by Gwynn White
“So what do you and Artemis have in store for us, Princess?” one of them shouted. “It better be as exciting as the sword fight.”
A ripple of laughter.
The Intelligentsia had bought it!
She risked a glance at Artemis. He sank back in his seat without a word of protest.
Outmaneuvered, you rotten snake! It gave her hope for all her dealings with him.
She turned to the men who really mattered.
Raith hissed; it was followed by a smile. Relief radiated from him like light from a morning sunrise. It confirmed her decision to change the rules.
Again, she resisted the urge to smile back at him.
Lord Mahlon slapped his hand on the table, rattling the golden crockery. “Others may quail, but I do not. I am equal to any challenge you may present.”
For the fifth time since she had met Lord Mahlon, she had to fight the urge to march down the stone steps and show him her right hook, followed by a well-deserved neck-wringing. Instead, she ignored him and let her eyes rove to Prince Coven and then to Lord Lardel.
Prince Coven gnawed his lip, looking uncertain.
Lord Lardel stood and took a step toward her. “That’s not what I signed up for. I’m a fighter, not a tactician.”
She looked him in the eye. “I am sorry for that. I really am. If you wish to withdraw, I will understand. But I cannot squander any more precious lives in this quest.”
“So how will the eliminations work?” Jorah called from his table.
She braced herself for another discussion with the terrifying blond man. “A good question. The last man who completes the trial loses. If anyone does die—these trials are still dangerous—there will be no elimination.” She addressed the courtiers. “Unlike our usual sports, many of the trials will be impossible to watch, so the winner’s wreath will be awarded in the arena for all to see.”
Another ripple of protest.
She shouted above it, “Even if the burrow and gardens where most of the trials will be held were big enough for all of you, which they aren’t, they are dangerous places. I would not want to risk your lives any more than I do my suitors’.”
Perhaps saying the burrow was dangerous was a little stretch of the truth, but she wasn’t having all these boots stomping over her gardens—especially the poison garden she had chosen for this trial.
Some heads nodded, others twittered together in obvious displeasure. How would she cope with all this dissent when she was queen?
Jorah stood. Tall, devastatingly handsome in the most intimidating way imaginable, he drew every eye in the hall as he walked over to her. He carried himself with the grace of one of the big cats—predatory.
“So, the first man to finish each trial wins? The last one is booted out,” he said, louder than necessary. To quell the protest? If so, she was grateful.
She looked up into his piercing blue eyes. “Yes. Exactly that. And the man who wins the final trial wins my hand.” Unable to bear looking into the depths of those seemingly all-knowing orbs, she faced Lord Lardel. “You will still be risking your life, but no one will be purposefully out to kill you. If you fail—or die—it will be of your own making.” Her fists clutching her dress tightened. “It’s my greatest hope that I don’t have to send any more coffins to families for burial.”
Lord Lardel tapped his dimpled chin with the hilt of his sword. Then his eyes roved the banqueting hall, taking inventory of the lavish furnishings. “I will stay and compete.”
A crass but obvious motive. She gave him a sick smile. “Then I extend my usual welcome.” She turned her back on him and started for the door before anyone else could object. “Please, follow me to the burrow. The trial awaits you.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jorah and his fellow competitors followed Aurora, her pony, and the fae across a long-forgotten but still familiar piazza that led to Niing’s burrow. Only now it was lined with Guardians.
Sweat beaded Aurora’s face and stained her brocade dress as she trudged past the foul constructs. It didn’t stop the silvery-purple flowers in the silk from shimmering as her skirts swayed. Despite her obvious discomfort, the dress and the color suited her.
But not even she struggled as much as Keahr. The fae’s breath rasped and gurgled with every step she took. Only the centaur showed no obvious sign of his Infirmity.
Behind them, courtiers trailed, despite Aurora’s blunt announcement that they weren’t welcome.
Jorah suppressed a smile of admiration. The princess might be frail and her latent beauty marred by those unfortunate freckles on her pale skin, but she was a force to be reckoned with. He had watched Artemis during her radical speech. Clearly trembling with fury, the man had kept his mouth shut.
Score one for Aurora.
Now it was up to Jorah to ensure that the devious cretin didn’t find a way of hitting back at the nymph. Jorah narrowed his eyes at the notion.
A task for Peckle. To keep watch on her uncle, too.
As far as Jorah could tell, the cat had done a good job of monitoring Raith and Carian during lunch and while the two of them had whispered at the glass doors.
He and Peckle had a rendezvous beyond the Guardians planned for that evening. He looked forward to hearing what the cat had discovered.
The only person Jorah had yet to see today was Niing. No doubt he’d played a part in this change of tactics. Centering the trials in the burrow could only benefit Jorah—not that he needed help to beat Raith in a fair fight.
But incubi didn’t fight fair. It wasn’t in their nature or in their design.
As for the rest of the contestants, Jorah snorted in derision. One of the perks of living so long: He was smarter than every man in this city combined. He could cut a man down just as easily as he could work out any riddles Princess Aurora could have set.
He smiled. Except for Niing. No one is smarter than he.
The piazza ended at an astonishing solarium made of wrought iron and glass. A new addition to the landscape, the vast hall, designed to trap heat and sunlight, stood over the tunnel to Niing’s burrow.
Aurora led them inside. Jorah—everyone—gaped.
The checkered marble floor was devoid of features except for line upon line of square holes where each alternative tile should have been. Jorah was about to investigate the closest hole when the pony grabbed his arm.
“Let’s all stick together, shall we?” Zandor suggested in a voice that brooked no argument.
Jorah sighed, but didn’t resist when Zandor pulled him back into the crowd threading down the stairs into the burrow, mouth puckered. While supposedly allies, Zandor didn’t seem to have much time for him.
As long as the pony kept Aurora safe, that was all that mattered.
The air in the burrow hung like a veil, heavy and moist. The second his boot alighted on the worn stone floor, a rush of familiar and much-loved smells and memories made his nostrils flare. A forgotten sense of childhood happiness wrapped a warm embrace around him. He had spent so much time here as a youngling with Niing.
But those heady earthy aromas were mingled with something new: dried and fresh plants hung from the roof above the familiar alchemy bench, where Niing had specialized in working with minerals. Some plants he recognized by their scents; others were unfamiliar—perhaps Aurora had introduced them into this special world. He liked the additions.
Niing waited at the alchemy table. Face inscrutable, the old dwarf nodded a welcome to his visitors.
Jorah didn’t offer much more in return. His relationship with Niing had already drawn unwanted attention. As it was, he sensed Raith smirking behind him. Would the parasite say anything?
Before he could, Aurora swept down one of the many chiseled stone passages that branched off the homely middle of Niing’s burrow, looking decidedly happier to be out of the sun and in the cool underground cove.
Jorah—and everyone else—had to stoop to follow her.
Amid mutters of displeasure from b
oth his competition and the courtiers, some of the spectators peeled away.
Shuffling on his haunches, he tried to remember where this particular passage led, but it had been too long since he’d explored this old mine.
Niing, his brothers, and their fellow dwarfs had used their magic to dig for gold. When Nethric came, all that had changed. Left on his own and with no magic to aid him, Niing had largely hung up his picks and shovels. The flecks glittering in the rocks must have taunted him daily.
Onward the tunnel wove.
Just when Jorah was sure his burning calves would seize up, the passage opened up into a huge cavern.
A verdant jungle of plants, trees, and flowers of every hue crammed into the humid space. Moss and vines crawled up the walls, while the ceiling was hung with trailing ferns. Soft light filtered down, highlighting narrow paths winding through the undergrowth.
He wasn’t the only one to gasp. How this marvel existed in what was once a dusty mine enthralled him. How had Aurora created this underground paradise? He looked up, and his keen eyes caught the gleam of tiny mirrors moving on hydraulic cogs to catch the sunlight, presumably from those holes in the solarium floor.
He smiled his approval. Aurora may not have had access to her magic, but she hadn’t let a “small” impediment like that stop her from manipulating the plants she should have controlled.
Aurora spread her arms wide. “Welcome to your challenge.”
She smiled. In Raith’s direction.
Jorah wanted to scowl, but a long life had taught him the art of looking bored.
“I call this my poison garden,” she said. “Some plants will kill you at the touch. Others, if you eat them. Many will cause hallucinations. Some will just make you sick. A few will even make you mad. Be careful of what you touch. Or how you breathe.”
Jorah’s eyes roved across the closest plants with more focus. Frangipani, moonflowers, and asparagus ferns tumbled in profusion just a few feet from him.
That was just the beginning.
Aurora continued. “There is one exception. I have planted something totally innocuous in various spots in the garden for this trial. Your task is to bring me a single flower from this plant.”
That should be easy enough, as long as she hadn’t grafted a new creation he wouldn’t recognize. He glanced at his competition. From the mix of perplexed and doubtful expressions, they weren’t as sanguine as he was.
“You have until the sun goes down. The first to bring me the correct plant wins this challenge. The last man out of the garden will be eliminated.”
Coven raised a tentative hand. “Can we work together?” His eyes flitted left and right.
No one engaged with him.
Aurora smiled. “To answer Prince Coven, you will each enter the garden through a different path, so if any of you were considering following someone to copy them, forget that half-witted plan.”
Coven’s eyebrows bobbed, and a red flush infused his face.
Aurora barreled on in her usual, inimitable way. “You do have one clue, however. And it’s right in front of you. Let’s see how many of you are smart enough to see it.”
Something in the nymph’s tone drew Jorah’s attention. He trailed his eyes down her willowy form, clad in her lavender-colored dress.
He almost laughed.
Violet. Not lavender.
And there, shimmering in the brocade, were silvery-violet flowers to confirm his assumption.
Satisfied he knew exactly what he was looking for, Jorah smirked at the mixture of fear and confusion radiating off his competition as they scanned the garden for clues. Their panic served them right; all they had to do was look at the woman they were here fighting each other to marry.
Raith’s eyes were everywhere but on her. Hopefully, she noticed.
Mahlon and Lardel fingered their steel armor. It would be little help in locating a tiny plant in this vast jungle of threat.
“You have five minutes to prepare yourselves, and then the trial begins. I wish you all luck.” She turned to leave.
Her entourage followed her.
Jorah spent his five minutes leaning against the stone and picking his nails, missing his talons.
And listening to the others.
Coven’s fox-tail helmet dropped to the floor, forgotten. Hands tearing at the lacings of his armor, he shouted at his squire to fetch his leathers.
He wouldn’t have time to change.
Mahlon’s face looked as if it would catch fire at any moment, and a vein pulsed in his forehead. “I know nothing about plants,” he shouted to his second, despite his earlier bravado.
Raith and his brother huddled together on their own. Jorah’s sharp ears caught snatches of their conversation.
“This is good,” Carian was saying. “You don’t have to fight.”
“No. I just have to navigate a garden of death while looking for a stupid flower,” Raith hissed. “Maleficent’s eyes, the least she could have done was give us a clue that meant something.”
“All you have to do is survive. She said that if someone dies in there, there would be no elimination. Your only priority is coming out alive.”
“And what if no one dies? What then?”
Carian stepped closer, whispering low. Jorah didn’t need to hear him to guess what was suggested. Killing someone.
A musketeer bellowed, “Your time is up. Please pick a path into the garden.”
Jorah strolled to the closest path, feeling Raith’s eyes burning a hole in his head. Without a backward glance, he stalked into the undergrowth. He had a flower to find and a trial to win.
Chapter Twenty-Three
That little ginger-haired bitch.
Raith stood in the very center of his narrow pathway, breathing heavily in the dankness. The air hung like a wet blanket around him, drawing sweat from his pores. It made his leathers stick to him like wine to linen.
Squealing metal sounded behind him. Musketeers swung a wrought-iron gate across his pathway and padlocked it closed, trapping him in the lethal garden.
He swallowed hard. With no mask or helmet, his face was unprotected. He pulled his tunic up over his nose and mouth. His hands he kept high in the air. While a few streaks of light sparkled from above, the light was primarily dark and blue.
Ahead of him, the ground was laden with bright-blue-and-orange mushrooms. Goo dripped from their waxy stems.
A large tree Raith didn’t recognize sent its roots sprawling through the undergrowth, waiting to trip him into the murk. New saplings sprouted up through the moss along their length. A wooden swing hung from the tree’s lower branches, poison ivy curling around the rope. Strangle weeds clung to everything a foot off the ground.
At eye level, fireflies hung like stars around him.
One landed on a dark purple flower.
Its glow went out.
I’ve stepped into a fairytale—of the worst kind.
Only this wasn’t magic. And his magic could do nothing to help him here.
Raith had hoped Aurora’s changes would work to his advantage. Now he knew that was too much to hope for.
Instead of having Jorah remove his head with an axe, his mind would be filled with hallucinations and poisons until one of them killed him.
Just concentrate on finding the flower.
It struck him that Aurora had worn a purple-colored dress. That could have been the clue. There were at least four different purplish flowers within arm’s reach of him. Hers could be any one of them.
They looked innocuous enough, but what did he know, when his interest in plants stopped at the vegetables on his dinner plate? He didn’t even like those much.
He grimaced at Carian’s solution to this challenge: forget the flower and concentrate on finding another contestant—and then kill him. That way, Raith’s place in the next trial was guaranteed.
Raith wasn’t ready to consider such a final option unless absolutely necessary.
Crunching into the mushroom
s, he was grateful for his knee-high boots as he set off down the path.
A squeak above his head made him jump.
He searched the mossy ceiling for the source.
A mirror winked down at him.
“Ginger is clever,” he muttered to himself.
And most definitely a dryad, given what she had created here.
Raith looked at the foul garden with greater appreciation; soon all this power, and more, would be his.
I certainly won’t use it to make gardens.
Treading lightly, he continued along the winding path—until his feet slid on slick mud.
A large pond, almost a dam, lay across the path. Lily pads the size of Raith’s bed and as thick as bone, dotted the dark glimmering surface. Pink and white lilies the size of a giant’s hand bobbed, intertwining with reeds. He stared into the depths of the lake between the lily pads, but the dark waters hid its secrets well.
He walked along the muddy bank to find a way around the pond, but every turn he took was blocked by lethal-looking shrubbery. Reluctantly, he returned to the lake’s edge. Sweat broke out on the back of his neck.
The only way across was via the pads.
They’re poison, too, he reminded himself as he stepped gingerly onto the closest one. It dipped a little, but didn’t drop below the surface. He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet to test its rigidity.
It held firm.
Foot shaking, he stepped onto the next lily pad, trying not to look over his shoulder. He couldn’t help it. He gulped as the gap between him and the shore widened.
With no alternative but to keep moving, he bunched his hands at his sides and leaped onto the closest one.
The water rippled at the force, some splashing onto his boots.
He prayed to Maleficent, a goddess he didn’t even truly believe in, that the water wasn’t some nasty poison concoction. When his boots didn’t start dissolving, he breathed deep in relief.
He jumped again—just as a great green-and-red mouth chomped down where he had been standing moments before.
It was all he could do not to scream as he toppled over into the lake in his shock.