We encountered our first real problem at the top of the mountains on the book of the second day. At which point, the thirst and hunger was finally taking its toll on every last one of us.
Lilith was irritable. Morrigan bristled at every word, refusing to hide how much she despised being ordered around. And whenever Lilith spoke to her like a child, Morrigan took it out on and Evadne.
I couldn’t quite see right, my limbs weakened, and my stomach gnawing wickedly, loud enough to make the group snicker. The ache in my left shoulder had ebbed, the wound healing slowly, but I suspected it had sohow gotten infected. I’d begun to feel feverish.
Couple that with the fatigue and cold, and I felt like death.
Which is why when noise swelled outside, excitedly, for the first ti in an entire day, I just wanted to be done with the entire Selection. My head ached. My muscles felt like lead. My body felt too tight for my skin and too hot. I was shivering and shaking.
Soraya and Altheira have their swords out when we crest the hill. A third I don’t recognise or care to, struggles with sothing behind them. What was her na again? Brianne? Brielle?
Her face is etched around a snarl as her fist closes around the silver poml of a great sword more than half her size, imbedded into a stone altar at the center of the mountain top.
Though, the sun is hidden behind the clouds, rays bounce off the steel, the da at the hilt seeming to laugh at us as Brian pulls and pulls to no avail.
"Soraya," Lilith calls out, her voice strained. "You are out numbered. Step aside, let take the sword, and I might let you live."
The shadow wielder scans the lot of us with dark eyes, her deep black leathers untouched. "I was here first. And we both know the challenge cannot be completed if the sword remains unmoved. What’s to say that if I step aside, you won’t screw us all over to trigger the end of this stage?"
Lilith smirks and I might have imagined it, but there is a flash of heat in the air. "Fighting won’t help the odds, either. You best save your strength for surviving the next two dawns. I have long been invested in becoming an ally of House Vaelthorn."
Soraya snorts. "Everyone knows your words and oath an nothing."
A soft giggle slips from Lilith and she inclines her red head towards . "Bring the sword, leech."
Soraya appraises with a long, ancient look, and her fingers tighten around her daggers like I am so threat she has perceived. "If we cannot get it out, how will that scrawny thing do it?"
Lilith doesn’t respond, only arching a dark red brow. "Do you need an incentive to move?" she purrs, green eyes flicking to Evadne.
Bile rises in my gut, the wind peppering against my skin as I blink back a heavy haze of dizziness as I spy a glance at Evadne. She’s not doing much better than , her breaths becoming thinner and thinner by the second. Her wounds have healed, but Lilith has ensured they stay reopened, leaving heavy tracks in the snow. If we both didn’t die of hypothermia, Evadne might die of blood loss.
Morrigan cuts the bind around my wrists loose and kicks forward. I can barely keep from crashing hard into the ground.
Tired. So tired...
I stumble for the sword, swaying tiredly. My mouth tastes like ash, the ache in my shoulder pulsing like a thing wanting to be acknowledged. Horridly enough, the ache reverberates in my very skull, making it hard to focus or keep my head on straight.
Brie steps aside, eyes alert and filled with suspicion.
The silver da on the sword smiles up at . Or maybe the fever has gotten to my head and I’ve begun hallucinating.
Touch , it sings to . Use , little one. Free .
I blink at it piece of tal, sharp, glinting without rust. The words repeat again and again in my head and if I hadn’t already experienced the most bizarre things since finding out what I was, then maybe I might have scread and said, "THAT SWORD IS TALKING TO !"
Instead, I reach for the crafted silver. It is warm to touch, despite the terrible cold. And that ancient voice sighs in my head. Finally.
I’ve heard once that sotis, a blade takes the shape of it’s users soul. Keeping to one blade for a long ti makes it an extension of you. In the oddest ways. I wonder if because of the godly power in the Lycan’s veins it makes their blades... sentient.
Or maybe I’m just one trip away from the looney bin.
I don’t even try. My fingers close around the blade and pull. It begins to move.
The crazy people on the other side of the door begin to cheer crazily, adding to the ache pounding along my temples. Ly-ra! They chant. And I wonder if they do not realize that retrieving this sword ans Lilith will have no use for . It ans I’ll die.
I hesitate, blinking tiredly. Still, I didn’t have a choice. I knew I had to do it. Every route lead there. Bitter tears sting at my eyes as I think the world everyone else does.
Fucking pathetic.
I rip the sword from the boulder like it was nothing but dust holding it together. The screech sounds like laughter grating against my mind. Use ! Use !
Before I can comprehend any of it, the sword is torn from my hands with a chipper complint from Lilith. "Very good."
She stares at the blade with reverence and tuts softly. And without missing a single beat, in half a second or even less than that ti, she whirls with such frightening speed, I barely catch the movent at all. The blade is engulfed in flas and she swings it viciously.
For Soraya’s head.
The Vaelthorn heir barely has ti to move. No one could have predicted that. No one could have stopped it.
But soone did.
Brianne of House Caelthorne does the unthinkable. Being the only one close enough to reach Soraya in ti, she doesn’t hesitate, not one breath, before stepping into Lilith’s path and taking the strike for Soraya.
The strength in it takes Brianne’s shoulder and cleaves her chest down to her torso. And her body bursts into red flas.
A shriek of outrage cleaves the world in half. It might have co from Soraya. It might have co from the other side of the arena. But it is a heart-rending sound, the sound of a world, an entire universe in the body of one person being destroyed.
"Brie!" Soraya howls, completely undone. She drops to the ground, forgetting herself, her blades, her own hands as she reaches for the flas, a shadow of darkness engulfing the body and putting it out. "Oh, gods no," she sobs. "Gods, no."
There’s nothing left to salvage. The body burned beyond repair, already turning to black dust.
"I suppose that leaves nine," Lilith says nonchalantly.
When Soraya finally looks up, it is with icy glittering rage. With such unending pain and madness that my knees weaken. Because I recognise that look. I’d seen it in Zara’s eyes before I killed her. Whatever the heir of Caelthorne was to Soraya, they had loved each other.
She launches herself at Lilith, screaming.
And that, is the ripple that explode into the tidal wave, because every alliance seems to shatter at that.
Altheira slams into Morrigan. Evadne bends back in an impossible angle and sinks her teeth into the neck of the woman who had taken pleasure in ripping open her wounds again and again. I couldn’t be bothered with her na, though she wears the sigil of the bear over her heart.
With her teeth. No. Not quite. Evadne’s body seems taller, trimr sohow. Her hair longer, her skin furrier. Her teeth are sharper than any fangs or canine I have seen. And when they rip into the woman’s neck, they take a substantial amount of skin, leaving only bone peeking out.
Dead.
One more death and the Selection will be forced to a stop. With the blade in Lilith’s hands, that’d make her the winner.
I couldn’t let soone like her win. Not with all the blood on her hands. Still, I didn’t know what to do. That, and my body haa begun to go numb, my breaths hot enough to burn. I take a step back from the chaos. And another. Lilith’s steel of flas slashes against Soraya’s shadows. Evadne is turning into a furry beast. Altheira has the grass underneath her feet growing into lecherous vines and--
I can’t even do a thing, other than shiver and fight the urge to vomit.
The world around is falling apart and... I just want to take a bath and sleep for a long ti. I’m tired. I’ve been tired for a long ti now. It wears on and--
Evadne’s scream snaps my head up, bringing back to the the mountain top and all the blood drains from my face as I see Altheira injured on the floor. Not dead. Unconscious. Evadne on her knees in front of her, lips parted in an open scream as Morrigan seems to wield the air around her, hands raised, lips curved in a wicked smile as she begins to twist and shred, Eva’s insides apart.
Only then do my legs move, my hands picking Brianne’s fallen blade as I race for Evadne. My wrist flicks more out of muscle mory, the sword rising to cut Morrigan down.
But she raises a hand and without looking, throws back with a shield of wind. I hit the ground, skull rattling against it.
I shake off the blur, rolling to my feet. Evadne’s blue eyes are blood-shot, her chest heaving and her throat choking on the blood that cos up from her insides. Slowly, I realize. Morrigan is killing her slowly.
"Stop it!" I yell, racing for them, only to be knocked down a peg like I am nothing.
"Once I am done with her, I will cut out your heart next," Morrigan says.
It starts as frustration and fatigue. And then, it builds into despair. Does it matter if I have this strength, this power if I can barely make a dent? If people like Zyra and Brianne still die for no reason? If Evadne who had been compelled and forced into protecting dies because of it?
Why did I need protecting? I am not a weakling.
The anger I feel isn’t human. I feel the stirring in my gut. "Stop."
The word is little more than a whisper, but it echoes. The mountain beneath my feet rumbles slightly and everything seizes. The fighting. The screaming. The shout from the crowd outside. Lilith stops. Soraya stops.
Everything. Stops.
Because I will it. I command it.
Sothing cruel flicks an eye open inside and I cock my head at Morrigan, extending my hand to her. "Co here."
Her eyes widen with horror as her legs move of their own volition. No. Of my volition. Because I will it to happen. Her eyes slacken. Her lips parting on a cry that never makes it out.
"Take it," I say in a whisper as soft as a caress.
Morrigan takes the blade from my grasp, her body trembling as her mind fights with her body, against the words that leave my lips.
But it is futile. She doesn’t know what I am. No one does. Not even .
A smile curves against my lips. "Die."
Tears roll down her cheeks, her eyes pleading as she turns the blade on herself, angling it in front of her heart. She fights, hard, to break free from , but she loses.
The world seems to hold is breath as she shoves the sword into her chest and pierces her heart. Blood sputters from her lips and her eyes still beg as she twists the blade, ripping her own heart apart.
Then, she falls and does exactly as I told her to. She dies.
Soft laughter echoes in the air. And it takes a mont to realize it is coming from .
I look up and find gazes on . They look at like I am sothing abominable. They look at like I am a monster.
That snaps out of the haze. And everyone else out of my ’whisper’.
How... Why... What have I done?
And because there is nothing left tethering them to hold off bloodshed, Lilith doesn’t see Soraya move until the latter kicks her off the mountain’s cliff.
I don’t know what cos over . I’d wanted nothing more than Lilith’s death seconds ago. But as she topples over the edge, a visceral cry tears from my chest. "Lily!"
I shouldn’t have been able to make it in ti. But I throw my torso half way over the edge, catching her wrist before she falls several feet down, a height not even a Lycan might survive.
Her green eyes are wide with fear as she dangles from above ground by my grasp alone.
"Let the fucking bitch die, Lyra," Evadne growls behind .
The wind whips at my eyes and the words leave before I can think them. "I can’t. She’s my... my... sister."
It’s the fever. It’s finally gotten into my head. But I cannot let Lilith go. When I tell myself I should, my hand only wraps around her tighter.
Lilith’s eyes snap to mine. At the tears brimming to my eyes as I struggle to pull her off the verge of death.
Eventually, her hand braces against the rock, gripping hard enough to pull herself back over the edge.
I pant, wiping at my hands as she staggers, voice shaky as she whispers her thanks.
But I must be a naive fool. Because right after Lilith thanks for saving her life, she shoves off the cliff.
Perhaps, it was falling off a cliff again, feeling the wind thrash against my skin with vengeance, or maybe it was the view of the skies as I dropped. It was the sa as I’d dreamt it to be. I stop screaming, staring up at it as I fall to sure death.
And instead of fear, I feel sothing else as I reach up, to feel the wind, to capture the skies in my grasp.
I feel everything.
And suddenly, I rember.
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