by Lily Velez
“You did!” a voice called out from somewhere in the crowd. Throughout the chamber, numerous heads nodded in assent.
“And when your needs were at their greatest and your kingdoms suffering, who supplied you with food for your hungry, with shelter for your displaced? Who welcomed you into her very court?”
“You did!”
There was thunderous applause now. There were cheers, howls. Many rose to their feet.
Morrígan raised her voice to be heard over the clamor of voices. “And when the All-Father and the tired gods of old retreated into the shadows, who remained to keep the peace between the races, to deal out justice and order, to ensure the prosperity of all?”
“You! Only you!”
Morrígan basked in the adoration. I, on the other hand, gaped at the deafening spectacle. They loved her. They loved her, and they would die for her, all of them.
“My golden sister, however, has forsaken her people. She would have you think you’re unworthy of her attentions, that the mortals she so cherishes are far more deserving of her devotion. So we shall put that theory to the test.”
Morrígan returned to her throne but remained standing. “Brigid has sent this mortal girl into my court to relieve me of the Sword of Light, a token of a battle I valiantly and honorably fought. You see, she desires no part in our wars, but she certainly covets the spoils.”
More laughter. I was starting to wish I’d never mentioned Brigid’s name. Morrígan was running a smear campaign against her when she’d had nothing at all to do with this.
“But we will let my poor sister try her hand at glory,” Morrígan told her audience. “If this is the champion she has sent into the figurative showground, then so be it. Let the challenge begin. Let us test the mettle of one of Brigid’s beloved, fearless warriors. My sentence is this: that the girl be put through The Trials.”
The audience roared in approval. I cringed at the deafening explosion of noise, and all the while, my heart slammed against my chest in painful, bruising beats. One glimpse at Jack, at the horror in his eyes, and I knew Morrígan’s ruling was practically a death sentence. On my other side, Kai had paled considerably.
“Do you accept, Daughter of Brigid?” the goddess asked. The triumphant smirk had returned to her face now that she’d regained control of the proceedings, now that she’d found a way to hurt the sister she so despised. “Should you complete The Trials, you would thereby prove yourself worthy of wielding the Sword of Light, at which point, I will immediately release the weapon into your possession, leaving you free to be on your way.”
“And if I fail?” I managed to ask, my voice hoarse.
Her smile was malicious. “If you fail, you won’t be alive to know it.”
I knew the room wasn’t actually spinning, but I didn’t have any luck convincing my mind of as much. I dug my nails into my palms to gather myself.
“What happens if I don’t accept your challenge?” I asked.
“Then you and your companions will be imprisoned here at Nightfell indefinitely as punishment for your crimes. While the Accords prevent me from bringing physical harm upon you, no rule exists that can prevent me from taking you as prisoner. And considering you won’t age so long as you’re in the Otherworld, you’ll spend all of eternity in shackles.”
I dug my nails in harder. I tried to breathe steadily within the bodice of my gown, but my heartbeats were frantic, my lungs practically trembling at Morrígan’s words.
“So what will it be? Will you choose the coward’s exit and accept your imprisonment, or will you rise to the challenge and begin your tests in The Trials?”
“I don’t even know what The Trials entail,” I said. “What will I have to do?”
“The Trials consist of three challenges that will test you as you have never been tested before. You will be pushed to your limits in every possible way, forged in fire the way the true warriors of old once were.”
I caught the gleam in her eyes when she said that. True warriors. As if I had no business bearing the runes of a goddess. As if I were unworthy to be Marked. As if it was laughable that I should ever be thought of as a warrior.
Heat lanced through my chest. It was strange, the way my fear, my terror, vanished in that moment. Maybe it wasn’t so much that it vanished. Maybe it was just that my resolve suddenly rose in me, building a dam against the flood of doubts that wanted to assail me.
I was a warrior. Whether Morrígan liked it or not, Brigid had chosen me. My eyes fell upon the runes carved into the inside of my arms. They still glowed in their soft, dazzling light, reminding me exactly of who I was, of what I was. As Father Nolan had once said, we weren’t chosen for any other reason than our courage, our tenacity, our refusal to bow out even when bowing out seemed our only option.
So I met Morrígan’s dark eyes, putting heat into my own gaze as I gave her my answer.
“When do I begin?”
21
Scarlet
“What did I ever do in a past life to land myself in The Cave of Nightmares with two witches?”
I rolled my eyes as Kai bemoaned his fate for what had to be the hundredth time and continued forward through the near darkness, our passage only illuminated by the polished, transparent stones we’d each been given.
“Fire rocks,” Jack had called them.
A rune meaning ‘light’ was carved onto each stone’s face, and the moment we’d stepped into the blackness of The Cave of Nightmares, the stones had begun glowing as bright as stars.
Looking at them, it was hard not to think of the Hallowstone, which in turn made me think of how it was presently in Alistair’s possession. My stomach turned at the thought, and I marched on, forcing myself to think of anything else.
It was hard to tell how much time had passed since Morrígan and a small party of her court had delivered us here. The goddess had looked as fearsome as ever, clad in forest green and black, with a sword at her side and that unsettling crow perched atop her shoulder. Overhead, a trio of dragons had soared across the sky, warring over the scraps of what looked to have once been a ram.
“Your first trial begins here,” Morrígan said, gesturing to the opening of a colossal cave, the black abyss beyond so wide and long it was like staring into the gaping mouth of a hungry whale. “You’re heretofore tasked with braving a night inside The Cave of Nightmares. Do you accept?”
I blinked, taken aback. “That’s it?” I asked. “I just have to spend one night here?”
Morrígan’s smile was pure ice. Just beneath the hollow of her throat, the teardrop-shaped ruby she wore pulsed with light, its colors swirling almost in rhythm with the heightening fury of the quarreling dragons above us. “The Cave of Nightmares is just that: a cavern where your most debilitating fears become manifest to haunt you. It’s enough to drive even the most determined of challengers mad. So much so that no one has ever accomplished the feat.”
My heart became lodged in my throat at that, but I didn’t want to give Morrígan the sweet satisfaction of seeing my courage deflate. “I guess I’ll be the first one then,” I said.
Morrígan’s courtiers chuckled amongst themselves, the way adults laughed at the antics of a child, and the goddess put on a knowing smirk, as if she knew something I didn’t.
Heat bloomed between my ribs at the slight, and I squared my jaw, more determined than ever to prove them wrong.
So far, I seemed to be on track with that endeavor.
I glanced to Jack, selfishly relieved that he was here with me. I’d accepted Morrígan’s challenge, but I’d decided the fate of my two ‘co-conspirators’ by doing so. Jack and Kai would have to endure The Trials right along with me. Jack hadn’t uttered a single complaint about it, but that was no surprise. There was no way he would’ve ever let me undertake such a feat on my own.
Kai, on the other hand, made no effort to veil his displeasure. He muttered under his breath without end, sometimes in his native demon tongue, the words harsh-sounding enoug
h to feel like stabs at my chest, but most of the time, his diatribes were in the English language, as if to make sure I understood just how infuriated he was with me.
I narrowed my eyes at his backside as he went on about the stupidity of stubborn witches who didn’t know when to keep their mouths shut.
Serves you right to be in here with us, I wanted to say.
I waved away the thick train of smoke following him, nearly choking on it. The smell of burning leaves that was so distinctly Kai’s filled the passageway through which we traveled, and it made my lungs sore. I started to feel as if I were gasping for each breath, but finally, the passageway opened up into an airy, expansive space.
In the pearly glow of my fire rock, the cavern revealed itself little by little. Giant stalactites hung from the ceiling like stone fangs, so that it was easy to imagine we’d wandered unawares into the waiting jaws of a monstrous dragon. I craned my neck back, taking in their size. Many were double the height of the average house, ending in particularly sharp points that made me shudder.
Shadows shifted among the stalactites, followed by the rapid beating of wings.
“Are those bats?” I asked.
“I think they’re crows actually,” Jack said, furrowing his brow as he tried to catch one in the light of his fire rock.
“Morrígan’s spies,” Kai said. “They’ll be present throughout The Trials to report back to the goddess as needed.”
We furthered inside the cavern. Water dripped from the stalactites into a dark pool at the space’s center, its mirror-like surface shimmering with ripples with every drop that hit it. As we skirted the edges of the pool, I lifted my fire rock to get a better view of it.
My stomach dropped to my knees. There were skeletons scattered all about the pool’s edges, their faces submerged in the water. I swept the light from my fire rock across the water’s surface and found even more skeletons sticking partway out of the pool deeper in.
“Past challengers,” Kai explained.
“What happened to them?” I asked, my throat pinching around the words. I carefully stepped to the closest skeleton, casting light onto its bones. Its eye sockets were fastened onto me, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. My heart missed a beat, leaving me momentarily breathless.
“They were driven mad by what they saw here,” Kai said. “Death seemed a sweet release, so they drowned themselves.”
My head swam. “Morrígan said your worst fears come alive here,” I recalled. “But can’t you just tell yourself they’re not real?”
Then again, when I’d journeyed through Alison Connelly’s mind, so much of what I’d witnessed had seemed so real, even during the times when I’d known in a forgotten corner of my consciousness that it wasn’t.
“It’s not the manifestation of the fear that drives a person to their wit’s end,” Kai said, nearing a skeleton and nudging it with the toe of his boot. The skeleton slumped to the side, its bones clattering. “It’s the truth that the manifestation represents.”
“Meaning?”
“Say for instance, a person fears death. The Cave of Nightmares will show them their death, all the different possibilities and the finality of death itself, how their existence will one day be snuffed out like a candle, as if they were never here at all. None of the visions the person sees will be genuinely real. They know that. It’s not as if they’re actually dying.
“But the fear of death’s still there when it’s all said and done, and now The Cave of Nightmares has amplified that fear until it’s all-consuming, until the person can think of nothing else. And alone in the dark, fears have a way of growing into ravenous things, into poisonous, little things that fester in your mind until you lose all sense of yourself. Why? Because things aren’t always as they seem. Very often, that which we dismiss as harmless, such as the secret terrors that keep us awake at night, are the very things that fell giants.”
My stomach turned over. I cast another look at all the challengers who’d entered The Cave of Nightmares before me. None had survived this first trial. They’d chosen death over facing another hour of the manifestation of their fears.
My courage almost faltered, almost guttered out like a candle in a breeze. I steeled myself before it could and straightened, clinging desperately to my determination.
“We’re going to make it through the night,” I announced.
We simply had to. If my fears wanted to materialize and taunt me, then let them. When morning came, I’d still be left standing.
22
Scarlet
Eventually, we found a roost in The Cave of Nightmares that seemed as good enough of a place as any to settle down for the night. I sat before a fire Jack had made, that he’d summoned rather, and watched the flames wave like pennants in the wind, the soft oranges and radiant yellows and blazing whites snapping and popping.
I crossed my arms, waiting for the heat to drive away the cold. Thankfully, I was outfitted in clothing that afforded reasonable warmth. Before leaving Nightfell, I’d had the chance to swap out my ball gown for more appropriate wear: boots, pants, an old-fashioned tunic that seemed to be straight out of the Middle Ages, and a heavy, woolen cloak. I wrapped the ends of the cloak around myself like a blanket and stared at the dancing flames of the fire.
“What are you thinking about?” Jack softly asked from beside me.
It was just the two of us now. Kai had wandered off earlier, presumably to explore the other caverns and intricate passageways, and had yet to return. His absence emptied the air of its heated tension, which I was relieved about. So relieved I apparently had been staring off into space for longer than I’d realized.
“Oddly enough,” I said, “Thanksgiving.”
He lifted an inquisitive brow, inviting elaboration.
I traced a fingertip over the hem of my cloak. “Back home, it’s nearly Thanksgiving. I was thinking about how this will be my first major holiday without my mom.”
I was only stating facts, so I hadn’t expected the knot to form in my throat. Then again, every time I thought I was moving forward, a memory would prick me like a bitter thorn, and I was a grieving, motherless girl again who was still trying to make sense of her new normal.
It hadn’t gotten any easier to remember her without experiencing heartache. Her absence was as prominent as ever in my life. My eyes still occasionally pooled with tears whenever they landed on the pictures of her I displayed throughout my room, and my chest still had a way of caving in when I read the birthday cards she’d given me over the years, loving messages filling their insides from edge to edge in bubbly, purple script.
Jack moved closer to me, so close our arms touched through the fabric of my cloak. “How would you usually celebrate with her?”
“Most people have a big feast, but we never did since it’d only ever been just the two of us. But for dessert, without fail, we always made the same thing every year: giant Belgian waffles topped with three scoops of vanilla ice cream, chocolate chips, and fudge. Then we’d sit in front of the TV and watch holiday classics all night.”
I smiled at the thought of it. I could picture it so clearly, us laughing in front of the TV, the shifting colors flashing against our faces. I could smell the buttery aroma of microwave popcorn once we were two movies in and needed a new snack. I could feel the softness of the corduroy couch I would lay upon with a blanket wrapped around me and my head propped up on one of my butterfly-shaped pillows.
I could almost hear my mom’s nonstop commentary throughout the films too. Back then, it had usually driven me crazy. Now it only made me laugh. It was funny how I’d collected so many little quirks like that these past months, holding them dear to my heart.
Jack had grown quiet, and when I glanced his way, he was watching me with a gentle smile.
“What?” I asked, self-consciously tucking a lock of hair behind my ear.
“Whenever you speak about her, your face glows,” he said. “I watch for it every time, an
d every time, sure enough, it happens. And every time, I feel your love for her as well. You couldn’t possibly know how beautiful you look in those moments.”
My face flushed, warming as if I’d caught a fever. A flutter skipped through my stomach as I hung onto that compliment.
Beautiful. He’d called me beautiful. And not in an off-handed way. Not in a simple, generic way that held no significance. He thought me beautiful because of the love I had for another person. I bit my bottom lip before I could smile ear to ear like a silly fool.
“Tell me more about your favorite memories with her,” Jack invited.
I loved that he enjoyed hearing about her. More than once, I’d thought about what it would’ve been like to bring Jack home to meet my mom. She would’ve gushed over him. She would’ve thought him a perfect gentleman.
I told him about trips she and I had taken and home projects we’d embarked upon and volunteer activities we’d pursued on the weekends. I told him about how she’d always supported my dreams and about the sacrifices she’d made to give me a good life and all the other reasons why I thought she was the best person to have ever lived. I laughed as I reminisced. At times, my heart winced too. But I decided that was okay because the depth of the heartache was simply an indication of how much I’d loved her and loved her still.
When I asked him to, Jack reciprocated by speaking about Maurice, his most recent lost.
“He lived a long life,” he said, “but it never stopped him from looking at the world with this childlike wonder. I think that was one of my favorite things about him.”
His other favorite things? The way his grandfather had always been there for his family from the moment Jack was born, never turning his back on his son despite what Redmond had done, despite the nasty whispers among witch-kind. That, and Maurice’s sage advice whenever Jack came to him with a problem, and the way the man dropped everything if his grandsons needed him, and the “quiet strength” that made him irreplaceable.