Lexa
Night falls on the Glade on the day of the second Trial, but the city is more alive than I’ve ever seen it. Kaleb walks steadily a few feet behind me, giving room for the pack to move out of their homes to watch me pass. It’s a procession, something sacred, I realize, as we walk further from the main gate that leads into the fae city beyond and closer to the solid gate to the lands none of these people have ever been allowed to even see.
Avery has been beyond the gate for the rare hunts that take place when food is so scarce Kaleb is forced to grovel at the king’s feet. It’s a game to the king–dangling their wolf powers in front of them, keeping them hungry and desperate. It’s all I can think about when we travel into the wide pit, where houses lean at odd angles and the stench of smoke from thousands of funeral pyres burned over the years clings to everything in sight.
But there is the gate to the outside world–to freedom I can taste it on the tip of my tongue as the wide, ancient monstrosity of metal and stone rises so high I have to crane my neck to see the top.
Just like the main gate, this one also has a smaller door. I wonder what it would be like, what it would sound like if the entire mass of the gate swung open all at once. Hundreds of people could move through it at the same time. It was be amazing.
A dream.
My gaze falls from the top of the wall to the group of women gathered at the exit. Kaleb hangs back while the women move forward, dipping their fingertips in oil that they then rub over my skin. Beads of shell and bone–meticulously carved into the cycles of the moon–are threaded through my hair. They work in silence, their fingers deft, and within minutes, I am decorated and ready to serve at the Goddess’s altar.
Kaleb moves from foot to foot uneasily as he waits for the door to open. A groan of metal from the other side sounds over the thrum of chatter all around us, and Avery steps forward to move curious onlookers away from the door, Colin and Chastan quickly backing him up. Within seconds, a large, cavernous space has opened up around us, and as the door swings open, revealing a sweeping darkness, I look over my shoulder at the city behind me. The people who took me in. The people looking at their Alpha and Luna with mixed expressions of sorrow and hope.
“I will return,” I say in a near whisper, breathless, as I turn my attention to Kaleb.
He licks his lips, a flash of teeth before he rolls his lower lip and shakes his head, his jaw tense with anger at our situation, at my being in the games, at being forced to send his mate back into the Trials while he can only watch.
We don’t have a choice. I reminded him of that only a few nights ago. He cannot get me out of the games.
Kaleb grabs my upper arm and guides me into the darkness. It’s a tunnel. Narrow and low, Kaleb has to bend sharply to even maneuver through it, and it makes my back sing with tension as well, but it quickly opens to a short flight of stone steps overgrown with moss and grass. The torchlight nearly blinds me, and over a dozen fae guards join us on the walk to the maze.
We exit the tunnel, and I keep my focus on the grass beneath my sandals and the cool night air grazing my skin, the whispering of wind through massive, old-growth trees towering over my head when we’re led into a forest. The walk is short and dark, giving me no inkling of where I am, what direction we’re going, and my wolf remains silent, dormant, and useless once more.
Disappointment washes through me. Selfishly, I’d wanted to feel her. Not my wolf–not for whatever advantage I might have gained from her during the next game but to feel the bond again. To have that sliver of connection with Kaleb, even if just for a few hours.
The forest floor gives way to cobblestone in an instant. I nearly trip in surprise then shield my eyes from the spray of lights pouring over us. A thick buzz of what feels and sounds like electricity explodes through my ears, but I can’t taste it for what it is–magic. The thick, all-consuming kind that sticks to my tongue, tasting of copper.
I squint, raising a hand to try to block the light, but Kaleb does it for me, grasping the back of my neck and forcing me to bend my head down as he rushes us through a crowd of warriors and under the cover of some kind of building, a waiting area, which expands quite suddenly in front of us.
“I can’t see a thing!” I whine, rubbing my eyes–partially blinded, I think.
Kaleb shushes me, giving me a tender squeeze on the back of the neck, then crouches to adjust the laces holding my sandals to my feet. My vision begins to clear, and I gasp, my chest convulsing, as walls of thick trees and vines rise in the near distance, a gaping, yawning entrance to the maze completely shrouded in shadows.
I can’t hear the crowd. I can’t see any spectators. In fact, it’s… quiet. Unnervingly so.
“Where are the other competitors?” I ask. Guards move in behind us, talking quietly in the fae tongue.
“This game is a one-at-a-time competition, compared to the others. Although, you might run into another victor in there if they’re lost. That happened to me.”
“You did the maze?”
“It’s not a common event. For some reason, the king seems to be using the same games as my Trial, so… yeah, I’ve done the maze.” He rises, his eyes on mine, his spine lengthening, but he looks confident, almost at ease, until a scream of epic proportions echoes from the entrance of the maze, carried on a brisk gust of wind coming from within.
“What’s in there?”
“The maze is going to be different for everyone,” Kaleb explains, busying his hands by adjusting the armor he fitted me with earlier. It’s lightweight, keeping my lower thighs and calves bare, but my chest and stomach are plated in thick scales of leather, as well as my forearms. It fits me like a glove. I wonder with unease why I need it. “This place is ancient, from before the time of the fae, according to some. There’s something beneath it —an old temple or something. They say it’s haunted. Whatever it is, it’s meant to trick you. The maze moves, Lexa. It wants you to stay. Anything you see within isn’t real. Do you understand?”
“No!” I bite out, my skin prickling as another garbled scream of pain rushes toward us.
Kaleb bites down on his lower lip and scans the fae guards behind us before clutching my hip and dragging me closer, closing the distance between us.
“Listen to me. You’ll make it out. You’ll know the way. I don’t know how else to explain it, but once I got there, once I saw–once I knew, for a fact, what I was seeing wasn’t real, that it couldn’t hurt me, I was able to find my way out. This game is… not many get out. I was one of four victors left afterward. It’s a type of culling, a mental one. It’s meant to ensure the last victors standing aren’t just there by sheer luck.” His grip on my hip tightens when another gurgled shout, this time laced with terror, ripples toward us before abruptly guttering out.
Fae guards shuffle uneasily, glancing around like they’re waiting for commands. The tension reaches a peak, and I feel my entire body caving inward. I’m a warrior. I’ve seen worse than this. Why am I petrified right now? “Look at me,” Kaleb rasps. The guards shout commands back and forth. “Lexa, look into my eyes right now.”
I do, and he grabs my face, forcing me to look him dead in the eyes even while the guards move in our direction.
“This is real. You and I are real. What happened between us was real. Whatever you see in there–” A guard tries to yank him away, but he shoves him back, hard, “Whatever you see, whatever you hear, know this.” He tucks a rogue curl behind my ear. “I will be waiting for you on the other side. I will carry you home if I have to. I will be beside you in our bed tonight. I swear on the Goddess, Lexa, I will be there.” Something in his tone shreds me to my center. Dread builds then explodes through my veins as a guard snatches my arm and roughly pulls us apart.
“Kaleb? Kaleb!”
He grunts in sudden pain when the guards push and shove him, tearing us apart. I lose sight of him, but it doesn’t matter because I quickly lose sight of everything when I’m shoved backward through the entrance of the maze. Total, complete darkness swallows me whole.
Silence closes me in an eerie embrace. I whirl toward what should be the entrance of the maze, but tall hedges spread out in every direction. A gentle breeze ripples through the leaves, and within seconds, my eyes adjust to what little light there is to be had– silver moonlight dappled in shadows.
I have to get out. That’s my only goal. Not killing, not maiming. Just surviving this new level of hell I must escape.
I take a few steps then whip my head as the hedges rustle, and in the darkness, I can just make out the shadows carved into the bushes, entrances, exits, sharp corners that I can travel toward… whatever end.
I close my eyes for a moment, digging deep, praying silently to the Goddess to show me the way, please, for the love of everything holy, Show me the way.
With a deep breath, I tear to the left and run.
The maze groans, the hedges shifting, moving, closing in and forcing me to skid to a near stop and turn to the right, where the path is less narrow and opens to multiple options for me to take. I close my eyes, letting my senses propel me forward, and I feel the breeze rushing around me as I take a sharp corner, my sandals sending a clattering echo into what I can only describe as a vat of nothing. The magic here sucks the sound from the world, like I’m in another plane of existence. Like I’m alone–utterly, wholly, alone.
It’s the one thing I’m afraid of.
A deep male scream of pain explodes through my ears. My eyes force open to see a man I recognize as a fellow victor races toward me, his face in shambles, skin flayed and one eye gouged completely. I scream. I can’t help it, especially when I notice his bloody fingers and the claw marks on his cheeks. He flies past me in a fit of terror so strong it rattles through my bones, and is gone in a flash, his wings shredded and hanging limp, dragging on the ground behind him.
He didn’t even notice me.
Kaleb’s words ring loud and clear, pulling from my fresh memory. Don’t trust anything you see here. None of it is real.
Had he been real?
The scent of his blood smells real.
Chills snake over my skin. I listen to his screams from deep in the maze.
“Lexa?”
I close my eyes. Bile rises in my throat as a familiar voice cuts me to the bone. “You’re not real.”
“Look at me. You owe me this. You did this to us.”
I shake my head. Hot tears gather along my lashes, but Austin’s voice turns pleading.
“Look at me. Look at what you’ve done to me! Did you ever love me, Lexa?”