Trial by Heart (Trial Series Book 4)

by Lizzy Ford

  Myca, Nate, Tristan, and Jason stand at the far end of the postage stamp sized backyard. I wave before trotting up the stairs and returning to the interior of the row house. The moon hovers overhead, and I check the time once more without registering the time.

  Ben is in the kitchen. I hug him hard, my insides twisting. My senses fill with him, and I relax a little, though nothing can take the edge off tonight, unless he’s willing to fuck me until I’m calm.

  “Erish has been good all day,” I observe and rest my chin on Ben’s chest to peer up at him. “What do you think he’s planning?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I wish you could see him, so you could do your magic non-mind reading, mind reading trick on him.”

  Ben smiles. He holds me for a good ten minutes, until I’m molded against him and breathing steadily again.

  “You can do this,” he whispers again. “It’s time for us to go outside.”

  No, no, no. I want to stay right here forever!

  Chapter Eleven

  My entire life has been leading up to this point. I freeze up, panicking silently. I’ve never felt capable of saving the world, and I definitely don’t feel ready to walk calmly to my death.

  Ben whispers something else my jammed up mind can’t process. Somehow, I manage to move when he does and trail him to the stairs overlooking my backyard.

  It’s windy and cold outside. Clouds break up the darkness of the night sky, passing the large moon at random and robbing it of its light.

  I’m too hyped up on adrenaline and anticipation to be cold or to hear the words of those speaking in low voices in the backyard. The ocean is in my ears and my eyes dart around so quickly, I don’t really see anyone’s face. I’m starting to panic when Ben takes my hand and squeezes. Just like that, my world rights itself.

  Gazing into his silver-blue gaze, I focus on us, on my mission tonight, on emulating him as much as I can and making my parents proud. He senses me calm and squeezes again.

  I release his hand and go to the picnic table beside the fire, where I dump out the curse charms onto a towel before placing the Exile knife beside them. I set the Book of Secrets down, wishing there was some way I could keep the letters my father wrote me. They’re depressing as hell, but after this, I won’t have anything to remember him by.

  A glance overhead reveals the tip of a shadow marring one side of the moon.

  Erish joins me.

  A hush falls over the small crowd in my backyard, and I look from Erish to Ben, whose intense expression is one of a predator that suddenly realizes competition is after his latest kill.

  “Can you see him?” I ask curiously.

  “Yeah.” Ben’s voice is soft despite the look.

  Neither of them is happy. I roll my eyes, aware no one can possibly know what it’s like to be haunted by Erish.

  My hands tremble as I organize the curse talismans and shift the sledge hammer closer.

  “These are so weird,” I say to fill the awkward silence and pick up the flute belonging to Tristan.

  “Each clan presents the Kingmaker with a token representing their clan whenever a new leader is selected for the clan. Some of them have used the same one for two thousand years,” Erish explains and lifts the gem with vampire magic. “Some of them present new charms every leader.” He picks up the fang from Ben’s clan. “The curse is transferred to the new leader upon the Kingmaker’s acceptance of the token.”

  “We use the fang of the late leader,” Ben supplies, eyes never leaving Erish. He motions to the incisor on the towel. “It belonged to my father.”

  “You can hear him, too?” I ask, surprised.

  Ben nods once.

  “Ben, meet Erish, the ancestor who fucked up the lives of the Community. Erish, this is Ben, who outsmarted you after two thousand years,” I tell them.

  “I’d like to say it’s a pleasure, but it’s not,” Erish replies sarcastically.

  “Now you see where I get my attitude from?” I snort. “It apparently runs in the family.”

  Ben doesn’t answer. The tension of his muscular body is scary.

  “Two millennia, and they still fear me,” Erish says. He’s looking out at the Community leaders. The men and women in my backyard are quiet, watching him.

  I’m not about to justify his observation by agreeing. “Now we wait.” I perch on the edge of the table, attention going to the three candidates.

  Tears rise to my eyes as I look at Myca.

  He winks, and I force a smile. I hope what he says is true, that this is a chance for redemption, and his life isn’t being sacrificed or wasted.

  Ben motions to the candidates, and the three approach, gathering around us.

  “The letter your father wrote me.” Tristan is the first to speak and presents the envelope I last saw in the memory Myca showed me of my father handing out the letters.

  I accept it.

  “Don’t read it, Leslie,” Tristan adds quietly.

  I’m afraid to read what torment it contains. Even knowing the truth about Erish, and how he made my father write untruths, I can’t handle reading anything bad that might be written in my father’s hand.

  “Thank you, Tristan,” I say. “For the soul surgery, for believing in me. For Hawaii.”

  “It was my pleasure, Leslie. Thank you for healing my fae-bies.”

  “If I survive this, I’ll heal all of them,” I promise him.

  His smile is genuine.

  I hug his lean frame. “You know I’ll always love you?” I whisper.

  “Yeah.” His voice softens. “I know.”

  This feels like farewell. I don’t want it to be. I hold him until I’m ready to cry recalling how he’ll never know peace again. Withdrawing, I wipe my eyes.

  “Don’t read this one either,” Nate says and hands me the letter from my father.

  Accepting it, I hug him tightly. “I’m so sorry about Jenny,” I murmur.

  “It’s done, Leslie. I don’t regret anything. I’m honored to have been a part of the Final Trials and to be a witness to the last night we all suffer from the curse,” he replies in his low, gruff voice.

  “I’ll always love you, too, Nate.”

  “Welcome to the family, sweetheart.”

  I don’t reply, unable to see how this night can possibly end with me alive. Releasing Nate, I turn to Myca, and the tears start again.

  “Myca.” I can’t say anything else and throw my arms around his neck and hug him hard.

  He laughs. “No crying, angel. This is what I wanted. Redemption and to watch every season of Buffy.”

  I make a choked sound, half-laugh, half-sob. I don’t want to let him go, don’t want to lose him. I cry in his arms until the moon is halfway covered, not caring how many people in the Community see me.

  Myca holds me and rocks me gently. When I’m in control of the raw agony threatening to shred me and cripple me so I can’t fulfill my responsibility to the Community tonight, I step back.

  “And I love you, too,” I manage.

  “Ditto, angel.” He cups the back of my neck and pulls my head forward until our foreheads meet. “The amulet has a secondary function. You left too quickly for me to explain it the other night.”

  I listen, not trusting myself to speak.

  “Before the eclipse is over, I’ll tell you what it is.”

  I nod. He releases me, and I wipe my face, too aware of the eyes of every leader in the Community on me. Myca hands me the final letter from my father.

  Ben hovers a short distance away, allowing the candidates to have their time with me while he remains close enough to react if Erish does something. His features are stoic. He’s in leader mode.

  Standing before everyone, I can’t help feeling very alone.

  I place the letters inside the front cover of the Book of Secrets and release the cover. A single sheet of paper, written in my father’s hand, peers up at me from the first page.

  “Read it,” Erish urges.r />
  Hesitating, I don’t pick it up, in case this is some sort of trick. I do lift the corner of the cover so that the moonlight hits it.

  Leslie,

  I’m proud of you. I know you can do this.

  Daddy

  I read it twice, my heart melting. In pure Kingmaker fashion, my father tends to be wordy, but the letter is short and sweet for once, without any riddles or torment. I drop the edge of the cover and look at Erish, torn about what I should feel for the cursed ancestor who has brought so much pain to the Community. There’s a part of me that believes he never could have known what horrors would come of his broken heart.

  The next ten minutes, where I wait for the eclipse to begin so I can start destroying shit, pass in complete silence. I can’t handle the weight of the Community on my shoulders and turn my back to them, breathing deeply and considering which of the charms I should break first. Needing to keep busy, I empty out the letters from the interior of the Book of Secrets and stack them beside the tome then line the charms up into two neat lines on the towel.

  Darkness descends as the moon is fully covered, and the light of the bonfire casts a cheerful, orange glow around the backyard.

  “It’s time,” Ben tells me.

  With a shaky breath, I select one of the letters and walk to the bonfire. I light up one side of it and go to the trail of gasoline. Kneeling, I stretch forward to light it.

  The fire leaps to life and races up the stairs and into the house. Without waiting to see what happens, I return to the table. Each letter goes into the bonfire separately, mainly so I can kiss each one and silently thank my father one last time. When the final letter is burning, I pick up the Book of Secrets.

  “You need to write your choices for the Final Trials before you burn it,” Erish tells me.

  I turn to the fire, ready to ignore him.

  He snatches the Book and drops it on the table, flipping the pages and stopping when he reaches the one he wants.

  Unable to resist looking, I grow near enough to see in the firelight. Three short fields are listed under the heading, Kingmaker No. 21, Final Trials:

  One to Love:

  One to Lead:

  One to Exile:

  Similar fields are on the opposite page, where my father wrote in the names of the three women who participated in his trials. My gaze rests on the name listed beside the field, One to Exile, the clan leader who should’ve become his mate, outside the trials. I can’t let myself think about my father’s broken heart, or knowing my mother may have married him with the understanding he loved someone else.

  I don’t have time to second guess myself, either. Snatching one of the pens from the pile I’m planning to burn, I lean over the book and complete the fields.

  One to Love: Ben

  One to Lead: Ben

  One to Exile: Kingmaker clan

  I then toss the pen into the fire and straighten, staring at what I’ve written. It’s the truth. But does it matter who I choose after tonight? The Community can select their own leader once I’m dead.

  The Book slams itself closed.

  “You’re done,” Erish says quietly.

  If this is a trick, it’s too late for me to do anything about it.

  “Goodbye, Kingmaker Curse,” I say and pick up the Book of Secrets one final time.

  I drop it, pages down, into the fire and wait to ensure it’s burning before returning to the table. Wrapping the towel around the charms, I lift the sledge hammer, wobble, then smash it down onto the towel. The tool is heavy as shit, and I try my hardest not to let those around me realize just how unprepared I am to lift it. It takes me twenty minutes to beat out enough strokes before I’m panting too hard to continue. With sweat dripping down the back of my neck, I rest, eyes on the house.

  The entire home is engulfed in flames. I’m mesmerized by the fire stretching towards the moon.

  “Such a shame.” Erish is on the other side of the table, observing. I glance at him. He’s materialized to the point I can almost distinguish his features. His eyes have an exotic tilt and his jawline is chiseled. It’s all I can see in the firelight.

  “Twenty minutes,” Ben says.

  I shift my focus back to the task at hand. When I catch my breath, I unwrap the towel. To my satisfaction, all but one of the charms are pulverized or in pieces. I completely missed one, what appears to be a rustic wooden peg of sorts. I carefully pluck it free then shake off the remnants of the charms into the fire before returning the towel to the table and wrapping the final charm and all of the pens we found in the house. Five strokes later, I dump the remains into the fire.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Ben says.

  I suck in a deep breath, my heart hammering.

  “Myca, do you have the amulet?” I ask, turning to him.

  He hands over the Kingmaker amulet, the one he was supposed to give me when the trials started when he gave me the protective vampire amulet instead. Oddly enough, it’s the most beautiful of all the charms: an intricately carved piece of petrified wood depicting a battle between a demon and angel. I study it in the light of the fire briefly then wrap it up in the towel to be crushed.

  Several minutes later, I dump it and the towel into the fire.

  House, Daddy’s belongings, curse charms, clan histories, Kingmaker amulet, letters. I check off the list mentally and glance at Erish. He’s still around. I don’t know what I expected to happen. Maybe for him to be screaming in misery as he slowly fades in agony before finally disappearing into oblivion.

  He’s just chillin’, watching me. I know why, and any hope I have of surviving disappears. The only thing attaching the curse, and Erish, to my world is me.

  “Am I missing something?” I ask for his ears only. “Aside from me, what else anchors the curse?”

  “Exile.”

  “The knife?”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “So I have to die and someone else has to destroy it.” I clench and release my fists. “Swear to me there’s nothing else, Erish.”

  “There is not.”

  Dare I believe him? I study him before plucking the knife off the table. My hands shake, and I have the urge to flee.

  “Courage, conviction, intuition,” Erish repeats what my father told me I needed to survive the trials.

  “Did you write that or did Daddy?” I ask.

  “It doesn’t matter, Leslie.”

  He’s right.

  My anger fizzles and turns into sorrow as I gaze at the heavy knife in my hands. Two thousand years, and it all ends tonight. Should I be proud? All I feel is fear and despair.

  “Please tell me some part of you regrets all the pain you’ve caused,” I whisper and look at Erish.

  He’s standing across from me.

  “Please tell me there’s some part of you that remembers what it means to love someone else.”

  “I cannot love in the form I am in now.” His voice is just as soft. “But I, too, have fought what I am. From the very beginning, I have stood aside during your trials when I could have acted. I knew the amulet was wrong, and I knew something has been off the entire time. I also have looked away when I didn’t have to. You cannot know the pain these actions caused, or that my suffering is only lessened when I act in accordance to the curse. To disobey is to be in agony.”

  “I wouldn’t say stabbing me and trying to take over my body were examples of you standing aside,” I point out.

  “It was a test.”

  “Of me?”

  “Of the amulet.” He motions to the vampire amulet. “And Ben.”

  “You wanted to try to drive him off.”

  “Or be certain he stuck around, since you held so much doubt. Maybe I did those things for you, so you would understand what I figured out when we first laid eyes on him,” Erish snaps. “I will pay for my interference. I will never know peace. But you will be free.”

  “You’re serious.”

  I’ve had the sense many times Erish wants the curse g
one but can’t break it, because of whatever magic binds him and forces him to execute the trials. That enough of who he once was remains to help me in what ways he can brings me a tiny bit of peace. In the end, he can’t do what’s right, but he will do his best not to get in the way of those who can.

  It’s not much, but it’s something, and it helps fill the need I have to know he regrets what he’s done.

  I want to tell him I’m glad he’s suffering, but I can’t. I’m not glad he’s in pain. He’s my only relative, the only other semi-living person to have gone through what I have. He is evil and wrong and everything I should despise.

  But once, long ago, he knew how to love and has existed in pain for two millennia since the day he took the life of the woman he cared about. I will never know the circumstances. In truth, I don’t want to anymore. Understanding he was once like me and has suffered alongside every Kingmaker he tormented is enough.

  It’s not pity I experience this time, standing toe to toe with the Kingmaker curse. It’s not anger or hatred or anything I thought I’d feel when I reached this point. He’s not the only one whose spirit is about to be extinguished for good. Minutes away from my death, I don’t have it in me to hate anyone, even him.

  “I’m sorry you hurt,” I tell him. “I’m sorry you lost the woman you love. I’m sorry for all you’ve done and for all you’ve suffered. It might not matter, and you might not be capable of caring, but I forgive you for fucking up my life and the lives of the rest of our clan.”

  “Spoken like a true angel,” Erish mocks quietly.

  “I’m no angel, but I will make this right.”

  “I know.”

  His acknowledgement, however reluctant, eases some of the concern that I’m missing something. “The knife and me. That’s it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Five minutes,” Ben says.

  I squeeze my eyes closed. Hot tears slide down my cheeks, and I swallow with difficulty.

  I don’t want to die.

  I have no choice.

  I also know without a doubt who my father chose to assassinate me – the only man he’d trust with my life. He chose my potential mate, the man who would break the curse, the alpha who would never kill the woman meant to become his mate unless there was absolutely no other option. Erish warned me either Ben or I would die before the week was out, and he’s right.