Lexa
Days pass in a blur of pain, hunger, and little sleep. From the moment the stars begin to fade in the sky to the second the moon rises over the Glade, I’m in the sparring ring. Kaleb is always there, always watching, always discerning every movement in a cutting silence that I believe made it possible for me to dissociate my feelings, worries, and outright concern over my situation and the welfare of my friends and the task at hand.
I can’t get out of this.
There is nothing I can do to change my circumstances.
“Again,” Kaleb says with no emotion, his tone dry and heavy as it bounces through the ring, off every curve of rusted metal. I throw the spear. Again and again, until my shoulder aches, and I have to switch sides. I’m right handed, but he has me practicing on the left side as well, just as often, in the event I… lose my arm.
“Again,” he bellows.
I send the spear tearing through the hot, sticky air. It pierces through the abdomen of the practice dummy in the center of the ring and lodges itself in the dirt. Kaleb doesn’t react even though it’s the best throw I’ve accomplished all morning.
I stagger backward into the shade, sweat pouring down my temples and dripping down my neck. My skin gleams as I wipe my brow with the back of my hand and shake my head when he motions for me to come back, to keep at it.
“I’m done. I won’t do this anymore. I don’t need this training, and you know it. All fucking week, you’ve known it. You’re just trying to keep me busy and tired so I don’t scale the fucking wall like I want to.”
“This is what you’re going to do until the Trials begin.”
“It’s been a week. What’s the holdup?”
This is the most we’ve spoken all week. Kaleb isn’t a chatty guy by any means, and he normally looks at me like I’m the worst thing to ever happen to him and his pack, and that he’d rather be getting his teeth pulled one by one than spending a single second in my company.
“You really think I know?”
“Well, you’re the Alpha King of the Glade, aren’t you? Surely–”
“I’m a slave, Lexa. My title means very little.”
“Then why do you even have it?”
He’s quiet for a moment, his jaw working as he grinds his teeth–annoyed with me, I think. Of course he is. There isn’t a kind, amiable bone in this man’s body.
I sink to the dirt, splaying out my legs as sweat drips down my neck. I still wear the clothes Lis gave me. I’m saving my new dress for the Trials. I won’t waste it here, in the dirt, where it won’t be stained with blood after a long, hard day’s work.
I’ll sweat in rags. I don’t care.
Kaleb slowly walks toward me, stepping into the shade, and leans his shoulder against one of the metal posts holding up the rusted canopy meant to keep us out of the heat.
I look up at him, tired, hot, and irritated. “I guess I should be seeking Silas out whenever I have questions about my captivity.”
“Silas won’t be helpful either.”
“He’s a lot more talkative than you are,” I reply, reaching up to unravel the tight braids currently making my head pound.
He rolls his lower lip between his teeth as he eyes me, but his expression is softer than before. Still, he’s silent, and I can’t stand it anymore.
“You know what?” I laugh bitterly, glaring at him. “I’ve been through real hell and then got dropped into an even deeper level of hell where I’ve lived for the past week. This is insane. You know that, right? The way your pack is forced to live? Gods, when my cousins find out…” I shake my head. “You’ve just had me in this pit, practicing moves I already know. You don’t talk to me. You don’t answer my questions. Lis walks on eggshells around me and acts like she can’t talk openly with me when I ask her questions, so I’ve just been alone–”
“Because she knows you’re going to die soon and isn’t trying to get attached,” he says bluntly, and I laugh.
“Oh please. You don’t know me.”
“I know enough to know you’re a spoiled princess of an Alpha King. I know you’re used to food in your belly and a world that bows to you instead of the other way around.”
“You don’t know shit about me,” I repeat caustically. Memories of the shore of Teshka funnel back, and the deep, dark grief that’s been fading with each passing day twists into guilt I’ve been trying to beat into submission. He must catch a flicker of it behind my eyes because he latches onto it.
“Overconfidence is a killer, Lexa. You think you’re ready for whenever the king comes to call, but you’re not. What you’ll see–what you’ll be forced to do in those games… it’ll change you for life. Even if you win, you’ll lose.”
“How would you know?” I shake my head again, chuckling. “It’s not like you’ve even stepped foot in that arena before–”
“I won.”
My heart stops. I slowly look up at him, but his expression is cast in shadow, his eyes gleaming a soft gold in the pockets of sunlight dancing through the holes in the awning above his head.
I open my mouth to argue, but only a strange whine comes out–shock, I suppose, because that’s all I feel as I gaze up at this… beast of a man.
“I wasn’t supposed to win,” he says as he crouches, his muscles flexed all over and glistening with sweat. I feel that slight ache I’ve been berating myself internally to ignore, but I can’t help it. Goddess, a man like him back home? Every girl in Silverhide would have been going absolutely, positively feral over him and doing anything in their power to get his attention. “Just like you’re not supposed to win.”
“It’s fixed, then? It’s a rigged system?”
“Of course it is.” He leans back until he’s seated on the ground just a few feet away from me, his arms resting on his knees. His scarred knuckles pop as he flexes and then curls his hands. “It’s for entertainment but also distraction. Silas has been talking about a rebellion brewing for so long I’m beginning to wonder if he’s dreaming it up, but the king called the games, and Silas believes it’s to cover some ongoing strife between the king and the rebels.”
I’m not sure what to say because this man hasn’t spoken plainly to me like this… ever. I’ve only been here a week, sure, but he’s acted like I’m some parasite until this very moment. Whatever. I can keep my cool.
“What does these games have to do with a rebellion?”
“I don’t know. Not yet. Silas wants me to join, but I can barely keep my own people alive as it stands. The fae could cut off our access to food immediately. Work the servants they use from the Glade to the bone. Separate families. I walk a fine line with the king as it stands, and I can’t do anything to risk my people, even if in the off chance it–”
“Frees them?”
“The shifters in Pantharas will never be free, even with a different king on the throne. It was not what our kind was brought here for.”
I think of the songs and folklore I grew up with, about the tribes who faded into the mists that came at the end of the war that saw the downfall of the Firestone Queens and the veil. Mist that… took me, too.
I think of Austin’s dying moment again and curl into myself.
“You still don’t believe I’m from Eastonia, do you?”
“I don’t know what to believe about you,” he answers. “It doesn’t matter, to be honest. It won’t change your outcome.”
“What will?”
“Training,” he says, and to my great surprise, he smirks.
“You know, that’s how I realized you and Silas were related. That smirk right there.”
“We’re not as similar as I’m sure you–and he–would like to think.”
“Oh, I can see it plainly now. Whatever genetics made him kind and fun skipped you entirely, though.”
He flashes another soft but short smirk, like he doesn’t know how to fully smile.
“I have a sister,” I tell him, and I’m unsure why I feel the need to even bring up Nora given the circumstances. “She’s a year younger than me. We’re barely similar, but everyone can tell we’re sisters. She’s like Silas–funny, soft, and sweet.” I taper off as her memory chokes me half to death. I wonder if I’ll ever see her again. “She loves to paint, whereas even my handwriting is atrocious. She can sing so beautifully with this high, lifted voice, and I… sound like a man, I’m sure. I don’t sing often. It’s just been me and her for a long time.”
“You don’t have brothers?”
“No,” I breathe, finally meeting his eyes. “Gods, no. I nearly killed my mom, and when Nora was born and almost finished the job, my parents swore they were done.”
He shifts his position, leaning closer with a look of confusion crossing his features. “But your father is an Alpha King? Who is his heir if he doesn’t have sons?”
I arch my brows.
He narrows his eyes.
“You?”
“Of course. I will be Alpha Queen of the Deadlands and all the tribes one day. Is that so hard to believe?” Now, I’m leaning toward him, the space between us shrinking slowly with every breath. “Because I’m a woman?”
“The right woman can rule, sure.”
“What are you saying, then? That I can’t?”
The door to the sparring ring squeals as it opens, revealing the shabby buildings of the Glade melting in the hot sun. Chastan walks with determined steps in our direction, but his face is etched with unease, which has Kaleb slowly rising. “What is it?”
“You’re being summoned to the castle tonight.” He hands Kaleb a folded piece of parchment.
Kaleb scans the contents before crumpling the paper in his hand and turns to me briefly. “Fuck. Any word at the gate from Silas?”
Chastan shakes his head, his skin paling a touch.
Kaleb runs his fingers through his hair and turns back to me. “Go to the house with Chastan. Bathe and have Lis help you dress.”
“For what?” I ask, but Kaleb is already stalking out of the ring, and I realize quite suddenly that the bubble we’d been trapped in while seeking solace in the shade… that’s all it was. I’m still as alone as ever.
Chastan purses his lips, but I rise and gather the water bag I’ve been hauling back and forth from the house for days now and hike it over my shoulder.
“What’s this about? Are the Trials starting tonight?”
“I doubt it,” he says, slowing his pace to allow me a moment to catch up with him as we weave through the city. “The king likes to put on a show, and that includes for the sponsors–the rivals.” He stops under an awning in front of a small shop selling leather. “Listen, you need to trust Kaleb, all right? I know he’s–he can be–”
“A real fucking asshole?”
“Sure,” he says, nodding in confirmation but grits his teeth. “He… he knows a lot about the games.”
“Because he is a champion?”
“I didn’t realize he told you.”
I step closer. “He doesn’t seem to like to talk about it.”
“There’s a good reason why.”
Lis rushes around the corner of the street in a sweat, carrying a length of smooth, woven burnt orange fabric. She sees us and huffs with marked irritation, hustling to our sides and red in the face. “Chastan! She has to leave in an hour!”
“Go,” he says to us, and I look over my shoulder at him while Lis worries over the dress and what to do with my hair.
The look on his face makes me wonder what happened to Kaleb in that arena and what, exactly, I’m up against.
Because it has to be more than just surviving, doesn’t it?