Page 12

“I haven’t been a child for a very long time.” I take a breath. “It will be enough.” It has to be.

Overhead, the domed ceiling’s glow increases. Brighter and brighter, until I have to squint against it. It does no good at protecting my aching eyeballs. The glow is behind my lids, working its way into my bones and blood and my very soul.

It hurts. I’m broken open, skin bursting, bones splintering, all the red and mushy parts inside me trying and failing to squirm away from the sensation. Something presses into me, something too large to be encompassed in my fragile human skin. Did I think the midwinter’s nights were cold? They have nothing on this. I hadn’t realized, before now, that cold could burn. If I had lungs left, I would be screaming. Maybe I am screaming. Maybe I’m simply frozen in this perfect moment of agony and regret. Humans are not meant to treat with gods.

Just as abruptly as I am taken apart, I’m stitched up, beat by beat to the pace of my frantically racing heart. Bones sealed into their customary positions. Skin sewn back into place with a deft hand. Even the warmth returns in bursts … bursts I belatedly realize are my panting inhales, so rapid I barely have a chance to exhale between them.

It lasts forever. It lasts a heartbeat.

When I open my eyes, I’m flat on my back in the middle of the floor, a sickle in each hand. I clench my aching fists around the textured metal of the handles, reacquainting myself with my body, testing out its willingness to obey my brain’s command to sit up.

There’s a throbbing ache in my muscles as if I’ve spent the day climbing up to the roofline of the Dregs and traveling that way, leaping over the gaps between buildings. Or lurking in a single position until my body screams, waiting for my mark to appear.

I hold up the arm I cut, not quite ready to believe I haven’t suffered some irreparable damage. My skin is smooth and unblemished … and clean. A quick search of my body finds the same to be true everywhere. Even my hair has been washed, thick with the faint wave I rarely experience. I tentatively run my fingers through it, wondering when it was taken out of the braid I always wear it in.

Magic, indeed.

Happy hunting, Daughter, a voice whispers. It sounds different from the one I heard earlier. It sounds like it’s in my mind.

“Moon?” I ask tentatively. There’s no answer. Maybe I imagined it? There’s no trick a priest could pull to speak in my mind. That’s not magic anyone in Caelria has. I sigh and roll my shoulders.

Sickles aren’t my preferred weapon. They aren’t a weapon at all. A dagger is subtler, easier to conceal, to strike, to slip away without anyone noticing. No one will miss my carrying these. They’re hardly a tool of stealth. I spin the sickles experimentally. They should feel strange in my hands, but there’s a new unearned familiarity as if I’ve spent a lifetime training with them. A gift from the Moon?

I turn for the entrance, only to find it sealed. The floor shifts beneath my feet, light scattering and then reforming into a pathway leading deeper into the shadows of the temple. I saw the full space earlier when I explored. There shouldn’t be shadows there, certainly not ones deep enough to hide the door that reveals itself as I follow the lights to the back of the temple.

Clothing hangs next to the door, supple black cloth that seems to repel both light and attention, soft and smooth and expensive. I strip quickly and pull the pieces on. The pants and shirt hug my body, leaving little to the imagination, but that ensures there’s nothing to catch on any sharp edges or give an opponent something to grab on to. I shift tentatively, finding the clothing stretches easily, allowing for a full range of movement. It even has a small pocket that almost seems designed to hold the coins Mara gave me. I’m being sentimental, but I don’t want to leave them behind.

On the next peg over, a harness hangs. I shrug it on and buckle it around my waist. After some quick experimentation, I figure out how to sheathe my sickles and draw them without running the risk of cutting myself. Again, it’s a motion that feels familiar but shouldn’t.

I take a few extra seconds to rebraid my hair and tuck it up and out of the way. No handholds there, either. I glance around, but there’s nothing to see. Why should there be?

The gods haven’t been present in Caelria for longer than collective memory exists. There is little evidence the voice in my mind actually was the Moon. It’s far more likely to be a side effect of the influx of magic. Even so, They clearly heard and accepted my offer. It doesn’t hurt to be polite. Just in case. “Ah … thank you. Whoever you are.” There’s no answer, but I didn’t really expect one.

Now, for the actual magic.

I hold my hand out and concentrate, the way Mouse tried his best to approximate teaching, focusing my attention on the space of my palm, willing the Moon’s magic to gather there. This will be my primary weapon, just like it was my mother’s during her time as the Moon’s champion. A surging shadow that swallows everything in its path. Even Death. I close my eyes and concentrate harder, willing my energy into my palms.

Nothing happens. Nothing except a headache starting between my eyes.

“What the fuck?” My mother had a whole host of magic in her arsenal, allowing her to flit about and strike where the other champions least expected it. She combined stealth and offense into an unkillable package—at least until she was murdered. Without offensive magic, I’ll have to rely on running and hiding and hoping this unearned familiarity with the sickles is enough to keep me alive. They might hold up in a close fight, but some of the other champions are sure to have long-range offensive magic. The last Sun had sunbeams to counter my mother’s moonbeams. The last Tower could annihilate an entire city block with pure destruction. Judgment doesn’t need to be close to use his magic to create crippling guilt. This is bad. Really, really bad.

The door I’m certain wasn’t there earlier slides open, revealing the deep darkness of night, the time when no one with any will to live ventures out onto the streets. It should barely be sunset, but it seems hours have passed while I was unconscious. Shit. At least this doorway leads out the back of the temple instead of into the courtyard. It’s the only chance I have to escape the first night’s slaughter.

I should have been able to channel offensive magic. Mouse swore I would have access to offensive magic. He’d seen it happen before, saw how my mother was able to channel beams of moonlight that carved her opponents into pieces. She explained how it worked to him in painstaking detail. We assumed I’d have the same magic, that it would function the way he projected. Instead, I only have the other lessons he taught me while I try to survive twenty-one enemy champions.

I’m fucked.

“At least I’ll be clean for my funeral.” It’s too late to back out now. I have to work with what I have and figure out how to survive the night—and the rest of the Trials. I slip from the temple and into the night.

The roar of the river, deep down in the gorge that runs through the hill, is horrifying in the dark. Hungry. I shiver and head for the bridge leading north off the island. I’ll still be in the Cups District, but better to put some distance between me and any champions lingering in the area. I can do this. I just need to avoid panicking. Stealth was always going to be my main strategy; it’s just going to be my only strategy now.

The bridge is remarkably normal, as bridges go. Smooth stone with a half wall designed to keep people out of the rushing waters below. I move slowly, sticking as close to the stone railing as possible. I don’t breathe once until I reach the other side and duck into the deeper shadow of the first building. There’s no sound of fighting or sign of any of the other champions. As tempting as it is to put as much distance between me and the champions’ island as possible, there’s the time to consider. I have to be back to the island by the sixth strike or risk violent expulsion from the Trials. That severely limits the range of my flight.

I look around and try to get my bearings. It should take my eyes longer to adjust to the darkness. I almost manage to convince myself I’m imagining things. But no, the strange fresh scent in my nose confirms the stories traders bring in from every part of the city and beyond. I move forward in a daze, stepping through a stone arch and into a fantasy. Greenery. Trees. Bushes. Even flowers blooming under the tender gaze of the Moon.

The sheer cost of the resources to keep all this alive staggers me. Not only do they have space up here in their city within a city, but they have gardens, too? Can this abundance even be called something as mundane as a garden?

I’ve seen gardens. Not in the Dregs—we don’t get enough Sun—but in the Peridot District. The guild grows produce to supplement the nutrition of their members so they aren’t surviving on fish alone. They can’t make money if their people are sickly, and they’re too savvy to pay the higher prices traders want from Grexium or Xiv across the Coeruleus Sea.