Shadow Fall

by Audrey Grey

  I inhale a deep breath to keep from falling off the table. Countess Delphine? The cruel girl who shaved my head for entertainment? Who in their right mind would put a maniac like that in charge of the finalists?

  Loud taunting makes me wobble, and I focus on keeping my balance. Something cold and heavy is placed into my hand. I hear and feel liquid sloshing inside it, so a cup. “Drink up,” orders Delphine. “I want to see empty goblets in ten seconds.”

  I draw in furious gulps, the liquid burning a fiery trail to my belly. After I take a couple breaths of air, I realize it’s blackberry rum, not acid—not that my esophagus seems to know the difference.

  A wave of dizziness crashes over me. My leg wobbles, but I manage to stay on one foot.

  “Again,” Delphine commands. There’s the sound of my glass being filled. I drain my cup. This time it doesn’t burn so badly, and the flame in my belly becomes a soothing blanket of warmth that seeps into my limbs.

  The girl beside me is having problems. I can hear her dry-heave between each shallow sip. Finally, though, she gets it down. Drawing in a ragged breath, she makes a grunting noise, followed by wet vomiting.

  “Oh,” says Delphine. “Oh, dear me. We can’t have that.” Footsteps clop our direction. “Your name?”

  “Bri—Brinley Fox,” says the girl. “I’m sorry. Let me try again.”

  “Well, Bri-Brinley,” Delphine says, mocking Brinley’s stutter, “I was hoping you would say that.”

  Clanging on the table. It sounds as if Brinley is being helped down. The sour smell of vomit burns my nose. After a moment, Brinley says, “I don’t understand.”

  “Lick it up,” Delphine says.

  “What?”

  Snickering echoes through the room. “Lick. It. Up.”

  After a pause comes the sound of lapping. My stomach tightens, and acrid bile tickles my throat.

  The mentors are trying to humiliate us. Make sure we don’t rise above our place. They are reminding us we are beneath them. That they—not us—were Chosen first, and we are an unwelcome afterthought.

  Every time a leg hits a table, someone has to drink another cup. There is more puking. More lapping. More crying. People begin to fall from their tables, from drunkenness or fatigue it’s hard to say.

  Just as I become aware of the dull ache in my bladder, a boy begs to use the bathroom. Minutes later he must wet his pants because Delphine and a few of the others mercilessly berate him. Another round of vomiting. Another series of thuds as bodies tumble to the ground.

  I’m thinking I might actually get by fine when something triggers the memory of Delphine and her friends snickering over me, and my leg wavers. I try to regain my balance, but it’s too late; my foot has already touched.

  My cup becomes heavy—but not as heavy as before. “Drink slowly,” a male with a gentle voice instructs. One long gulp is all it takes, but I pretend to drink for another thirty seconds so it looks like my cup was full.

  I blink as our blindfolds are discarded and we are allowed to stand on two legs. Not that that helps some of the others, who are already so drunk they can barely sit. Dark wet stains drench the front of more than one trouser. The hall smells of piss and vomit and rum. Many of the girls shake, shedding silent, streaky tears. My vision swims as my eyes follow the flickering golden light, tossed from the two massive chandeliers in the ceiling.

  That’s when I see the air seem to shiver, like invisible ripples billowing outward. I squint to make sure I’m not drunker than I thought, but the rest of the room must see it too because the hall goes quiet. Just as the air starts to solidify into a form, Delphine slaps a hand over her chest. “All hail the Emperor!”

  The Chosen echo, “All hail the Emperor!”

  And then a deathly quiet descends the room as the Emperor’s hologram, a huge, larger than life figure spanning the ceiling, smiles down at us. “Hello, little maggots.”

  A girl beside me begins to cry, and a few of the other finalists look as if they’re going to be ill again.

  “So these are the traitors’ children,” the Emperor says in a booming voice. “A pathetic lot, wouldn’t you agree, my Chosen?”

  The Chosen stomp their feet and yell, “Yes, my Emperor,” in unison.

  “During the Culling tonight, it will be your job to discover the few deserving Bronzes to mentor beneath you and possibly enter Hyperion.” A cruel grin twists the Emperor’s face. “But right now, your job is to find the weakest worm and squash it.”

  Cheers erupt as the Chosen go wild, clapping and pounding fists on the tables while the finalists shake. I’m shaking too. But I remind myself the Emperor is only a hologram—for now, at least. He can’t hurt me. And if I don’t call attention to myself, there’s no reason for him to notice me.

  A sober-looking Riser stands near the back, surveying our tormentors. He makes small, smooth, maniacal movements that hint at murder. Giant blots of blood stain his vest.

  It doesn’t take long to find the owner of the blood. Unlike the other mentors, whose features are lithe and pleasing, the boy with the swollen nose is muscular and imposing, platinum-blond hair cropped over cruel blue eyes and a thick, square jaw. By the way he’s sneering at Riser, the boy isn’t too happy about their previous interaction.

  A Bronze bloodying a Gold. Not the best start to the Shadow Trials.

  I look around. It’s impossible to tell which of the mentors spared my drink. I spy Caspian to my right. He’s speaking softly to a girl who has fallen from her table into a pool of yellowish vomit. His eyes cut at me, and I look away. The last thing I need is to be noticed by someone like him.

  The mentors are casually walking around us, talking and laughing as if we are chattel to be bid upon. Every once in a while, a mentor will take stock of a finalist, fingering their clothes or nudging them to see how drunk they are.

  Above us, the Emperor stays quiet. But he watches. I can feel his gaze as it travels the finalists, looking for what, I don’t know.

  Our tormentors make up twenty-five of the highest-ranking Chosen, all descended from powerful Houses. The Emperor must be proud, I think as I study them. They are exactly as I remember. Each one different, a masterpiece of genetics and breeding, exquisitely made, their flawless features nearly impossible to look away from. They mill about, smooth and graceful, as if they float instead of walk. Each one carries a weapon of some sort on their person: The guys seem to favor short swords, the girls jeweled daggers.

  One dark-eyed boy casts an indifferent glance at me, and I fight the urge to dig my pointed boot into his smirking lips. Instead, I stand stiff as a statue while he casually measures my ankles, tilting his head side to side as his eyes travel up.

  Soon there are others I recognize. Delphine sits on an elaborately-carved redwood throne on an upraised stage, her deep-plum-colored dress overflowing the chair, whispering and laughing with a pack of sharp-eyed courtiers who pick at the dark cherries on the table next to her. She wears the casual arrogance of someone who’s been told since birth they are better than everyone else. But it’s her eyes—pale, fidgety, pupils swollen with cruel excitement—that scare me. Caspian’s sovereign seat sits empty to Delphine’s left.

  “The Countess Delphine has never been able to resist a throne,” a girl teases in a soft voice. I look down to the courtier who whispered it, a big-eyed, fair-haired girl, but she’s already moved past. Prince Caspian glances up from his position on the floor and beams at her in a way I could only hope someone would look at me. Then she turns her head and glances curiously at me before dipping low to help Caspian with the sick finalists.

  Princess Ophelia, it has to be. Did she notice me watching Delphine? But why would she say what she did? Unless the court is divided. After a while I see I’m right; there are two separate factions: those who follow Delphine and those who follow Caspian.

  Hmm, won’t that be an interesting marriage?

  The Emperor watches it all like a god, his gaze implacable—except when he glances
down at Caspian helping the finalists. Then The Emperor frowns, and an angry line etches his forehead.

  But he perks up again when the brutish boy with the broken nose—undoubtedly Delphine’s twin brother, Count Roman Bloodwood—leaps onto a table full of finalists and stomps loudly, whooping and hollering in their faces. “C’mon,” he yells, his voice breathy with excitement and rum, “time to get to know you little worms.”

  Slowly the room fills with the chanting of the Chosen. “Truth or Risk!”

  I know the game. My friends and I played it when I was young. Sit in a circle. Wait your turn and choose to answer a question or take a dare. Always stupid stuff. Who do you want to kiss? Run across the busy street. That sort of thing.

  I have the sinking feeling this is not stupid, childish stuff we are about to do.

  “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” Delphine trills, strolling around the tables. “Catch a worm by the toe.” She grabs a girl’s leg and the girl cries out in alarm. “If it hollers, make it pay.” Delphine smirks up at the girl. “Truth or risk?”

  The girl chooses truth. Delphine seems disappointed. Sighing, she says in a bored voice, “What’s the most deviant thing you’ve ever done?”

  The girl’s round eyes flit upward at the Emperor as she struggles for the safest answer.

  Delphine points a remote at the wall, and a huge projector screen lowers. “Hold . . . that . . . thought.” With one little click, the screen comes to life. My heart sinks as I realize it’s the girl’s memories being accessed somehow through the Microplant they gave us at headquarters.

  Riser and I make eye contact. It’s only a slight shake of the head, but I understand perfectly what he is saying. We cannot take the chance of them accessing something Flame has yet to encrypt.

  Both of us will have to choose dare.

  I miss the girl’s memory, but it must not have been too inflammatory because Delphine quickly moves on. Slicing between the tables, she parts the crowd like a knife, seemingly choosing at random. Memories project onto the wall. Thoughts and actions and feeling that were supposed to be private.

  A boy kicks his neighbor’s dog to death for nipping his shoe. Two boys cheat on their final exams. Nearly everyone has had something reconstructed. Several girls had forbidden trysts with Centurions. Another is in love with her family’s Bronze serving boy.

  Despite the embarrassment to the finalists, I can tell Delphine is unsatisfied. She’s become cagey, her bottom lip puffing out like a child not getting her way.

  But then she comes upon two sibling finalists who introduce themselves as Lord Hugo and Lady Lucy Redgrave. With dark curly hair streaked silver and alabaster skin tinged gray, like dirty snow, they stand out from the others. Of course I remember them from the ferryboat. After holding me down so Delphine could practically scalp me, their faces are seared into my brain. They’re the first Chosen pair I know of who were ousted from court, and I wonder exactly what happened.

  My gut tells me it’s an interesting story.

  Hugo goes first. We all quiet as the screen shows him bash in the head of an older professor who gave him a poor grade. The man would have surely died had the rock Hugo used not have cracked. Lucy’s memory seems different, at least at first. She’s shown walking through the alleyway when a group of girls finds her. They torment her, pulling her mass of tight black curls and making jokes about her snowy complexion. After they tire of this game and go back inside the apartment building down the street, Lucy waits until nightfall, sneaks into their apartment, and sets fire to it while everyone sleeps.

  At the end, both Hugo and Lucy display no emotion.

  But Delphine is finally smiling.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Delphine chooses Rhydian to go next. Smiling coyly at him, she says, “What’s your darkest secret, worm?”

  Merida, standing beside him at the table, gives his hand a quick, furtive squeeze.

  Rhydian’s ashy-blond eyebrows knit together, and he clenches his teeth in an effort to hide his thoughts. Delphine’s little pointer is oblivious to his efforts as it clicks and the wall comes to life.

  A dim, windowless room. No furniture. Someone is crying—Rhydian. He sounds young, maybe twelve or thirteen. A rope hangs from the rafters. No, not just a rope. A noose. A chair sits beneath it. The noose gets closer. The crying has stopped and there are only the sound of Rhydian’s footsteps on the stone floor and a few sniffles. He steps onto the chair, his hands wrapping around the noose. His breathing becomes heavy.

  One of the finalists cries out as Rhydian places his head into the noose, says one word, “Father,” and kicks the chair away. Horrible gurgling noises. The room spins back and forth. There’s a loud knock on the door and then a girl calling his name. It sounds like Merida, but I can’t be sure. The voice gets more frantic. The choking noises become more guttural.

  We are listening to him die.

  Suddenly there’s the sound of the rope snapping, and Rhydian falls to the floor. The view on the screen slips sideways. It moves up and down with his violent wheezing. Right before the screen goes dark, the door bursts open and we hear a gut-wrenching scream.

  Rhydian is standing stock-still. He works to keep the emotions from his face, but something desperate flickers behind his eyes.

  Slowly, with purpose, Delphine turns her back on Rhydian. The rest of the Chosen follow. After a pause, the finalists do the same. I hesitate, but not for long, before turning as well. I hear Merida whisper to Rhydian, “What do I do?”

  But Rhydian, his face held together by a hard, trembling smirk, ignores her. Finally she turns as well. In Royalist society, suicide is one of the most heinous and cowardly acts one can commit.

  It’s only when Delphine moves on to someone else that I notice Riser didn’t turn. Why would he choose not to follow the others after lecturing me on not standing out? Especially with the Emperor watching. The thought bothers me.

  I’m so focused on being annoyed with Riser that I don’t pay attention to the girl until I hear the quiet murmuring fill the Great Hall.

  “Risk,” the girl repeats again, looking up at the Emperor. A tentative smile lights up her eager-to-please-face. By the sound of her voice it’s Brinley Fox.

  Delphine claps her hands together. “Finally.” As she helps Brinley down from the table, her gaze halts on a Gold phoenix brooch pinned to Brinley’s dress. “You think you deserve to wear Gold, Bronze?”

  Brinley shrugs. It’s clear by the careful way she moves she is still drunk but trying to hide it. “My mother gave it to me for luck. It was from . . . from before.”

  This is someone worth allying with.

  “Hmm, let’s test your worthiness, shall we?” Delphine slips behind the girl and replaces her blindfold.

  “Oh,” Brinley says, giggling nervously. She stumbles as two Chosen take her by each elbow and lead her away.

  I don’t understand what they intend to do until it is too late. They appear on the upper level balcony. Just above them stretches a thin rafter. It has to be sixty feet up, at least, and just as long. From down here I can’t hear what the two Chosen whisper to Brinley before they leave, but she seems to sway in disbelief for a moment.

  After a few minutes of feeling the length of the balcony railing, Brinley finds the wall to her left and braces one hand against it while climbing to an unsteady stand on the railing. My stomach churns as she reaches up, tentatively, searching for the rafter. Even on tiptoe the rafter is just out of reach. The room fills with shouts of encouragement.

  “Jump!” someone yells.

  She crouches down while I hold my breath. My palms are slick with sweat. I find myself rooting for her, my insides screaming.

  Her small hands slap the rafter’s edge with a loud thunk. The skirt of her bright-green dress ripples out, and then she’s swinging her legs over. It takes her a moment to get her bearings enough to brave a low crouch. A collective cheer rises up from the finalists. Brinley Fox has surprised us all and allowed us to carv
e out a tiny sliver of dignity.

  Holding her hands straight out like wings, she uses them for balance as she inches forward, her clunky heels scraping the wood. Murmurs of excitement fill the room. I can hardly breathe as I watch her, my neck aching from looking up.

  The problem starts halfway through. Her balance is off and she teeters, windmilling her arms to right herself. It happens again. Then again. After the last time she sways, she rights herself and freezes solid; her entire body begins to shake.

  Jeers rise up from some of the Chosen. Brinley wraps her arms around her chest, whispering to herself as one of her shoes falls with a loud bang.

  After a couple of minutes, the taunts stop. Then I see why.

  Riser has left his table and is standing beneath her. “Lady Brinley,” he says, “don’t listen to them; listen to me.” His voice is conversational, soothing. “You are halfway there. The rafter is two feet across, so simply place one foot in front of the other, and you will be fine.”

  “No.” She shakes her head. “I’m going to die.”

  “Say it,” Riser orders. “One foot in front of the other.”

  Roman lumbers up to Riser, and I think there will be another fight. “Shove off, worm!”

  But Roman stops just short of hitting Riser. I can’t figure out why at first. Although Riser could get a few well-aimed blows in, without a weapon it wouldn’t take long for Roman’s sheer size and strength to overwhelm Riser.

  But then I see Riser’s look. It’s simple and to the point: You might kill me, but I’ll make sure you suffer just as well. Roman gives a baffled frown, and then he backs up an inch.

  Riser holds up his hands and smiles so everyone watching thinks he has given in. Only he and Roman know the truth.

  Careful, Pit Boy. That’s a Gold you’re provoking, and in front of the Emperor, no less.

  As soon as Riser is back at his table, Brinley tries again. Her lips move in a continuous mantra. I know what she is saying.