The Bitter Kingdom

by Rae Carson

  In the months since becoming queen, there has been a nebulous thought wavering in my mind, just beyond the clarity of consciousness—that if I wanted to, I could give it all up. I don’t have to fight for my kingdom. I could abdicate. Hand it over to Conde Eduardo, who wants it so badly. Let him fight it out with Invierne. I could go back to Orovalle, to Papá and Alodia. I would be a failed queen, a failed bearer, yes. But I would be safe. My life would be easy.

  I know I’ll never do it, even though my current path means danger and maybe even death. It’s terrifying. But it’s a manageable terror. Because I’ve chosen it.

  I wince at Waterfall’s muffled scream. “Got it!” Hector says.

  Mara sacrifices some of her precious burn ointment for disinfecting purposes, then Hector stitches her up. I call a halt for the day—if indeed it is day—to give Waterfall a chance to rest and ascertain the true extent of her injury. We’ll see if she can walk tomorrow.

  But I gaze down the tunnel into the dark, knowing it’s too late to turn back, racking my brain for an idea on how to get across the false floor.

  After breakfast I tell everyone the plan I came up with while we rested. I’m greeted by silence. “Or,” I add, “we can turn around and go back. Take our chances in the snow.”

  “This is our best option,” Hector says.

  “I agree,” says Belén.

  Mara closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, but she nods.

  We set up quickly. Hector shows Red how to tie a rolling hitch knot and has her practice several times. We loop one end of the rope around a rocky outcropping, the other around Red’s waist.

  Traveling this tunnel has been made even more difficult by the fact that it is rough-hewn and jagged, for the goal of the original miners was to tunnel as quickly as possible. But now I’m grateful. There are plenty of places to tie a rope down. It might be what saves us.

  We hold tight to Red’s rope as she sets off. She holds her cloak out in front of her, and she uses it to brush years of dust away from the floor to expose the rotting wood. We hope that by being able to see the floor, we can avoid the more obviously rotted parts as we cross.

  She takes a step on the floor. It creaks. She waits a moment, then takes another step. On the third step, her foot breaks through and she jerks left to retain her balance, clutching at the wall. I brace myself and grip the rope so tightly my palms ache, but she doesn’t fall through. She doesn’t look back, and she doesn’t hesitate. She pulls her foot from the hole and keeps going.

  The moment her feet touch solid ground, she jumps into the air with a whoop. “I did it!” she says, whirling to show us her grinning face. “I did it!”

  “Good work, Red,” I call out. “Now can you tie the rope to something?”

  She removes the rope from her waist and looks around. She spots a promising outcropping of rock, then loops the rope around twice and ties it off the way Hector showed her.

  “Your turn, Waterfall,” Hector says.

  She limps forward and grips the now-taut rope that stretches across the hidden chasm.

  “Hold on with both hands,” Hector instructs. “And try to keep to the path Red used.”

  I hold my breath as she starts forward. Ideally, we’d tie another rope to her waist. But this one will have to be cut when we all reach the other side, and we dare not risk losing another. I make a mental note that if I survive this and have the misfortune of embarking on another long journey, I will take lots of rope. A mountain of rope.

  Waterfall reaches the other side safely. Then me, then Mara, then Storm and Belén. Hector goes last. He insisted on it, saying he is the heaviest and thus most likely to weaken the floor for everyone else.

  My heart is in my throat as he sets out. The floor groans beneath his weight. He has only gone two steps when something snaps. The entire floor falls away, and Hector with it.

  “No!” I yell, rushing toward the edge. Hands grab at my elbows, trying to hold me back, but I push them away.

  The dust clears. The rope sags into the pit, but it is not broken. Hector hangs from it with both hands. He swings one leg up and hooks the rope with his ankle, then does the same with the other. With slow, jerky movements, he executes an upside-down crawl up the length of the rope toward us.

  “Hurry, Commander,” Storm says. “The rope is fraying.”

  I whip my head up. Sure enough, the rope is unraveling where it rubs up against the opposite edge. We’ll be lucky if it holds much longer.

  One of Hector’s ankles slips, and the rope sways wildly, scraping hard at the edge of the pit. He swings his leg back into place and keeps going, hand over hand, dragging himself along as the rope unravels, and I can’t stop muttering, “Please, God, please, please, please.”

  He reaches the edge. The rope snaps.

  Hector’s head drops out of sight as Belén and I lunge forward to grab him, and miss. My chest feels like it’s turning inside out, until I see Hector’s fingertips, gripping the edge so tight they’ve gone white.

  We grab his wrists, then his arms. My fingers dig into his flesh, and my shoulder sockets burn as I pull with all my might. He gets an arm over the edge, then a leg. I grab the back of his pants and help him roll up to solid ground.

  He lays there panting, staring up at the ceiling. “That was close,” he says.

  I stick a finger in his chest. “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

  Before I can blink he grabs me, pulls me atop him, and right in front of everyone, kisses me soundly. “It’s hard, isn’t it?” he says, his lips still against mine. “To watch someone you love almost die?”

  I rest my forehead against his. “Once this is all over, I say we stop doing that to each other.”

  He grins. “Agreed.”

  I get to my feet, pulling him with me. “Can you travel?”

  “Like the wind.”

  I turn to find everyone else staring at us without bothering to disguise their amusement. Except Red, who wrinkles her nose at me. “That was gross,” she says.

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  29

  THREE or four days later, we reach a crossroads. Waterfall crouches to read the runes and says, “This way.” And we follow her into a different tunnel, even narrower than the last, with a ceiling so low that everyone save Red and me must stoop to pass.

  When instinct says it’s time to halt for the day, I decide to keep going, for the tunnel is so narrow that we would have to lay out our bedrolls single file to camp. No one complains. We push on and on, until we reach a spot where the ceiling is so low we must get on our hands and knees and crawl through. The walls press tight around us. The rock above me feels heavier than ever. Surely it will give way any moment, tumbling around us, crushing us to death. In this tight space, it would be impossible to run from danger.

  In front of me, Mara whimpers. I reach up and squeeze her leg.

  At last the tunnel opens into a wide natural cavern, with a high ceiling thick with stalactites that sparkle like icicles, and we tumble into it as fast as we can. It’s such a relief to stand up straight, to stretch our arms high. Waterfall stands in the center and holds out her torch, revealing water-smoothed rock and a sandy floor. Dark blots of shadow mar the walls, indicating branching tunnels.

  “This place floods regularly,” Hector observes, bending down. He grabs a handful of sand and rubs it around in his palm. “No moisture. It’s been dry for a while.”

  “Maybe in the spring?” Belén says.

  “Or when winter comes early, after the first thaw,” Waterfall says.

  Oh, God. What if the sun is shining outside? What if it’s melting all that snow?

  “Maybe we shouldn’t camp here,” I say. “Maybe we should keep going.” But my legs quiver. If I were to guess, I’d say we’ve been walking or crawling for a day and a half.

  “Rest for a bit,�
�� Waterfall says, with uncharacteristic softness in her voice. “Sleep if you can. I need time to figure out which of these tunnels to take anyway.”

  It’s as good a plan as any. We unshoulder our packs and look for a place to lie down. Hector finds a flat bit of rock and stretches out on his side. I stretch out behind him, wrapping my arm around his chest and burying my nose in his back. His hand comes up to trap my arm.

  I should savor this moment, with my body pressed against his, breathing in the familiar scents of leather oil and the aloe gel he uses to shave. But suddenly all I can think about is Waterfall. I hope we were right to trust her. We’ve come so far, taken so many turns, that without her, we would be lost down here forever.

  Scritch-scritch-scritch. Something echoes in the dark. I blink to clear fuzzy vision and shake off sleep, wishing for the thousandth time that we could manage more light in this awful place. I roll away from Hector as it sounds again. Scritch-scritch-scritch.

  I shake him awake, and he lurches to a sitting position. I put a finger to my lips. “Listen,” I whisper.

  The others breathe softly around us. Waterfall is nowhere to be seen. One of the branching tunnels glows. She must have taken a torch to investigate it.

  Scritch-scritch-scritch.

  “An animal,” Hector says. “Something small. With claws.”

  “Small is good,” I say in a weak voice. My mind tumbles through its brief catalog of small animals with claws that might live deep in a cave. Rats, maybe. Or bats. Do bat wings sound like claws?

  The tunnel brightens. The light is steady and sure, blue-white rather than orange.

  “Hector? That—”

  “Get the others up,” he says. “Now!”

  We run around shouting, shaking everyone awake. Storm’s bleary eyes turn sharp almost at once. “Where is my sister?” he demands.

  “We don’t know. Be ready. Something is coming down that tunnel toward us.”

  The scratching is steadier now, louder. It doesn’t sound like a small creature with claws anymore. It sounds like thousands of them.

  Storm pulls his amulet from beneath his shift. Mara strings her bow, her fingers flying. Belén and I draw our daggers, Hector his short sword. Red grabs a burning piece of wood from the fire and stands beside Mara.

  The walls of the tunnels pulse with light. Something scuttles over the lip of the tunnel entrance toward us. Fist sized, glowing. A deathstalker.

  Then others pour out after it, a whole flood of them. Red screams as our cavern fills with soft light.

  “Get ready to stomp!” Hector yells. He grabs another chunk of wood from the fire. Sparks fly as he flings it at the deathstalkers. It lands near the entrance to the tunnel, and the scorpions part to make way for it, like water rushing around a boulder. “They’re afraid of fire!”

  The nearest have reached us. Mara and Belén stomp furiously, knees kicking high. Several crawl up Mara’s legs, up her back, into her hair.

  I anchor myself to the ground, call the zafira, and spring up a barrier between us and the tunnel. They pile up against it, scrambling over one another’s bodies in a frenzy.

  It slows the onslaught, but too many are already upon us. My barrier wavers as I shoot fire into their swarming midst, bolt after bolt. When the fire hits, they turn brown and shrivel, but it’s not enough, and I can’t maintain both fire and barrier much longer.

  Red screams and stomps; Hector hacks uselessly with his sword. Then more bolts join mine as Storm enters the fray.

  Mara is covered in scorpions now, but she grabs her pack, rummages inside, and comes up with a bottle of lamp oil. She flings it into the thickest part of the swarm. I aim a bolt where the bottle landed. Fire whooshes to life, and wind plasters my clothes against my body. Scorpions die by the hundreds.

  Do I imagine that the trickle coming from the tunnel is thinning? But so is my barrier. A few deathstalkers scuttle through. Then a hundred. Something pierces my ankle; the sting shoots up my leg. I cry out, dropping the barrier entirely.

  “Mara, drop to the ground and roll!” Belén bellows. I wince at the crunch of carapaces, even as I continue to fling fire toward the tunnel.

  I’m sure of it now; the onslaught is thinning! I almost laugh aloud. But then something else comes down the tunnel—I hear it before I see it, the way it clackety-clacks against the stone. Storm continues to send his own bolts, but they’re weaker now. Not as weak as mine, though. I stop, saving my energy for whatever comes next.

  It’s another scorpion. The mother of all scorpions. Bigger than a tavern building, glowing like a moon. Its pincers snap as its segmented tail curls over its back. A drop of venom collects at the tip.

  Hector whips his sword to the ready position. “Belén!” he calls. “I need my forearm shield.”

  Belén tosses it to him, and Hector catches it deftly. Then the commander of my guard advances on the scorpion.

  It reaches out with pincers as if to snap him in half. Hector dodges and arcs his sword down, but he’s not quite fast enough, and the scorpion dances away.

  Hector darts in, slashing, and nicks one of the legs. The scorpion stumbles but thrusts its tail forward to spear him. Hector ducks, and the tails misses him by a hand’s breadth.

  The creature skitters sideways, pulling its tail back for another try. Beside Hector, something sizzles. It’s venom, shaken from the scorpion’s tail when it attacked, now burning through the rock like acid.

  “Watch the venom!” I yell. “It burns.”

  Hector circles the scorpion, keeping an eye on the tail as another drop of venom coalesces at its tip. “It’s too fast,” he hollers. “Can you weaken it for me?”

  But I’m already focusing the zafira into a white-hot point of power. I scream, thrusting it from me. My white firebolt plunges into its side. The scorpion screeches, a metal-scraping-metal sound that pierces my head like a knife. But it works—the tail’s next shot misses, and its body smokes with char.

  It’s a little slower now, wobblier, as it rounds on Hector once again. Hector attacks in a flurry of movement, slashing so fast I can hardly track him. The tail whips down again, but Hector dodges and rolls out of reach. A drop of venom sizzles on one of his gauntlets, and he backs away to give himself a few precious seconds to unbuckle it and toss it to the ground.

  The scorpion advances. Its tail spears forward over and over again, desperately. Finally it overcommits, stumbles. Hector dodges right, leaps, plunges the blade into the creature’s head with a sickening crunch.

  It shudders for a moment, then collapses, legs twitching, sword jutting from its carapace. The glow gradually fades.

  I look around, collecting my breath, trying not to pass out from emptying myself of the zafira so quickly. The other scorpions are gone, burned or scuttled away. The cavern reeks of burned hair.

  Mara lies on the ground, her head in Belén’s lap. Purple welts are rising up all over her hands and face. They must be all over her body, beneath her clothes. Her breath comes in gasps. Her lips are turning blue. I drop to my knees beside them. Not Mara, God, please, not her.

  “Heal her,” Belén says. His one good eye brims with tears. “Please?”

  I bury my face in my hands. “I can’t. I’ve got nothing left. I’m barely—”

  “Try!”

  The world sways; my vision blurs. “All right,” I hear myself saying. “I’ll try.” I reach down and take Mara’s hands. They feel odd, like puffy pillows.

  A shape kneels beside me. “Let me,” says Storm. “I didn’t use everything up the way you did. I might have something left.”

  “But healing only works for people you—”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  I’m so dizzy, so tired. But I have to stay awake. “It’s creation magic, so think about growing and cleansing and . . . I always imagine the power going through my hands into the other person. But I have a living stone. So maybe put your amulet in Mara’s hands?”

  He wraps her hands around his amulet, h
olding them there with his own. Mara’s eyelids flutter, but they stay closed. I want to tell Storm to hurry, that there might not be much time, but I don’t want to ruin his focus.

  He closes his eyes. My own Godstone flutters in response as he draws on the zafira and focuses all the power on his amulet. Their clasped hands begin to glow.

  Mara’s back arches, and her sightless eyes fly open—but only for the briefest moment. She crashes back to Belén’s lap, and Storm topples over on top of her. “Not enough,” he mutters. “I didn’t have enough after all.”

  Do I imagine that some of Mara’s welts have turned sickly yellow? That the swelling in her face has subsided? A partial healing, maybe. Dear God, please let it be enough to save her life.

  I sway to the side, barely noting how Hector catches me before I join Mara and Storm in oblivion.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  30

  MY first thought upon waking is for Mara. I scramble over and put my hand to her cheek. Not feverish. And her breathing is definitely easier.

  “Hector says she might live,” Belén says. His voice is ragged, his face bereft. I’d bet my Godstone crown he hasn’t left her side.

  “You love her,” I say gently.

  He nods. “But she won’t marry me. Says she may never marry. That her first priority is to be your lady-in-waiting, and she’s finally doing something she’s proud of, and she won’t . . . I’m babbling.”

  I put a hand on his arm and squeeze.

  Footsteps draw my attention away, beyond the scorpion’s giant carcass to the tunnel it came from. It’s Hector and Red, carrying something long and heavy between them.

  “No,” I whisper. “No, no, no, no.”

  They lay Waterfall beside the fire. Her once-beautiful features are unrecognizable, her face a lumpy mask of hives. But unlike Mara’s, hers are pale and bloodless. And unlike Mara, she doesn’t breathe.