A Sword of Chance

by Bella Forrest

  “Wait!” I said. “We need some water and food. We need the bathroom as well. If you’re going to keep us locked in this damn prison, give us some basic—”

  My requests were cut off by another searing headache. I gasped with the intensified pain. So soon after recovering from the first round, it seemed a hundred times worse. Benedict screamed, and I hated myself for not being able to protect him.

  The door slammed shut and we heard the bolt slip into place once again.

  We sat on the cold stone ground, gasping and rubbing our temples as the pain started to recede.

  “Ugh!” Benedict hissed. “I really hate that guy.”

  Hazel

  After we’d finished the rest of the breakfast in near silence, Tejus walked me back to his living quarters and left me there, locking the door behind him.

  As soon as he’d gone I breathed a sigh of relief. I needed the time alone—not locked away in the windowless room which seemed to have become my sleeping quarters, but in the opulent luxury of the castle where I could finally get my bearings.

  I looked around the silent living room that he’d left me in.

  The morning sun had just begun to rise over the kingdom, and cast a peachy yellow glow over the velvet cushions and sofas that adorned the room. A plush spun rug lay in the middle, its elaborate design looking almost medieval—but I couldn’t detect any signs of age or wear.

  The tapestries that covered the gray stone were different. I walked over to one of them, instantly noticing its musky odor and blanched-out color where the sun had shone on it for God knew how many centuries.

  It depicted a meadow, and a young warrior riding on the back of a horse. Above them, far larger than anything else in the scene, loomed a great big vulture in flight. Its beak pointed downward as if it were about to attack the rider—its dark eyes had a menacing expression. I shuddered and turned away.

  It occurred to me that during our breakfast ‘debrief’ about the second trial, Tejus hadn’t mentioned the role I would play. Would I really just be standing on the sidelines while he siphoned off my energy?

  That had been my assumption in the first trial, and I had been very wrong about that.

  Not only had I rescued him from an embarrassing situation with the nymphs, I had then saved him from a deadly fight with his brother, as Jenus took advantage of the rule change and manipulated Ruby and Julian into trying to kill Tejus. Again, I had done more than stand on the sidelines.

  We had won that trial, but we might not be so lucky this time.

  It was clear from the behavior of both Jenus and the emperor that human life was held in seriously low esteem here—we had been treated as commodities, our mind powers there for the taking. Tejus seemed rare in that he almost treated me kindly—for a sentry, at least.

  I dreaded to think what would happen to me if Tejus didn’t become king. I seriously doubted that the sentries in the other kingdoms would look more kindly on humans than the sentries did at Hellswan.

  My fate was completely tied to Tejus’, which made it all the more frustrating that he hadn’t better prepared me for what lay ahead. How could I increase my mental agility in the time before the trial? I had no idea when it would even begin.

  I considered shutting myself back in the room with the emerald crystals. They were a collection belonging to Tejus—chosen because of their porous abilities, which had allowed him to transfer his own mental energy into them, to recoup it when needed. Whenever I slept in that room I was absorbing his energy to make mine stronger.

  What else?

  I racked my brain thinking of all the possible things I could do, from meditation to physical training. My spear-throwing skills had helped in the first trial, but I was rusty on sword fighting. And I had never actually tried to meditate in my life.

  I leaned against the stone window ledge, hoping that the open landscape would help conjure up some further inspiration. After a while, my gaze drifted down to the streets below—the old pebble passageways and houses that looked as if they were straight out of a children’s fairy tale book.

  The streets were largely deserted around the castle keep, but as I remained watching, a small girl stepped into view.

  My heart constricted and then started to pound in my chest.

  The girl looked human.

  She was young, and bewildered-looking, her head darting left to right as she scuttled along the street. Instinctively I went to bash on the window, to try to get her attention. Before I could move or shout a warning, a tall and imposing figure on the back of some kind of strange horse-like animal rode forward and grabbed the girl by her arm, dragging her off down a side street.

  Though I hadn’t been able to make out the face of the attacker, I knew for sure that it had been a sentry by its physical size—far taller than a human—and the richly adorned cloak that it wore.

  I stood looking at the now empty street, my mind whirling.

  If the girl was human—and I was pretty positive that she was—did it mean that more sentries were kidnapping them for their own gain? Had the emperor’s urging of his sons to take humans for their mind powers started a new Hellswan trend? I wondered if the sentry kidnapper was also to be in the trial—if they were, did that mean that more humans had been snatched from Earth for these purposes? And if so, then how many more would be taken before the trials were over?

  I thought of the small girl. She had looked no older than Benedict. If she wasn’t as strong as me or other Shadians, how well would her mind stand up to the constant probing and siphoning?

  I needed to find Tejus and get some answers.

  When I stepped away from the window, my senses instantly prickled on high alert. It felt as if someone or something was in the room with me.

  I glanced toward the door, but my neck was suddenly clasped in an impossibly strong grip from behind. Choking, I frantically tried to turn my head around and get a better look at the attacker, but another hand latched over my mouth, holding me in place.

  I yanked my head backward, hoping to come into contact with a head or chest. All my parents’ training suddenly kicked into gear, and I struggled against the vice-like grip I was held in. Kicking backward, I struck their leg and knocked the attacker sideways onto the corner of the sofa.

  I went down too and landed on the body behind me. Without loosening their grip, my attacker dragged me back up. My arms flailed about, trying to gouge or scratch what I couldn’t see.

  It was another sentry—I could feel the sickening sensation of someone trying to probe into my mind and suck away its power. I could feel it, but it wasn’t as strong as Tejus or Jenus—I didn’t experience the same splitting headache I’d felt before, and this gave me more confidence.

  I caught the sentry off-guard with a body slam. We both launched into one of the tapestries. The attacker rose again, but I knocked my head backward again. We surged sideways, smashing into the bookshelf. Thick volumes banged onto the floor.

  “Stop, I don’t want to damage you!” the sentry’s voice came as a hiss in my ear, so sharp I couldn’t tell its gender.

  Well, I want to damage you.

  Before I could make another move, I heard shouts from the floor beneath and the pounding of footsteps along the corridor toward the room.

  The sentry must have heard the approach, because in the next moment I was released. I spun to follow the figure as it tried to make its escape from the room, but all I could see was a thick black cloak and a white, featureless mask.

  My attacker ran toward the far door, which led to the main staircase. I knew from experience that descending it led to the main castle, but the attacker ran upward—and I had no idea where that staircase ended up.

  Tejus came bursting through the door. His eyes darted around the room, and even I backed away from the icy fury written across his expression. It was Tejus at his most deadly—something I hadn’t seen before, even as he’d fought his brother to secure his victory by obtaining the sword of the Hellswan kingdom.<
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  Unable to speak, and still clutching my aching throat, I gestured to the stairwell and made motions to indicate that the attacker had run upward.

  A group of sentries came in the room behind Tejus.

  “Up the stairs!” he bellowed at them. They swept through the room, daggers and swords held aloft and at the ready. They clattered up the iron staircase, their weapons banging loudly as the group tried to maneuver themselves along the narrow passage.

  Tejus strode forward and slammed the door, closing off the worst of the noise.

  “Whoever it was probably had a bird on the top tower.” He turned toward me. “They’ll be long gone already.”

  I nodded, still unable to speak. Now that the threat was gone, I was feeling the aches in my body where we’d battered ourselves around the room.

  “Sit,” he commanded, gesturing to one of the sofas.

  As I took a seat, he approached me, kneeling down so that our heads were at the same height. He raised a hand, his eyes briefly flicking to mine in an unspoken question. I gave a small nod, unsure of what he was about to do, but he only raised his fingers to my face, flitting over it with cool, light touches.

  His fingers moved down to my neck, and I tried not to wince as he touched the bruised skin. His cool touch eventually started to soothe the pain, but as he ran a finger down from the bone behind my ear to the nape of my neck I jerked back—uncomfortable with the attention. This quiet, almost caring Tejus was so different to the warrior I knew that it threw me.

  He moved backward, lowering his hands. “I don’t think too much damage has been done—you are a hardy creature, Hazel Achilles.” He leaned back on his knees, and studied me with curious, questioning eyes. “I want you to tell me everything—don’t leave out any details,” he commanded.

  I started with the girl, explaining that I’d thought she was human, and then told him what little I could remember about my attacker—which really just came down to their strength and the horrible, white mask.

  “I really don’t remember much,” I muttered. The story sounded weak to my own ears—I hadn’t been able to see anything properly, and as the adrenaline started to fade away, details were starting to fudge and vanish.

  “It all happened so fast,” I claimed, in way of an explanation. Inwardly I kicked myself—had I been a fully-fledged member of GASP, my debrief to Tejus would be far more thorough.

  Tejus stood up abruptly. He walked to the far end of the living room and started pacing back and forth, stepping over the clutter of books and cushions that littered the room.

  I tried to gauge his expression. It was difficult to tell with Tejus. He seemed to flicker between anger and worry, his muscles taut with tension. Lost in thought, he barely glanced in my direction until he spun around with a look of determination—some decision had clearly been made.

  “I need to break into your mind. The information you’ve given me isn’t enough—I’ll need to see the events exactly as you saw them to notice what you did not,” he stated.

  “No!” I barked, recoiling in my chair, “You can’t!”

  Even as I refused, I could feel the beginning of a tension headache clouding within me, an indicator that he’d already started to feel around inside my mind.

  “Stop!” I gasped.

  “It’s the only way I can identify the perpetrator—the only way I’ll be able to eliminate the threat. If I don’t solve this, it could happen again at any moment.”

  No.

  I hated the icky, painful feeling of sentries digging about in my mind. I desperately tried to come up with a reason to stop him doing it, racking my brains for more details that I might have left out of the incident, or a way in which I could show him what I’d seen without him probing inside me.

  “Wait!” I hesitated before replying, feeling my headache slowly start to recede. “Is there any way at all that you can do this without… ‘breaking into’ my mind? Is there another way that might be a bit less painful?”

  Tejus looked baffled. I thought wildly, trying to come up with anything that he might consider.

  “What about if I could send you the vision? You know—if I could somehow project it out without you having to probe into me? Maybe if I offered up what I remember, it might not be so painful for you to look at it? It might even work better,” I stated optimistically.

  It was a complete stab in the dark, but Tejus’s expression was changing from bafflement to curiosity.

  “It would make sense,” I reasoned, trying to hold his attention. “If you can siphon off my energy without delving into my mind, then surely you can do the same with my thoughts—it’s worth a try, at least.”

  I held my breath as he considered my suggestion.

  “It sounds reasonable,” he said slowly. “We can give it a try. But if it doesn’t work, we’ll have to do it my way. But I will at least try.”

  He sat on the sofa opposite mine, arms crossed and his gaze questioning.

  Now it was up to me.

  Crap.

  I closed my eyes, trying to block out Tejus’s glare. Focusing on the first scene, I tried to picture the cobbled streets outside and the lopsided cottages that ran alongside them. I brought the girl into view, her small frame and her tentative, wary glance as she looked around. The picture wobbled and faded from view, bringing up Benedict’s face instead.

  I cautiously opened one eye.

  Tejus raised one eyebrow.

  Clearly it hadn’t worked.

  With a sigh of frustration, I closed my eyes again and re-focused.

  Think.

  Shutting Benedict’s face out, I tried to focus on the girl. This time I tried to ‘throw’ the image—as if I was watching it from a distance, trying to direct it toward Tejus.

  He sighed. It still wasn’t working.

  My palms prickled. I was getting nervous—and the harder I tried to focus on the girl, the harder it was for me to recapture the image.

  This time I tried a different tactic. I tried to picture the sentry who had approached her, the black cloak and the thundering of the horse on the cobbles.

  I felt something shift then, and a blackness crept over my mind.

  “I don’t want to damage you!”

  I could feel the hiss in my ear, the cloying breath as it ran down my neck. I felt the image take over. I was finally reliving—not remembering.

  Tejus took a sharp inhale of breath.

  It’s working!

  I continued to get lost in the memory, the hands at my neck, the scent of the glove that had closed around my mouth.

  As I went deeper into the memory, I noticed details that I’d missed the first time round—the black boots of my attacker, their grunt as I’d thrown my head backward and come into contact with their nose.

  The deeper I went, the more dreamlike the sequence started to become. Everything seemed to slow down, then rewind and fast-forward till it would jump, returning again to a slow-motion sequence. As if it was all a video in my head which was being controlled by someone else.

  Tejus.

  An odd sensation started to flow over me, as if I was falling asleep—drifting off into a weightless state. I started to become aware of Tejus’s thoughts beside my own, almost as if I could see his point of view on the events that were unfolding—like we were watching a movie together, sitting side by side on a sofa, whilst I was also inside the movie, dipping in and out of the action.

  I could also feel him roaming around inside my mind—light, feathery brushstrokes like his fingers on my face earlier, but this time inside my skull. It wasn’t painful—it was far removed from what it had felt like when he’d drained my energy or broken into my mind previously. This was different. Almost soothing, but at the same time indescribably weird.

  As he explored, Tejus ‘paused’ on the flickering image of us sitting on the sofa together in front of a movie—I had made that comparison to what we were doing, and now he was clearly able to see it.

  The picture expanded
and became more solid—as if it was a real thing, and we were no longer in the castle at Hellswan, but far off in another dimension that was more real and familiar to me.

  The image started to take on more form, more detail. The room became the den at home, with the sofa and the fluffy rug, and Benedict’s beanbag in the corner with his school bag lying next to it.

  I glanced to my right, and found Tejus sitting beside me on the sofa, looking around, bemused and intrigued about his new surroundings.

  “This is very curious—is this a human dwelling?” he asked, his face flickering closer toward mine.

  I could hear the sound of my laughter—it echoed around the room, but seemed to come from outside the scene as well.

  A warm, dreamy wave trickled through me and the weightless feeling returned. His face moved closer still, and his eyes were warm and smiling.

  As if it was the most natural thing in the world, I reached my hand up and laid my fingers on Tejus’s broad shoulder, feeling the heat beneath his shirt. The pressure of my fingers increased, and I pulled him down toward me, trying to hold on as his body flickered and juddered in my mind.

  He smiled ever so slightly at me, reaching a hand up to brush away a strand of my hair, and I could feel the tips of his fingers lightly touch my temple in the same way he had before when analyzing my wounds… but this time his fingers felt hot, as if they would leave burning marks etched into my skin.

  Abruptly the connection was broken.

  My throat was bone dry. I could feel an intense heat rising up in my face, and my heart was pounding so loudly I was sure Tejus could hear it from where he sat. I hardly dared look up at him.

  When I finally did, I was astonished to find him looking as uncomfortable as I felt. I was sure I could detect a red flush on his face, and his gaze was averted.

  Whoa.

  I didn’t know Tejus could look uncomfortable, that he was even capable of such ‘human’ emotions.

  Still looking everywhere but at me, he cleared his throat.

  “Thank you. That was… interesting,” he muttered.