She fell against me, and I hesitantly put my arms around her, at a loss for what to say. This was obviously part of the test, but what exactly were they testing me for?
“What can I do?” I asked her, feeling her tears soaking into my shirt.
She pulled back, and it seemed that she tried to compose herself.
“Gold, to rebuild the warehouses, and men, to help replant the fields. Compensation for my daughters, Lady Queen, perhaps a noble husband for each.” She began crying again, and fell back to her knees, despite my protests, clutching at my feet.
It seemed an easy solution, allow her what she asked—it didn’t seem an unreasonable request—and then move on. But something wasn’t sitting right. Isolde had chosen the test after Nareon’s declaration that I possessed a great amount of empathy, so surely they wouldn’t waste time trying to prove him wrong. And more than that, the synfees weren’t the kind of people to honour kindness, or sympathy. They were the kind of people that favoured strength and power, and perhaps intelligence.
The woman looked up at me through a fresh outpouring of tears, and I suddenly understood.
“It is horrible what has been done,” I told her, dropping down to kneel with her, and grasp her hands. “Please allow me to visit your farms so that I may see the damage myself, and offer my condolences to your daughters.”
Something switched in her expression. “Oh no, Lady Queen, I cannot expect you to do that, you are too kind. I will bring my daughters to you tomorrow, to spare you the sight of such terrible destruction.”
Please don’t be wrong, I thought, as my voice hardened fractionally. “I insist.”
She released my hands and stepped back, her eyes flashing angrily before she melted back into the crowd. I took a steadying breath and moved forward again. There had been three sets of creatures and three of the initial set; perhaps there would be three citizens also. To my surprise, the second person to step into my path wasn’t a citizen at all, but one of my advisors. Ashen.
I considered him, and he grinned, the movement so familiar that I felt my breath catch for a second. Not Nareon, I reminded myself, only his brother. Except that with each step he took toward me, his appearance shifted slightly. The violet of his hair darkened, and the violet of his eyes lightened, until it actually was Nareon walking toward me.
“Spitfire,” he drawled, capturing my hands. His voice was identical to Nareon’s.
“Everybody knows that he calls me that,” I said, trying to remain calm.
He grinned, and tugged. I fell forward a step.
“You have much to learn,” he said, turning a wave of compulsion on me.
I swore, my knees beginning to buckle, and then I swore again. “I hate you, Ashen. I hate you.”
He chuckled, and his arm angled behind my back, drawing me against him. It was terrifying and yet his compulsion had me convinced that it was also a good thing. Nareon was holding me again, offering what Nareon had offered me countless times before, and I would take it, wouldn’t I? Feeding from Nareon had kept me alive, kept me from killing others. It had made me stronger. Better.
I caught sight of something then, something that stood out from the crowd. It was a man, dressed all in black, with his face hidden behind a hood. The people around him didn’t even seem to notice that he was there, but he stood out terribly to me.
“No.” I pushed out of Ashen’s arms, trying to shove off his compulsion, which was making my limbs heavy and uncooperative.
His mirage rippled, and I saw a flash of purple. He was surprised, he had been sure that I would give in. I began to push past him, but in that moment, his appearance shimmered again, and this time my breath slammed against my chest.
“Harbringer,” I croaked.
His smile was easy. “You’re doing well, Bea.” He offered his hand to me, and my weak resistance against Ashen’s compulsion shattered.
It felt amazing, to have Harbringer here, looking so soft and approachable. He only ever looked like that in the rare moments when we were alone… but we weren’t alone now. I looked around, confused. Harbringer grabbed my chin softly, drawing my eyes back to him, and his lips hovered over mine. I had never resisted Harbringer, so why did I feel like resisting him now? I wanted him to kiss me, didn’t I?
“You are him, aren’t you?” I blinked my eyes open again, not even realising that I had closed them. “It is you?”
“Of course.” His voice was low, his hands moulding to the curve of my spine.
Why does this feel wrong?
“How did you get into the kingdom, aren’t they watching you?”
“Hazen helped me.”
I paused, and the slither of doubt that grew in my mind widened. “Hazen? He helped you come to see me?”
Harbringer was a professor again, and Hazen had already found out about the second kiss. There was no way that he would endanger either of us just to stoke our forbidden romance. Something flickered in Harbringer’s face, and once more, I saw something out of the corner of my eye that distracted me.
A cloaked man, arms folded. Leif.
I pushed away from the Harbringer lookalike, and watched with sickening horror as his features melted back into Ashen’s.
“I was wrong,” I said to Ashen, who was smiling again. “That was worse than flesh-eating bees.”
He tipped his bent leather hat, as if I had just offered him a compliment, and stepped out of my way. Leif had disappeared.
One more.
I moved along the path again, my legs weak from the recent drain of Ashen’s compulsion. Only the mortification that I had let him embarrass me in front of the entire synfee kingdom pushed me onwards. The next man to step in front of me was blessedly unfamiliar. He clutched my hands as the woman had, and I noticed that his fingers were stained with ink.
“Lady Queen. Something terrible has happened.”
“What is it?”
“My printing shop burnt to the ground last night.” There was something wary in his expression, and I couldn’t place what it meant.
“Do you want compensation as well?”
“No, Lady Queen.”
“What you do you want, then?”
“I want you to let me print the articles.”
“What articles? You don’t think I set your printing shop on fire do you?”
He didn’t reply.
“What articles?” I repeated, shocked.
“I wrote that you killed the King, and that his soul still lives within you, because his spirit was too strong to be sent to the afterlife by the likes of you.”
I stilled, pulling my hands from his.
“Print whatever you want,” I said, though the words hurt terribly, and I thought that if this were real, I would regret the decision later. “I won’t silence anybody. And you’ll be compensated for your shop.”
He opened his mouth again, and I anticipated his next insult, holding up my hand to cut him off. “It’s not a bribe. Print what you will, though I’ll neither confirm nor deny that what you say is true.”
I turned, and took a step away from him before something else occurred to me. Pausing, I glanced back at him over my shoulder. He hadn’t disappeared back into the crowd, as the woman and Ashen had.
“What if it is true?” I asked him. “Would you do that to him? Your King? Would you shame him like that? I am just a girl, after all.”
I turned without waiting for his answer, and continued down the procession, which twisted and turned throughout Castle Nest without another person stepping into my path. When it reached the edge of town, the people seemed to have congregated to block off my path, and I had to squeeze between them to get past. Their hands grasped at me and they whispered my name, but I didn’t stop until someone actually grabbed my wrist. Something tiny and sharp was pressed into my palm, and I gripped it instinctively, twisting the sharp end of what seemed to be a needle downwards, so that it wouldn’t stab me. The mysterious touch disappeared, and I kept moving, some unaccountable inclination telli
ng me to act as if nothing had transpired.
When I broke free of the people, however, I did look back. I thought I saw a dark hood, disappearing back through the sea of faces, but when I blinked, it was gone. Turning back to the river before me, I listened carefully, stepping forward slowly as I tried to decide if I was going the right way or not. As if on cue, the great big hawk rose above one of the red crests to the northwest of the bridge that would lead me into Kingsbed land.
I ran for the bridge, and by the time I finally reached it, it occurred to me that I should have strayed from the procession to find a horse. I paused by the bridge, leaning against one of the stone pillars set into the riverbank as I tried to catch my breath, watching the hawk dipping in and out of the peaks on the horizon. How long would it take me to reach that spot on foot?
I looked to the sky, trying to judge how much sunlight I had left. It looked as if it would last about an hour, which was nowhere near enough, but could I really stop now? What if I were under some kind of time limit? Trying to make the movement casual, I speared the pin through my belt, and then lifted my shirt to check my bruises, giving my hands some reason to be hovering in that area. They looked much worse now than they had before the test started. I sighed, dropping my shirt, and then crossed the bridge, moving toward the rocky slopes in the distance, picking up sticks and pulling up long strands of field grass as I went. Once I had a stack that I could no longer hold in the one hand, I pulled the hair-tie from the end of my braid, and used it to bind the makeshift torch together. I’d need something to light my path once the sun went down.
Chapter Ten
How the Haunted have Sauntered
At first I couldn’t believe how easy it was. I could hear the wolves howling, but they didn’t come near me. The torch kept the dark—and even the cold, to some extent—at bay, and judging by the volume of the hawk’s shrieks that trembled through the trees, I was close.
There was only one problem. I kept hearing Nareon’s voice in my head. I hadn’t called on him, but then again, he had proven to be above my supposed power over him. He mostly just whispered commands, like turn left, or go toward that peak. The problem wasn’t that he was telling me where to go, the problem was that I wouldn’t have been able to go any other way, even if I had wanted to. He controlled me.
The closer I got, the worse he got, until finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I came to an abrupt halt, my entire body seizing as I attempted to bring a barrier down over my mind, my hands slapping over my ears of their own accord.
“Stop!” I screamed into the sky. “Stop!”
His laughter echoed around the mountains, and I truly felt as though I were in a nightmare, slipping deeper and deeper into one of my worst fears with each second. Soon, I would be lost.
Get up, Nareon told me, keep walking.
I did.
It took me longer than it should have to realise that he had ordered me to go back the way I had come, and I shook my head furiously, a sensation akin to the ground tilting beneath my feet gripped me, leaving me gasping as if I had just woken up.
Keep going, sweetheart, he whispered.
“Show yourself!” I yelled, hoping that if he materialised I could throw something at him and run while he was preoccupied.
Calm down. Keep walking.
I tried to resist, and his voice grew harsh.
Move!
It was the first time he had ever spoken to me like that, and I stumbled. My knee jarred painfully, my tights torn by a sharp rock which had managed to draw blood. Nareon’s presence disappeared with the sudden shock of pain, and I looked around, suddenly aware of my surroundings again. My torch lay on the ground beside me, having guttered out with my fall, and in the darkness I could hear the rustling of the leaves, the whisperings of the forest, encircling me. I scrambled to my feet, grabbed the torch, and tried to light it again with my fire elemental.
It took a few tries, and after I had accidently set my sleeve on fire, I once again had a circle of firelight to guide me. My shirt—which had been thoroughly soaked in my attempt to temper the damage done by my unruly fire elemental—would hopefully dry with the close heat. Somewhere, the hawk screeched. It sounded much further away this time.
Someone is here… I thought. They have a mental ability. They’re tapping into my fears and trapping me inside a nightmare.
I looked around at the trees again and took a hesitant step forward, until I remembered something else, the needle. I picked it from my belt and started forward at a quicker pace, feeling a small amount of confidence return.
If you want to escape your nightmares, my father had once told me, all that is required is the sting of a pinch.
It wasn’t long until I broke into a run, feeling desperate to make up the time that I had just lost by succumbing to the Nareon deception. Another Nareon deception.
It should have made it easier to guess the next nightmare, but I was still shocked to come across Harbringer and Hazen, talking quietly to each other on the path ahead. I gripped the needle tightly between my fingers, and jolted to a stop. And then, suddenly, Hazen’s arms shot out, shoving Harbringer backwards.
I yelled out and ran toward them, but Harbringer was already retaliating. His fist swung toward Hazen’s face, catching him on the side of the jaw.
“I told you not to touch her.” Hazen sneered, swiping the back of his hand across his mouth. It came away red.
“You don’t own her, Read.” Harbringer ducked beneath the fist that flew toward his face, but didn’t see the second blow, which caught him heavily beneath his ribcage.
He fell back a step, and I tried to calm my racing heart, tried to tell myself that it wasn’t real. I jabbed myself with the needle and screwed my eyes closed.
Not real, not real… The sounds of their scuffling immediately disappeared, and I let my breath out on a half-sob, moving forward again, and then finally breaking back into a run. I was closer now than I had been the first time. I could feel it.
A sudden gust of wind kicked up around me, and I knew instantly what the next nightmare would be. I thrust the pin into my palm, probably a little harder than was necessary, and shoved the manipulation away before it even had a chance to properly begin. I would destroy no land with my Force. Not even if it were imaginary. I pushed right through the wind, directing myself to where the last screech had sounded, and soon it was just me, and I was back in control of my own mind.
Three creatures to beat, three people to get past, and three nightmares… the hawk may be my last challenge.
I held onto that hope as I pushed forward, and didn’t stop until the beast’s mountain was right above me, circling the sky and occasionally dipping to brush the trees above my head with the beat of gigantic wings. I couldn’t see the crown, but knew that it would be clasped in the hawk’s claws, just as I knew that as soon as it was mine again, the Throne Test would be won.
I stared up at the granite slope, choosing this moment to question the sanity of going through with the Throne Test. The Read kingdom hadn’t boasted any real mountains, and I had certainly never had opportunity to climb one before. Yet I had already overcome several impossibilities, it seemed that the mountain was more of a garnish than a real challenge. They hadn’t assumed that I would get this far. This was merely a safeguard. Just in case.
I stood there, curling my fingers into fists and relaxing them over and over again. Some logical part of my brain was trying to convince me to walk away, to sneak back into the human kingdom under the cover of darkness and beg Hazen to hide me away, to do anything but climb this ridiculous mountain. With any luck, the hawk would simply fly to a new mountain once I had managed the task. No matter how my better sense attempted to cajole me, there was a burning anger in my heart that began to push me forward. I climbed silently, always fitting myself into a crevice as the bird dipped low, and resting on an outcrop as it returned to the skies. Shrouded in the shadow of the highest ridge at the top of the mountain, I awaited my moment.
My face was turned up to the stars, my scraped hands gripping a shelf of rock above my head. When I saw the edge of a wing cut across the sky, I scrambled onto the ridge above me, sliding a little against the rock, and pushed my unbound hair out of my face.
“Hey!” I yelled. “I’m down here!”
The bird dove, rushing toward me quicker than I had expected, and I braced my feet against the rock, throwing my arms out and whipping a barricade of wind at it. It began to spin, thrown off-course, and I jumped from the ridge at the last possible moment, the glinting gold of the crown in my sight. For a moment, I was suspended in midair, seconds away from colliding with the hawk, and then I turned, my hand closing about the crown as I rolled myself along the bird’s side, tipping with the momentum that had it hurling toward the bottom of the ridge. The crown came away easily, and I tried to swallow the terror that rose in my throat as the bottom of my stomach seemed to rise into my chest. The rock was rising up to meet us rapidly, and I threw my arm around the bird’s neck, dropping my glamor just as it managed to straighten.
It scrambled along the bottom of the ridge, almost jostling me off, and then launched into the air again. I closed my eyes, calming my breathing as best I could so that I was able to concentrate my connection on the body of energy beneath me. Eventually I would have to learn how to compel people without my Force connection, but now—as the hawk began to dip into a turn that would throw me—was not the time.
“Whoa… straighten… easy.” I panted, clutching to it.
It resisted me more than the reptile creature had, but I only concentrated harder, until it finally slowed, and began to sail through the air with an ease that quickly spread through me. I laughed, my eyes flying open, and the hawk cawed in response. I should have told it to go back to the arena, it seemed the most logical option, but I had the crown, and I was flying. I was free of my High Council and the mirrored arena, displaying my own terror back to me, free of the Tainted Resistance and the nightmares of the forest below. Nobody had expected me to fly the beast I was supposed to be fighting. There would be no plan to kill me up here.
The Soulstoy Inheritance (Beatrice Harrow Series Book 2) Page 11
