I didn’t know much about Fae hierarchies, but Viscount seemed to be higher ranked than au pair. Was Elaith gunning for the Viscount’s position? Could Elaith have stolen the Viscount’s cure? Why not? This world was still unfamiliar to me, and anything was possible.

  I realized suddenly, in a moment of stark, internal panic, that I didn’t know Elaith nearly as well as I thought I did. Were they lying to me? Did they have theft in them? Murder? I didn’t know what to do with myself in that moment. Worse, I could tell Elaith was catching onto some of my inner turmoil.

  “Is everything alright?” they asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, “Yeah, I’m fine. I think I’m just still tired from all the… uh…”

  “Adventuring?”

  I fired finger-guns at them. “That’s it.” Finger-guns? Who are you? “Maybe I just need to sit down.”

  “I hate to have to tell you, but I’m not here to let you sit and rest.”

  “You aren’t?”

  “No. You’ve eaten your breakfast, which means it’s time to train. Your first trial is today.”

  “Today!?” I shrieked.

  “Yes, and I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but if you don’t excel at these next few trials, you have no hope of winning. In fact, not only do you have to excel, but the others have to do incredibly poorly.”

  I spun around and marched toward the opposite wall, throwing my hands in the air. “Are you serious?” I asked, turning around to face them again.

  “I am. I’m sorry. Invidia was clear on her instructions.”

  “Invidia can go and suck it.”

  Elaith’s eyebrow arched. “And what exactly should she suck?”

  I groaned. “It. All of it.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Is this another human thing?”

  “It is, and frankly I’m surprised you people don’t say it too.”

  “Judging by your tone, I’m going to assume that’s something vulgar, so… is it really a surprise that we don’t say it?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Just tell me what I have to do.”

  “Well, first, I have to prepare you for the trial. I have been allowed that much, at least. Then, later on—sometime in the afternoon—the trial will begin, and you’ll win.”

  “I will?”

  “You don’t have a choice. You must excel, remember? If you don’t find a victory in this competition… I dread to think what Invidia will do.”

  “Oh, she already spoiled that ending for me. Don’t worry about that.”

  “I’d rather not know, then.” Elaith paused. “Shall we get started?”

  “I guess. What’s the first trial?”

  “Instead of answering that question, how about we start with the basics? Like, your outfit?”

  “Outfit?”

  “Oh, yes. You can’t wear any old thing to these trials. You’ll need something suited to the spectacle, and the task.”

  “Please don’t make me wear that hideous dress with the shoulder-balls again.”

  “No, we’re past that part. Right now, you’ll need function over form, and I have just the thing. All you have to do is pick a color.”

  “Color?” I paused. “I guess I’ve grown kind of partial to green.”

  Elaith grinned. “Done.”

  CHAPTER 4

  I sat alone in a room, bouncing my knee, waiting for my turn. At the edge of my hearing, there were grunts, and groans, and the sounds of people cheering. Considering what Elaith had told me about the trial, it felt a little morbid for them to be cheering, but I guessed it also made sense.

  The Fae were assholes.

  Watching someone, anyone, even one of their own taking part in some violent event where their survival depended on their wits was exactly the kind of entertainment the Fae enjoyed. Why wouldn’t they be cheering? Why wouldn’t they be hungry for a slip up? For a little blood?

  I made balls with my fists, tightening my hands around the fingerless gloves I was wearing. The outfit Elaith had chosen for me was pretty good, I had to admit. I was wearing leather, green with golden accents, form fitting, and tight in all the right places. I was showing a little more skin than I was comfortable with considering I was about to get into battle, but the armor I was wearing wasn’t as important as not getting hit.

  Elaith had made that much clear.

  I rubbed my hands on my legs to stop them from shaking. From beyond the door to my room, a monstrous roar billowed out, followed by more cheering from the watching crowd. I could already imagine the beast in my mind… huge, and green, with lashing vines for limbs and a head like a Venus fly trap.

  I hadn’t seen it yet, but Elaith had done a pretty good job of putting the image into my head. Whatever my mind was capable of conjuring probably didn’t have much on the real deal, but it was enough to humble me. If I thought I was going to come out of this unscathed, I had another thing coming.

  There was a knock at the door, and I stood bolt upright at the sound. A moment later, the door opened, and two guards walked in carrying between them a rack holding various weapons and small shields. They set the rack down and took a step back from it, without offering a word of explanation.

  They didn’t have to; I knew what I had to do.

  “What do we have here?” I asked, using words to try to break the tension.

  It didn’t work. The guards weren’t here to talk.

  I walked up to the rack and examined what was on it. The weapons all looked too large and clunky for my tastes. A sword with an ornate, golden handle caught my eye, but it was huge and weighed a ton. Next to it sat a battle axe with a head as large as a TV set, and edges as sharp as razors.

  That thing probably weighed more than the sword.

  My eyes finally settled on a knife, and as I picked it up, I realized why it was automatically a far better choice than any of the others. It wasn’t the size or the weight; I had trained with sword and axe under Elaith’s watchful eye. It was the quickness of the blade that I needed; the ability to move, and duck, and strafe with ease.

  Knowing what I knew about the creature I was about to go up against, and knowing the specifics of my trial, I would’ve lost all hope of winning if I’d chosen anything larger than the knife I had picked up. I was going to need speed and agility, here… and even then, my prospects didn’t look great.

  “Is that your choice?” one of the guards asked, his voice flat and cold.

  I nodded. “Yeah, this is my choice,” I said.

  “Then, come with us. Now.”

  Taking a deep breath, I followed the guard out of the room and down a hallway. I had expected it to be empty, but there were people all over the place. Butlers, waiters, and other house staff were fluttering through it, rushing to get to wherever they needed to go while the cheering and applause continued all around us. The guard in front of me had to bore a hole into the press of people just so we could walk through it.

  We finally reached a large, wooden double door that I suspected would take me somewhere outside. I could smell the freshly cut grass, the flowers, the trees. The sounds of cheering and applause were coming through more forcefully, louder, and more intensely than before.

  Whatever I was about to face was on the other side of that door, and I didn’t have Rell here for help. I didn’t have anyone here for help. I was expected to excel in this trial, and I was going to have to do it all on my own.

  Gods help me.

  A fanfare erupted, with trumpets and horns sounding. A man yelled from the other side of the door, making proclamations about what had just happened.

  “And that concludes this exciting round,” the man called out, “Let it be known that Lady Isolde has completed her trial in under five minutes, putting her at the front of the pack!”

  That had warranted a round of applause from the Fae in attendance, and I guessed it was deserved. Five minutes? I needed to beat five minutes? Even if I had five hours, I didn’t think I would complete the trial ahead of me. A surge of anxiety pulsed through me, electrifying my skin, and sending a flush of warmth into my chest.

  On the one hand, my adrenaline was pumping; on the other hand, I was stressed to high heaven.

  “And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for,” said the voice on the other side of the door, “Finally ready to re-join the competition after her mysterious illness, the Lady of Emerald Hall, Kadeera Nightbloom!”

  Illness? Was that Invidia’s excuse?

  To my surprise, the mention of my name sent up a wave of cheers and hoots from the crowd. I hadn’t seen them yet, but that changed as soon as the doors opened. The bright sunlight blinded me for a moment, forcing me to put up my hand to protect my eyes from its rays.

  My eyes adjusted to the brightness as I walked further into the light. The cheering had reached fever pitch, a gaggle of screeching and chanting that made it difficult for me to think clearly. I tried to drown it out, but it was no use. It was like trying to ignore a jackhammer going off in the middle of your living room.

  By the time the cheering dimmed, I had reached the center of the arena I had walked into. There were tall stands all around me, arranged in a circle around the edges of the arena. Toward the front, a platform jutted out like a lip, and on it were the Fae nobles and dignitaries from the other Houses.

  And so was Invidia.

  They were sitting in the warm, Spring sun, being lightly fanned by entities made of shifting, whirling clouds. I couldn’t see the air blasting out of their hands, but I could see the way it played on the hair of the Fae sitting like lords on top of that platform.

  One man stood out from the rest. He was large, and round, and sported a fancy green waistcoat over a frilly, yellow shirt—both which looked like they were about to burst at their buttons. Someone handed him a long-necked glass filled with a kind of soft, rose-colored liquid, and he drank it quickly before handing it back.

  He put a hand up, and the crowd quietened.

  “Lady Kadeera Nightbloom,” he called out, his voice roaring across the arena. “Welcome back to your finest hours. Are you ready for your trial?”

  Looking around at the crowd, at the expectant Fae faces, I knew that wasn’t a question I could refuse. How was I going to say no? What kind of a scandal would that have started? With way Invidia was looking at me from the platform, she was likely to burst into flames and take the entire event down with her if I’d said anything but ‘yes’ right now.

  I nodded. “Yes, I am,” I called out, realizing suddenly that there was no huge beast in the arena with me.

  “Then let the game commence!”

  With a wave of his hand and a flick of his wrist, the man on the platform sent a shower of sparkles flying through the air. As the cloud of glittering green light fell onto the grass at my feet, the ground started to churn and squirm, the earth splitting apart and bashing together in places.

  Instantly I started to move, bouncing from one bit of raised earth to the other. It was all moving so fast, I didn’t have much time to think about where I was putting my feet, or where I was jumping to next. I had to let my instincts guide me, and so far, they were doing a good job at keeping me upright.

  “Today, this brave, young Fae will be taking on the Jewel,” came the presenter’s voice, rising high above the rumble of the earth. “This formidable creature, a native of Darkwood Forest, is responsible for the deaths of many Fae… it is strong, it is quick, it will lash, and whip, and slash at our contestant, but if she can retrieve the gem in its mouth, she will be victorious!”

  I leapt onto a rock grinding its way out of the earth and scanned the arena. I was already breathing hard, my heart was pumping fast, and my muscles were warm, but I didn’t like the sound of what that man had just said. Elaith had prepared me for the task; they had told me what I would be fighting, and that it was called a Jewel, but I didn’t know I had to grab a gem from out of its mouth.

  I scanned the writhing arena, watching the ground churn, and move, and spit out large, jagged rocks that seemed to create little corridors in an otherwise open field. With one hand tightly wrapped around my knife, and a breath sucked in, I waited… and waited… and waited, until finally, a giant pair of doors set under the platform on which the nobles were sitting burst open, and something came screeching out.

  My heart surged into my throat as soon as I laid eyes on the beast I would be fighting. It really was huge, easily ten feet tall, and it came charging out of the darkness on legs of vines and roots, hustling like it had a purpose. It had a large, green stem for a body, but even that was covered in thick, ropey vines I didn’t think I would have much luck cutting through.

  “Dammit,” I said, glancing at the tiny knife in my hand. “I should’ve picked the sword.”

  The Jewel roared, and I realized then, that was the first time I had ever heard a plant make a sound of any kind in my life. It had a bulbous, purple head, with no eyes, massive, gnashing teeth and something stuck in its throat. Something small, but shiny, and green.

  The gem.

  That was it.

  I had to stick my hand in that thing’s mouth and pull the little green crystal out of its throat—and I had to do it in less than five minutes, because that’s how long it had taken Isolde. I needed to beat her time, and I had to do it with no magic, and only minimal training.

  “Great.”

  “Let the trial…” yelled the man on the podium, pausing for anticipation. “Begin!”

  Someone slammed a large gong, and the sound only seemed to make the Jewel even angrier because it roared again and started charging toward me across the broken arena. I knew I wasn’t going to last long in a straight up fight against that thing, so I let myself drop from the rock I had perched on, hitting the soft, wet dirt beneath me and putting a few obstacles between myself and that thing.

  “Rell, buddy,” I said, as I started slipping between rocks, “I could’ve really used your help today.”

  But I was all alone. Rell wasn’t here to help me.

  It was time to show these Fae what I was made of, or die trying.

  CHAPTER 5

  I was going to die trying.

  The thing, the Jewel, was a true monster, and I just couldn’t keep up with it. It rampaged from place to place, the roots and vines it used to push itself around slamming into the ground and into the rocks around it. Wherever it went, it took chunks out of the scenery, reminding me of one simple, crucial fact.

  I didn’t want to get hit.

  There was no telling what those lashing vines would do to my bones if I had let one get close enough to hit me. So far, I had managed to duck, and dodge, and weave, and hide from that monster’s tails and whips, but that wasn’t going to last for long.

  I was already panting, each breath was coming in harsher than the last, and I had no idea how much time had gone by. For all I knew, I had already lost to Isolde, but there was no way I was going to get close enough to this thing to complete the task, so what in the world was I supposed to do?

  Improvise.

  Taking refuge behind a large slab of rock, I allowed my lungs a moment to catch up to the frantic pace of my breathing. The creature was so big it made the earth shake every time it moved, and my chest rattle with its roars.

  Peeking around a corner, I caught a glimpse its many, many limbs as it flailed around looking for me. I was a lot smaller than it was, and able to hide from it well enough. It didn’t look like it had eyes, so it must have been tracking me some other way.

  Maybe by sound?

  I tried to quiet my breathing, hoping that would keep the Jewel away for another few seconds while I tried to figure the situation out. If it couldn’t see, then that was a tool I could use. But if its hearing made up for its lack of vision, then I was screwed.

  Okay, I thought to myself, if it can’t see you, then the best thing to do is to be quiet, but you can’t be quiet if you’re panicked. Just breathe. Relax.

  I could hear it stomping around, smashing into everything in front of it as it moved. Occasionally, I would hear it take in a sharp breath of air, like it was sniffing. At one point I caught a glimpse of its tongue, long and thin, flicking out past its mouth and licking the air the way snakes did.

  I don’t know if it can hear me, but it can probably smell me.

  I would’ve killed for a bottle of perfume right about now, something sharp and strong to throw at it and maybe distract it for a moment or two. I didn’t have one, though; all I had was my knife… and the dirt at my feet. Mossy, grassy, wet dirt.

  Throwing myself to my knees, I started scooping handfuls of dirt and smearing it onto my skin, my armor, my face. I couldn’t just smell the dirt—I could taste it, too. It was stronger here than the dirt back home, fresher; ripe with the scent of vitality itself.

  And bugs.

  I spat out a worm that had tried burrowing into my mouth, and the Jewel suddenly stopped. It stopped sniffing, stopped stomping, stopped moving entirely… but only for an instant. After a split second, it was on the move again, only this time it was coming straight toward me.

  Without sparing another moment, I sprang to my feet and started running. I hadn’t covered enough of myself in dirt to avoid being sniffed out yet, but I could fix that if I managed to get out of its way again. But as the thing came crashing into the crevice I was running through, I started to worry I wouldn’t get another chance to lose it.

  It filled the space entirely, blocking the circle of light that was the sun burning high in the sky. I could hear the roots and vines it used as feet thumping and thudding against the ground as it chased me. One of its tendrils lashed out to try and grab my arm, and it managed to yank me off balance for half a heartbeat, but I was able to swing around and slice through it with my knife, breaking its hold on me before I could topple over.

  Scrambling, I bolted through a narrow passage through the broken and jagged rocks, dipping left and right, hoping to confuse it. Up ahead, I spotted a patch of dirt so wet it looked like a small pond. I hurled myself at it, then I turned onto my back and rubbed as much of myself into the dirt as I could.