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Fiadh’s trial will end when it’s ready, and we can’t do anything to speed it along.
I walk over to the black crystal, and touch it with the tip of my finger. It’s vibrating, but not unstable—waiting for us to do this “It’s not done,” I say. “That little movie was for her, but the next one will be for one of us.”
Khol cracks his knuckles as he glares at the spot. “Fucking bring it, dickheads. If you think you can do worse than that reflection or what Krystos did me, you’ve lost your fucking bucket.”
‘Bucket?’ Our girl mouths that at me and I suppress an urge to laugh. At least she’s not being ground down so much that she can’t joke.
“Good to know, snakelet,” I reply to him as I cut my gaze to the prince. “And you?”
Revelin’s grin is a little too wide, like he’d rather risk annihilation than another vision, but his hands light up where they’re holding onto our mate. “Fuck it. Let’s get it on, you sadists. I know what my fears are and it will suck, but I can do this.”
Fiadh steadies herself, and then lets go of the prince, walking over to me as her eyes meet mine. “How about you, Mr. Ruby? Can you survive the torturous past you alluded to coming into the light?”
“I haven’t asked our feline yet,” I say. “You don’t want to skip him, do you?”
She rolls her eyes and turns to look at Tiernan. “Are you ready to rumble if it’s you?”
His smile is feral, but he shakes his head. “It won’t be, but yes. I don’t have the same wells of abuse they have, Knuckles. It can’t try to break me like it wants. But I will be here to help anyone who needs it, and protect us all.”
“Fine,” I say as they all watch me carefully. “I accept the challenge as well.”
Like magic, the black crystal opens, swallowing the light as the next vision appears and we all wait to see who it chose to punish for our hubris.
I barely need to squint to know that it has elected to show them one of the worst moments in my long life and now I will have to live with that shame.
Twenty-One
FIADH
The magic in the room doesn’t just fade; it seeps out like blood from a slow wound, bleeding color from the world until all that’s left is the high, brittle shine of exhaustion. I blink the afterimage of my memory out of my retinas, hand shaking as I wipe the sweat—or maybe it’s tears—off my upper lip.
This shit is brutal, and if I’m really the savior of the Midnight Court, it’s going ‘bye-bye’ when I’m crowned or whatever.
The blue-white glow in my palm has gone from pulsing to a steady, urgent beacon. Our trial doesn’t bother with subtlety anymore. It shows a straight, narrow chute lined in polished black, the only light coming from the crescent mark on my palm and the faint glow of Revelin’s magic at the rear. Every footstep echoes back at us a thousand times, so the sound alone could drive someone insane if the rest of this place hadn’t already done the job.
I have just enough time to catch my breath before the corridor jolts underfoot and the floor splits down the center. My boots hang for a half-second over the gap before it slams shut again, but in that instant a fog of cold, silver vapor hisses out, coiling around our ankles and clinging to the walls.
“Did you see—?” Khol starts, but a wisp of vapor rises in front of his face, forming a split-second outline of a man in a high-collared coat with a neck shredded by vampire fangs. It screams as it vanishes, but the chill of it lingers, filling the room with impotent rage.
Tiernan looks around, his gaze predatory, before he turns to arch a brow at Dezi. The gash above his eye is crusted with dried blood, and the surrounding skin’s gone the color of an old bruise, but he barely seems to notice as he waits for the explanation.
“I have killed more people than I can remember in detail, young feline. My life has not always been one of intellect, beauty, and restraint. If the trial wants to reveal that, you shouldn’t be surprised by anything it shows you. Youth is oft wasted on the young, and the beginning of my eternity was controlled by someone who has never learned to appreciate anything but death and destruction.”
Khol’s half-shift still hasn’t retreated. If anything, it’s getting more aggressive, his scales rising and falling in restless waves across his face and throat. He sniffs the air, tongue flickering over his lips as he nods sharply at the vamp. “It’s all good, mosquito. I don’t claim to be an angel, either.”
My prince’s hands won’t stay still, and he’s humming tunelessly under his breath—a ritual for keeping panic at bay, or maybe just a leftover habit from years of stages and spotlights. Finally, he rolls his eyes as if we’re all being ridiculous and says, “Again, we’re a family. Our parents and the people who were supposed to instill good behavior sucked, and we’ve all done what we needed to in order to survive that shit. Plus, I’m really not as concerned about humans as I am about supernaturals and my people. I dare the rest of you to say you’re worried about him culling the people who would kill or put us in labs in the blink of an eye. It’s fine, fancy pants.”
Tiernan’s voice is steady as he shrugs. “It’s not my way to do the stuff you and the others have had to do, but I’m not judging you. How can I? People pay me for the privilege of my abilities and what I’ll do if our customers are threatened. It’s not exactly ‘clean hands’ shit, either.”
That’s when I really get how bad Dezi’s past must be to a casual observer with more… stringent mores. He’s concerned we’ll kick him off the island.
“Ignore the ghosts then,” Dezi says, voice flat. “They’re not alive, but I assume if you let them touch you, you’ll remember things I’d rather you not see despite your insistence that it will be fine.”
The surrounding fog seems to hear him and it coalesces into figures—dozens, maybe hundreds, all crowded together, elbow to elbow, forming a solid wall of bodies around us. Their faces are a mix of shock, grief, and hunger, and they’re all watching us.
“These aren’t mine; they’re failed challengers,” Dezi says, his voice so low I barely hear it. “I know because they all have injuries that don’t scream ‘vampire coven attack’ the moment you look at them.”
Khol squares his shoulders, the scales crawling higher up his face until they glitter at the tips of his ears. “If they want a fight, I’ll give it to them.”
