“You’re amazing.” Her eyes glisten, and my stomach twists. “That was way more than luck.”
I shrug. I don’t bother to tell her that if one of several things had happened differently, I wouldn’t have been able to win that fight.
“I’m glad I didn’t lose you,” I admit. I’d been ready to sacrifice everything for this. Maybe she was right and I should have run away with her. But then Rev would be dead...
Part of me feels like fate was on my side yesterday. That I was supposed to be here, and I was supposed to defend him.
That’s a stupid thought but comforting nonetheless.
“Me too,” she whispers and wraps her hand around mine, our fingers intertwining. She giggles. “You should have seen their faces when they woke up.”
I whip my head around. “What?”
“Those assholes who tried to get you to kill your hotty friend.”
I roll my eyes but ignore her comment about Rev. “You watched them wake? What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you know how much danger you put yourself in by getting that close?”
“I’m just a bird. Come on, no one cares.”
I step forward and grip her upper arm. “They do, Raven. Rev made a comment about you just an hour ago. He thinks you’re someone’s spy.”
She shrugs. “I am. I’m your spy.” She smiles proudly.
“Yes, but that’s the problem. If he suspects, they will too. And they won’t hesitate to shoot you from the damn sky to stop you once they even begin to suspect you’re with me.”
Her face falls slightly. “I’ll be more careful.”
I scrunch my nose. “Fine, but one more close call, and I’m sending you back home.” I flop down on a stone. “So what did their faces look like?” I ask begrudgingly. Okay, I’m curious.
Her eyes light up. “They were soooo mad. It was hilarious. Drake started throwing shit. And that snobby girl?”
“Kari?”
“No, the one with Rev before. Red hair?”
“Brielle.”
“Yes! Brielle, her whole head caught on fire when she came to and realized what happened. I mean, her hair was perfect when it was over, which was annoying, but it was still funny at the time.”
I can’t help a small smile.
“They had this whole conversation about how you could have done that. That you must be stronger than they thought. Drake didn’t want to believe it—pompous fool. But Kari was the smart one and convinced him you must have been hiding your power all along.”
I purse my lips. Guess my secret is out.
“Where are they now?”
“They barely made it to the mountain ranges by sunset, so they picked a mountain near the desert. They’re almost a mile east of you now.”
I nod. “Thank you for the information, but I mean it.” I point my finger at her. “Don’t get that close again. And stop chirping and squawking while you fly. Stay low in the trees. Stay silent. Stay far away. Got it?”
She swallows.
“I mean it,” I say. “I’ll turn you into a damn tree frog and come back for you when the trials are done if I need to.”
“Ew!”
“Then follow my rules. Stay safe. Or I’ll do what I have to.”
She nods somberly. I grip her behind her neck gently and kiss her cheek before marching back toward the summit. I flick my hand and turn her into a black owl with blue eyes this time. That will help a little at least.
Maybe in a few days, if she does a god job of following my rules, I’ll reward her with being a raven again.
Because if she dies out here...
I’ll lose the last good thing I have left.
Rev
The sun has set by the time I wake, darkness hanging over the trees. I groan as I stir, although the pain is nowhere near as fierce as it had been.
A small fire burns, Ty and Caelynn sitting beside it, warming their hands.
“It’s colder than it should be, isn’t it?” I ask.
Ty jumps at my voice. “Welcome back,” he says with a smile. “And yes. We’ve got a theory about that, though.”
“Oh?” I ask, not daring to let my eyes move toward the female fae with him. I could like Tyadin. I’d like to pretend she’s not here, though. That would make my life a lot easier.
“This isn’t the Winding Mountain range,” she says simply.
“You can’t see it now,” Ty says, “but the desert can’t even be seen from here.”
My eyebrows pinch together. “How?”
“We’re thinking some dimensional magic. They want us to traverse the entire fae lands so some points must skip hundreds of miles, while we only walk a few.”
I bite my lip. That sounds complicated.
“There was a clue on the horizon. I remember seeing southwest. What else?”
“The Black Gates.”
“The real Black Gates?” I ask.
Ty nods. “We think so.”
“I guess that’s good for her.” I nod toward the blond without looking at her.
“I’ll know my way around it,” she agrees.
“Although, the scourge passed through that area. We might have to face that tomorrow.”
“Really?” she whispers.
Did she not know?
“Where did it hit?”
“Just one corner of the Whisperwood and some small mining town before moving on.”
She bites a lip and looks down at her lap. Does she care about her homelands? She hasn’t set foot there in a decade so far as I know. It’s hard for me to imagine her feeling anything at all.
She doesn’t look up, so I take the non-threatening moment to examine my enemy closer than ever before. Her eyes darken as she stares at the fire. Her eyebrows gently pinch together. Otherwise, she shows no evidence of pain.
Is that what it is that covers her eyes? Pain? I suppose if someone is full of rage and pain, it would be her. She’s so messed up inside, her blackened soul covers the true color of her eyes. Her essence.
I blink away the image of the golden eyes of the girl in the vision.
I can’t feel sorry for her. Even as her voice echoes through my head, begging my brother to stop as he held her down.
I stand suddenly. “I’m going to take a walk.”
They don’t stop me. They don’t say a word, and I don’t ask what they did to take away the pain in my side. My muscles are still stiff and sore, but my abdomen doesn’t pain me at all.
I take a long walk around the mountain top and stare out over the star-streaked sky for several long minutes. The skyline is vaguely visible in the moonlight. I wish I’d had the opportunity to study the valley while the sun was still up. But no, I had to be a stubborn fool and push my body to its breaking point to prove my worth to an enemy.
So foolish.
Their theory is interesting—that we’ve walked through portals, transporting us hundreds of miles without us knowing it—but potentially ludicrous. Luckily, the clue is transparent enough. Whether our arena is as basic as it seems or something more complex—they did say it would be a maze—southwest should take us where we need to go.
I suppose the real question will be if we pay enough attention to our surroundings to make our way back by the week’s end. If there are portals, they might be showing us the way through the maze without us knowing, and we’ll need to retrace it to finish the trial.
I consider this as thoroughly as I can, alone with the wind and the stars’ calming hue. I close my eyes and think through everything I’ve learned. Though each task will be a challenge in a different way, testing us physically, mentally, and emotionally, the trial itself is surprisingly simple. The more I think about it, I suspect their theory is correct or close to it. We are meant to notice our surroundings and figure out the difference between real and fake. Notice when what we’ve left behind has changed. Realize when our paths have switched on us.
A maze that doesn’t appear as a maze.
If we are literally trave
lling to the other side of our country, they’ve taken out hundreds of miles between making it a y possible journey in the five days. I will certainly be keeping my eyes open for how these planes may have been folded. Are they directing us through small portals? I recall a bridge over a river that may have held some clues. Or are the portals miles wide so we couldn’t miss them? Is that even possible? There will either be one route we must memorize or a pattern we must uncover.
They’d told us at the beginning of this trial that we’d need to travel to each corner of the arena, so it’s easily assumed we’ll travel to the exact southwest corner. We traveled at least ten miles to reach the Ruby Well, which was apparently the northeast corner. We are now moving toward what must be the southwest corner. If we are to hit all four corners in five days, and we’ve already missed one day, there is no other option.
My eyes begin to grow heavy again, my mind satisfied with enough information for now. I’ll be very interested to see how our journey goes tomorrow. Not only the destination but every twist and turn between.
This challenge, much like the trials in general, will easily become more and more complicated as time passes.
Caelynn
I wake to find Rev staring out over the skyline.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I ask, as I sit up.
“Slept fine. Just doing some homework.”
I nod. “Find anything useful?”
“The desert should be there,” he points behind him. “It’s not.”
I nod. We’d said as much last night.
“There’s very little to tell from here. Other than the fact that where we came from appears to be gone, there is nothing else out of place. No signs of shadow creatures in the southwest. No changes in foliage to be noticed. It looks... normal.”
“You’ve kept an eye out for evidence of portals?”
“Yes,” he says. “Nothing that I could make out from here.”
“They won’t want to make it easy on us, I suppose. We’ll have to see what we find as we head south. I’ll wake Tyadin, and we’ll get moving right away. The mountain alone will take two hours to descend, and who knows what kind of distance we’ll need to travel.”
I nod. “Two hours on the mountain. Then a few hours of running should get us twenty to thirty miles of distance easily—assuming a direct and obstacle-free route. Can the dwarf run for hours straight?”
“We managed the first trial fine.”
“Riding a wyvern half the way.” His voice remains low and sharp. Anger rises in my chest, even though it’s not me he’s criticizing. I thought he was getting along with Tyadin.
“It was a tenth of the way. And that tenth, if you recall was entirely underground. In a tunnel that did not exist before Tyadin plowed his way through. And that’s assuming riding a Shadow-vyrn is easy.”
“I have the two weakest allies left in the trials,” he says.
Several defenses and comebacks fly through my mind, foremost that I was strong enough to save his ass, but I bite them back and instead stare at him with disgust.
“With an attitude like that, you will never win the trials,” I say with no acid at all. It’s the simple truth.
If he can’t see beyond his preconceived perceptions of his own allies to understand what’s right in front of his face, he’ll lose every time.
He curls his lips, his eyes dark and full of rage. “Neither will you,” he seethes, hatred clear in his expression. He’s imaging all the ways he’d like to kill me. I can almost see them. His fingers gripping my neck, me gasping for breath. The words he’d like to hear from me—begging for my life.
I swallow back the pain those images cause.
“Watch me.”
Rev
After another revitalizing potion and some food in my stomach, I feel significantly stronger and we make it to the valley below in less time than we’d planned.
We begin a run through the forest, travelling directly southwest as instructed. We’d discussed the possibility of travelling full west first, then south, for the extra distance we’d put between us and the others, but we decided against it out of concern we could miss a portal.
Finally, we pass the river we’d crossed on the way to the mountain yesterday, and I stop in the middle of the path. Caelynn and Ty stop up ahead, turning to watch me.
The bridge stands there just like it did before, nothing out of place. The water of the river rushes gently. It would have been impossible for us to get this far inland without crossing the river. There are likely a handful of bridges much like this one.
“What?” Ty asks, watching me stare at the bridge like a madman.
Caelynn eyes the bridge along with me. “We crossed it on the way here.”
“Yes, and?” Ty says.
“Let’s try it,” she tells me.
I nod, jog toward the bridge, and cross it in only a moment. On the far bank, I stop and look around. The birds still chirp, the trees are the same species, the sky looks no different. But as I turn back, Tyadin and Caelynn are nowhere to be seen. I tilt my head, watching the other side of the river where I knew them to be. Quiet. Still.
I walk back over the rushing water slowly. Watching each step.
Nothing noticeable. Then, all at once, Tyadin and Caelynn appear into the path before me.
“Whoa,” Tyadin says, his eyes wide where I assume I’d just appeared in the same manner.
“They worked hard on that one,” I say.
“What?”
“It’s seamless. I couldn’t tell you where one portion starts or ends, the forest looks exactly the same. How did they find two bridges with the same angle and build, where the trees are so similar?”
“Could you see us on the other side?” Caelynn asks.
“No, that was the only clue. One moment you weren’t there, then you were. Is it an illusion, do you think? Every tree is exactly the same as what I see now, but it’s obviously not the same place.”
“An illusion makes sense.” She nods.
“Well, the only question now is will they continue to corral us through the portals like this one, or will we be expected to find them?”
She bites her lip as she considers, her intelligent eyes darting around like her surroundings will have the answers she seeks.
Truth. I’d asked for truth from the wishing well.
I hope it’s her truth they give to me. My stomach squirms, knowing there is no truth in her that will fix my hatred. It’ll only make my life harder—and that’s likely the exact reason the well will give it to me.
I steel my heart for what she’ll expose eventually. Truths I know I don’t want. And yet, can’t possibly walk away from.
“Let’s keep moving,” Ty says. “We’ll have to puzzle it out as we go.”
Our steps are swift but light as we careen down the pathways, compasses out. It bothers me how seamless the portal was—sights, sounds, and smells didn’t change in the slightest. Which means we might not notice the change even now that we know what we’re looking for.
I almost want to go examine the bridge portal again—there had to be a clue we missed. But it’s best to keep moving, putting distance between us and where we assume the others to be.
I’ve somehow swapped from the strongest alliance in the trials to the weakest. Four of the strongest fae are hunting me. Though, I’m almost at full strength, my climb yesterday set me back, and my two allies are lesser court fae. Weak.
I shake my head at my ridiculous predicament.
At least I’m alive, I suppose. But death very well may be just around the corner.
“Could we destroy it?” I ask suddenly. Ty and Caelynn turn to me. “The bridge, the portal. If you’re right that they’re behind us, they were likely on the other side of that portal and if we destroy it, they may never find the right course.”
Caelynn presses her teeth to her bottom lip. I stare mercilessly, then shake my head. Stupid.
Yes, she’s attractive. Yes, she’s smart. Yes, she�
�s strong. And probably more things I’ve never expected from her—but she’s still my enemy.
She destroyed my life for her own gain. She’s a damn terrorist.
“We don’t know that will work,” Ty says.
“That’s not a reason not to try.”
“What if we have to go back through it later?” Caelynn says, flecks of gold flickering in her eyes like fire.
I purse my lips.
“This is supposed to be some kind of maze,” she says. “So far, it doesn’t seem very complicated. I’d be willing to bet these portals will become more and more important as we complete the challenge.”
“We’ll have to follow the same route we used to reach our tasks, you think?”
“Possibly.”
I nod sharply, content with the reason not to destroy our known portal.
“Should we leave clues for us to find later?” Ty asks as we continue our swift pace.
“Maybe,” I say, “but then we run the risk of the others following our hints. I’d rather trust my own memory and instincts. Brielle has a particularly sharp eye. She’ll notice something out of place.”
We cross another small body of water, but after a few moments of testing, we decide there is no portal here. We keep moving. Our miles take much longer than we’d have liked, but figuring out the keys to the portal maze is easily worth it.
Our pace is more of a swift walk than a run, but we still travel several miles before deciding a meal break is in order.
“Does your bandage need changed?” Tyadin asks.
I pull up my shirt to examine the gauze over my stomach. “Looks fine to me. Did you change it last night?”
He nods. My shoulders relax slightly, knowing it was him that aided me while I slept and not Caelynn. For all I know, she’d poison me while she did it.
I don’t want her to touch me, at all. Ever.
“Did you do something different? It seems to be healing better than before.” That or I didn’t hurt it as badly as I thought while climbing the cliff.
He nods but keeps his eyes low.
“Carnelian,” Caelynn says.
Trial of Thorns (Wicked Fae Book 1) Page 17