CHAPTER 2
There was daylight and nightfall.
I woke intermittently either at dusk or dawn, but never the same time in a row.
I couldn’t comprehend how many days I had been asleep for, since I was never allowed to remain awake for longer than the minutes it took my captors to realize I was conscious.
Then they’d force something with a sweet scent beneath my nostrils, and I would drift off into a dreamless sleep until the next day.
In the twilight zone between wakefulness and sleep, I thought I saw a glimmer of silver peering down at me.
It carried through to my befuddled dreams.
Once, the disorientation faded momentarily for my body to register a soft rocking beneath the hard surface I slept on.
An almost imperceptible swaying had my stomach twisting, threatening to upturn whatever meager contents remained.
That was before the ever-present guard swiftly sent me back to sleep.
When my eyes eventually fluttered and stayed open for long enough to assess my surroundings, it was early morning.
A strip of pale sky was visible through a window near a slatted ceiling, illuminating a large room.
Its walls were painted an eggshell white and a solid wooden door was wedged near the left corner.
I sat slowly, wincing at the crick in my neck and the ache in my joints from having slept far too long and uncomfortably.
Where was I? Memories slotted through my brain, foggy and condensed. Umma, the elven, the Trials–
“You’re up.”
The words came from my right. I turned to find a girl who looked to be about my age, seated in a bed similar to the one I occupied.
She was pale, paler than most of the people in Serila, so I assumed she was from one of the northern islands, perhaps Concorde.
And she was ethereally beautiful, so much so that I had to triple check her ears to make sure she was not elven.
Strands of lilac framed her face, but the rest of her hair was the color of cornsilk, her eyes a cool blue.
Dark circles shadowed those eyes. She looked as tired as I felt.
She tracked my face too, no doubt also making a mental note of everything she saw there. She gingerly folded back the covers of her duvet, swinging her legs off the side of the mattress and letting out a loud yawn.
“Gods, I feel like I’ve been asleep for years,” she muttered, stretching her long limbs.
It seemed like a good thing to do considering how sore my body felt, so I pulled my arms before me, tentatively rotating the joints. My muscles winced in protest, and I gave up stretching in favor of rubbing the knots out.
“As do I,” I said. “Do you know how long we’ve been asleep for?”
She snorted. “I tried counting for the first week. Gave up fairly swiftly.”
A week? We had been asleep for a week, maybe even longer? My heart stuttered in my chest at the thought of Umma, voiceless and unable to do anything about it. I wasn’t even there to help her.
“I take it you’re another one of the candidates, then?” she asked.
“Hm?” I fixed my gaze back on her, though my thoughts still lay with Umma.
“One of the candidates,” she repeated. “Chosen for the Mortal Trials.”
“Oh. That. Yes.”
“Yeah. That.” She leaned back against one of her pillows, sighing loudly. “You look like you’re from one of the eastern isles. Let me guess – Foulkan?”
“Serila.”
“Huh.” She levelled those cool blue eyes at me. “You do not look like you’re from Serila.”
Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe my mother – my real mother – had been from Foulkan, where the islanders had brown skin and dark hair, obsidian eyes, and sharp tongues. It didn’t matter. I was taken from Serila. From the person who did not birth me but was more of a mother than anyone else would ever be.
“What about you?” I changed the subject.
“I’m from the mainland,” the girl said. “Dorisport.”
My brows raised on their own accord. I had lived a cloistered life in the governor’s house, but still, I had heard stories about the mainland from Umma, from the other cooks and cleaners, and even the men who tended the gardens.
“I’ve never met someone from Dorisport,” I hedged, not wanting to offend her with my next question. “Is it really as… religious, as they say?”
“Oh, yeah.” The girl’s eyes fluttered closed as if she hadn’t just slept for days.
“There’s a monument on practically every corner.
You can’t walk four feet down the street without one of those zealous Children of the Gods preaching fealty.
My family are super religious,” she said this last part like it was a secret, shared between old friends.
“And you aren’t?” I couldn’t help but question, fascinated to have met someone so far from Serila.
Citizens of the mainland hardly ever traveled to neighboring islands.
There was no reason for them to when the mainland housed the most important temple.
The one that was said to have once been the hallowed crossing ground for the gods themselves eons ago, when they had deigned to leave their land and visit our world; a tale so outlandish I had trouble believing it.
The girl blew out a breath, lifting her head to study the ceiling.
“To an extent, I am. You can’t not be, living in Dorisport.
Not with the Amber Temple at your doorstep.
” She seemed to be choosing her words carefully.
“I’m just not as… fervent, as most. I perform the rituals on the holy days, and usually do my nightly prayers, but I don’t really know if they’re ever listening. ”
“The gods are always listening,” I said. “Whether they hear you is another story.”
It was the most I could say without my words venturing into treason.
To speak ill against the gods was not only careless, but dangerous too.
From what Umma had told me, the gods were a petty bunch.
Whispered enmity had once wrought floods of devastation and destruction upon Concorde several years ago. They were still rebuilding to this day.
She gave me a curious look. “You’re surprisingly candid for someone from Serila.”
“Is there talk that we’re deceitful?”
“Your governor has a reputation for dishonesty. It has made trading with Serila most risky. My father’s a tradesman,” she added as an aside.
Being a tradesman could be a noble profession, but there were many who were crooked, and a side effect of the job was exposure to corruption, from secrets to black market deals. It made the occupation trickier to navigate than others. “Is that why you were taken?”
Her eyes flickered to me, then over to the ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” I hastened, “if that was too invasive.”
She let out a soft chuckle. “There’s nothing invasive about it. You were also taken. It’s not a secret. To be quite honest, I don’t know why I was taken. All I know is that three elven arrived halfway through Augustine and took me.”
“And your family–” I paused, not knowing whether I should finish that sentence.
She scoffed. “What were they supposed to do? I have three younger sisters. It was either me or one of them. I’d rather it be me.
And it’s not like anyone will ever rebel against the Mortal Trials.
If they do, the elven will stop blessing the isles, all our crops will die, and then we’ll starve to death. ”
“What do you mean they bless the land?” I asked. This was the first I was hearing of it.
Her brows scrunched. “Have you been living under a rock?”
Close. The governor’s house was a fortress, the kitchen my prison. I had only ever heard whispered rumors of the elven. I had even been half-convinced that Augustine was a cautionary tale, a bedtime story told to children so they would behave.
She shook her head at my silence and continued, “Every month, an elven representative visits each isle. They drop a seed of magic in the soil, and it ensures our crops are healthy.”
“What happens if they stop?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.
There’s a reason why we coexist so peacefully with the elven, why no mortal will ever raise an army to challenge them.
It’s a battle we would not win. I suppose the loss of thirteen lives every decade is far better than the countless who would lose their lives in a war.
” She sucked in a deep breath. “I am glad they took me and not my sisters. Everyone knows no one makes it out of the Trials, anyway.”
Her words made me feel queasy. The truth behind them echoed hollowly in my chest. The thought of me not making it back home, of never seeing Umma again, was too painful to bear. I had to make it back. I made a promise. “Don’t say that.”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t mean to tell me you actually think you’re getting out of this alive? I know you Serilans are an untrustworthy bunch, but I didn’t take you for na?ve.”
I wasn’t na?ve. Everyone in Tarlor knew what the Mortal Trials were. Umma had explained it to me before I was six.
Every decade, on Augustine, the elven were entitled to take thirteen mortals, one from each of the islands of Tarlor, to compete in an elaborate series of twisted challenges designed to weed out the strongest of the lot, the ones most genetically compatible for the final challenge, the Rite.
Participating in the Rite would bestow the ultimate gift upon the winner – immortality – and thus a chance to become elven.
The choice of which mortals were taken was always at the discretion of the elven. Volunteers were never considered. There was no age limit, but generally, most candidates were in their twenties. And the girl seated across from me was right. No one ever made it through the Rite.
It was horrifically dangerous to even compete in the challenges, and the few who passed through and made it to the end swiftly found Azrael, the God of Death, waiting on the other side.
All but one. The only mortal to ever turn elven in the past seven decades.
Augustine Devior.
“But August–”