by Alex Lidell
Lera.
Ice gripped Tye’s chest. The lass had held four cords of magic, panicked, and lost her grip on them. And the one thing he could have done to help increase her control—coupling—he’d selfishly refused.
All because he had fallen in love, soul and all, and wanted as much in return. Tye wanted to mate, and in longing for that unattainable bond, he’d put the lass in danger.
A dull roaring filled his ears as he stared at the shimmering wall. Lera was in there. Alone. Perhaps hurt. Certainly scared. Raising his hand, Tye encircled the male’s neck with a collar of flames, holding it so close to the bastard’s skin that it would burn him at the slightest of motions. “Take your shield down. Now.”
“Tye,” River called from across the split in the earth, his voice cutting through Tye’s haze, too calm and steady for reality. River held a panting warrior by one arm. “Let him go. The shield is static—they can’t take it down. It will hold for . . . How long is the ward for?” River snapped the last words at the male in his grip.
“An hour.” The male swallowed. “Our quint had no chance to beat you. We knew it, you knew it. Viper just wanted to show the council that we tried. Lure the girl away, separate you. Make you twiddle your thumbs for an hour. No one was to get hurt.”
Tye let the collar tighten, scorching the male’s skin. The smell of burnt flesh rose into the air, together with a bit-back scream. “Now someone is hurt.” Tye’s harsh voice sounded foreign even to his own ears. “So call a surrender and end this now.”
“Can’t.” The male held still despite the pain, sweat running down his temples and into his eyes. “We don’t have a surrender left. If we try, the runes will kill us.”
“Let him go.” Coal grabbed Tye’s wrist, though Tye little remembered the warrior moving toward him.
“Why?”
Coal shifted his weight, placing himself directly before Tye, his blue eyes clear and fierce. In another world, the notion of Coal talking Tye down from violence would have been hilarious. Now, it was just noise.
“Because Viper’s quint played by the rules,” Coal said quietly. “There was no malice. Until now. Until you.”
Rules. A phantom hand squeezed Tye’s soul, digging daggers into his heart. Yes, he’d played by the bloody rules once. Right up until they turned on him. Snapped him in two. Lera, so full of life and goodness—she deserved better than the broken male Tye was. He should have slept with her and been grateful, and then he should have let her go.
Coal’s grip tightened, bending Tye’s wrist so painfully that he dropped to his knees beneath the pressure, making the black-haired male moan in fresh pain. With no change in his stony expression, Coal stared down at him, silently pulling rank. “Stand down, you imbecile, and channel what passes for brains into finding a way over this wall. It is infinitely more efficient if you leave murder to me. I’m better at it.” The last came under Coal’s breath, likely not intended to be said aloud at all.
Tye’s nostrils flared but he released Viper’s quint mate, who scrambled away with a sharp gasp.
Coal nodded and eased the pressure on Tye’s joint, though he didn’t let go completely, as if afraid Tye might attack someone else. Coal was smart that way. “The wall is too smooth to climb,” he said, jerking his chin at the shimmering shield rising fifteen feet into the air behind him. “Could your tiger clear it?”
Tye’s stomach turned. Yes, the tiger could clear the wall—maybe. At least enough to get his paws hooked over the top rim. But Tye couldn’t make the animal choose to do so. Just as Tye could do nothing to stop the tiger from attacking everyone in the arena. Tye had failed the tiger just as he’d failed Lera, trading the needs of the developing bond as a colt for something he’d wanted—the heady thrill of flex—only to end up with nothing at all.
“Tye.” Coal’s eyes flashed with blue ice. “I asked—”
Rolling his wrist to free it of Coal’s hold, Tye spread his chest and snarled at the other male. “I heard you. And no, the tiger can’t make the bloody jump.”
8
Lera
“Viper!” Not trusting my legs, I crawl up the raised lip of the crack. Sand grinds into my cuts and I grit my teeth against the pain. An endlessly deep wedge stares back at me, its walls made of crumbling orange and red stone that disappears eventually into blackness. Heat wafts from the crack like the earth’s core itself has been exposed. “Viper!”
My voice echoes and ricochets down the walls like a tossed pebble.
“Here.” The male’s tight voice draws my eyes to a tiny ledge fifteen feet down from where I kneel. Standing on one leg, Viper grips a nub of a handhold. His other leg, bent at an unnatural angle, hangs off the side of the abyss. He curses and releases one hand to work the flag loose from his belt. Still worrying about winning the damn trial.
“Neither of us has a surrender left,” Viper says, as if having heard my thought. His voice strains, the words coming in gasps. “Don’t want the flag to fall with me. No need for your quint to die.”
I swallow, my hands digging into the rock. “You aren’t falling anywhere until I say you are,” I call down, sounding more like Coal or River than myself. My stomach clenches at the need to have the males close, but I shove the ache away. I have to. For Viper’s sake.
A pained chuckle reaches me. “A mortal is giving me orders?”
I run my hand along the red stone. Soft. Porous. Unstable. And the only option to save Viper’s life. “A weaver is giving you orders.” My heart beats so hard, it’s a wonder the rock doesn’t tremble from it. “And after this trial is over, I’ll outrank you, won’t I?”
Silence answers me.
“Viper!” I survey the deadly drop in search of a way down.
“Yes.” The word comes soft and blurry, the male’s strength draining with each heartbeat.
“Yes, what?” There. A two-foot-wide ledge, just above Viper’s tenuous hold. If I can get to it, I could lower something for Viper to hold on to. Anchor him in. Except there’s a dozen feet of crumbling stone between the ledge and me, with death waiting for me to slip. “Viper. Yes, what?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the male says, not even fighting the insult. Damn it.
I look at my trembling hands, the knuckles still bleeding from trying to punch the shield. My breath comes in quick puffs, my pulse sprinting, my mouth dry and filled with specks of earth. Before my courage fails completely, I swing myself over the edge, sending sand and small stones into the abyss before me.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?” Viper’s suddenly awake voice cracks the air. “One death isn’t enough? You need to make it two?”
“Your confidence in me is overwhelm—” The lip I’m holding crumbles, my body sliding two feet along sharp, brittle stone before I find footing, my hands gripping tiny nubs of rock. Stars. Am I imagining it or is it already hotter here? I can’t breathe for the tightness in my chest, the sinking feeling in my gut.
“Leralynn!” Viper calls.
“I’m all right.” I’m not all right. I’m going to die. But he doesn’t need to know that. I lay my cheek against the rock, forcing air into my spasming lungs. Once. Twice. On the third inhale, I close my eyes to wash away the abyss and focus on nothing but the rock beneath me. Think. Feel. Stay alive. Keep Viper alive.
Gently reaching down with my leg, I find the next foothold and tap the outcropping with my boot before entrusting my weight to it. I feel for the next. The next. My arms ache, my already bleeding fingers leaving wet proof of my descent. Ten feet to go until the ledge. Eight. Six. I press my hips against the rock wall, trying to take pressure off my screaming arms.
My grip fails just as I reach for a solid hold, my fingers refusing to hold on for a moment longer. With a scream, I fall the rest of the way to the ledge. The thud of impact comes first, a numbness and dull ringing that echo through my body. Then pain. A hot knife driving into my ankle, lines of fire along my shin. The world wavers. Blackens.
My first, rid
iculous thought is how mad Coal will be about my foiled landing. My next is a list of increasingly crude variations on the “I told you I wasn’t ready” I will scream at the bastard.
“Leralynn?” The weakness in Viper’s voice parts the veil of darkness clouding my vision.
Get Viper first. Die second. Yell at Coal in between.
Dirt coating my tongue, I breathe in the chalky dust with every gasp. But I do breathe. Do push myself up onto my hands and knees, even as my skin burns, sweat and blood wetting my clothes. Making myself look down, I find the top of Viper’s hand two feet below me—and a chasm of black nothing beyond.
With jerky motions, I unfasten my belt. Looping one end around my wrist, I extend the rest down to the injured male. “Grab on.”
Instead of reaching for the leather, Viper strains his head back, turquoise eyes wild with pain. “Do you have purchase?” he gasps. “Don’t want to pull you down.”
“There’s a spike here. I’m anchored in with my armor.” I grit my teeth, making myself believe my own lie before Viper sees through it. “Stop stalling and use the damn belt to climb up before I decide you aren’t worth the trouble.”
Viper’s hand moves off the stone, the nub of rock he’d been holding breaking off with the shift of weight. For a second, he hangs over the abyss, one foot and one hand his only anchors to life. Then he grips the belt, and my shoulder roars as I brace his climb.
The sight of my enemy quint leader pulling himself up beside me on the ledge is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Tipping my head up to the arena’s sky, I make a crude gesture that I hope Klarissa knows is meant for her. Beside me, Viper chuckles softly and rests his back against the stone.
“So what now?” I ask.
“Now we wait. The static shield will go down in thirty minutes or so and our quints will charge in with a grand rescue. Then you get to win, and we go to breakfast.”
Silence falls.
Viper’s breath is coming in short gasps now, his skin gray and clammy.
“Bet you wish you’d made it one of those half-hour shields, huh?” I say.
Viper looks at me with wide eyes and suddenly we’re both laughing.
“Just so you know, mortal,” he says once the absurd mirth dies away to silence and the throbbing of our wounds rises to fill the void. “You won more than my flag today. The magic made no mistake when it chose you for Lunos.”
9
Lera
“You used the life-and-death-defining flag as a handkerchief?” Shaking his head, River sets me on the edge of the worktable in the preparation room, the arena’s cheering still echoing in my ears.
“I needed to wipe my face.” I try to smile and grimace instead. “Viper and I had little other use for it at the time.” My body hurts. My head aches. A hot knife stabs my ankle every time I dare shift my weight. I can feel the other males close by, resisting the urge to crowd me, per River’s orders—Tye pacing restlessly, Coal making himself busy over armor, Shade laying out medical supplies with thunder in his golden eyes. I count them all, over and over, needing the reassurance that they are all right.
“Indeed.” River brushes hair from my face, his sweat-soaked temples and mussed, sandy hair probably a mirror of my own.
“I could have killed you. I nearly did kill Viper.” I shoot Coal a dark look. “You still think the council was right?”
A muscle in Coal’s jaw ticks once, then he tosses his armor polish into a wooden crate and walks out the door, the slam echoing in his wake.
“Coal!” I groan, starting after him only to have River’s heavy hand hold me in place. “It was a bloody jest.”
“Today’s trial . . . It was the longest hour of my life, Leralynn,” River says quietly. “Standing on the other side of that shield, unable to get to you. I don’t remember ever being so terrified as that. And I doubt Coal can either. Give him time to work through it.”
I lean my head against River, breathing in his earthy scent. My cheek brushes the smooth skin of his neck, now clear of runes. It’s over. It’s actually over. The trials, the Citadel, Klarissa’s unchecked power over us. I try to understand it, to let it sink through me that we’re finally an official, sanctioned quint. That we can finally leave this polished, poisonous Citadel. Leave and never return.
Except, of course, it isn’t over. I’m too slow to hide my shudder.
“What is it?” River’s gaze pierces mine.
“I want to feel like something monumental just finished, but the truth is that it’s all just starting, isn’t it? What we have to do before Lunos is safe.”
River nods, his thumb tracing my cheek. “True. For now, however, let’s get you back on your feet.” He looks over his shoulder at where Shade has finished organizing salves, bandages, and several unpleasant-looking implements on a tray. “Why don’t we take her to the baths?”
Shade shakes his head. “Not until I have the ankle stabilized.” Leaving off his preparations, he comes up beside River and lays a hand against the side of my face. His yellow eyes are clear and focused, his emotions held back at a low simmer just as his black hair is caught in a tail. Shade’s healer mode. “I’m sorry, cub. We’ve a bit of mending to do before you can go anywhere.” He leans forward to kiss my forehead before returning to his work. I close my eyes momentarily at the warmth left behind by his velvet-soft lips and the lingering scent of damp forest, wishing he’d stayed there longer.
Taking up the space Shade vacated, Tye crouches beside me, his lithe muscles rippling beneath a torn tunic. Once the static shield fell, the male had scampered down the rock with such feline grace and so little concern for gravity that even Viper loosed an appreciative whistle. Now, all that power seems contained behind piercing green eyes. It’s intoxicating, after all his distance and avoidance these past few days, to have his full attention on me. I wonder what it means—probably just the emotion of the trial burning through him. Reaching up, he takes my hands in his, the pads of his thumbs running lightly over my damaged knuckles. “I want to sleep with you.”
“What?” I jerk back and instantly regret the motion as pain from my head, ankle, and cut-up skin collide. “Now?”
“No. Yes.” Tye cringes. “If I’d not been a selfish idiot about it, all of this might have been different. Stars. Lilac Girl . . . I’m . . .”
“If you think yourself responsible for the earthquake I started, you give your cock entirely too much credit,” I mutter.
Tye’s face lowers, the pain in his sharp features squeezing my heart. I wish I understood what was going on in that mind of his. “I don’t know what to say, lass.”
“That is usually a good sign to shut up,” Shade says from where he strips away my bootlaces. “And if we are to have a chance of riding out of here today, I suggest you leave me to my work. Unless your cock has suddenly developed healing powers?”
Tye rocks back on his heels. “No, that would be Coal’s. I’m keeping track, you know.”
The tips of my ears heat, turning into spasming chuckles when the male wiggles his brows. I try to hold back the laughter for the sake of my abused bones, but the first ha escapes with the force of a rearing stallion. My back arches and I grab Tye’s hand, squeezing it in an attempt to steady my body.
It’s no use, not when the tension of the past hours breaks whatever dam held it back and spills out in a storm. “‘Keeping . . . track,’” I gasp. “You . . . are . . . insufferable.” My laughter fills the preparation room, deep and desperate and unstoppable, even when tears finally start streaming down my dusty cheeks.
True to his word, River keeps us at the Citadel not a moment longer than he must. Trading a celebratory dinner for a few extra hours of daylight, we pack our things and head for the stable just as the bell tolls four in the afternoon. I savor my last walk across the Citadel grounds, inhaling the sweet, wine-scented air, the bustle of warriors-in-training. I won’t miss it, but I can appreciate its unfettered beauty now that I’m leaving.
&n
bsp; The smell of horses and hay carried on a lively breeze greets me like an old friend. The ivy growing around the long wooden rafters floats on a breeze from the open door, and far overhead, the magically lit lanterns still give their steady glow, even in broad daylight. I long to wrap my arms around Sprite, but she’s occupied at the moment—the gray mare eyes Coal’s unamused stallion as the warrior checks both sets of tack.
Standing with his arms behind his back, River listens to something Klarissa is saying. The female’s gown, the color of honey, hugs her slender hips and tangles seductively around her ankles. Stars, even the female’s dress seems intent on inviting River into her bed. When Klarissa extends a hand toward River’s cheek, a bitterness fills my mouth.
River steps back, out of reach.
Klarissa’s smile tightens.
She looks in my direction, gives me a tiny quirk of her perfect red lips and a delicate farewell wave, then breezes out the door without waiting for my response.
I run my fingers over my rune-free neck and my own new outfit, which Autumn put together with a child’s delight. The embroidered forest-green tunic is both tight and flexible, the low, scooped neckline managing to look sensual instead of lewd. A silver pendant of a dragon—a gift from Shade to celebrate the trial conclusion—hangs just above the swell of my breasts, while Coal’s finest knife sits in a clever sheath attached to my thigh for ease of access.
Autumn hands me a fur-lined cloak, a gentle smile on her face. She’s resplendent in a close-fitting white travel outfit and a long white cape. “I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but the mountain path will get downright freezing. Are you certain you want to stay with the males instead of traveling with Kora and me? The bastards want to trek through the Light for two weeks, all in the name of—what was it, River?”
