by Lily Velez
Though I knew the apparitions weren’t real, I remained between them to serve as a shield. I turned back to Scarlet, her waxen complexion only outdone by the way she slowly backed away, trembling.
“Scarlet,” I urged, wanting to take her attention off him.
Her eyes flicked to me, clung to me.
I stepped forward and reached out a hand to gently touch her cheek.
She flinched.
So simple a gesture, and yet, it destroyed me. I froze, staring at the raw terror reflected in her eyes.
“I like this new fear the most,” my shadow self said, having come to form beside me. “It crushes you, doesn’t it? One day, and that day is sure to be soon, Scarlet will see the truth of what you’re becoming. And it keeps you awake at night knowing it’s a truth that will absolutely terrify her. She’ll fear you the way children fear monsters in the night, and nothing you do will ever change that.”
“Stop it! Leave me alone!”
At first, I thought the apparition had spoken inside my mind, and it cut me deep. As I continued to stare at her, though, I saw her attention had already drifted, her focus turned to pressing herself against the wall of the passageway as if to melt into it and escape. It took me the length of a breath to realize the words had been exclaimed aloud.
By the real Scarlet.
I tore down the passageway, abandoning the apparition and my shadow self. With no time to waste on making sense of the cave’s winding corridors, I wayfared. In loud snaps of wind, I sped from one spot to another, staying only long enough to see if Scarlet was nearby before taking off again. A good thing I’d covered so much ground earlier, as it allowed me a wider berth for my search.
Arriving in what had to be my dozenth passageway, I felt the tug of my residual magic, the magic still lingering within Scarlet. I turned in place. I turned again. Nothing, no one.
There was a splash to my left. Furrowing my brow, I noticed a roughly circular cutout in the rock-hewn wall an arm’s length above my head, like a window with no panes. I jumped, grasping the bottom ledge of the cutout, and heaved my body up.
The view was of that menacing pool overrun with skeletons. I started to lower myself, but then I caught a figure at the far end of the pool, kneeling in the water.
“Scarlet!” I yelled.
She winced, murmuring something to herself, pressing her hands to the sides of her head. Gods, her fears had turned her inside out.
“Scarlet!” I called out, trying to rip her from whatever disturbing thoughts plagued her.
Again, she didn’t respond.
I dropped down from the cutout, envisioned the course I’d followed alongside the pool earlier, and wayfared there.
By the time I arrived, she’d disappeared.
All that remained were rippling rings expanding across the water surface. My eyes fixed to their innermost center. I charged into the water, barely registering its freezing touch or the clatter of bones as I plowed through skeletons.
The deeper into the water I marched, the tighter the pull of my magic, like a magnetic force reeling me to Scarlet. At the center of the rings, I fumbled in the water, trying to feel for her, trying to control the chaos in my head and the matching one between my ribs as the seconds continued to tick by.
Finally, my fingers closed around an arm. I seized her at once, yanking her above the water’s surface as I pulled her against me.
“Scarlet!”
Her head lolled to the side, and her ivory color shot through me like a razing bullet. I moved soaking wet hair from her face, beads of water clinging to skin that looked as fragile as porcelain. She was as limp as a doll in my arms.
And devastatingly still.
27
Scarlet
When my eyes yawned open, the first thing I saw were glittering garnet eyes paired with a delighted smirk.
“Welcome back, little witch,” Kai greeted. He stood at the foot of my bed, dressed in his usual aesthetic: total black.
“Where are we?” I frowned and started to sit up, though paused at the dizziness that resounded in my mind, as if my head was a bell that had just been struck to announce the hour.
“Easy,” he said, “or you might start coughing up water again.”
Almost as if stirred by his words, my chest started to ache. I rubbed it in an effort to massage my lungs. They were sore, and they burned as if scorched. Every breath felt like rubbing a bruise.
The Cave of Nightmares.
All at once, it came back to me. Meeting my shadow self, the fear in me she’d exposed, the destiny that awaited me. That pervasive feeling of loneliness that had felt like rot in the center of my chest. The desperate need to dial down all the noise and quiet my mind.
My face burned from mortification. I had cast myself into that pool where so many others had met their end. I had tried to drown myself.
“You certainly drank your fill,” Kai said, and I didn’t have to see him to hear the grin in his words.
I glared at him, irritated that he’d make light of something so serious. “And where were you exactly the whole time?”
His smirk deepened. In a swift whip of air, he disappeared, leaving only wisps of black smoke in his wake.
In the next second, he rematerialized right at my bedside. “Are you saying you would’ve rather I be the one to pull you from certain death? My word. I wasn’t aware how quickly things had escalated between us. Don’t worry. I won’t tell Jack if you won’t.”
I rolled my eyes. My gaze skipped across the room as I tried to place myself. The mattress underneath me was decadently soft, so soft it was all I could do to keep from going right back to sleep. The furnishings surrounding me were tasteful and elegant, the kind of fixtures you might expect in a French chateau. One thing was for sure: I wasn’t in a prison cell.
“Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I was contending with fears of my own? Don’t give me that look. Or did you think I was a fearless creature? Come now, you must stop with all these accolades. I’d really rather not make an enemy out of Jack.”
Jack.
My heart rioted as my thoughts swung back to that final vision my shadow self had shown me. How it had shaken me. It shook me even now, like a nightmare that still managed to keep its claws in you even when the morning light filtered into your bedroom.
“How true are the things The Cave of Nightmares shows you?” I asked Kai.
“What do you mean? They’re your own fears. There’s nothing truer than that.”
“But if you witness something that hasn’t happened yet…”
The red in Kai’s eyes brightened. “What did you see exactly?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I just need to know if it’s a future that’s set in stone. Is it possible to change your fate?”
Kai shrugged. “One might argue that you’ve already begun to do so,” he said. “No mortal has ever survived The Cave of Nightmares until now.” Just when I thought he’d managed to assume a staid tone, he added, “Of course, you did take quite the dive toward the end. Nearly a perfect ten too.”
“You sure are chipper,” I countered. “Yesterday, you were going on and on about how much you loathe witches—”
“One witch in particular,” he corrected, holding up his index finger.
“And now you’re back to being your typical irreverent self.”
“I’m charmed to hear you know me so well.” He placed a hand over his heart, his trails of smoke snaking around his arms almost in a lively way.
“Are we back at Nightfell?”
“Morrígan is absolutely fuming over your little victory.” He filled in the gaps for me, my memory a blur. After Jack had yanked me from the pool inside The Cave of Nightmares, he’d managed to get me coughing up all the water I’d swallowed, carrying me back to our campsite where I could warm myself by the fire. When morning came, Morrígan and her entourage waited at the opening to The Cave of Nightmares, furious that we were still alive. I couldn’t believ
e I’d slept through it all.
“Morrígan is positively savage, but she’s still a goddess, and challengers are to be treated as esteemed guests during The Trials. Granted, she obviously didn’t expect to be putting you up for another night, but you’re just full of surprises, aren’t you? Things aren’t always as they seem indeed.”
I realized then the reason for Kai’s high spirits. “You’re at the top of the food chain among your kind,” I said, grasping what I hadn’t understood before. “You can’t die.”
“Not by any means we’ll encounter throughout The Trials.”
Meaning had I met my end, he, still alive, would’ve been left to Morrígan’s mercy. Most likely, he would’ve served as her prisoner for all eternity. Because I’d survived, he was free to enjoy another day sans the shackles.
The question was, how much longer could Jack and I keep up our winning streak? There were still two more trials left. And it wasn’t as if I’d walked away from this one by my own doing. If Jack hadn’t been there...
Embarrassment singed my cheeks again. I thought about how easily I’d succumbed in The Cave of Nightmares. I couldn’t afford to let that happen again.
I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and slowly stood, grateful when my head didn’t swim as I’d anticipated. I was in a white, medieval sleeping gown with bell sleeves and a lace-trimmed collar, the material soft and airy. I examined my hands and arms, my legs. I had some cuts and bruises, but all things considered, they were of minimal concern.
My mind was already chewing its way through bigger issues. The dark against the light. That’s what my shadow self had called the battle that pitted me against Jack. In my right mind, I knew I would never harm Jack, but how binding was the oath I’d taken before Brigid? Could my hand be forced? Could Brigid assume control of my body and mental faculties and manipulate me like a puppet to see the realization of her will?
The solution seemed obvious enough. If Jack was a threat to witch-kind because he was the Dark Lord’s, then we needed to make him not the Dark Lord’s. In other words, we needed more than ever to break his curse and release him from his fate.
Maurice’s book. We needed to do everything in our power to understand it. The Lost Clan. We needed to exhaust every avenue in finding them. Preferably, we needed to do all that now.
“When’s the next trial?” I asked Kai, impatience buzzing in my blood.
“So eager for another brush with death, are we?”
Before I could respond, the door creaked open, and a moment later, Jack filled the entrance. Seeing me, ease filled his warm gaze at once.
It made my heart pirouette. He saved my life.
A cornucopia of conflicting emotions flooded my body. I wanted to throw my arms around him in gratitude. I wanted to bury my face into that warm spot where his neck met his shoulder and sink against him with relief. I wanted to kiss him because of what we’d endured. So badly did I want to kiss him. Until my lips hurt, until I was breathless.
But that vision flashed brightly in my mind. Me, a glowing dagger, a fatal strike, and a burst of ruby red spilling from Jack’s chest. I was a danger to him. However I wished to cut it, that was the truth. Until I could figure out how to change what lied ahead, I didn’t trust myself around him.
Or rather, I didn’t trust my connection to Brigid and the vow that bound me to her wishes. I didn’t trust the power of the runes on my arms and how easily Brigid’s ferocity could fill me if needed. A part of me still hoped the goddess would never ask such a thing of me, but until I could know for sure, I needed to be careful around him. If the only way to stay the destructive course we were on was to keep my distance, then that’s what I needed to do.
So when Jack approached me, his eyes scanning me for injuries, I braced myself, folding my arms behind my back lest they act of their own accord. And when he reached for me with his hand, wanting to touch me as if to assure himself I truly was there before him, my first reaction was to flinch, panic roiling within me as I worried that some godly spark would blaze out of me and scorch him.
He froze, taken aback by my response, as if I’d stunned him. Then hurt cracked in his eyes like broken glass.
Glass that slashed at my heart. I wanted to explain. I wanted to tell him it was for his own good, that until I could figure out how to rewrite the future, I was too afraid of being his downfall, of being his end. But the words got stuck in the back of my throat, because how could I possibly tell him what I’d seen? It shamed me that I should ever be cast as his enemy. The last thing I’d ever want to give him was a reason to distrust me.
I was keenly aware of Kai observing all of this, his curiosity practically palpable. Astonishingly, he remained silent.
“Jack—” I started, not even sure what I purposed to say. What could be said?
“I’ll let you get some rest,” Jack told me, forcing a faint smile that did little to disguise his crestfallen veneer.
With that, he showed himself out.
I hated that I didn’t stop him, that I didn’t protest.
I hated that I couldn’t.
Mostly, I hated how being above water didn’t make it any easier to breathe the moment Jack walked out that door.
28
Scarlet
Three days later, I was racing through an enchanted forest with a pack of demonic wolves called Warglings hotly pursuing me. All around us, the Warglings zipped past tree silhouettes in blurs of black as they played a symphony of snapping jaws and vicious, rumbling snarls, dry leaves crackling as the beasts kept pace with us.
The pounding of my feet was a steady drumbeat in my ears, the impact so hard my temples throbbed with each note. Of all the terrors I’d considered encountering during The Trials, being mauled to death by a pack of wolf hybrids definitely hadn’t appeared on the list.
Embarrassingly enough, this was all my doing.
My second trial had seemed straightforward enough. I was to retrieve a purple-skinned fruit called The Violet Jewel from the top of a rare tree veined with honey.
Armed with weapons and equipped with enough provisions to last us one measly day—“The length of time Morrígan expects you to last before you’re inevitably killed,” Kai had said—we’d set out into the wilds of The Everwoods.
Within mere hours, I had learned several things.
First, an enchanted forest was hardly the glorious things most fairy tales would’ve painted it as. This wasn’t to say The Everwoods wasn’t breathtaking. It was. I was stunned by the kaleidoscope of vibrant colors at every turn, the alien flora and fauna, the cascading waterfalls.
If I forgot about the reason I was here long enough, I found brief pockets of time when I actually admired the forest. Among these age-old trees, journeying across the cold, sleeping earth, I was in my element. I’d close my eyes and breathe in the soul of the place, silencing my mind to catch the chorus of sounds around me: the quick-paced percussion of a bird beak here, the snap of twigs and hush of leaves as small animals made their way through the underbrush there, the whine and creak of tree trunks against the wind.
Occasionally, a lamenting melody reached my ears as well.
“The Song of the Ancients,” Kai had called it. “These trees have been around since before the dawn of mankind. They sing ballads of the heroes that have walked among them to keep their memory alive.”
It was all so very spellbinding, making me fall in love with the forest.
At least until I realized the forest was playing games with us.
When we stepped over a stretch of moss-colored tree roots and untangled our way through hanging vines, I stopped short, puzzled.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “We’ve already passed this way.” I pointed to a colossal tree with buttress roots so high they were like thin walls rising from the earth. I remembered them because of the cluster of pink, long-stemmed mushrooms gathered around their bases like pretty bouquets ready to be picked.
“I imagine we have,” Kai replied. “The Ever
woods is ever-shifting. From one hour to the next, the forest is never the same.”
In other words, we were navigating a duplicitous labyrinth that kept redesigning itself with every step we took.
That wasn’t the worst of it.
The second thing I’d learned about enchanted forests? They weren’t promised lands overflowing with abundance.
Our provisions consisted of dehydrated strips of bison meat and dried fruit. We each also carried a single canteen of water. Initially, I didn’t think this would be a problem, so convinced was I that I’d retrieve The Violet Jewel within twenty-four hours. Having since learned of the forest’s shapeshifting ways, however, the hunger pangs began to afflict me in full force on my second evening in the forest, the jerky and figs and apricots no longer sating me, not that they ever had.
I was so hungry, my stomach felt as if it were twisting itself into knots. I’d been fortunate enough to never know true hunger growing up, a privilege I owed to my mother. Being thrust into it now, with the last of our provisions nearly depleted, was jarring. I portioned out our remaining strips of meat in scraps, one thread on the hour. It never was enough.
The cruelty was that nearly every tree in The Everwoods boasted engorged fruit that spilled sweet-smelling nectar. And there were clear, sparkling streams everywhere filled with rainbow-colored fish. The problem was everything in the forest was enchanted. One taste, and you were dead.
My third lesson: enchanted forests weren’t as big as one might hope.
At least they didn’t seem very spacious when you were trying to keep your distance from a member in your party. Jack and I hadn’t spoken a word to each other since the trial had begun. The few times we’d interacted, like when he offered me the last of his bison meat (which I selfishly accepted, too hungry to decline, the decision haunting me ever since because Jack needed it just as much as I did), or when he stopped and leaned down to untangle my cloak when its threads had snagged on a vine of thorns, were done wordlessly.