CHAPTER 3
Lana and I shared a reluctant glance as we followed the elven, too exhausted to even ask where he was taking us.
He had been leading us along a series of hallways, all of which were so similar.
I lost track of the various twists and turns we took to get to a wider, open space.
It looked like a sparring hall, with rubber mats spaced equidistantly on the ground and a rack of vicious looking weapons to one side.
The ceiling was covered with moss and fern, spiny tendrils snaking along the walls, and a cool breeze seemed to drift in from absolutely nowhere.
Anxiety speared my gut at the lack of windows and the others who already stood waiting in the room, near the weapons rack. From my count, there were eight mortals and three elven, one of which I recognized as Scar Face.
His eyes met mine and an arrogant smirk crossed his mouth. A soft hiss escaped my lips at the haughty look.
Lana nudged me in the ribs. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head silently at her, but Blondie tutted from where he stood a few steps ahead. “Making enemies already, are we?”
I opened my mouth to bite out that this was none of my doing and all their fault, but he was already striding away toward the others in the center. Lana elbowed me forward and we took position beside two other mortals: a boy who looked a few years older than me, and a girl no older than sixteen.
“Hi,” Lana said to them, clearly the chattiest of our bunch.
The girl surveyed us shrewdly. She sported a nasty gash above her eyebrow, while her counterpart crossed his muscled forearms.
“This is Lirah,” Lana continued, pointing me out. “And I’m Lana.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, in an attempt to be friendly.
“Is it?” the girl drawled.
She clearly did not want to be friends.
The boy clicked his tongue at her. “Ignore her. She’s pissy because the arrows nearly caught her.”
Arrows?
“Nearly?” the girl shrieked, pointing to the cut on her brow. “I beg to differ.”
The boy ignored her. “I’m Moric. From the isle of Foulkan.”
“Rayna, from Oulis,” the girl grumbled. She held a tiny lighter in her hand, which she flicked on, then off.
“They let you keep that?” I asked, noting that the blade Umma had given me was missing. Kidnapped and now defenseless. Just great.
Rayna shrugged. “Seems like it. You look terrible.” She said the last part specifically to me. “What happened to you guys?”
“We had to find a key to unlock our door before the floor dropped out,” I summarized.
“We had to find a key too,” Rayna said, the little flame in her hand striking again. “Our floor didn’t fall, but we had about ten dozen arrows shooting at us.”
I didn’t know which was worse.
“What are we doing here?” Lana asked, peering at the elven gathered in front. “It looks like they’re waiting for something.”
“Yeah. The last three.” Moric’s eyes scanned the other mortals. “There should be thirteen.”
Rayna scoffed bitterly at the elven. “What even stops us from leaving? I didn’t ask to be kidnapped in the middle of the night. If I don’t die from these dumb challenges, I’ll die during the Rite. So, what’ll happen if I refuse to compete?”
“They’ll kill you,” Moric muttered.
“None of us are getting out of here alive,” Rayna said. “Whether I die now or later, it doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter,” a deep voice boomed from across the room, and all heads swiveled to survey the elven now entering.
Dark hair, familiar silver eyes.
“I think he heard you,” Moric said.
“No shit.”
Great. I filed away super hearing in the mental cabinet I was slowly beginning to grow on all things elven.
“And you will compete,” Silver Eyes continued, striding purposefully across the room. He was so tall and his shoulders so broad that I didn’t even notice the two mortals trailing behind him, until he swerved around our group to join the other elven.
The remaining mortals joined us, their faces ashen. Tear tracks marked the face of an older woman. She was the eldest of the group, it seemed.
“Aren’t there supposed to be three of them?” Lana whispered.
“Thank you for joining us,” Silver Eyes said, his voice filling the room.
He was clearly in charge here. If the position in which he stood a few steps ahead of the others, who had shifted into formation behind him – Blondie at his right, Scar Face at his left and two others behind them – did not indicate his dominance, then the power radiating from him did.
Just like the night they had taken me, I sensed his energy like a tangible beast, prowling the radius of our group.
It felt like midnight rain and forest fires, ocean salt and unyielding granite.
It was a different kind of deadly brutality.
One that rippled and undulated with lethal calm.
And lurking at the edges of that power was something unspeakably wild.
“We barely did,” Rayna snapped.
Moric elbowed her in the ribs, earning him a cold glare.
“What? It’s the truth.” Rayna’s voice rang loud and clear across the room. “If this was the first Trial, I can’t imagine what fresh horror you’re going to throw at us next.”
My gaze flickered to Silver Eyes, waiting for a display of brutality. For Scar Face to step forward and silence Rayna, just because he could. Anger bubbled beneath my skin, hot and vicious.
But Scar Face didn’t so much as glance at our group. His focus was on his nails, which he was cleaning with the tip of his dagger, looking infinitely more entertained by the blade than us.
Silver Eyes didn’t so much as bat his eyelashes at Rayna’s outburst. Instead, his brows knitted together in an expression I could only call pitying.
Blondie beside him grimaced.
“I’m afraid to tell you,” he said, “but that was not the first Trial.”
Moric shuffled uncomfortably beside me as Lana’s lips parted silently. Rayna’s eyes widened, but even she seemed to have been rendered speechless.
It was the eldest woman of the group that spoke. “What do you mean that wasn’t the first task? A man died trying to make it out of that room!” Her voice broke, tears threatening to spill again from her brown eyes.
“That was most unfortunate,” the elven said, as if reporting on bad weather. “But a necessary consequence of the Mortal Trials. As you will find out, the Trials are not as linear as you may think and will also consist of several unofficial Trials within the actual challenges themselves.”
This caused a spattering of murmured grumbling and outrage within our group.
Granted, no one had ever made it out of the Mortal Trials alive – with the exception of Augustine – so there wasn’t really a lot of knowledge on the challenges themselves within the mortal isles.
But the general consensus was that there were three Trials and then the Rite.
I was relieved that the news of the unofficial Trials seemed to be a surprise to everyone.
Additional challenges seemed brutal on top of what we were already forced into.
I shouldn’t have expected anything less.
“Let me explain,” Silver Eyes said, his voice like liquid night, silencing the murmurs. “I am Kilian Valhan.”
Kilian Valhan. Even sequestered in the governor’s kitchen my entire life, I knew who he was. Elven, like mortals, had a hierarchy system. Kilian was upper elven, and he ruled over other elven who resided on the isle of Lortan.
That had to mean…
“You’ve all been brought to Lortan. More specifically, Lomask, where the Mortal Trials will take place.”
That explained the sea legs I had felt upon waking earlier, and the several days of unconsciousness.
It had definitely taken over a week to sail from Serila to Lortan.
The bridges and pathways used to enter Lortan were forbidden to mortal eyes.
The elven were allowed to cross over to the mortal isles, but humans could not set foot on Lortan or Greyhaven, the isle of the lower elven – those who did not possess the power of the upper elven, but had lower magic.
“You have all been chosen to compete in three Trials, along with any unofficial challenges we may determine at our discretion. Those who survive will have the privilege of participating in the Rite for the chance to join us here in Lortan, in everlasting glory and life as upper elven,” Kilian said.
As if sensing Rayna’s next question, Kilian continued, his tone sharp as knives, “It is important to note that there is a very specific reason why mortals are not allowed to cross into Lortan, or even Greyhaven. Once a mortal sets foot on elven soil, they are bound to remain there for all eternity.”
A silence rang through the room. My sluggish brain tripped and lurched over its thoughts, turning the sentence over and over in my head, until finally it sank in. I could never leave.
Not as a mortal, that is.
I promised Umma I would return. I promised to go back for her. Fear clenched at my heart unlike anything I had ever known, its grip a steel vise. My eyes met Lana’s, the determination I had seen burning in them earlier now guttering into cinders.
She had been right all along. We would either die competing in the challenges or die living as mortals on an elven isle, where everything from the food to drink could be poisonous to our fragile human bodies.
And even though I knew hope was nothing but kindling to my pyre, the only chance I stood of ever making it back home was to try to get to the Rite.
And, if by some miracle, I passed the challenges but my body failed at that final hurdle, at least I would have tried my hardest to return to the only person who had ever truly loved me.
Perhaps then, when Azrael collected my soul, it would have found peace.