Lexa
Sponsors step forward to claim their victors–their pets. I keep my eyes locked on the shifter at the table until Meg is suddenly shoved forward by a guard into the waiting arms of two fae males in long, emerald green robes. She thrashes, her eyes on mine, her lips pulled back in a snarl, but she’s dragged out of sight, swallowed by the crowd. I step out of line, my body angled toward hers, but a low whistle stops me, and I turn to the shifter. He shakes his head at me in a very discrete motion–a silent demand to stop.
For whatever reason, I do.
But Chessie is next. Another fae male steps forward but leans down, speaking low in the Dead Tongue. I catch a single sentence. “It’s all right. Let’s get you mended, shall we?” The kindness in his pale blue eyes has my stomach flip-flopping out of sheer confusion, especially after he turns his head slightly to the shifter, who gives him another discreet motion of his head–a quick nod, a blink. Like this was planned.
“And who will claim the feral shifter bitch? She’s the leader of the little trio,” the king’s translator says to the room. It quiets in an instant.
I look around. There’s only a few victors left without sponsors, whatever that means. I’m one of them.
The shifter steps around the table and bows low to the king, who smirks, rolls his eyes to Hannibal, and back to the wingless wolf now straightening before him. But the king speaks in the Dead Tongue this time–fluent, like he couldn’t be bothered with the language before now. “Chastan. I was wondering why you were here. Where is your Alpha King? I expected him to stay for refreshments after the final round of the Culling, but apparently, our wines and bites aren’t good enough for him.”
“He’s indisposed at the moment,” Chastan, I guess, says under his breath. I notice he doesn’t look the king in the eyes.
“Doing what?” The king laughs cruelly.
Chastan licks his lips, hanging his head to hide the emotion I can see plainly, the grief written all over his face. “He’s giving his condolences to the families who lost men in the Culling today, Your Highness, and arranging their funeral pyres. I came to claim his victor in his stead.”
“Let me guess, he wants the she-wolf?” The king’s eyes slide to mine. I stare at him. I don’t even fucking blink.
Chastan nods, his spine rigid. “He has chosen her, yes.”
“And he’ll train her directly, I assume?”
“Yes, that is what he told me.”
“Well,” the king drawls, smiling as he meets the eyes of the fae nobility now tittering what I can only describe as excitement. “These Trials just became far more interesting, didn’t they? Fine, take her.”
Chastan bows once more before turning on his heels and stalking toward me, his hands tucked behind his back.
He stops short of me, however, as the king booms, “Tell your precious Alpha King I expect to see him tomorrow morning. The sponsors must meet to discuss the first game of the Trials, and I’d like his opinion on a few things.”
Chastan’s nostrils flare, but he doesn’t turn around. His eyes meet mine and flick to the side, another silent command, and this time it definitely means move.
He grips my elbow. The crowd of fae parts to allow us to snake through the ballroom.
“Do not say a word yet,” he says in a low warning growl the moment my lips part. I snap my mouth shut, letting him guide me out of the ballroom and back through the interlocking corridors leading to the foyer.
But we don’t turn to the immaculate grand entrance. No, Chastan leads me back in the direction I came with Chessie and Meg. When the base of the arena comes into view again, now shrouded in darkness and starlight, I rip my arm out of his grasp and dig in my heels.
“I am not going back into a cell.” I snarl and then shove him so hard he staggers backward several feet, huffing a pained breath. I whirl in a circle, looking for an exit but notice he’s stuffed his hands in his pockets, his shoulders relaxing. I expect him to lunge to get me back under control.
If anything, he looks relieved.
“You will not find your friends in this maze, I assure you. That’s what you’re thinking, right? Find them, escape this prison, and go back to the Highwoods.”
“Highwoods?” The word feels funny on my tongue. “I don’t know–”
“You are stuck here,” he grinds out but shrugs one shoulder so casually I blink, thinking I’m not seeing him clearly. “The easiest thing to do to get out of the Trials is to just… die.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Chastan.”
“I don’t care about your fucking name,” I seethe, my lips drawn back to showcase my very normal teeth. Gods, I miss my wolf. I miss those elongated canine teeth so badly it hurts. “Where am I?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where the fuck am I?” I swipe a hand toward the gloomy arena, at the dark splotches no doubt stained with blood.
He looks me up and down with a sigh. “They didn’t even bother to heal you, did they? Those fucking bastards. Fuckin’ fae pieces of shit–” His words garble together–new sounds, new words I don’t know in the Dead Tongue, which is obviously his native language. My mind reels as I try to place myself in the world, in the current time. Did I travel backward? Is this the Deadlands, but centuries, if not millennia, ago?
“Who is your queen?”
“What?”
“Your Firestone Queen? What is her name?”
He blinks at me, tilting his head in confusion. “Are you all right?”
Panic floods my system like a tsunami, shattering every other sense of survival in its path. I press my hands to my temples to stop the pounding headache threatening to split my skull into pieces. My arms ache–burning with deep gashes that will take days, if not weeks, to fully heal. I’m starving. I can’t think like this, but I have to figure this out.
“Come on,” Chastan urges, cautiously taking my arm. “You’re safe with me, okay? These fuckin’ pricks won’t do anything to you now that you’re under our Alphas protection. Okay? Listen, most of the guards are halflings anyway–”
“Where am I?” I rasp, tears brimming along my lower lashes. “Where am I!”
Chastan scans my face with sudden distaste. He chews his lower lip for a moment and then reaches out to… massage my head? I whip out of his touch and shove him again, not as hard as the first time, but honestly, I’ve lost all of my strength at this point. “Don’t fucking touch me!”
“Did you hit your head?”
“No!”
“I was just checking for any injuries,” he grumbles under his breath, but then he turns toward the sound of footsteps heading in our direction. He clicks his tongue. “We gotta go, okay? I’m sure someone back at the pack can answer any questions you have, but we need to get back.”
“Back where?”
The footsteps come closer, carrying voices with each passing step. Chastan takes my arm and leads me into the shadows, through several narrow hallways lined with dirt and stone, but eventually, the corridor opens up again, and the night sky bleeds down on us–warm but comfortable. Dryer than the heat of the day I’d spent in the arena.
My eyes adjust to the darkness as a great, towering wall comes into view. Guards linger outside a massive set of doors–taller than anything I’ve ever witnessed. The top of the wall must be at least six stories high.
A feeling of dread settles in the pit of my stomach as Chastan approaches a guard–a guard with wings. They speak for a moment before the guard nods and turns, snapping his fingers at his comrades. I hug myself against a sudden chill sweeping through the air, waiting for the massive doors to swing open, but a much smaller door spills light across the ancient stone tiles beneath my feet instead.
A normal wooden door, a wicket, has been carved into the towering monstrosity I realize wasn’t built to keep something out.
But to keep something in.
I take a single breath as we step through the doorway and smell… wood smoke. The door shuts behind us with a horrible clang of metal being moved back into a place, a lock, but a new world expands ahead of me, the lights and sounds of a small city replacing the quiet stillness of the arena and palace above.
Buildings stretch four stories tall in some places, precariously built with what looks like any materials that could be found. Narrow streets are made of raw earth, rusted metal, brick, and chipped stone. Light pours from open windows–firelight, candlelight–and the city itself hums with something other than electricity, something ancient. Something that comes from deep underground, like the world radiates a sense of life into this shanty-town.
Magic. The same magic that runs through the creeks and rivers that feed the farmlands and prairies back home.
My heart hangs in my throat as I move through the walled city beside Chastan, unable to bring myself to even make a sound.
“They didn’t give you shoes?”
I blink, shocked back to reality. “N-no.”
Another grumbled curse–something colorful, I imagine, based on the sour look on his face. He hates the fae; that’s clear. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, or however the fuck the saying goes.
“What is this place?” I follow the wall–the curve, the incredible height of it.
“We call it the Glade. The fae have another word for it, but it doesn’t matter to us here.” His voice is low and soft but edged with disgust.
The road suddenly dips down, revealing a gradual decline into a pit of sorts. I gasp, unable to stop myself, as the rest of the Glade, confined within the wall, spreads out before me in a wash of twisting metal, wood and earthen structures. It’s a massive city of wolves. Shifters. But there’s poverty in this place. A desperation I can taste scents the air, mingling with the wood smoke. On the far side of the city, another set of towering doors looms in the shadows, but I can’t see beyond it. Chasten continues to lead me, and I turn to look over my shoulder and see the top-most levels of the castle peaking over the wall.
I can’t focus. My mind is a blur of noise and color. Chastan turns, leading me down an alley, where a courtyard opens, lit by oil lanterns. Laundry hangs static on lines stretched between the buildings facing the courtyard. Candles flicker in windows three or four stories above my head.
“In here,” Chastan says, motioning to one of the tall buildings, and I follow him inside.
The smell of bread and salt hits me like a freight train, and suddenly, food is all I can think about.
“Oh, thank the Goddess!” a soft female voice shrieks. A tight hallway counts as a foyer with a shabby wooden staircase to one side, but it’s sparkling clean here, even if the plaster walls are cracked, and the wood floors are gray with age and use.
A young woman tears around the corner. Light brown hair and big gray eyes fill my vision. She skids to a stop, her hand pressed against the pale cream apron covering the front of her homespun dress. She cradles the swell of an early pregnancy, just beginning to show.
Her eyes travel the length of my body from my bare toes to my face, and she cranes her neck toward the end.
She rears back, stepping into the shadows.
Chastan, however, steps between us, extending a hand to the stranger. “Lis, this is–” He pauses and then turns to me. “What is your name?”
“Lexa,” I whisper, my mind locked on the smell of food coming from around the corner. Nothing else matters. I can’t think of anything else right now, let alone the fact that I was thrown into an arena, forced to fight for my life, and no one even knew my name.
“This is Lexa. She’s–she’s Kaleb’s victor.”
The woman, Lis, glances between me and Chastan, wary and uncomfortable.
“Felicity,” Chastan says, turning back to me, “is my wife.”
I’m looking over the top of Felicity’s head at the darkened hallway leading toward wherever the food is.
“Kaleb isn’t here.”
“I know,” Chastan replies. “I doubt we’ll see him until much later tonight.”
“I made dinner.”
“Please?” The word falls from my lips before I can stop it. I sound so desperate. I am desperate. Starving.
Felicity blinks up at me, but her steely expression softens. She smiles, but it’s guarded. “There’s enough to share. Come on. You must be hungry.” Her eyes lock on my battered body, my unmended wounds. “We’ll fix those up, too.”
I don’t realize at first that Chastan is gone, that he’s left, walking back out into the night, but as Felicity offers me a stool at a worn wooden table in a warm, cozy room with a woodstove and several shelves–mostly empty save for a few jars of herbs–a name dances through my head. A name that sounds familiar in a strange way.
Kaleb.
But then a bowl of thin soup is placed in front me, and any rational thought leaves my mind.