by Lucy Tempest
“Maybe I wanted her to put her money where her mouth is?” I said, exhaling the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been bating. “She’s been bragging for days about how she’s the best, it would have been a real letdown if she botched her routine like that girl from Shimmerhale.”
Cora cringed, hand flying to her chin. The last girl to present a dance had attempted moves beyond her abilities for extra points and had paid for her gamble, dearly, by landing on her face and cracking her jaw.
“NEXT!”
I clung to Cora’s free arm and begged, “Trade places with me?”
“I’ll be up there for a few minutes at most, and the delay won’t make any difference,” she said honestly, eyes softening with pity. “But I will if you want.”
I was really going to miss her.
I gulped down the spiked rock in my throat. “No, you’re right. I’ll go.”
She cupped my cheek affectionately. I again had a feeling Cora realized how afraid I was of being eliminated, and for a reason other than caring about the competition itself. She had no empty words or white lies to give me, but this quiet, empathizing gesture meant far more than any variation of “You can do it!” could have.
“NEXT!” The yell from Master Zuhaïr came again, impatient now.
I smoothed my gold dress, the one I had arrived in, and stepped up. As if I was stepping up before my executioners.
Chapter Nineteen
“Present yourself and your quality,” Mistress Asena recited emotionlessly.
I could only answer the first part of the demand. “Lady Ada of Rose Isle.”
Master Farouk livened up instantly, recognizing me. “Ah, Lady Ada, what have you got for us today?”
The lump expanded again in my throat, choking me with its nauseating pressure, making the world before me sway as fresh tears burned behind my eyes. “Nothing.”
A puzzled crease pulled his thick brows together. “I take it you’re telling jokes today?”
The tears I tried to blink away stuck to my lashes and blurred my eyesight. I sniffled and forced my wobbling lips into a smile. “No jokes, sir. I have nothing to show.”
Loujaïne’s grey eyes were like cold silver in the daylight. “What does that even mean?”
I turned up my hands in a shrug, a guileless move reserved for whenever I delivered a convincing lie to an adult. Except, for once, I really was clueless and couldn’t lie my way out of this situation. “It means I never learned a skill.”
“None at all?” Farouk asked, sounding disappointed.
“I can’t sing or dance. I can’t paint or draw or sculpt or sew, neither can I tell one end of a flute from the other or remember more than two lines of poetry.” My voice cracked on pitchy squeaks as I smothered sobs. “If there’s anything else I can do in this test, please tell me.”
“You had ten days to prepare for this.” Mistress Asena scowled. “You could have learned something, anything to present to us, in that time. Why didn’t you?”
I’d tried. I really had. But in such a short time I couldn’t learn to work with my hands, sing or dance well-enough to impress anyone. And though I had a great memory for detail, it was never the kind needed to memorize passages from books. There’d been nothing I could have learned in ten days that could have put me on the weakest girl’s level.
Even if there had been, I’d been too distracted by my mission to commit to it, anyway.
“If you don’t know what you’re supposed to do, let alone what you can do, then there’s no chance you have any quality to offer the prince or the kingdom,” Loujaïne stated bluntly. “But I thank you for making our job easier.”
Farouk’s disappointment felt personal—like I had let him down—as he glowered at me and called out, “Next!”
I walked off the stage and blew past the other girls, my own heartbeat and breathing becoming the loudest things in the world, roaring in my ears.
Cherine caught me by the arm, pulling on it like a demanding child. “Where are you going?”
“To pack.”
“But you can’t leave.”
I limply wiped my eyes. “I can’t stay, either.”
Cherine stomped her feet. “This isn’t fair! We have to find a loophole of some sort. Arts, music and crafts—that can’t be the end of it, there have to be other ways—”
“It’s too late for that now!” It came out harsher than I meant it to, taking her by surprise.
Her face fell for seconds before it was reanimated again, this time with excitement. “You can stay with me, as my companion. Fairuza is allowed her handmaidens, I better be allowed to keep you. I’m Cyaxares’s cousin too!”
That sounded like a lifeline. If I could stay…
No, I couldn’t. I was an idiot to consider it. These people stuck by their rules rigidly and any hope they’d let me stay was a false one. I had to hurry, make use of the time I had left around here.
I pulled my arm free from her grip. “I came here to compete and I lost. They won’t let me stay. Now let me go.”
“No! You can’t leave me now.”
“Why not? This helps you move forward.”
“Not like this. We were supposed to make it to the final week together, where we attend dinners and balls, where I can introduce you to my family.”
“Cherine, you’re making this worse.”
She pulled harder on my arm. “No! This is not how this is supposed to go. I already planned everything. You can’t go!”
Her intensity bewildered me, made me stop resisting her. “Why do you suddenly care so much?”
“Because you’re the only friend I have!” she shouted shrilly in my face, her lower lip trembling, her hazel eyes brimming with tears. “I am to marry the prince and you are to marry my brother, and we’ll be sisters.”
That hit me like a kick in the teeth.
It hadn’t occurred to me that she liked me, let alone enough to want to be my sister-in-law. Only one person had thought of me this fondly since my mother.
For a second, through blurry, tear-filled eyes I saw her small form, defiant expression and round face become that of Bonnie Fairborn, the only friend I had. Or at least hoped I still had.
I pried her fingers off my arm. “I’m sorry, Cherine, but I have to leave.”
She burst into loud, gasping sobs as her grip slid off my arm, her hand remaining outstretched, reaching for me as I backed away.
I couldn’t bear looking at her, not without envisioning Bonnie. Or worse, seeing her as the friend I now knew her to be, the one I had to leave behind.
I ran out of the gardens, hurtled up every set of stairs and sprinted towards our chambers. I couldn’t waste one more second.
Before I could reach the door, my midsection collided with something hard and flexible. An arm.
Cyrus!
He caught me by the waist like he’d done in the tunnels, stopping and steadying me, crowding me back into a hidden corner. “Where are you going?”
The storm of despair, stress, exhaustion and sadness overwhelmed me. Unable to get a word out through my gasping and sobbing, I went straight into hyperventilating.
He bent to bring his eyes level with mine, worry swirling in their depths. He cradled my head in his long fingers, my jaw in his large palms, calloused thumbs stroking the tears off my cheeks.
This should have been a sweet, soothing moment. One that was self-contained in its closeness, and the gentle intimacy of him comfortingly touching my face. One I’d always treasure. But my mood was too dark to see even this moment through a rosy tint. In fact, it was a cruelly tantalizing taste of something I was about to lose forever.
“What is it?” he whispered, deep voice vibrating with urgency. “What happened?”
“Please,” I gasped. “You have to help me now. I don’t have much time left.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m getting sent home tomorrow.”
His head moved back away from mine, his thumbs co
ntinued rubbing smooth circles on my face, moving upwards like he meant to massage away my headache. “You scared me. I thought they’d discovered you were missing this morning and were going to punish you.”
“I would take that over being sent home right now.”
“What’s wrong with going home?”
“Because there’s no one to go back to!” I cried. “Not if I don’t have that stupid lamp!”
“How? I swear I will help you find it if you just tell me what it’s for.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know what it’s for. I just know I have to get it.”
“You make no sense. Nothing about you makes any sense.”
Nothing about me?
I moved out of his reach, the tinge of suspicion in his eyes proving enough of a distraction to halt my tears. “What does that mean?”
He shook his head, appeared to be wrestling with his own thoughts. Then he finally pinned me in a pensive gaze. “It’s for a god, isn’t it? The lamp?”
That had come out of left field. “W-what do you mean?”
“That’s the only way this makes sense,” he said. “That it’s a sacred lamp for the shrine of a god. I know that in some cultures, major gods have extravagant temples equipped with ceremonial articles and that it’s considered sacrilege to remove them from the hallowed grounds, as that’s equal to stealing from a god. But that’s never stopped thieves, has it? Was that lamp stolen from your god’s shrine?”
If Nariman turned out to be a goddess I was going to fling myself off the mountain.
But, if that explanation would get him to stop looking at me like I’d grown a second head and help me, then I was going with it.
“Testy minor goddess might be a more appropriate title,” I admitted, putting as much truth as I could in the lie to make him believe me. “As for the thievery, would that make it harder or easier to find?”
“Depends on who took it.”
According to Our Lady of Merciless Threats, the king himself had taken it from her. Didn’t bother to explain how, or why, or even when that had happened.
“Someone who lives in this palace, that’s for sure,” I dodged.
He raised one eyebrow. “That’s all you know?”
At my nod, he gave me a long, hard look then stepped away, his expression solemn as he waved one hand in invitation. “We’ll start by searching the shrines on the eastern tower.”
I was trembling so hard I could barely put one foot in front of the other. “You’ll search with me?”
He nodded. “And I’ll search for you as you sleep tonight if it will help.”
“You don’t have to…”
“I want to,” he assured me firmly, looking deeply into my eyes, before turning his ahead as we started walking.
I was so touched my tears started falling again. But I didn’t know how to express my gratitude beyond a shy brush on his arm and a strained thank-you. I had a feeling I would be thanking him for his invaluable help so much that all words and gestures of thanks in the world would lose their meaning.
We walked in a tense silence full of stolen glances. I didn’t know where we were going but for a while, nothing mattered but being with him, feeling him beside me. I found myself lagging behind him as I marveled at all the shades of brown and bronze in his hair, at every detail of his powerful body and every assured, graceful move he made.
On our way to the tower, we passed by eyebrow windows that looked down on the gardens. I spotted the girls still lined up below, the presentations ongoing as a girl in a yellow dress played the fiddle. Out of another window, I saw the garden wall that overlooked the very edge of the mountain. The dismissed girls were now making their way up to the palace through the sloping path.
As the line turned the corner, reaching the highest point of the border wall, I saw Cora retreating as another girl advanced on her. It was Fairuza, hard to miss in her turquoise dress, the silver in her hair reflecting sunlight blindingly. Cherine cut through the line and squeezed herself between Cora and Fairuza, stopping everyone’s ascension. Then everyone joined in on what appeared to be a heated argument.
From that distance, I could only hear wisps of their shrill voices. Then as the girls behind them decided to cluster around the trio, I could no longer see them, either.
Suddenly, I heard a familiar blood-curdling scream.
All the girls stopped moving for moments then surged as one, crowding at the edge of the low wall. Their voices were so loud now I could make out what they were saying.
They were screaming for help.
Someone had fallen over the wall.
Chapter Twenty
Every ounce of nerves and exhaustion were blown away as I blasted past Cyrus. And that was before another scream exploded in my head. Cora’s.
“Cherine!”
Cherine was the one who’d fallen over the edge.
No. No, no, no!
I no longer felt the ground beneath me as I hurtled down the spiraling stairs, heart stampeding, following the commotion until I found a balcony that directly overlooked the wall where the girls crowded. But I was still one level up, still too far away.
Palace guards had arrived, some were interrogating the girls, some looking over the side of the wall, yelling. Yelling down. It seemed they were talking to someone.
It had to be to Cherine. Which meant she hadn’t fallen off to the bottom of the mountain.
Yet.
Why weren’t they doing anything to help her? Why were they just standing there?
Cyrus caught up with me, panting, alarmed. “What happened? Did someone fall over the wall?”
I only nodded as I pounced on him in my urgency. “Where can I get a rope? And a hook?”
He blinked. “From the armory.” Which was across the palace. “Why?”
Mind going a mile a minute, teeth chattering, I didn’t have the words, or the time, to explain. All my energy crammed into the need to save Cherine.
“Forget it.”
I grabbed the balcony’s curtains, yanking on them desperately.
Cyrus joined me, and being much taller, he managed to pull the long curtains with their rod down for me. “What are you planning exactly?”
“Anything that can help her! She’s still hanging on!”
I threw the rod with its curtains over the balcony ledge. As I swung my legs in the massive skirt over it, Cyrus leaped over the ledge and down what had to be at least ten feet. He landed on bent knees, beating me to the ground.
He stood up, held his arms up.
Without a second’s hesitation, I let go of the balustrade and fell into his arms.
The impact emptied both of our lungs. But there wasn’t a moment to lose, not by regaining our breath, or registering the moment of closeness.
He set me on my feet at once. “Now what?”
Without answering, I knelt, slid one set of curtains off the rod and tightly knotted their ends. Then bundling it up and holding the rod up like a flagpole, I leaped to my feet. “Follow me.”
I ran toward the clucking crowd, tore through them, knocking them out of my way with my improvised spear to reach the ledge. The sight below froze my blood.
At least fifty feet above the narrow mountain plateau—and thirty feet beneath us—Cherine was hanging onto a gargoyle, hair blowing in the wind, legs kicking in the air.
“Help!” Her pleading scream cracked, lodging like an arrow in my heart.
“Hold on until we get a net below you,” a guard yelled down at her.
“No!” she shrieked, terror turning her eyes rabid. “It’s too high.”
It was too high. Falling on a net from that height wouldn’t make much of a difference. She’d still impact the ground hard enough to shatter every bone in her body. Or they might not be able to catch her at all.
I elbowed the guard. “Out of my way!”
“Get back upstairs,” the guard ordered, sticking an arm out to block me. “All of you go to your quarters and let us wo
rk.”
Dread and anger burst like lava from my gut and I screamed shrilly in his face, jamming the end of the rod in his side. “You’re not doing anything, so either help or get out of my way!”
“Miss, he told you to step aside,” another guard said. “You’re holding up the rescue.”
“What rescue?” Cyrus shoved the first guard away from me while Cora did the same to the other one. “Go get a rope so we can pull her up.”
As soon as the guards ran away, I immediately threw the curtains over the edge, holding the rod by the middle. Cyrus and Cora at once rushed to my side, each holding an end.
“Cherine! Grab on!” I yelled.
She opened her eyes, arms trembling over the gargoyle’s neck. The end of the curtains was over two feet above her head.
“I can’t!” she whimpered.
She was losing her strength, and despair was starting to eat at her will to hang on.
The best way would have been to loop a rope around her. But by the time they fetched one, she would have slipped. Our only hope was dragging her up by those curtains.
“Yes, you can!” I tried to sound as certain as I could. “Just reach up!”
Shaking, she stuck her feet on the wall and unwrapped an arm to reach up and —
She slipped, slamming her chin down onto the head of the gargoyle, and ended up hooking her arm tighter around it, clinging for dear life, sobbing, “It’s too high!”
My heart shivered in my chest, shaking my voice as I hissed to Cyrus and Cora, “We need to hang it lower.”
“How can we do that?” Cora asked, peeking over the edge, face pale as ashes.
There was no way we could. Any lower and we’d go over the edge ourselves. There was only one thing to do now.
I had to climb down to her.
I’d climbed up and down walls before, but they were the facades of houses or the fences of gardens, not hundred-feet-high palace walls. That, and I always climbed up with an empty backpack and down with loot small enough to tuck in it. Now I’d have to climb up with an armful of wriggling, panicked girl.