulder dislocates with a horrific crack, and Oona shrieks.
My breath burns in my chest.
Her arm hangs uselessly out of the socket, and her eyes are wild with pain. But she doesn’t let go of the blade. She just switches it to her other hand and pants, eyes fixed on me and burning with lethal hate.
It all comes down to this.
Oona will never yield—not to a peasant.