by Audrey Grey
“Merida!” I yell. I find her leaning on Rhydian, her eyes hooded and unfocused. I delicately lift her arm. Sweat and dirt burn my eyes, and I rub them, squinting at the crude map of sorts traced across her skin. Using my tongue, I wet my thumb and rub out the dangerous pathways and dead ends. I don’t dare breathe as I follow the lines with my eyes. There, the tail, the legs. At the top, created with my blood, is the triangular path that doubled back on itself.
Not a triangle. The head. “Monoceros!”
Half of me thinks I’m mad with fear, conjuring fantasies from thin air.
The other half, though, the half that’s kept me alive up until this point, that’s whispered truths into my ear, is convinced I’ve finally figured out my mother’s game.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The others are staring at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “Don’t you see?” I shout, stabbing a finger at the sky. “It was right in front of us the entire time!” She has a cruel sense of humor, my mother. I lift Merida’s arm. “Monoceros, the unicorn. And you,” I point at Riser, “you started in the Gemini Constellation, the two brightest stars being Castor and Pollux. Right?” I can see by their confused expressions I’m not making sense. “They’re twins, a horse trainer and a . . . a warrior.”
“The dogs?” Riser asks, his brow furrowing.
“Between the Gemini Constellation and the Monoceros is Canis Minor. It’s called Mera, I think, Icarus’ water dog, who died to honor his master. And when Merida and I got lost, we ended up in Canis Major, dog of Orion.” I inhale a deep breath. I am talking too fast. “That explains the river Merida and I saw. The ancient Egyptians used the Dog star to predict the Nile River’s tides.”
Silence. I look to Riser, begging him to believe me, but his lips are pressed into a thin, cryptic line.
“Can you get us out?”
“Do we have a choice?” Their wary faces tell me that was the wrong answer. “Yes.”
Rhydian squeezes Merida tighter. I can tell he wants to believe me but isn’t convinced. He turns to Riser. “You trust her?”
Riser locks eyes with me, and I think of all the times he asked me to trust him and I failed. “With my life.”
Rhydian nods, his shoulders slumping. “Okay, let’s do it.”
We need a new canvas for the map, so Riser strips off his coat and shirt. I begin tracing the Monoceros constellation on his back with my blood, starting at the base of his spine. His arms lift as my finger curves around his side, his muscles shivering beneath my fingertips. Satisfied with the unicorn, I mark the octagon-shaped center of the Orion Constellation in between his shoulder blades, working outward. The Bellatrix star, the star that begins Orion’s arrow, goes at the base of Riser’s neck. Then, lifting his hair, I continue the arrow to the dark hairline. Lastly, I run my bloody finger from just below one ear to the other for the curved bow.
“Orion and Monoceros,” I say aloud, “should connect, I’m guessing . . . here.” I smudge a bloody dotted line from the unicorn’s second hoof to the M42 star, the Great Nebula of Orion, my finger slowly riding the hills of Riser’s mid-spine.
Now that I’m done, I have a moment to step back and observe my plan. It’s simple, daring, and a long shot. Judging by the fading stars and silvery light, we won’t have time to correct it if I’m wrong.
Rhydian glares at my childish map. “So we just . . . follow the lines?”
“No,” I say. “You follow me.”
We walk fast, me in front and Riser and Rhydian on either side of Merida, helping her along. As soon as we pass the entrance with the bear, though, the walls close in so only two can fit at a time. On some unspoken command, we all begin to run, even Merida, who has somehow found enough energy to keep going.
Inside my head, I recreate the constellation. Up ahead will be the first test of my theory. If I’m correct, it will lead us to the second section of the maze, the Orion Constellation.
If I’m wrong, we die.
It doesn’t take long to find out. Because of my lens, I notice the body before the others. I can tell he’s dead by the way he lies: on his back, head tilted at an odd angle, foot resting against the wall. I must react somehow, because the others stop too.
“No!” I cry. I was so sure. This has to be the way. I scan Riser’s back to double check, but I hardly look at it because I know I didn’t make a mistake. This has to be it.
“Is that . . . a body?” Merida asks, trying hard to hide the disappointment in her voice.
“This is it.” I jut out my chin. “I’m not wrong.”
Rhydian’s palm makes a dull thwump as it slaps the wall. “Because you couldn’t possibly be wrong!”
“Not about this!”
Turning to Riser, I see he’s staring into the tunnel. His eyes cut to me. “You say it’s safe?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Without another word, Riser enters the passage. My chest constricts as he bends over the body, examining something. After an eternity he straightens up.
“She’s right!”
When we join him, I discover what he means. A circular, fingertip-sized hole gapes from the finalist’s neck.
“The blade was small,” Riser remarks. “A dirk or a stylet.” Or a push dagger hidden in a waistband. He circles the body, touching the grass here and there. “He was taken by surprise by another finalist.”
A chill runs through me. Only one name comes to mind. Hugo Redgrave.
Riser hops to his feet, I shoot Rhydian a defiant grin, and we resume our jogging pace. After a long, narrow tunnel, the passage forks. We stay left, passing what would be the Saiph star, Orion’s foot. I run the plan through my head. Up, to the right, crossing Orion’s belt. Left, straight up to the Bellatrix star. Out through Orion’s arrow.
Out. It’s finally a reality.
Out!
We are quiet. Buoyed on by the comforting concert of our feet striking the soft ground and our labored, hopeful breaths. After we pass a torch and the walls are illuminated, I see I was right. The form of a hunter, clad only in an armored battle skirt and golden centurion helmet, holds a bow and arrow, surrounded by hunting dogs. Seven doves fly away from the hunter, toward the sky, as if trying to escape him.
Orion and the Seven Pleiades.
Out! Everything is a daze now. Walls. Flickering flames. Out! Passageways strewn with bodies. Out! One of the entrances on the left harbors a body still sizzling with electricity, the smell indescribable.
Orion’s belt turns out to be a long, convex tunnel. Out! I stop short at the next passageway, barely a crack wide enough for a child. “Turn sideways,” I order. “And take off any extra clothing you can.”
There’s the sound of shedding clothes and then Riser’s voice, calm in my ear. “Ready.”
Rough stone rubs the skin from my cheeks, knuckles, and knees as I wedge myself in the tiny space. Merida goes next, her breath shallow and raspy with the effort.
“Almost there,” I say, working to keep my excited voice calm.
As it turns out, I’m not lying. I don’t see the passageway. Rather, I fall backward into it as the wall gives way. It’s a bit wider than the previous tunnel, enough I can spread my arms a few inches from my thighs. Orion’s Arrow. The shaft stretches straight out, thirty feet or so into what first appears to be darkness. I blink and the twinkling red fireflies come into view.
Torches.
Out!
Voices.
Out!
“Guys! We made it. Come look!”
Merida appears, a hesitant smile on her face. I laugh, relief trilling through me. Out!
Rhydian is next, and he too breaks into a smile. “Oh, thank the gods. Merida, look! We’re safe. Do you see . . . ?”
Rhydian’s smile dies.
Riser erupts behind Rhydian. “Go!” Riser is screaming. “Go! Go! Run!”
And then I hear it too.
The walls are closing.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I
make it maybe two feet in when I realize our mistake. Facing forward we will be crushed. I pause to flatten sideways, parallel to the wall, and Merida slams into my shoulder, my head thudding against stone. When my eyes open, my world is suddenly dark and gray; my contact lens has come out.
It takes a moment for my eyes to again adjust. Once they do, though, there’s enough light to make out the granules in the stone pressed into my face, which means Shadow Fall is almost over. The stone is wet, mossy. Slowly, so not to scrape my flesh, I turn my head back to check on the others.
It’s worse than I imagined. Merida is wedged between the walls, facing forward, one arm caught above her head, the other trapped down by her side. The way her body is compacted and the angle of her arm tell me she has at least a few crushed bones. Her eyes gape wide, unblinking. Air whistles from her compressed lungs.
“Merida’s stuck,” I yell over Merida’s head. “Can you move?”
“It’s tight, but we can move,” comes Riser’s voice.
Okay, they can still move. Good. “Riser, I need you to put pressure on Merida’s back. On the count of three.”
With my left arm, I grab a fistful of Merida’s jumper. “One! Two! Three!”
My shoulder screams as I yank uselessly, my arm threatening to pop out of socket again, Merida gurgling tiny, pitiful moans of pain.
Grunts escape my lungs as I jerk harder, rocking backward. She has to budge. We’re so close. I promised!
She whimpers and I fall back, her charred blouse slipping from my fingers. I hear Riser, still pushing. Finally, his grunting stops and any hope I had left dissipates.
The wild, delirious look has faded from Merida’s eyes. Now they are focused on me. I have to make myself look at her, because I want to look away, to hide the truth about her situation. But that would be cruel. “I’m sorry, Merida.” My voice catches. “I don’t know what else to do.”
Her cracked, blackened lips part. “Tell Rhydian . . . I’m sorry.”
“You tell him.”
But we both know that won’t happen. Groaning, Merida looks down. I understand immediately. The pill.
“No.” But my gaze lingers on Merida’s pocket where the pill hides as a little voice whispers, we need the walls to open, and for that one of us has to die.
A tear cuts a shiny path down her good cheek. She struggles to form a smile. “Like sleeping.”
My choice is cruel but simple. Kill Merida and save the others, or let them all die. I want to refuse. To insist we keep trying. Merida is my friend, my sweet, kind, selfless friend. How can I execute her? I wrack my brain for another way, but there’s no time. Maybe if Shadow Fall wasn’t almost over, or if we weren’t one death away from being crushed.
“I can’t, Merida,” I whisper. But even as I say these words, I know that I’ll do it, I’ll kill the only true friend I’ve ever had, and the relief I feel makes me sick to my stomach.
I give myself simple orders to make it through. Get the pill, Everly. Put it in her mouth, Everly. Don’t cry, Everly. Save the others, Everly.
Kill your friend, Everly.
I find the case, manage to get the poisoned pill out and into Merida’s open mouth. Behind her, the muffled sound of Rhydian and Riser arguing grows louder.
“Merida!” Rhydian yells. “What’s going on? Merida? Merida?” His voice cracks with desperation. “Merida, for Emperor’s sake, talk to me!”
Tears drip from her chin as she ignores him. “I was brave, wasn’t I, Everly?”
“Yes.”
She swallows the pill and smiles. “Tell me . . . a . . . story.”
My throat aches with unshed tears. I think of all the times I held Max and told him stories when he couldn’t sleep. It’s just like that, I tell myself. You’re helping her rest.
“Have you heard the story of Iphigenia?” I clear the agony from my voice as I try to remember my favorite tale. “Iphigenia was the beloved daughter of Agamemnon, the King of Argos. This was during the Trojan War, and the entire Greek shipping fleet was stuck in the ocean without any winds. To move their ships, Artemis required Agamemnon to sacrifice Iphigenia. Although it broke his heart, Agamemnon called Iphigenia home under the pretense of marriage to Achilles—do you know who he is?”
Merida’s breathing has slowed, but her eyelids flutter and I pretend it’s a yes.
“Of course, she was overjoyed to be marrying Achilles, renowned for his courage and good-looks, so when she got to the altar and discovered her father’s treachery, she was devastated”—I swallow down a sob—“but instead of . . . of pleading for her life, she did something very, very brave, just like you.”
Merida’s eyes are rolling erratically.
“You see, she sacrificed herself to help her people, and when Artemis saw her selflessness and courage, she spared her life and allowed her to go free.”
The sound of Rhydian screaming Merida’s name fades beneath the noise of the gears inside the walls turning. Merida’s eyes are half open, resting just behind me.
I guess in her own way she’s free now too.
The walls growl open, releasing my torso enough so I can turn. Riser catches Merida’s lifeless body before she can slump to the ground, and I slip an arm under her knees, walking backward toward the exit.
We carry my dead friend out to the sound of cheers.
The sun has broken through, and it warms my cheek. Over my shoulder I spot Caspian, his eyes unreadable as they trail my many injuries before landing on Merida. Finalists and mentors whoop and stomp their feet and call out our names from underneath the pavilion as the Emperor shoots us a bored glance. That’s when I see the rift screens. They must have watched us scrambling for our lives.
We carry Merida past the vanguard of Centurions and Chosen, past the other lucky finalists. There is a nice spot in the grass we lay her on. Riser gently closes her eyelids while I arrange her ripped jumpsuit the best I can.
I wonder if, like me, Riser busies himself with Merida partially so he can gain control of his anger. One look at his tight jaw, the rage smoldering below his flat gaze, and I know I’m right. Perhaps he also saw the rift screens and it was too much. The idea of them watching us suffer and die gruesomely, clapping each other on the shoulders with hands greasy from the rich table of food spread in front of them. Did they applaud when I fed Merida the poison? When I killed the only person I’d ever come close to calling a friend?
A shadow falls over me. Caspian. His lips form a hollow smile as he limply holds out a thick wreath of black and white roses—his House colors. Some of the other surviving finalists wear their mentor’s colors around their necks, so I assume I’m supposed to as well. But I’m not in the mood for flowers or hollow smiles and turn away from him.
Rhydian joins us. His arms hang by his sides, his cheeks shiny with tears. He’s not crying now though. Like us, his emotions have become something else. Something dangerous. I move over so he can kneel, and he begins combing out what’s left of her hair with his fingers.
Rhydian has just finished wiping the grime from her cheek when they come for us. My mother leads, flanked by Delphine. Caspian’s tight frown tells me it’s not simply a friendly, congratulatory visit. That I should probably play nice.
Unfortunately I’m incapable of that right now.
Stopping a few feet from us, my mother ignores Merida while we stand, flagrantly breaking protocol by not bowing.
“Your devotion is remarkable,” my mother states, ignoring our disobedience. “One can never tell about these things. I just watched siblings and friends kill each other to live without a second thought. But not you three.”
I struggle to determine what she’s playing at. From the corner of my eye, I make out Riser’s expression, a potent mix of contempt and disrespect. I hope for his sake he doesn’t confuse my mother’s calm, detached demeanor with weakness.
Riser’s contempt grows only more obvious as she focuses her attention on him, ordering him to turn so she can examine his back. He hesit
ates, longer than he should, before complying. Her lips twitch at his insolence.
Slowly, my mother’s sharp eyes trace the lines mapping his back.
“Clever, Lady March,” she says without looking up.
“Dumb luck,” I insist.
“Hmm.” Her steely gaze casts my way. “I am beginning to think you are the luckiest girl in all the world.”
Turning to Rhydian, she says, “Lord Pope, my condolences on the loss of Lady Pope. She was very brave and very selfless, and surely now the shadow of shame has fallen from House Pope once and for all.” Again she looks to me. “Unfortunate, indeed, I am not Artemis to grant her a reprieve from such a fate.”
Just like you left me to my fate, Mother? I swallow down the words I want to lob like daggers, and I smile coolly when I want to howl with rage.
Do you see what I am? What you made me?
The first hint something else is going on comes from Delphine. She fidgets, a gleeful, almost giddy expression twisting her face. It doesn’t take long to discover why. Two Centurions arrive and box me in—in case, I suppose, I plan to fight, which is still undecided.
My mother nods to Delphine, who produces a small silver flashlight-looking instrument. I blink as the beam flicks over my eyes.
“Hold her eyes open,” Delphine growls.
I instinctively flinch against the Centurions thick, brutish fingers.
Delphine releases a disappointed huff.
“Nothing, Countess Bloodwood,” my mother says. It’s impossible to determine if she’s pleased or disappointed. Through a haze of starry red dots, I see my mother smile. “Once again, Lady March, the gods favor you.”
As soon as my mother takes her leave, Delphine turns on me. “There’s no way a worm like you survives the trials without cheating.”
“Prove it!” I spit back.
Her pale eyes go cold. “One of these days you’ll talk your head off your shoulders and onto a pike.” Before I can react, one of Delphine’s exquisite, steel-tipped boots rears back and brings its full force into Merida’s torso. “The same goes for any worm stupid enough to befriend you.”