“Areyougoing to take a break?” she asked with a meaningful eyebrow arch.
The sunset bell rang well over an hour ago. Many of my neighbors—or at least their children—would soon climb into their beds. Even though I could easily keep going, the crack of my pickaxe against stone would echo through the chasm, keeping the babes awake.
“Don’t you worry. I’m stopping now.”
“Good.” She looked down, frowning at the ever-present pin on my tunic. “And don’t forget you have another trial tomorrow.”
My mood instantly soured. I’d done my best to put the competition out of my mind, focusing all my energy and effort into mining sunstones and building myself a new home. The plants had well and truly infiltrated my old cottage, but they hadn’t expanded beyond that. It had kept me busy enough that Tormund, the Everstone, and all that went with it were out of sight and very much out of mind.
I had not thought of Tormund once.
Not even when I’d lain awake at night, staring up at the vaulted ceiling and wondering what he was up to in the wait between trials.
Yulla snapped her fingers in front of my eyes. “Don’t you dare disappear like that on me while I’m talking to you about the trials. I know you want to pretend like they don’t exist, but you’ll have to participate, whether you like it or not. And you can’t zone out when scaling ropes over the chasm.”
I swallowed. Yulla was right, of course. I’d watched enough previous competitions to know what came next. We had to cross the chasm by a series of rails, then scale a rope to the top of the mountain, where the watchtower sat. I flexed my hands, wincing at the slight sting from my raw callouses. I’d need to wrap my palms before tomorrow morning, or the ropes were going to be a problem.
“I’m listening to you. I just…”
“Just take it slowly. You said before you didn’t want to win, right?” She shrugged. “So while everyone else is rushing across the rails to get to the rope, you can take the bridge.”
The bridge—it was the option for crossing the chasm for anyone who did not feel equipped to handle the rails. But not once had I ever witnessed someone actually choosing the bridge. If you were entering the Fittest Under the Mountain, you’d have trained for this very thing, and you’d feel confident in your ability to make it across.
There were no nets. There were no harnesses or ropes to save you from a fall.
Which was why taking the bridge meant you’d place lower than anyone who didn’t, no matter how quickly you made it across.
“Of course I’ll take the bridge,” I said, heaving a sigh. “But I don’t want to think about it any more tonight. It’s been a long day. See you in the morning for breakfast?”
Yulla opened her mouth to argue, then seemed to think better of it. “You betcha. Sleep well, Astrid. And don’t forget, you have a place at mine if you ever need it.”
Yulla wandered back over to her house, and I leaned on the handle of my pickaxe, considering the progress we’d made. After only a few days, we’d managed to make a small indention in the stone. Lilia’s partner, Ragnar, had helped a couple of hours every evening, as well as a few others who weren’t competing in the trials. Another couple weeks of this, and I might have enough shelter for the cot Jostein had found me. Right now, it perched right beside my flower boxes.
“What happened here?” a voice sounded from behind me.
I whirled, heart jerking up into my throat. Tormund stood only a few steps away, arms folded over his chest, brow raised in surprised question. My heart continued to pound. I hadn’t seen him for days, and I’d kept wondering when he’d show his face. Ihad started to think perhaps he never would, that he’d been right about the fake Everstone, that he’d found the real one, and that he’d run back to Azraak without bothering to say, “Ha ha, I won, you lose!”
My pickaxe clattered to the stone floor, and heat flooded my cheeks. I hadn’t realized I’d let go of it. “I thought you’d left.”
He dragged his gaze from my plant-entombed cottage and cocked his head at me. “Very odd assumption. Not sure what could have given you that idea.”
“I haven’t seen you for days,” I said.
“My friends and I have been preparing for the next trial.” His gaze returned to my cottage, then moved on to my new dwelling—what little of it there was. “And you appear to have grown an entire garden that has kicked you out of your own house?”
The mocking tone in his voice made me bristle. “Not that it’s any of your business, but…well, yes.”
“And instead of trimming these vines back so you can get inside, you’re buildinganotherhome?” He chuckled. “You do have shears, don’t you? Why not just make some space?”
I frowned. “Because I don’t want to cut them back. Look at them. They’re thriving.”
He looked at the plants, then looked back at me. A strange expression crossed his face. “You actually mean that, don’t you?”
“Well, yes.” I gestured emphatically at the world around me. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s not like we have grass and trees in The Glass Peaks. Few living things survive down here in The Deep. Us and the daises and those vines. I’m not going to cut them back, not even a little.”
His lips tilted up. “And so you’ve abandoned your home to them. How long will it take you to build another?”
“Six months, tops, as long as I have some help.”
