Lexa
Bright pain laces down my back with every step as I walk out of the woods and onto pearls of gravel. I’m not sure where I am, but it’s not the port. A shadow rises in the near distance. My vision ebbs in and out–a wall. The Glade. I’m standing on a rise and looking down at the city, at the capital of Pantharas, and beyond.
My knees give out. Blood trails down my back. Hands grip my arms, yanking me upright. “Kaleb?” I croak, squinting against a rush of bright light threatening to blind me, but everyone around me is speaking in the fae tongue–and rapidly.
I pick out a few words but nothing substantial. Nothing that gives me any idea of what happens next.
I just won the Trials.
I won.
I did it, Kaleb. I won for us–
“I am her sponsor now. Let her go!” Silas’s voice rips through the fray, and suddenly, I’m in his arms, which isn’t right. He shouldn’t be here. He kept having to leave, to go to the Highwoods, wherever that is.
“K–Kaleb?” I cry out. Silas scoops me into his arms, pressing me against his chest. He’s arguing viciously with the fae guards surrounding us. Everyone is shouting at each other. There’s a tension in the air I can taste, and then I hear the telltale sound of metal sliding from holsters, and without warning, Silas’s wings flare from his back.
“Wait–” I beg, but in a split second, we’re airborne, and my voice dies in my throat.
Wind rushes around me. It’s almost like spiriting, but without the feeling of being pulled to pieces. My stomach drops to my toes as the air grows thin and cold, and again without warning, we’re funneling to the ground. Silas’s wings tuck tight around us, strengthening the rate of the fall, and I fight the darkness sweeping through my body, threatening to pull me under.
“I’m blacking out!” I warn, but my voice is lost in the rip current of the air whirling around our bodies.
His wings expand once more, velvet and dark blue taking up what’s left of my vision. Why can’t I see? Why can’t I feel my body? I mouth Silas’s name against his chest, but my teeth rattle, and my bones lurch when he hits the ground, knees bent, and a second later, he’s running at a full sprint with me tightly secured in his arms.
“Secure the house!” he shouts, and dozens of footsteps thunder over what sounds like cobble stone. “Every man surrounding the manor, NOW!”
I taste smoke. I open my eyes to an orange haze. It is smoke. Something’s on fire. I barely have a chance to register what’s happening before the night sky bleeds into the ceiling of the servants’ quarters of the manor, then the grand foyer, then–then rooms I don’t remember exploring. Silas bursts through a door and shouts, “She’s injured badly! Her back is flayed!”
Blake’s voice rises above his. The ceiling blurs, the chandelier nothing but orbs of hazy golden light. “Lie her down on her stomach.”
A soft, shallow rug meets my skin. I turn my head to the side, watching multiple sets of feet dance around me in slow motion, like time has slowed to a crawl. “Kaleb?”
“He’s not here, Lexa,” Silas’s voice says, ragged and full of emotion I can’t decipher. “Stay awake for us.”
A shooting pain screams up my spine. I don’t remember being this hurt, but adrenaline will do that. My mind tangles over what happened in the forest, memories overlapping out of order. I killed Meg.
I killed her.
I’m the champion.
I won.
“Fuck,” Blake sneers, pulling the back of dress apart until I’m barely covered. Warm, wet liquid rushes over my skin, my sides, pooling around me. Blood. My blood.
Someone kneels near my head, their touch warm on my cheek. It’s familiar. A small, delicate hand, like a child’s.
“I can find something to dull the pain–”
“There’s no time.” Blake’s voice is rough, distant, like he’s talking through gritted teeth from across the room, but I can feel his hands on my back. “She shifted with this injury. It tore open her back. Fuck, I can see her spine–”
I take a shattering breath as the room spins, but then the person beside me lies down, her face turned to mine. Chessie smiles softly at me, her big green eyes dancing with mingled fear and a sense of hope.
I’m dying.
I’m seeing her because I’m dying.
“I’m going to do it. I’m going to put her back together again,” Blake says in a shaky voice.
“The fighting has started, Blake, we need your powers on the shields–”
“I’m not leaving her like this. She’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. I just need to–she has to be awake for this–”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I promised I would,” I say to Chessie, my eyes blurred with tears. “I’m so sorry. I love you so much–” Pain like I’ve never felt in my life tears me open. Someone’s screaming. I realize as my mind swims with Blake’s power that it’s me. I’m screaming, my voice lifting to the ceiling in shrieks of agony that makes the chandelier rattle. Screaming as his powers dig into my head, and suddenly, I see red. Blood red. Then it fades, and it’s quiet, empty, like I’m floating in a pool on my back against a backdrop of stars, and there’s no one, no sound.
I stay suspended like that for what feels like a matter of seconds, and then I sink, unable to breathe.
“They’ve taken the outer city. The villages beyond are under our control now, too, but the inner capital and the Glade are heavily guarded. We can’t get through the king’s magic. Once our men are in, they’re at his mercy.” Silas’s voice is very far away. I reach for it, my fingers curling around soft cotton.
“Where are they keeping Kaleb?”
“The dungeons, I presume. They’re asking for her. She won. She’s the king’s victor. He’s meant to make a show of her in front of the lesser kings, to show the games still hold weight. That the rioting means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I’ve been told the king will make a deal if Lexa is presented to him in the arena.”
“What are our options?” It’s Blake’s voice. He’s closer. I feel his touch smoothing down my bare back, his power like little sutures against my skin, pinching.
“You have to get in front of the king, subdue him somehow. We can’t access the inner city again until he’s taken care of.”
I open my eyes to slits. We’re not in Silas’s house anymore. The walls are bare plaster, old, and a window is open to fresh air. It’s raining but light. Daytime. Maybe midday. I close my eyes when the light becomes too much.
“Hannibal is the one keeping the shields up around the arena. I could feel him there. We’re linked somehow, likely after my torture at his hands. I took a piece of him when he took a piece of me.”
“The king will do what it takes to keep Hannibal safe. He’s his most trusted advisor. You’ll have better luck facing the king himself.”
“Look at what we’ve done, Silas, and tell me the king still trusts Hannibal. He did not see this coming. He still does not realize I’m here.”
“What are you asking me to do?” Silas growls, and I feel the air in the room shift as a door opens outside of my blurred line of light. Soft footsteps creep into the room, but it’s not enough to dissuade Silas and Blake from continuing their line of conversation.
“I need access to the orrery tower at the castle. I need Hannibal’s scrying altar, his crystals. One crystal was not enough to contact Eastonia, but using the altar will be enough to get in touch with the Firestone Queen of Eastonia. Once she knows where we are, she will come. I am willing to bet my life on it.”
“You would be betting your life on it!” Silas shouts. “The second you step past those shields, the king’s entire army will be on your ass–”
“Shhh,” Chessie whispers. “She needs to rest. You’re both being so loud! I just got her back to sleep.”
My eyes pop open, but I can’t turn my head. I’m trapped, my spine locked.
“I’m sorry, darling,” Silas murmurs.
“Can this conversation take place elsewhere, please? You’re both making me nervous.”
“There isn’t a conversation to be had. I have to go back to the city,” Blake says tartly. The bed shifts as he rises. “I’m running out of time. I have to use my powers while I still have them. I need to contact my cousin. Your resistance doesn’t have the power it needs to take control of the castle, but she does.”
My moan of pain alerts everyone to the fact I’m… alive, and based on the look on their faces when they rush to the side of the bed, coming in full, startling view, they’re surprised.
Chessie stands between Silas and Blake, her curly blonde hair piled on the top of her head, her eyes wide and full of life. She clutches Silas’s forearm and blinks down at me looking… so alive. She’s alive?
“You’re–” I manage one word before pain ghosts through my back and seizes my lungs.
“Don’t,” Chessie rushes out, kneeling beside the bed. Silas’s fingers creep over her shoulder, holding her there, like he’s prepared to yank her away if I lash out. “You’re okay. You just–you nearly severed your spine shifting while injured. Blake fixed it. You’re going to be sore for a while, but you’re okay–”
“You died. I watched you die–”
“I–I was–” She looks at Blake for help.
Blake looks at me, his violet eyes dim.
“You can heal?” Three words are enough to send my vision into a tailspin. My eyes flare with light before settling, dark spots skittering in my peripheral like bugs.
“A new talent I discovered during my… adventure here,” he says lightly. I’d hit him if I were able to move. “It’s not the same as what Kenna and Misty can do.”
“Obviously,” I rasp, looking at Chessie again. “You–you were brought back to life?”
Chessie pinches her lips closed. Silas squeezes her shoulder lovingly, his chest heaving. I look up at him and notice his eyes are downcast on Chessie before he closes them, a flash of guilt darkening the planes of his face.
“What have you done, Blake?” I murmur, pain lacing around my ribs.
“Lets give them a moment,” Silas whispers to Chessie. I want to grab her as she turns from the bed and rises, following Silas out, but I’m in so much pain I can barely move.
Blake replaces her, kneeling beside the bed. He rests his head against the mattress only inches from mine. He’s completely undone. Exhausted. Burned out. I can feel it in the space carved out between us.
“You knew better than to shift with an injury like that. You broke nearly every rib. You had a punctured lung and several fractured vertebrae, and your muscles were mangled nearly beyond repair. It should have killed you. The only reason you survived is because your heart continued to pump blood through your body despite being in shock the entirety of that Trial.”
“I had a game to finish,” I whisper, and he moves his head, his eyes angled to meet mine. “What did you do to me, Blake?”
“I call it reanimation because I’m not sure it has a name. I knitted you back together using my powers. Just imagining where things are supposed to go, where they’re supposed to be. I willed it into existence. It worked.”
“And you did this to Chessie?”
“For the first time. Silas had a hold on their mate bond. She was still there, a flicker of her life left, but dying, and he refused to let it go. It gave us time. It gave me time to… change her destiny. It’s not natural. It’s not a form of healing, Lexa, what I can do. I forced her back to life, forced her back together, and the real healing process has been slow. She’s only alive because Silas is her mate–”
“That can’t be possible–”
“It is. It’s rare. I think fae being mated–fated mates–with a shifter is something that is so rare we’re never going to find any mention of it in books or our shared histories, but they are mates, I confirmed it, and they knew before she went into her final round. She didn’t tell you and regretted it immensely. She was scared to tell anyone. Silas begged me to save her, and I did. It took… everything I had at the time. He gave her his life. Gave up his immortality to keep her here. You were easier because your lifeline is like steel. You’re an Alpha King’s daughter. You’re meant for something great, a main point in the tapestry of our universe. My powers knew that. I had to force it with Chessie, and it nearly killed me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, but there’s nothing we can do about it now. You need to rest. Silas is bringing in the same healer who’s been taking care of Chessie. She’s a shifter like us and very talented. In a few days–”
“Where’s Kaleb?” My voice shatters.
Blake licks his lips, looking absolutely defeated. “He was taken to the dungeons after the start of the hunt. Several of the Alphas of the Glade under his rule were also apprehended. There’s a mass execution planned in three days’ time for… all of them.”
“Why?”
“For aiding in the resistance. The fighting began just as the hunt did. It’s happening. Their war. The war that’s meant to spill onto our soil. The war I saw and the reason I’m here.”
“I have to go back–” I try to push up, but my spine tingles. Blake pushes me down as gently as he can.
“This isn’t your fight anymore. It’s mine. I have a plan. Maeve will come. She’ll come in time, I swear.”