The Royal Trials: Imposter

by Tate James

  At least I would die knowing the truth, for all the good it would do. King Titus and his Snake had been responsible for Queen Ophelia's murder, and what was more shocking still... they believed the Princess Zarina was alive.

  Not just alive, but here in the trials? It was an insane idea. But then, was it really so implausible? The land's magic was making it damn clear that it wasn't happy with the current rulers. Why do that if Ophelia's bloodline was extinct?

  Finally—and surprisingly, the most shocking revelation—was that the king's evil and twisted plans didn't even spare his own sons. Whichever prince ascended to the throne would be little more than a meat puppet, existing only as a figurehead for Titus to continue ruling behind the scenes. It made me furious, dizzyingly so, and for once I wished I could see those royal twats once more to warn them.

  As the world faded away and I gave myself over to the pain of death, I cursed myself for a great many things, not the least of which was my attitude toward the royal princes of Teich. Perhaps I'd been going about things all the wrong way... If I had wanted them to change, to help the citizens of Lakehaven rather than ignoring them, it might have been better to try a more persuasive approach.

  So it was then—as I lay on the chaise lounge in a spreading pool of my own blood as my skin swelled and split—that I made myself a promise. If by some miracle I survived the poison, I would change tactics. The princes were in the same doomed ship as me, so we might as well get some good done while we could.

  23

  Death smelled so much worse than I had ever really thought it would, like potent herbs and wet soil mixed with a harsh sanitizer and blood. So much coppery blood. In short, death smelled bad.

  And it was bright. Wasn't death meant to be all dark and shadowy? Not that I was any expert, but that's sort of what the broadly accepted idea of death was.

  Cringing against the brightness that seemed to be right in my damn eyes, I raised an arm to cover my face—and ended up smearing a toxic-smelling concoction all over myself.

  “What the—” I mumbled, peeling my glop-covered eyelids open and frowning. “Where the fuck am I?”

  “Calla?” Lee's panicked voice met my ears seconds before his face loomed into my blurry field of vision. “Holy shit. Guys! Ty, Zan! She's awake!”

  “Lee?” I croaked, blinking to try and clear my vision. I was in my bedroom, with Lee. Was he dead too? No wait, that was stupid. Which meant, “I'm still alive?”

  The handsome blond gardener laughed, but it had an edge of hysteria to it. “Yeah, beautiful. You're still alive. Holy gods, you're still alive.”

  “Lo!” Ty exclaimed, shoving Lee aside and launching his huge form at me in a huge bear hug that made me hiss with pain. My whole body felt as though it'd been through a meat grinder, and my skin was so raw that it was agony to have him touching me.

  Lee growled a curse and peeled Ty off me. “Can't you see you're hurting her, you giant oaf? Look, you made her cry!”

  Sweet Aana, even my tears rolling down my cheeks stung like acid. Perhaps Lee was wrong, and this was some form of afterlife punishment.

  “Shit,” Ty cursed. “I'm so sorry, Lo. I just... We thought you wouldn't make it.”

  I tried to force a reassuring smile, but it all hurt too much. “I probably wouldn't have. By the fact that I'm here now, I take it Lee's cure works?”

  Ty glanced at Lee, who shook his head while still staring at me.

  “No?” I squinted at him, trying to make sense of what was going on. “But I'm not dead, and I'm all covered in this... goop.” I lifted a lead-like arm again to demonstrate, and Lee pursed his lips, frowning.

  The bed sagged on my other side, and I glanced over to find Zan perched on the mattress, staring down at the quilt. “The goop is just healing all the splits in your skin,” he explained. “Lee's antidote for the red-tide did nothing. In fact, it almost seemed to make you worse.”

  I gaped at Zan, then turned to stare in shock at Lee, who was flushed and frowning.

  “Seriously?” I asked the botanist, and he shrugged awkwardly.

  “It certainly seemed to,” he admitted. “After that, we let you vomit it all back up and then just did whatever we could to treat the symptoms. The actual poison itself, though, your body seemed to just metabolize it naturally. It's actually pretty incredible; I hadn't even known it was possible.”

  Stunned, all I could say was, “Huh.” I'd been so sure I was dying. “Maybe because I've been in contact with red-tide before? Is it possible to build a tolerance?”

  Lee's brows shot up. “Maybe? That could explain why you were able to fight it off when no one else has.”

  “Lo,” Ty said quietly, frowning down at me. “Why would you have ever been in contact with red-tide before? It's not a common algae, and as far as I'm aware, it only grows in swamps and places like the Pond.”

  Shifting uncomfortably under three sets of curious eyes, I searched for a change of subject. “How long have I been... out?”

  “Not long, which is equally as shocking as the fact that you've processed the poison naturally.” Lee glanced at his simple, leather-strapped wristwatch. “It's just after dawn now. We found you last night in the sanctuary around half an hour after you’d left dinner. What made you go there, anyway?”

  I'd thought that was fairly obvious, but maybe not? “I was looking for you.”

  “Oh.” Lee blinked at me a couple of times, then looked away like he was uncomfortable.

  “Today is the final test, right?” I turned to Zan, and he nodded. “Do you think I'll be okay? I don't want...” Lord Taipanus or the king “...anyone knowing I was poisoned last night too. That would lead to way too many questions, don't you think?”

  Zan gave a short nod, his mouth tight. “I don't know, Luna. You're still in bad shape. Lee?”

  Lee had just picked up a soft, damp cloth and began ever so gently wiping some goop off my forearm. “Maybe?” he replied. “I sort of don't see any way around it, given the king wouldn't let you skip a simple history test.”

  I grunted a disgusted noise, agreeing with him. Fuzzy, fractured memories of the night before flittered across my mind, but I couldn't quite grab onto any details. Something about the king and his Snake and the unmistakable feeling that they were people to fear, now more so than ever before... But if only I could remember why.

  “You're right.” I sucked in a deep breath as Lee's cloth pressed just a little hard, but I was relieved to see unblemished skin being revealed from under the goop. “How long do I have?”

  “Testing starts in just a little over four hours,” Ty told me. “But if we can get your name moved down the list, you'll get more time. There's no rule that says you have to sit there and wait with the other ladies.”

  “Let's do that then,” Zan agreed. “If we can get you last on the list, you'll have around eight hours from now.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Eight hours. What should I do in the meantime?” This question was directed at Lee, who was turning into my personal physician.

  “Sleep,” he ordered me in a firm voice. “That's the only thing you can do, and it’s ultimately going to give your body the best chance of recovery. Zan and Ty can come and grab us if anything changes or if they can't get your name moved.”

  “Us?” I echoed, focusing on totally the wrong aspect of the situation.

  Lee gave a short nod, rinsed his cloth, and started on my other arm. “Yes, I'll stay to monitor you.”

  I bit back a smile but couldn't deny the fact that him staying made me feel stupidly girly inside. “Okay, sure. To monitor me.”

  Zan and Ty looked less than impressed at being dismissed but didn't argue the sense of the plan. Lee was tending my wounds, and there was no point in all three of them hovering over me while I slept.

  “I'll be fine,” I reassured them. “It's amazing what a little rest can do.”

  Ty leaned over, being much more careful this time, and placed a gentle kiss against my hair—probably the only
place on me not covered in Lee's herbal concoction. “Sleep well, little one. We will be thinking of you every minute until we see you again.”

  It was such a sweet thing to say, but the big soldier was gone before I could reciprocate with words of my own.

  Zan stood from his perch on the edge of my bed and started for the door before pausing and turning back to scowl at me. “Just... don't die again, okay Luna?”

  A bit stunned and confused, I just nodded, and he left the room.

  “Again?” I asked Lee. “What does he mean?”

  “Exactly what he said,” Lee muttered, shifting to sit further on the bed so he could reach my upper arms. “Technically, you died a couple of times last night.”

  “What?” I exclaimed, trying to push myself up to sit but groaning as my body protested.

  Lee sighed. “Your heart kept stopping. I couldn't even do anything to help you. We just had to sit here and pray that it would restart. Which, obviously, it did. Zan was right about you being harder to kill than you look.”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, a small smile crept across my lips. Turned out I hadn't just been talking shit after all. “I'm tougher than I look, Lee. But...” I bit the side of my lip and looked at him through lowered lashes. “I'm sorry you had to see that. It can't have been fun, for any of you.”

  Lee huffed a noise, rinsing his cloth again and moving to my shoulder. “It was one of the most horrific things I've ever lived through, Calla, and that includes seeing people die during the Plague. But I'm glad I was here. You seemed to know we were with you. Your crying eased when one of us was holding your hand.”

  I had no idea what to even say to that, so I said nothing for a long time.

  “What did you guys do with Jules?” I asked finally, noticing my fake-maid was nowhere to be seen. “Please tell me Zan locked her in a cupboard somewhere.”

  Lee cracked a smile and shook his head. “Not that he wasn't tempted, but we simply convinced her that she wasn't needed here.”

  I frowned, hardly believing that a girl who'd claimed to be my best friend since we were eight years old would just leave me to die with a bunch of virtual strangers. Then the phrasing Lee had used clicked in my head. “You paid her to stay away.”

  “We did.” He nodded, totally unapologetic.

  My lips tightened, and I swallowed the lump of disappointment in my throat. Of course Jules had chosen money over my welfare. Chances were, she thought I was already dead by now. If I was lucky, she might report this back to Bloodeye and give me a break from their spying.

  “Good,” I muttered, then yawned heavily.

  “Go to sleep, Calla,” Lee whispered in a soft, caring voice. “I'll stay with you. Just rest up and get through this test, okay? For us.”

  I murmured my agreement, letting my heavy lids fall closed as Lee continued his slow, gentle strokes to clean my skin of his herbal formula. The motion was hypnotizing, and it wasn't hard to follow instructions and sleep soundly.

  24

  “Okay, I can do this,” I whispered to myself, staring at the heavy, wooden door that would lead me into the final test of the week. This was the conclusion of the first Royal Trial, and if I survived this... well, then I would be a third of the way there.

  When I'd woken again in my room, Lee had been curled around me protectively, and I'd wanted nothing more than to stay there in his arms forever.

  I felt rested and refreshed, if still a bit weak. Most of all, my thoughts were clear. Memories of the night before had begun floating back to me, and I shivered as I thought of the King and Taipanus' revolting plan. Whether that conversation had really happened or was a figment of my poison-corrupted mind, I wasn't totally sure. But it was enough to make me cautious.

  My resolve had returned. If we only had two weeks left, then I intended to make a difference. I'd do everything in my power to force the princes to see sense—to see what their father was doing to our home. And if it turned out that I'd imagined the whole thing... well, there was still no harm done, and the people of Lakehaven and Teich might be better off for it.

  I needed to make it through this final test first, though.

  Lee had given me a brief rundown of what I was to expect as he'd walked with me to the testing hall. As detailed as he could be was still rather vague, but I appreciated all the help I could get.

  “Room one, botany and alchemy,” I murmured under my breath as I paused with my hand on the doorknob. “Room two, combat and knife skills. Room three, politics, history, and etiquette.”

  All of our classes for the week were combined in this test that could make or break our participation in the Royal Trials. Each stage held very real possibilities of death, and despite what we'd been led to believe—that only the lowest scoring lady would die—it could be a whole lot more of us than that. As in... anyone who failed.

  The winner was determined on how fast the stages were completed, and that oh so lucky lady would get the privilege of alone time with a prince. Despite the fact that the sheer misogyny of this “prize” turned my stomach, it could be the perfect opportunity to start working on my plan.

  “Botany and alchemy.” I muttered again, turning the huge doorknob and opening the door. “I can do this.”

  Inside the dim room, all I saw was a large table set up with all manner of alchemical ingredients and three doors at the end of the room. That was all. But Lee had definitely said that this stage was alchemy and botany, so there had to be more to this than I could see.

  Stepping carefully into the room, I tried not to flinch when the door slammed shut behind me, starting my timer.

  As quickly as I could, I searched the whole room for any hints of the botany aspect. At first glance, I found nothing. But when I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, something familiar pricked at my nostrils.

  Silvered axeroot.

  An herb that we had learned about in our first class of the week, it was capable of soothing rashes when applied as a whole leaf. Its secondary use was by smugglers, as it could be ground up and boiled down to create an ink that only became visible when set alight.

  “Which means...” I hurried back to the table of supplies and quickly located all of the ingredients, which confirmed my theory. “Fire potion. Perfect.”

  Relying on my memory and instinct, I quickly mixed up the fire potion, which Lee had taught us during his second class. Pouring it into a small glass bottle, I popped the cap in and then went in search of the space that contained a secret message.

  My initial guess had been the doors. Perhaps two might say “don't enter” and one would say, “you're cool to come through here.” But to my disappointment, none of them carried the distinctive, muddy scent of silvered axeroot.

  Feeling a bit like a bloodhound, I made my way around all of the walls and then checked the floor. Nothing. So where was it? Every now and then, I caught a hint of it, which confirmed my initial guess... but where the hell was it?

  There was only one option left. Craning my neck, I peered up at the dark ceiling of the room and considered the possibility that the message was written up there.

  It really was the only place left, and I'd already spent too long in this room; I needed to move on. So I sucked in a deep breath and held it as I hurled my potion bottle at the stones above my head. Fingers crossed, I crouched and cowered as my potion exploded with shards of glass and the whole room lit up with flames.

  As the flames faded, a series of glittering words and symbols were revealed, and I hurried to read through them all. Half of the message had been substituted by alchemical symbols, just to make things harder, but it was clearly a formula for another potion. But a potion for what?

  My question was answered moments later, as a thick, green gas began seeping into the room from the air vents.

  “Shit,” I cursed, instantly recognizing the gas as the sister herb to silvered axeroot. Obsidian deathweed was exactly as pleasant as the name suggested, and I had been poisoned quite enough for on
e week, thank you.

  Running back to the table of supplies, I gathered the ingredients listed on the glittering recipe above my head. I had no idea what it would do, but it had to be something to escape the gas.

  Thankfully, obsidian deathweed was a heavy gas, and it gathered across the floor first before slowly beginning to fill the room. By my guess, it would only be a couple of minutes until it reached face height, but that was more than enough time for me. I’d finished mixing the potion by the time the gas reached my waist, then lost precious seconds chewing my lip and working out what the fuck I did next.

  Was it something I drank? It couldn't be, as some of the ingredients would be lethal if consumed. So it must need to be dispersed to counter the gas.

  I hesitated another second, but when the thick green gas touched my shoulder, I made my decision and hurled the potion at the floor.

  For a moment, nothing happened, and I squeaked in panic. Then all of a sudden, the green gas began whipping around me in a tornado as it was consumed by the potion I'd released on the floor. That clear liquid I'd splattered the tiles with quickly sucked up every last drop of the deadly gas until the room was free and clear of threats once more.

  “Cool trick,” I murmured to myself as I eyed the remains of the potion on the floor. “Now what?”

  As though answering me, the door in the middle of the three clicked open, making me realize the other two were just decoys, probably to trick people into throwing their fire at the wrong place.

  Conscious of the fact that I was being timed, I wiped my sweaty hands off on my pants and wrapped my fingers around the edge of the door to pull it open.

  “Room two. Combat and knife work. This should be easy.” I whispered the encouragements aloud, hoping they would feel more real. “Should be.”