It’s only twenty feet down from here, and I smile at how easy this is compared to what I’ve been going through in the castle. I slide ten feet down an escarpment and use that momentum to hop ontoa ledge. I run along the ledge that’s only four inches wide as the wind blows across my cloak, trying to drag me off.
When I’m on top of the overhang, I deftly swing myself onto the ledge below it. My father’s there, just as I’d expected. This time, he’s wearing the tattered cloak of a Priest rather than the embroidered tunics which everyone else knows him to wear. He looks… like I imagine him. First and foremost, he’s a Priest. He may have learned to peacock around the courts, but in his heart, the Marks that cover his body define him just as much as they define me.
And immediately, thoughts of Bram and Cedric flash through my mind, of the way they’d looked on the Shadow Road. I want to ask him about them, but I can’t bring myself to. What if they’re…
“You’re alive,” he says with a soft sigh of relief, as if he’s been holding his breath this entire time. “Ainslee told me you were, but I needed to see for myself. Especially after Nyxthos turned Castle Lachlan into a battleground.”
I smile at him. “I’m alive. And a quarter of the other contestants aren’t.”
“How have you fared since then? With the other competitors, I mean. Being around that many Godforged, all of whom want to kill you, would be a real difficulty.”
I nod to him. “It’s terrible, to be completely honest. Ainslee hid me and Darian in a secret room deep in the castle. I think we’re mostly safe, but it’s miserable. This is the first time I’ve left that room in five days.”
“The life of a Priest is rarely one of luxury.” He says it with the touch of a smile.
I huff. “I wasn’t expecting gold and silver, Father. An occasional bath would be nice. Or, you know, something more than a bucket to piss in. Maybe even a pillow.”
My father’s grin spreads even wider at my complaints. “When I was just a little older than you, a dozen of the first Priests discovered that a contingent of Marek’s soldiers was going to attack one of our castles. We hadn’t created the Mark of the Spear at that point, and there was no way we could fight off even a dozen Stormbringers, much less the two hundred that were breaking off from their primary force to attack us.”
He sits down on a bit of stone and runs his hand through his hair. “We decided that the only chance we had was to pretend to be the dead Mindless that we’d fought in the field just outside that castle a few days prior. So, we covered ourselves in gore from the dead creatures. It was positively rancid.
“Then we laid down in the middle of that battlefield. We didn’t know how long it’d be before they showed up. All we knew was that they were coming. The dozen of us were amongst the dead and decaying for thirty-six hours without moving.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Is this one of those stories that gets worse the more years have passed?”
He chuckles, and it feels like I’m really seeing my father the way he was when he was younger, before all the responsibilities of leading the Order had begun to weigh on him. He feels like Bram—asoldier telling war stories—rather than a man who can’t be convinced to smile because it’d reveal his humanity.
“Maybe. Then again, I distinctly remember we bathed in the river afterward rather than let anyone inside the castle realize just how disgusting we’d become. We burned every one of those cloaks afterward.”
“Well, how’d the plan work? Did you push back the Stormbringers?”
His laughter dies. “Nine of the twelve of us died that day, but we killed every one of them to the man. We surprised them completely. We waited until they lined up just a few hundred feet in front of us to prepare a charge. Then we snuck up on them and sprayed them with dragonfire.”
It almost seems like he’s developed soft wrinkles in his face, like the years have finally caught up with him. The mask he wears around everyone seems to be cracking just a little. “This was before we could use the Mark of the Phoenix so indiscriminately. We each had a single use of it. Chains and the Cloak helped us gain a bit more of an advantage, but those Stormbringers aren’t like mages. They know how to use spear and sword as well as any Priest. It was a hard fight, but in the end, we won.”
Those first few years must have been hard. “I…” I hesitate, and his eyes darken. “I spoke to Azric Cyrus, Father.”
Suddenly, the carefree feeling of an old soldier is gone, and Rhaskar Thorne stands up, raw intensity in his eyes. “And?”
“He wants me to win the trials because he thinks that people from Sylvantia can kill Godforged soldiers permanently.”
The wrinkles next to his eyes crinkle just a little as he listens, but nothing else changes. “Why does that interest him?”
“Because he says he wants to end the war, and this will be the way he accomplishes it.”
My father turns to look at the Midnight Bridge. “He’s dangerous, Fiona. I’ve realized I cannot tell you what to do anymore. I am not at your side, and I cannot help you make the decisions you’ll have to make. The best I can do is offer some advice. You are stronger than you think you are. I do not believe that you need anyone else’s help to win these trials. You may need help to survive the time between because you can’t fight everyone else in that castle with the resources at your disposal. In the trials, though, I think you have what it takes to win against any of them.”
He turns back and looks at me. “You are special, Daughter of my Soul. I would beware any help you receive from Azric Cyrus. I hate the fact you are so bound to that imbecile Darian Emlyn, but it is what it is. They have found you a hiding place, and they most likely ask little from you. But the Prince of Bones will not give help without expecting something in return.”
I nod to him. My father, more than anyone else in the entire world, is someone that I trust so completely that I don’t even think to question him. He raised me after my parents died. He built the Order that’s saved an entire kingdom and has given me the ability to survive this terrible world.
If he tells me to beware of any help from the most dangerous champion in Nyth, then it feels obvious I should heed that warning.
He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Well, I guess that’s that. Cedric and I have been watching you through the Eye. We can’t watch all the time, but Ainslee’s been keeping us informed about things. I saw you fight the skryths, Fiona. You did well, better than I’d expect most Priests to do when facing something like them with no experience. We were thinking…”
Normally, I’d be leaping with joy at his praise, but something overshadows those emotions. It was a question I’d been too scared to ask. I’d felt confident Nyxthos couldn’t have caught them and brought them to the Shadow Road, but the possibility was there. If my father thought they were missing, it’d mean I’d killed them. I couldn’t feel those feelings right now. I couldn’t go to the next trial with their deaths on my hands. It was better to wonder than to know for sure. But if my Father had been watching the trial with Cedric, then they can’t be dead. I ask the question that’s terrified me. “Cedric and Bram are alive, aren’t they?”
He frowns at me. “Of course they’re alive. Why would you think they weren’t?”
