No wonder this line was taking so long. Suzan, according to her nametag, wasn't even paying attention.
I should be mad, but I had been waiting for this day for seventeen years. Too long to get pissed at some Tarn and get myself kicked out only moments before the Gauntlet was to begin. Besides, Suzan had clearly come from a Chosen family like myself. She was too clean and had none of the tattoos or piercings that the Drains usually covered themselves in.
We were equals, for now. Goldens. Children of the Chosen, raised in the gleaming world of magic. I was sure she had entered the Gauntlet as I was about to do. The clean, unmarked skin on her wrists made it clear she hadn't succeeded.
She hadn't received a kiss from the Vilỳ, the winged magical beast whose poison awakens the magic in a mortal. She was never blessed with magic. She was nothing more than a Tarnished Golden now. A Tarn.
I was not going to meet the same fate.
"Sia Demarco." I spoke my name slowly, confidently, just as my father had demanded of me my entire life. It made little difference. My agitation boiled into a steam when she didn't click right over from her game.
"Daughter of Samantha and Giovanni Demarco." I tacked that last part on for effect, pushing my sheet of chestnut hair behind me as if that alone would catch her attention.
Suzan froze, but not from the glittering strands of hair that my mother had bewitched that morning. She recognized my parents’ names.
Of course she did.
My parents were some of the most prominent Chosen in our area. My father had campaigned for the imprisonment and reuse of the Drains for years. Obsolete mortals were useless to the world and needed to be dealt with after all. They were drains of society, living in the abandoned drains of the world. Last year, my mother had led the efforts to clear the old subway tunnels they called home. Which, if I had to guess, was where the Tarn that was sitting beside the useless Suzan had come from. Thick black lines of the tattoo on his neck were practically bursting out of the makeup he was attempting to use to cover it. Most of the Tarns who failed the Gauntlet chose to hide underground. Ashamed.
Suzan hadn’t chosen that path. She should be commended for choosing to serve those better than herself. She had chosen to make herself useful to those above her.
I gave her a brighter smile.
"Demarco," she repeated. There was a bit of hostility in her voice as she finally looked up from the screen, fixing me with a steely grey stare from behind her grubby spectacles. I didn't let my smile falter. "Come to join your parents in their blessings of power?"
"No," I said, leaning closer to her and putting my hands flat on the folding table they were using for check-ins. "I've come to surpass them."
She flinched. My smile stretched.
"Well, I hope it works out for you. Everyone here has the same goal after all. Only the best will see the end." She gave me a narrow stare before clicking a few things on her screen and handing me a small steel blade, a cracked rock, a canvas bag, and an old laminated sheet of instructions. I didn’t need any of it. My father had prepared me better than that. I took it anyway, giving her a simpering smile.
"May the wells of Imdalind follow your quest," she recited the line at the same time as the Tarn next to her. Echoes of the deadpanned greeting banged through the noise of all the Gauntlet runners lined up behind me.
“You can count on it.” My smile did not falter as she sent me on my way. I passed the security check and stepped into the old train station that they had used for the Gauntlet since they caught the last of the Vilỳs two hundred years ago and the Queen had started the school.
My school.
My heart was an absolute hum as I ascended the steps, staring at the chipped gargoyles that flagged the massive carved doors like sentinels. The first gatekeepers toward gaining my mark.
Every surface in the massive wood and marble lobby glistened with magic after having been scrubbed clean by the Chosen workers last night. Not that it made any difference with the wall of bodies and odor that now flooded it. I had been prepared for the hundreds of Goldens who would gather to fight for their place to follow their parents in a path of magic, but there were far too many of the vile sewer dwellers here than I had been warned about.
They may be allowed to run the Gauntlet, but it was useless. They would never win; they were only serving to overwhelm the air with their stench. They were wasting everyone's time by being here.
The canvas bag was good for something, I guess. I balled the thing up and smashed it against my nose, staring at the group of Drains that were nervously hovering to my left.
Scared, pathetic little sewer rats. They weren’t welcome here, and I would do my best to make sure they knew that.
Maybe the knife would be good for something.
Noxious fumes dampened; I reached the edge of the crowd as my name rang over the nervous buzz of voices in a high-pitched squeal. Tasha. Only one person could make a sound like that. It wasn't even worth turning to her. She would catch up with me. I was too busy pushing my way past the others; who might as well be sightseers with how they were staring at the mosaic on the ceiling with their jaws sagging open.
"Idiots! We are here to win, not to ogle." I pushed some Drain with a bubblegum-pink mohawk aside, earning myself a glare from the snarly girl who had marred her face with a few too many piercings. Fecking Drains. I could already tell she was not going to survive this. No muscle. No training. Too foul. Moving on.
"You don't want to go that way," Tasha said in a sing song tone as she reached me, wrapping her hand around my arm and pulling me back. "It's a madhouse that way, Sia."
"But that's where my father says the best starting point is. It has to be this way." I pulled my arm out of her grip, ready to continue my charge through the crowd, but she pulled me back again, her sharp nails digging into my skin.
I cringed and stepped back, massaging my arm.
She was as ruthless as I was.
This is how I knew Tasha and I were going to be the first through the gates, and the first to receive a bite. We had trained for this since we were small. For the Gauntlet, for magic; all of it.
The magic of the Chosen didn't pass on through generations like it did for the Eternals. My grandparents and my parents all ran and won the Gauntlet, my great-grandparents having been bitten in the war before. We were meant for this power. Meant for this world.
But, I could do better than that. I would be the first to get a bite in this race, enroll in Imdalind Academy, and find myself an Eternal to take as a mate and give me the eternal life and magic that I really deserved. I already had everything planned out.
"We can't deviate from the plan, Tash." I was ready to pull her after me if I had to. "This is what we planned on and I won't let anything stand in my way."
"How about anyone? Ryland and Cail have decided to set up shop up there. There is no way you are getting through."
That smug little laugh in her voice said it all. I gave her a look, but she only smiled and nodded towards a raised platform where three Eternals were standing.
Ryland, Mira, and Cail stood on a large stage; waving, chatting, and laughing with some of the runners. Hundreds more were pushing up behind them as they tried to get closer to the Eternals, hands outstretched in the hope of a touch.
These weren’t the Skȓítek guard of the Eternals. Ryland was the brother of the King, Mira his wife. Their nephew Cail served as the headmaster of Imdalind Academy.
They all appeared the same as they had my entire life. Young, gorgeous, tall, and powerful. As Eternals, they did not age. Even though these three were some of the younger Eternals that guarded over Imdalind; Ryland having recently celebrated his three hundredth birthday, they didn’t look a day over thirty. What an amazingly handsome thirty it was.
The other Eternals, although older, were the same. The King, Ilyan Krul, was easily a few thousand years old. Wynifred Krul, the King's sister-in-law, was not much younger.
It made sense that the
majority of the Eternals and the royal family that ruled over all with magic were related. Of course, it all stemmed from one man who had enough children to create an army. Which is exactly what he tried to do, and what Ilyan and his wife, Joclyn, had stopped.
Which is what made Mira a god to so many. She was bitten when the Vilỳ rampaged the earth, as my grandparents had been. She had survived the bite, and she and Ryland met and fell in love. My father said there was more to the story than that, but I didn't care. All that mattered was that a Chosen had mated an Eternal and she had gained eternal life.
Seeing her on that platform was a good omen to my success.
“Let’s pick another door,” Tasha whined, pulling me out of the childlike awe that had crippled me. “There is no point in going that way.”
"You mean, Tash, that there is no way I am going to miss it." I gave her a wink, and she rolled her eyes, although it was half-hearted. She clearly expected this to happen and didn't even fight me as I dragged her through the crowd toward the platform.
The closer we got, the better I could see them. Right down to Cail's dark eyes, and each curl in Ryland's brown-black hair. Mira was as beautiful and strong as I had imagined her. She may not be as tall as the boys, but it didn’t matter, you could barely tell with the confidence that shown from her grey eyes. Her long blonde hair was braided in the long strands of mating only the Eternals used. Her chunky jewelry and elegant style was something I had modeled my own after, having cut and pinned every picture I had found of her in magazines for years.
It was the power in her eyes that was impacting me the most, though. She had worked as Ryland's bodyguard, his second, long before they were mated. She was watching everyone now and it was clear she wasn't missing anything.
"God, she's such a badass!" Tasha said from behind me as I continued to plow our way forward. She had taken the words right out of my mouth. I would meet her someday, didn’t matter who I had to kill to get there.
Now, however, I forced myself to look away and continued muscling our way toward the entrance my dad had sworn would give us the upper hand. Just as I looked away, the crowd went crazy. Screaming. Yelling. Girls jumped up and down as they pressed against us.
The Gauntlet couldn't have started already. I had planned to get there an hour early so I had enough time to get to my place, but not enough time that I would be fatigued from standing. They weren't pushing us toward the entrance, however, they were pushing us toward the platform.
"Oh my! It's Ilyan!" I had no idea who had spoken, but it didn't matter. The crowd was turning into a mob and now I knew why.
Ryland and Cail had been little more than pre-show entertainment. Ilyan and Joclyn were here, and they were the main act. The immortal king and his once mortal queen, stood in the center of the platform as regal and perfect as they always were. The golden ribbons of their crowns wound through their hair, twisting around one another as though they were caught in a breeze. I had never seen them this close before. Not many had. They normally sent Ryland to handle appearances. With the screaming and clamoring that was happening, it was clear why.
It grew significantly worse when Talon burst his way out to stand next to his father.
Talon was Ilyan and Joclyn's oldest son, and heir to the throne. He was in his late fifties now, and I had never seen anyone hotter. God. I, along with every other girl here wanted to lick him, and we were all screaming loud enough to say so. Well... they were. I stood, the lone smiling girl in the sea of screamers. Talon noticed me immediately and smiled. It took everything in me not to lose it along with the rest of them, a necessary decorum which only got harder to control when Talon’s younger siblings followed him onto the platform.
Dramin and his wife Patrice walked into the center of the stage, along with the youngest of all the Eternals; eight-year-old Angela.
I wasn't the first to notice that someone was missing.
Rowan, the third son to the King and Queen, was nowhere to be seen. He was a few months older than me, and was to attend Imdalind Academy this year. The year of his nineteenth birthday, as his siblings had done before him. You could only run the Gauntlet between the ages of seventeen and nineteen, and I had even waited a year so I could enroll in the academy the same year that Rowan would be there.
He was the reason I was going to win the Gauntlet. He was the reason I had done everything. To get his attention, his heart and his hand. And he wasn't there.
Everything tensed at the possibility that something was wrong. Rumors had been swirling about his health for years; many saying that he was born with too much of his mother’s mortality and his magic was damaging him. I certainly hoped that wasn't true.
"Where's Rowan?" Screams and shouts echoed around me, but I still did not rise; other than to give Tasha one quizzical lift of my brow. She shrugged and went back to making a fool of herself and screaming like a madman.
Ilyan stepped forward, pulsing his hands down as though he was fanning the crowd. Waves of hot and cold moved through the air with each beat of his hands. Numbing our minds, stilling our tongues and pulling us all into quiet. His mouth did not move as his magic washed over the room. A spark of power never dripped from his fingertips as you saw with the Chosen. His power just existed. It ran over all of us in a pressurized weight until everything was calm. I had never seen magic like that before. I didn’t know it was possible.
But King Ilyan was an Eternal. He was the king.
"Thank you for the warm welcome," Ilyan said in an accent that rumbled through the air with its own kind of power. "We will be beginning the challenge in a few moments. I, and my family, are proud to join you for this, the seventieth anniversary of this competition. We are proud of the Chosen that have wielded the magic of Imdalind since we first began this challenge, and are eager to welcome more into Imdalind at the completion of this race."
"Where's Rowan?" A shout broke over the King's speech, causing a flash of dark to pool in his eyes and the Queen to turn and glare at whoever had yelled.
"Fool," I hissed under my breath.
I may be curious about the boy I had every intention of marrying, but I had been brought up better than to disrespect the King and Queen.
I leaned forward, picking the fool out of the crowd. A Drain thinking they can lift themselves up to a higher stature, no doubt. I would push them out of the way first, send them back to the sewer that they never should have crawled out of.
"Our son is preparing to join many of you at Imdalind Academy and has been working with my nephew, Cail, to prepare. He will be attending school with many of you beginning next week and is excited to meet with you then," Joclyn said, her voice bright even though her eyes were growing dark. Dark as night. Dark as a Drak.
I had heard of the power of a Drak before, the magic focused in sight and prophecy, even though I had never seen it. This time I gasped in shock with all the others.
No one living, besides the Eternals, had seen the Queen give sight. To think that I could see her power…
Before anything else happened, however, the queen’s eyes faded back to her signature silver, and she smiled, giving the King a look that ran through the crowd like a wave.
“I dunno about you, Sia,” Tasha whispered in my ear. “But maybe you should change your plans to that one,” she nodded toward Talon, who was now winking toward a pretty red head near the front. “Then you won’t have some sickly Eternal hanging on your arm. The kid hasn’t been seen in over a year, Sia. You might be wasting your time.”
There was more truth to her words than I wanted to admit, but I didn’t give her more than one quick side glance. I had a plan and I was sticking to it. A plan that required me to be first in line for the Gauntlet.
No more fawning over the Eternals, I would be among them soon enough.
“Come on,” I growled, hauling Tasha after me as I continued to cut through the crowd. Ilyan had continued his speech, making it easier to navigate through the sea of people who were staring up at him.
“As you know, the Gauntlet began as a way to allow the magic of Imdalind to remain strong in our world. After the Vilỳ were gathered, Joclyn and I built this challenge as a way for all children, from every background and lineage, to hold the power of Imdalind. Children are granted access to this Gauntlet for two years after their seventeenth birthday, and have three chances to successfully complete the race. The first one hundred to pass through the five challenges will be given a kiss from a Vilỳ that will awaken their magic, and are enrolled into Imdalind Academy so they may learn to harness their power.”
“I will be the first,” I said to myself, continuing to haul Tasha after me, aware the girl was still ogling at the platform and the Eternals who were staring down at us like gods and goddesses.
The association was wonderfully accurate.
“On this, the anniversary of the creation of Imdalind Academy, we are pleased to announce that we have worked to make sure that everyone who would like the opportunity to awaken their magic is able to. An additional five hundred interested in seeking their power have been brought here today. We have also worked to give everyone an equal opportunity to join the tradition of the Chosen. We have done this by increasing the student capacity, and will welcome a total of two hundred new Chosen into Imdalind at the end of today. In addition, the challenges have been decreased from five to three and today we will be introducing brand new challenges to our Gauntlet.”
I stopped in place, Tasha slamming into my back as the crowd erupted into a combination of panic, fear, and laughter. Now I knew why there we so many Drains here.
That wasn’t what was heating my blood into a boil, however.
“New quests?”
Outbursts roared through the crowd at his announcement, everyone rushing toward the platform. The Eternals moved to line the edges of the stage. Little Angela had disappeared. All of them stood with hands out, surrounding Ilyan and Joclyn as both their guard and crowd control.
Not that any of us were dumb enough to fight them. They had magic, powerful magic that only the Eternals possessed. Right then we were nothing more than mortals. Mortals that were fighting for their chance to possess even a fraction of what they have.
The Gauntlet Page 4
