Lexa
Boots scrape over stone. Water drips down moss covered bricks with a smooth plop, plop, plop next to my head, where my cheek is pressed against what I can only assume is the floor. It stinks here. Like sweat, blood, and filth I refuse to describe.
I haven’t moved in hours, but I’ve been awake. Yes, I’m aware. Yes, I can feel every ache in my body. Yes, I’m alive, but why?
The memories of the beach are hazy. I’m not sure how much time has passed or where I am. I could actually be dead, I suppose, and currently in purgatory awaiting the Goddess’s final judgment. People have been moving in and out of wherever I am for the last several hours. I know that much. Facing the wall with my body curled in the fetal position, I haven’t so much as glanced behind me–at the darkness, at the shadows that groan and grumble, at the sound of chains grating across the wet floor.
The Boots, I call them, have been coming in and out, collecting souls in silence. A key slides into a lock. A murmured command. Movement. A door closing with a sharp squeal. The scent of male sweat and grime.
But The Boots stop behind me this time. The key slides into the lock confining me to my cell. My fingers, which have been curled into fists since I woke up, stretch, flexing. My body tingles with adrenaline, and I’m thankful for it because, otherwise, I’d dive headfirst into the emotions currently threatening to render all of my training useless.
My friends are dead. I failed my regiment. I watched them get slaughtered. I watched Austin sacrifice himself to save me and Chessie, giving up his life for his mate, and I still failed Chessie. She’s dead. She’s dead. She’s dead.
The memory of my mom’s guttural, panicked scream burrows through my body, cutting out the sound of two sets of boots approaching where I’m curled into myself. Only a mother could make a sound like that. Only a mother could have that kind of edge to her voice, that agony.
What is she thinking now? How far has her heart caved in?
“Up,” a deep, male growl resonates.
I shakily obey, but not out of fear. My legs are like lead, and my battered arms hang limp at my sides. I’m still in my leather warrior garb–a dress with loops instead of seams–meant for shifting, but my weapons are gone. Long, brutal gashes run the length of my upper arms in sets of three, but the blood has long dried, which gives me some insight on how long I was out. Hours at least. Maybe a full day or more, given the scabs forming. My healing skin crinkles and pulls when a man in dark, well-fitted leather armor clutches my forearm. I take a single step and realize the reason my limbs feel so impossibly heavy is because of thick iron manacles on my ankles and wrists, connected by even thicker chains. Not silver, but iron.
Still, I can’t feel my wolf. I can’t access the mind-link. I feel utterly empty of any of my lupine gifts as the guard, I presume, tugs me out of the cell toward his comrade, dressed similarly in dark leather and shockingly fine fabric. Golden thread weaves along the seams of a beautiful velvet blue overcoat covering the intricate swirling design of his leather armor. I follow the smooth, polished golden buttons of his coat up to the pointy white collar of his shirt and then his face–
I rear back, my body colliding with the second guard. He rips me to the side with a grip like iron, the pressure sinking into the horrific bruises painting my skin in shades of purple and blue.
Pointed ears. Sharp, chiseled facial features. Eyes the color of polished sapphires but too bright, too wide and large.
And behind him?
“Let me go!” I rush out, breathless with shock.
Wings. Wings sprout from his back–a pale, shimmering green in the darkness. His wings flare before tucking in tight, but the damage is done. I’m too stunned to speak again, let alone fight as his comrade drags me out of the cell and into a wet, cramped stone hallway.
Both warriors have wings and pointed ears. Both are unnaturally tall. Both are beautiful.
Fae. Fucking Faeries. The family was right. They exist. They’re not just characters in the haunting folklore of Eastonia and beyond.
The air is thick as the guard–warriors–whatever the fae deign to call them–take turns pushing me, shoving me down the corridor. The chains binding my legs drag, heavy, and make it impossible to take more than a hobbling step at a time. My chest refuses to expand enough to take a full breath, but I’m trying. I don’t know where I am. I don’t recognize this place or these people. The smells are unfamiliar. The garbled, quick, and lifted language they speak doesn’t register.
I have to get free. That’s the only thought in my mind until they turn me around a corner, and blinding sunlight steals my vision completely. My eyes water as I try to raise a hand to shield my face from the light, but the chains binding my wrists weigh down my arms.
They pause, talking rapidly to each other, arguing about something. One of the guards jostles me like he’s trying to make a point, and the other grunts, then says in… the original language of the Deadlands, a language so ancient its origins have been lost to time, “Go out there and wait for direction.”
I blink, completely, utterly startled, and turn to face the man who spoke. His wings are a deep, almost amber-hued brown compared to the other faerie, but he’s also different. It’s hard to describe. His features are roughly beautiful, hardened in a way I find incredibly familiar. His scent is different, too. Warmer, like a crackling fire. His hands, compared to the other fae guard, are bigger, less feminine.
It’s the only look I get of him as one of those hands presses against my chest and shoves me, chains and all, into the blinding sunlight.
I stumble backward, flailing blindly. My eyes sting. Bodies push and shove against me as my vision adjusts to the brightness. It’s hot. Terribly so. The heat is wet, thick, and sticks to my skin as I blink rapidly, trying to see over the rippling sunlight and people–men–jostling me into what I realize is a crowd.
“Move, bitch!” a man snarls before violently pushing me out of the crowd, where I fall to my knees in the dirt.
There’s a hum of noise, then applause, which nearly bursts my eardrums. My head swims, pounding with a dull ache that hasn’t gone away since I hit my head on the beach. Sweat glistens along my hairline, sinking into microscopic cuts all over my body. It burns almost as much as the sun as I squint at my surroundings.
My stomach pinches, curling inward.
I’m in an arena. A massive fortress of white stone. The blinding light is the sun reflecting off the polished tiles shading an enormous crowd situated in a semicircle around the arena’s base, every bench full to the brim with cheering spectators.
I whirl to look at the crowd in the arena, snapping back to reality, finally, and glare at the dozens of men shifting from side to side, scanning the area just like I am. Only a few have wings. Many are tall and built, but others hang on the outskirts of the crowd, alone, bound in chains while looking warily at the balcony situated several stories above our heads.
I look up, squinting against the sun, as another tall man dressed in rich turquoise robes steps into view on the balcony. His waist-length thick, dark brown hair lifts in a soft breeze that doesn’t reach us in this pit of hell.
He raises his hands and silences the spectators.
“Lexa!”
I whirl toward Meg’s voice, my heart leaping into my throat when she just barely comes into view. She’s no more than ten feet away, trying to fight her way toward me through the men, also weighed down by chains. I glance at the fae male above us on the balcony before shuffling in her direction, my hands shaking as we reach for each other. I clutch her fingertips, trying to pull her between two of the men currently making no attempt to move out of her way, but at this point, it doesn’t matter. None of this makes sense.
Meg is in much better shape than I am. That’s the first thing I notice as I pull her toward me. It takes all of my strength, which isn’t a good sign.
“How the fuck are we alive?” she hisses under her breath, raising her chains to try to touch my face. “How the fuck? What happened–”
“I have no idea. I don’t know. What do you remember? How did we get here?”
She shakes her head, her eyes shining with panic. “I remember everything going black, then I woke up in a cell this morning. I can’t feel my wolf at all, Lexa. I can’t summon it!”
“I know. Neither can I.” I look around, trying to gauge whether any of these men are shifters like us. They must be. It’s so easy to tell the fae apart. But some men are just enormous. Handsome. Rugged. Like true, full-blooded shifter males from a royal line. Still, something is off about them. I scan a few of the taller, stronger looking men. Pointed ears. So many fucking pointy ears!
“Lexa,” Meg says hurriedly, shaking my arms. “Chessie–”
“She got–she’s–” I can’t bring myself to say it. My best friend. I loved her more than anything, more than my own life. I feel my chest beginning to cave when Meg shakes her head, her grimy red hair falling over her shoulders like stained red silk.
“She’s here. I can’t get to her. She’s on the other side of the arena–”
“What?” I rise on my toes to look over the heads of the tallest men, a first for me, but I still can’t see her. “You’re sure?”
“I was one of the first they brought out,” she says over the jostling bodies starting to bump into us as they turn to the balcony. “I swear I saw her. She’s okay–”
A voice booms like the sky is being split–like a god is talking down at us, to the gathered spectators. I move to cover my ears on instinct, but the chains bite into my wrists, already rubbed raw. The fae male in his turquoise robes speaks in a language I can’t understand, but beneath his words, as if speaking through a megaphone, his voice changes, translated in real time to that ancient language of the Deadlands.
We all learned it growing up. I’m fluent. I can read and write the symbols and speak plainly, conversationally in the old tongue. My father might be from Crescent Falls, but I also carry my mother’s blood–the blood of the surviving tribes of the Deadlands–the three tribes that carried on despite the odds stacked against them over the course of three thousand years and multiple, horrible wars. Tribes who taught their people the Old Tongue from generation to generation, never letting it die.
Now, it booms as if coming from a speaker, each word clear as day.
“Welcome!” the King of the Fae says with a bright smile as he looks at his spectators. “To the Culling!”
“The Culling?” Meg whispers, glancing up at me. “Lexa, what is this? Why is he speaking in the Dead Tongue?”
“I don’t know,” I breathe, transfixed on his wings. Massive silver-white wings spread out behind him, tipped with a shade of blue that matches his robes. A cord of golden ivy glints in the sunlight as he turns his head, illuminating a crown. Yeah, this is the king, for sure. He has to be.
It strikes me then. The cold reality of our situation.
“We’re very far away from home, Meg,” I whisper and let all of my training take over.
“Over the next several hours,” the king booms, “our champions for the Trials will be chosen. Only the strongest, the most cunning, will move onto the first Trial.” He looks down at the crowd at the base of the arena–us–the people in chains. But his eyes hold on mine. I feel nothing but a sudden gust of determination as I stare back, unafraid. “Only one fighter will ascend to the Trials from each round of the Culling, a fight to the death,” he says, and the crowd of spectators explodes in applause. “But in this round, whoever kills the three shifter bitches gets an automatic pass.”
A murmur of excitement passes behind us as the men turn to look in our direction. My hackles raise, but my wolf remains absent. There’s nothing there.
“Your only objectives,” I tell Meg as the Fae King grins wickedly down at us, “are to get to Chessie and kill everyone who gets in your way.”
Meg rolls her shoulders and smirks at one of the men now glowering down at us with a hungry expression. “This is going to be fun,” she muses, but her expression is murderous.
They must think we’re easy pickings.
I keep my eyes on the king as he calls for the games to begin and smoothes his hand through the air. The iron shackles all over the arena break apart, and a horn blows in the distance like a death knell.
Let the games begin indeed.