A breeze itched in through the narrow slit beneath the door, blowing in a strange powder across the pristine floor. I knelt, to the displeasure of my aching muscles, and drew a finger through the powder. Lifting it to my eyes, I saw what it really was.
“Sand,” I said, turning my finger over until the slightly beige specs fell back to the floor.
The thing about the Witch Trials that I’d learned… expect suffering. Whatever waited outside that door was likely a threat against my life.
Reaching for the handle, I finally understood what it meant when people said curiosity killed the cat. Because it was my need to know what waited on the other side of the door that would ultimately threaten my life.
I shielded my eyes as I was met with natural sunlight. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, and as they did I stepped out into a stadium of stone and sand.
Flabbergasted was an understatement as I took in the immense construction that was bigger than a football field, and looked more like something picked up from ancient Rome and dumped here.
Sunlight glared over the top of the stadium. Blinking back tears, I noticed that my initial hunch was right. I wasn’t aloneat all. All around the long pitch of sand were bodies, stood in an even circle. I followed it around, not recognising any of the faces until my eyes fell on Kai.
His knees were bent like a cat, looking frantically at those at his sides. Poised and ready to attack, he was shouting something that I couldn’t hear at our yawning distance.
I took another step forwards just as the person to my left made a sharp move to run. The moment the woman clad in Hunter leathers reached away from her door, the sand exploded with a boom.
Her body… or thepartsof her body, flew skyward.
Arms and legs were blown apart and ruined beyond the point of healing. They rained back down upon the stadium bed, staining the pale sands a dark brown. Her head, with its mouth creased in eternal pain, smacked the ground and rolled to a stop just ahead of me, endless eyes staring into my soul.
I clapped a hand over my mouth just as the urge to vomit overcame me.
Rule number one: don’t move until the trial begins.
As the dust settled, I frantically continued my search for who had found themselves victims to Bahmet’s deadly games. My heart sunk to the pit of my stomach as I finally found Romy Bailey.
She was standing calmly, hands clasped before her, eyes trained on me as if she waited for me to look for her. The second our eyes met she lifted up a hand and waved, jumping up and down to hold my attention.
Her mouth moved, but the sheer distance between us eradicated my ability to read her lips. I wanted nothing more than to run to her side, but after watching the Hunter beside me be blown up, I didn’t dare.
To Romy’s side was another woman I recognised. Verena. The older woman looked at no one else but Romy, shock anddisbelief evident across her face. I clung to it for a moment, then wondered if I was mistaken, and the traitor witch working with Tomin only wanted to kill Romy the first moment she got?—
Tomin. Was he here too?
My answer came quickly as I found him standing close to my left. Fire erupted in my gut, so hot I almost forgot the danger of stepping from my spot. If I hadn’t noticed Arwyn, moving just shy of Tomin’s shoulder, I might’ve risked my life.
My heart didn’t just skip a beat, it fucking leaped.
“Arwyn,” I gasped as he stepped free of his own white door. At the use of his name, Arwyn snapped his gaze to me. Our eyes met, and then he crumpled, legs giving out as he hit the ground.
Relief had never looked so beautiful.
“Don’t move!” I shouted, mind flashing with an image of his body exploding. There were no marks to suggest how far we could travel, no guidelines or clear set rules. And my mind was too overwhelmed to begin working out what trial this could possibly be. “The ground is rigged with some kind of explosives.”
“You’re alive,” Arwyn gasped, eyes tracing every inch of me.
My hand automatically moved for my healed stomach, whilst the other lifted, fingers unfurling, to show Arwyn the single bullet sitting in my palm. “I gather you have something to do with it?”
Being back in the Witch Trials could only mean one thing. Bahmet was free… free to reign chaos on witch-kind once again. Which meant that Arwyn had freely given him up.
“Your life, for his freedom. That was my deal,” Arwyn admitted, standing again and dusting his trousers off. “But… Bahmet tricked me. If I’d known it would trigger the Witch Trials, I wouldn’t have?—”
Arwyn stopped himself, chin lowering to his chest. I didn’t know what hurt more, almost dying or hearing Arwyn admit thathe wouldn’t have saved me if he’d known his decision would lead to this.
“I get it,” I replied, tone as cold as my insides.
“No, you don’t,” Arwyn snapped. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
