Shadow Fall

by Audrey Grey

  “You’re the girl who defied the Lady Delphine and scored highest at the Culling? Yes, I have heard your name much since the trials began.”

  I study my bootlaces. “That was not my intention, Baroness.”

  Silence. I look up to see my mother staring at me, almost as if she’s studying an old photo she recognizes but can’t place. There, just below the glacial surface, something. A whisper of emotion. “Oh, but intentions are like jewels in a dagger, Lady March.” She leans closer. “They don’t particularly matter much in the end.”

  Her sharp tongue peels away at me, as if each word lashes pieces of my flesh from the bone to reveal Maia Graystone beneath. Weak, sad little Maia.

  Don’t you recognize me, Mother?

  Addressing both of us now, she says, “Finalists, you have until the end of Shadow Fall to complete your first trial.”

  Then, without another word, she mounts her horse and digs into its flank, galloping to the next finalists.

  “That went well,” Merida jokes.

  “Did it?” I reply, blinking away the panic. Now that she is gone I can relax, stretch my arms a bit. That’s when I notice two groups down the Redgrave siblings stand alone next to a white flag. Inside the flag writhes Cerberus, the guardian of Hades, a three-headed black dog with a serpent’s tail and long, curved fangs.

  House Bloodwood. Which means their mentor could only be the Countess Delphine.

  My ears prick at the distant sound of hoof beats. The riders round the bridge and set a furious pace toward us. Centurions, headed by a blond female rider, her hood covering most of her head, a ceremonial crimson cape flapping behind her. The Cerberus on the large flag held by the nearest Centurion seems to slither in the air above her, a ravenous monster eager for blood.

  Before the riders can come to a complete stop, Delphine is off her horse. Caspian and my mother meet the Countess halfway, and my mother embraces her stiffly. Still, I swallow the bitterness forming at the back of my throat. If ever anyone could meet my mother’s expectations, it would be Delphine.

  After a few minutes, my mother and Caspian peer over their shoulders. I swear they are looking at me.

  My heart skips a beat when Merida confirms my fear. “Are they talking about us?”

  Caspian seems to deflate a bit, his shoulders slumping. Delphine nods to the Emperor and reaches into her waistband. As the image of her grandfather’s revolver registers in my brain, adrenaline burns through me.

  My only regret is I won’t get to see my mother realize all the horrors she’s caused. The thought makes me angry, and I turn to face Delphine. She is halfway to me now, walking with a purpose, the revolver swinging in her hand.

  “What are you doing?” Merida whispers into my ear.

  But at this point my heart is hammering so loudly I can barely hear her.

  Deep down I know my choices are simple. I can let Delphine lodge a bullet into my brain, or I can fight back and maybe take her with me before I die.

  A sudden gust of wind whips Delphine’s cape out like a burst of blood, blowing back her deep-set hood to reveal her face. Her eyes are focused behind me. Once the implications of what I am seeing become clear, my muscles relax and I exhale. As she passes, she turns to me and grins, her caramel-blond eyebrows lifting.

  As if to say, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you.

  After a few seconds, I hear a girl start to beg. The others turn to watch, but I stay still. I refuse to watch. Refuse to participate. I know it is not enough, not nearly, but it’s something.

  What happens next isn’t a coincidence. Merida looks away, followed by Teagan and the frail boy beside her. Laurel and Blaise are next. A few others look around before joining us. And then, one by one, the other finalists in the circle turn their backs, until it is just the Redgrave siblings watching.

  If I didn’t know how futile our act of rebellion is, I would feel more pride. Hope, even. Instead I have given the illusion we have a choice. An illusion about to be smashed as soon as the trial begins.

  From my position, I study my mother. She stands erect, stern, the wide brim of her fascinator lifted just enough from the wind to reveal her stoic expression. She seems to look beyond us, into the horizon. But I know better. She sees everything, my mother. The screaming girl’s horror; Delphine’s madness; our subtle, pointless rebellion.

  The Emperor doesn’t hide his annoyance, though, and even from here I can see his hands clenching the sides of his throne. But then his gaze travels behind me to the poor girl about to be executed, and his lips curl into a smile as he leans forward, drinking in the girl’s fear the way a parched man would gulp water.

  An abrupt scream pierces my thoughts, halted by a single gunshot. The sound reverberates through the valley for a moment and then all goes still. My mother nods once, as if an unwelcome task has been completed, and then commences her rounds giving the finalist speeches.

  By the time I look, the body has already been dragged off. Rhydian now stands alone, which leads me to believe it was the purple-frocked girl who was executed. I don’t have to wonder long why, because Caspian appears and explains. “They found someone inside the system and traced it back to Lady Kingston.”

  I cross my arms. “They could have simply let her outside the wall.”

  “Lady March,” Caspian begins, in a curt voice not used to being challenged, “sometimes a quick death is the most merciful option.” He pauses for that ugly realization to sink in. “I would have done the same for you.”

  I think it’s meant to be an affectionate gesture. The thought forces a bitter smile to my face.

  And then, for a cruel moment, the span of a heartbeat, I see Riser, surrounded, desperately fighting them off. Could I have forced a dagger through his heart to spare him that torture? I should have done that, at least.

  It’s what I’m good at.

  Merida shifts on her feet. “I’m sad for her,” she says amicably, trying to break the tension. “But now, at least, there’s one less finalist to compete against.”

  A strange look comes over Caspian’s face; he glances my way. “Not exactly.”

  I know what he means even before I notice the rider in my periphery. And suddenly it all makes sense. Flame framed someone else for our crime. Someone innocent. So we could live.

  Or maybe it was all for one person.

  Riser hits the ground like a cat, graceful and poised. His gaze furiously scans the circle. Then stops at me. Something passes between us—a sort of unspoken greeting that ripples through my body.

  And then the rogue winks, and of course, I want to throttle him.

  Caspian’s eyes watch me below a furrowed brow, as if he’s trying to gauge my reaction to Riser’s second chance. But as Riser takes his place next to Rhydian, I realize I couldn’t adequately express the complex jumble of emotions bombarding me if I tried.

  We condemned another to die for us. I listened to her scream. I felt her fear. Probably even then I knew. Deep down I must have.

  I should feel guilt.

  I should hate myself.

  Certainly I should feel something.

  But the instant I saw Riser’s face, the instant I understood, deep down, he was safe, it was like the feeling I had in the pit when the first tendrils of light broke through my black prison and an invisible weight I hadn’t noticed around my neck was severed. As if I hadn’t taken a single breath of air those entire seven years until that moment. That’s how it feels now. Like I can breathe again.

  On some hidden signal, the mentors move to the middle of the circle to join my mother. Caspian is the last to go. Before he does, he leans down, his hair tickling my cheek, and whispers, “I checked your Sim but, oddly, your experience was blank.” Straightening back up, he smiles. “Perhaps when you come out the other side, you will finally trust me enough to tell me why.”

  I watch him lope across the field to the others. They stand in silence, waiting.

  The shadow comes like a silent wave of brac
kish water crashing down from the mountains. The instant it touches the valley floor, there’s a grating, rumbling noise all around us. At first I think it’s the horizon moving, but then I realize the ground is trembling. I put out my arms for balance. It’s happening—whatever they have planned for us. I exhale two forceful breaths and step back.

  Rising from the earth, grating and graveling, is what looks to be a giant slab of curved stone that takes up the entire valley. Grass and dirt tumble from the top of the slab as it grows past my waist. Now I can see it’s a giant circle, filled with intricate stone pathways that lead to the mentors in the middle. Directly in front of me looms an entrance.

  Suddenly an enormous shadow of dread falls over me. I know what it is.

  A labyrinth.

  Merida is breathing fast and loud, her lips tugged into a trembling frown. “I’m scared, Everly.”

  I know I shouldn’t say it. Saying it only ties me to her, makes me weak. But some part of me is beginning to understand strength isn’t measured by who’s left standing at the end. That’s what they want me to think. What keeps them strong and us weak.

  I take Merida’s hand between mine. “I’ll get us through this, Merida. I promise.”

  It feels good, like a declaration of something. Merida squeezes my fingers. “I know, Everly. And I promise to try to be brave.”

  Just before the barricade blocks my vision, I meet eyes with Riser. His lips are pressed together in determination, his body tensed to run. He must know what it is as well.

  Until my last dying breath. I think I say the words from my dream. Or maybe I only think them. It doesn’t matter, because they reverberate inside my head, over and over, an angry, primal call to war.

  Whatever happens in there, until my last dying breath I will fight to survive. Not just for myself or for Max, but for everyone left on Earth. Because if I don’t make it out the other side, the thing my father hid dies with me—and so does any chance we have left of stopping Pandora.

  Merida stands beside me, but I’m alone. The wall stops growing at three stories tall.

  Silence.

  “I’m ready!” I scream. I scream it to the wall. To the shadow murk. To my mother, and Delphine and the Emperor.

  Sometimes, just like the truth needs to be unspoken, a lie needs to be shouted at the top of your lungs.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The gate shuts behind us as soon as we enter. The smell of dank stone and torn earth fills the darkness. I pause to let my lens adjust and give myself a second to think. Undoubtedly the others will be running, thinking it a simple race.

  I know better, though. My mother reveres violence for its ability to strip a man down to his essence, to who he really is. The only thing she loves more is riddles. Merida’s heavy breathing fills the air, and I turn to see her feeling along the wall. Her eyes, now adjusted, find me. We begin walking side by side, Merida occasionally feeling along the walls for guidance.

  It isn’t long before another passageway opens up to our left. I hesitate, but both of us silently agree to keep going forward. We pass another a minute later on our right. A few more, grouped close together.

  I feel the tiny lens in my eye adjust before I actually notice the light. It’s around the curve, a torch in the wall about eye-level, shimmering bluish-white beneath my lens. My interest piques immediately—everything my mother does is by design, a puzzle piece to a larger picture. The lichen and moss covering the walls comes away easily under my fingers. Beneath I feel something, maybe random stone. Maybe something more. I wipe until a good section of the wall opposite the torch is clear, coughing as the crushed lichen enters my lungs, fingers wet and muddy from the moss.

  Merida is the first to see it. “It’s a . . . a horse?”

  Standing back, I see she’s right. I have uncovered most of the body up to the ears.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.” The air smells earthy, like the ground after a light rain. I rub away more of the wall, uncovering a woodland scene full of trees and flowers. Now that I know what to look for, I can make out more life-size horses beneath the thin lichen carpet, their muscular hindquarters and wild manes trapping shadow.

  “It has to mean something.” My voice teeters on desperation.

  Merida shifts uncomfortably. “Or maybe it’s just meant to slow us down.”

  She’s right. With my mother, nothing is ever as it seems.

  Both of us freeze. Muffled winding, clicking noises, like a gear shifting, emanate from deep within the stone. Something’s happening. A noise on the other side of the tunnel. Voices, low and indecipherable. Someone cries out, followed by shouts.

  The shouts become screams.

  After the screams, we both have the silent understanding we need to keep going. But it’s hard to leave the light. Even with my lens, which transforms the darkness into a grainy, greenish color, I recognize the shadows are where we are the weakest.

  The second the screams stop, the wall makes a groaning noise. I steady my feet as the earth shakes. I think at first I’m walking sideways, but the wall is moving inward. It stops after a few seconds, leaving only an eerie silence, prickled by more far-away cries.

  What was that? Why would the walls move? Perhaps my mother is having the labyrinth change shape, but if so, why? Merida turns to me, her elbow gouging my ribs. As I twist away from her and my back presses into hard stone, I understand.

  It’s not changing shape. Our passageway is getting smaller. Or, more likely, when the finalists on the other side of the wall died, their passageway became bigger. Only by a couple feet, I think. But two feet can be the difference between life and death if the walls are about to close in on us.

  “These walls are interactive.” My words come out breathy and fast. “We need to move. Now!” Panic and adrenaline course through me, intoxicating my mind.

  Calm down. But the Doom has already taken over. A primordial part of me understands once these walls close in, I won’t be able to handle it. Too much like the pit. I try to steady my breathing, pulling in fat drags of air, sucking them greedily through an invisible straw as the greenish darkness spins around me.

  First my hands go numb, then my mouth. My mind goes blank and I’m on my knees, gasping, spinning out of control.

  I’m hyperventilating.

  It’s Merida who goads me back to my senses. I awaken from my stupor to pain. She’s slapping the shit out of me.

  “Please!” Her voice sinks through my fear. “You promised. I cannot do this alone!”

  But I don’t just see her. I see Max. My father. The millions upon millions of people waiting to die.

  Pull your shit together, Lady March.

  Merida’s terrified face comes into focus.

  “I’m sorry.” I feel as if I’ve let her down. “I’ve just . . . been here before. In another lifetime.”

  “Good.” She pulls me to my feet. “If you survived it once, you can again.”

  I nod, embarrassed she witnessed Maia, the old me. Mud and grass cake my knees, and I wipe at them.

  Suddenly I have an idea. “Give me your arm,” I instruct, gathering more mud onto my fingertip.

  Merida obliges without comment. I set to work, starting at her middle knuckle, pausing here and there to remember. When I’m through, I carefully drop her arm.

  Merida peers at my work. “Tracing our steps?”

  “Mapping the labyrinth. The dotted lines are the passageways we don’t choose, and the full line is our path so far.” I’m thankful she doesn’t notice—or at least mention—I can see to do such a thing. There’s a dull thump as I slap the stone. “The walls move inward, which means they also move outward, depending on what side you’re on.”

  “But why would they give us more space when we die?”

  “So when we’re out of space, we’ll start killing each other for more.”

  After that little pearl of insight, we travel in silence. I stick to the right when the pass
ageway forks to make it easier to mark. There is no plan, which terrifies me.

  There has to be a design to this, a riddle to solve. Something to guide us. A helpless feeling has crept over me, taken hold. Even with my lens, the walls are black, and my muddy, pixilated vision makes it seem like I’m dreaming. When we pass the torches, it’s almost worse, having to go back into the shadows.

  I don’t know what alerts me to them. A muffled voice, perhaps. The sound of feet whispering over grass. Two feet farther and I pinpoint their position just inside the passageway on our right. It takes a few seconds to recognize them: Lady Hood and Lady Knowles. Unaware of our presence, they whisper to one another, nod, and take another step. When nothing happens, they walk a little faster, their silk trousers rustling in the silence.

  Should we follow? Use them to ensure it’s safe? I turn to Merida and then, without explanation, the hairs on my neck stick straight up. Peering back into the passageway, I see their silhouettes, small against the darkness. It takes a moment to actually hear what my body has already sensed. Barking, laughing noises trickle from the tunnel. It’s a strange, unfamiliar noise, unlike dogs or any other animal I can think of. Some deep-rooted part of me screams for the girls to run.

  Run!

  Except I know my mother doesn’t give second chances.

  The ladies reappear. They are walking backward, slowly, their hands out. One of the girls kicks at something. Shapes part the shadows, waist high. More heckling growls and high-pitched yips.

  The girls make it about twenty feet from us when I see what is making the sounds. Not dogs, exactly; they are larger. Wilder. With stout heads, short bat-like ears, and black snouts. Thick elongated necks lead to a curved back and crooked hind legs. Dark-brown spots speckle their long, grayish-red coats. A putrid, decaying smell creeps up my nose.

  It’s their movements that scare me. The way they circle the girls, studying them with their glittering eyes and cocked heads. The way they communicate with their bizarre staccato of noises that echo off the walls.

  Hyena. The word lodges in the back of my throat, although I don’t remember how I know it. Perhaps my father, then, or one of the Royalist museums I visited so long ago. The animals seem to be smiling as they stalk the girls, making excited grunting noises. The girls are pivoting, desperately kicking and waving their arms to ward off the predators, their eyes round white eggs inside their pale faces.