Elemental Trial, page 23
Regardless, he was still here. And that gave me an idea.
“Riley…” Iris was eyeing me. “Don’t even talk to him. Nothing good can come of it.”
“I just need a few answers,” I said. I gave her a pained smirk. “He won’t hurt me. He’s already given us to Onora, he won’t want to damage his prize.”
Iris pointed to her leg with a “history has totally proven you wrong, girl” sort of look. I didn’t even believe what I was saying, but against my better judgement, I found myself striding across the stone bridge to the platform and stopping outside the group of sparring children. And they were sparring, not playing like I’d originally thought.
Some of them, the witches and other magic users, I assumed, wielded swords made of sticks they clacked together with surprising ferocity. A young shifter changed into a panther kitten and lunged at her opponent. I thought it was adorable, right up until she started chewing at her opponent’s arm like it was infused with catnip. Her opponent—a witch—howled in pain and tried to kick her off, managing to catch the panther beneath the ribs and send her stumbling back with a pained mewl.
Lukas watched them all impassively. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even step in. I couldn’t imagine what he was looking for. The guy wasn’t an idiot. He was ruthless and cunning and had absolutely zero remorse or compassion, but what could he possibly see in these kids other than the sadistic pleasure that they were training for war instead of having a childhood?
He looked sharply at the next pair of children—a couple of wolf shifters—as they attacked each other, popping back and forth between their human and animal forms. The boy managed to bite the girl’s front left paw and she winced, limping backwards. The boy immediately shifted to human form.
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to bite that hard! Did I hurt you?”
The girl shifted back, wincing. “It’s okay. It’s not the worst—”
Lukas smacked her across the back of the head, sending her sprawling. I let out a shocked cry as he brought his hand around to the boy, sending him to the ground too. I looked around, sure that someone would step in, but the few parents who were paying attention watched impassively from the sidelines. One even nodded their approval.
Lukas knelt next to the boy who rubbed the spot where Lukas had hit him, tears in his eyes. “Do you remember what I told you?” Lukas said.
“To not…To never show weakness,” the boy blubbered. He sniffed hard, trying to keep his tears at bay. “I’m sorry.”
“Not yet you aren’t. If you were, you’d never do it again. Never show weakness, any of you,” Lukas said to the rest of the children who’d stopped to watch, eyes wide. “It’s only fuel for your enemies. It shows them that you can be hurt.”
The girl rolled over, still clutching her injured hand. She tried to push herself up but collapsed, whimpering. My heart clenched. I fought against every desire to run out there and help her up.
“Stop,” Lukas said as the little boy stepped forward. “What did I just tell you?”
“But she needs help,” the boy said meekly.
“She needs to get up on her own. Nobody can help her. Only then will she get stronger.”
The other kids watched as the girl let out another whimper. Her hand was starting to swell, but she pressed it against the ground as she tried pushing herself up again. She gritted her teeth. Her arms shook. I clenched my fists, breath stuck in my throat, until at last she pushed herself to sitting and gingerly got to her feet.
Lukas nodded. “Good. Don’t forget what I said again.”
“I won’t, sir,” the girl said meekly.
Lukas looked right at me, like he knew I’d been watching the entire time. He took his time standing from where he knelt and pushing the little boy back to his friends. I watched him place a hand on the little girl’s head and whisper something in her ear. Then he stalked over to me, the children scattering around him like kicked aside leaves.
“Have you come to beg?” he said.
It took me a moment to pull my eyes away from the children flocking back to their parents—a few of them continuing to tussle—and focus on his searing stare.
“Hardly,” I said. I crossed my arms in a pose of nonchalance, like I had something I couldn’t wait to share with him. “Do you know where I went this morning?”
“I don’t play games, girl. If you’re here to waste my time, then I’ll do what I promised Onora and rip off your mouth.”
I took a steadying breath. “Onora took me down below the tombs. She had me try to control lava.”
“She’s simply testing out her new toy.”
“She’s getting ready to use me for something. Something…” I thought back to the cavern with the fleshy orb. The thing that almost had a heartbeat. I forced a shrug. “Just thought you should know. I don’t know what you’re planning, but she’s planning something too, and it doesn’t involve you being in charge.”
Lukas peered at me for a time, long enough for goosebumps to rise on my arms, long enough to know that he was searching my face, perhaps even smelling whether or not I was lying to him. At last he grinned and I got an up close and personal look at those sharp incisors that’d tried to tear me open before. The ones that, knowing my luck, would probably try to do so again.
“Clever. Very clever. Trying to set us up against each other. A good idea, but you’re too stupid to pull it off. You can try all you want, but I only trust myself. Onora…” the name rolled off his tongue like a piece of meat he hadn’t yet finished devouring. “She’s just the means to an end for me.”
“As you are to her,” I said.
“Good. That’s the best kind of relationship,” Lukas said. “We both want something, and we’ll both do whatever we have to, and use whoever we have to, in order to get it.”
I couldn’t help letting my jaw slack just a little. “Do either of you trust each other at all? That’s no way to live.”
“Wrong.” Lukas stalked closer. Maybe it was the ever-dimming light of the false sun overhead, but I swore his yellow eyes glowed brighter. “It’s the only way to live. These children you pity—and I know you do; I could smell your pathetic sympathy for them even before I saw you—if they are weak, they will die. From the very beginning they must learn to trust no one but themselves. This,” he tapped the side of his skull, “and this,” one of his bulging biceps, “their smarts and their strength, those are what will let them survive. Not the kindness and mercy of others.”
I bit back a scathing retort. There was no point in arguing with him. The violent way he touted his ideology was proof this was a stance he’d lived by for probably his entire life.
I glanced at the little girl Lukas had reprimanded as she cradled her hand. Her mother held it gently as they walked away, examining it with a tenderness only a parent could. Some of the other parents were looking right at me, mistrust in their eyes.
“Who are these people?” I said.
“They’re outsiders,” Lukas said. “Lepers of sorts. Some believe that paranormals are safer together. Easier, in some ways, to stay hidden. But just because some want to be together doesn’t mean other paranormals want them.”
“You’re saying the Conclave turned them away?”
“Among others. That’s what they are, rejects of their own kind. Ostracized and forgotten.”
“That’s terrible,” I said, truly meaning it.
Lukas laughed, a deep rumbling in his throat. “I knew you were too tenderhearted for what needed to be done. This—” He swept a hand out to the people still making their way back to the tombs for the encroaching night. “This is the way things are. No unity. No ‘for the good of all.’ Just us against them.”
I wasn’t going to pretend I knew everything about the paranormal world, the politics of it or the prejudice, but that seemed broken. And if paranormals like Lukas of all people were the ones seeing it then there was something truly broken.
“My parents lived in a place like this out west,” Lukas said. He didn’t seem to be speaking to me, but just out loud to anyone who was nearby. His scowl was still there, but in his eyes…
Was it possible for a horrible killer, a terrible person, to look so sad? I didn’t want to believe it; didn’t want to see what I know I did: true pain and misery.
“It was a terrible place. We were all outcasts of some kind, cut off from the local groups of paranormals that would have made it safer for us to survive. Disease killed off more of us than the frequent attacks from other paranormals did. By the time I was ten, I’d buried nearly all my friends. The surviving ones left and I never saw them again.”
He spit on the ground. A corner of his lip pulled up in furious scorn. “I’ll never forgive my parents for not fighting to get out of that place.”
“I’m sure they tried the best—”
“They were weak!” Lukas snarled. “Weak in an unforgivable way. I swore I’d never be like them. It took me a long time—too long—to figure that out. When I did, I left them to rot and found my own way, becoming stronger than they, than anyone, could ever imagine. That’s why I’m going to be ruler and you’re not.”
He sneered at me, his expression so full of disdain and loathing that I found myself taking a half step back, sure, for a moment, that he was about to throw himself at me for the kill. “You were raised sheltered from everything, including the nature of what you were. The Order might believe a ruler is born, but I know they’re forged. Forged in their own success, not isolated from the realities of the world.”
“I can learn,” I argued. “I can learn about the world and try to make it better.”
“No, you can’t. Some things can’t be taught. They can only be experienced, and you’re far past the time for that.”
“You’re just bitter. That’s no better than me being ignorant. All you’re going to do is use the throne to take out your anger on—”
“I am the product of my upbringing,” Lukas said. “And I am exactly what our world needs. No more factions, no more of the forgotten. Just one group of paranormals united beneath a strong, clawed fist.”
I wanted to say something that would change his mind. Perhaps even, I don’t know, convince him to stop. But what did I expect would happen? That a few poorly picked words would erase the years of obvious resentment he carried? That he’d magically snap to his senses, curl up on the ground, and proclaim that he’d been wrong the whole time?
I was learning more and more that in no reality did the world work like that. So I stayed quiet. I hated to admit it, but he was right. I’d known, even before the trial, I wasn’t ready for the responsibility of the throne. Not now, and maybe not ever. What did I, a sheltered girl who’d only recently endured true pain and heartbreak, have to offer people who had endured it their entire lives?
And then, as though summoned from my thoughts, came Rasesh’s voice, it is that belief of your unworthiness that makes a ruler great.
“I can learn,” I repeated. “And I will. I’m sorry for what happened to you, I really am. But you’re only going to make things worse.”
“I’m going to make things as they’re supposed to be,” Lukas said. “I’m making my way to the forger and becoming king, and you’ll stay here with Onora.” He started walking away. “Hopefully she won’t kill you too soon.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I wandered back toward my prison cell tomb, mind spinning. I’d let Lukas walk off toward the volcano and the finality of the trial. I hadn’t raised a hand to try to stop him, didn’t leap in front of him and—magic or not—try to take him down. Rationally I knew that’d be suicide. But it wasn’t the fear of what he’d physically do to me that’d stopped me.
It’d been because of what he’d said. Somehow, without raising a claw, Lukas had cut me open and left me bleeding and vulnerable.
“Hurry it up.”
The guard who usually stood outside our tomb ushered me inside. “Get in there so I can eat some dinner. Or do you want me to dine on you instead?”
He flashed me a tooth, but I knew he was only joking. Probably.
I stepped inside and he closed the door behind me. I heard the lock slide into place. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the lack of any proper light. Iris wasn’t asleep like I thought she’d be, but sat on the edge of her bed, adjusting the laces of one of her boots. Had she rested at all?
Her brow furrowed when she saw me. “You look like you were crying, but, like, not really. Wait…” Her eyes widened. “Lukas didn’t—”
“No,” I assured her. “I mean, yes, it was him, but he didn’t hurt me. Not physically.”
Iris’s brow furrowed even more. “Okay…then how?”
I spilled everything. What Lukas had said to me about his childhood. What I was feeling now, all the gross, ugly doubts I didn’t want but couldn’t help feeling I deserved regardless.
“He’s right,” I finished, exasperated.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, seriously?” Iris said, her voice so full of sarcasm I was surprised I couldn’t see it dripping off her lips. “You honestly think that psycho with fur and a god complex should be ruler?”
I gave an undignified sniffle and wiped my nose with the back of my hand. “Not exactly. No.” I added firmly as Iris opened her mouth, probably to verbally snap me back to my senses. “But he has a point. He’s seen all these things. He knows about the paranormal world and its problems and has ideas on how to fix them, even if they’re bad ideas.”
“Look, these doubts are nothing new,” Iris said. “I’m sure you had them when you first found out about being an Outcast and the prophecy, right?”
“Yes…But this is different.”
“This is the exact same. You didn’t think you were worthy to be an Outcast, or an elemental, or as the center of a prophecy, and you were all three. Okay, sure, you don’t have the sob story to back it up, but you know what? You’ve put yourself selflessly in harm’s way for other people, some of whom you barely knew. You think Lukas has ever done something like that when he didn’t think he’d get anything out of it?”
I could tell Iris was getting worked up, the way her hair seemed to rise on its own and her entire body seemed to tilt forward as though she could physically spear me with her words. “You ran out to save me, even after what I’d done to you, and got yourself caught. Even now you’re standing by me.”
“Of course,” I said, finally able to get a word in. “Even if I hated you, I wouldn’t just leave you to someone like Onora.”
Iris’s finger really was a spear as she jabbed it near my face. “That. That attitude right there. Even though you were mad, even though you could have hated me, even though you had no reason to stick by me, you did it anyway.”
That was a total lie. There was a reason. Iris was—still was—my best friend. I realized that, deep down, I never truly hated her, even if I swore up and down that I did. I wasn’t even mad anymore, not really. Somewhere along our journey my bitterness had been replaced by grudging understanding. Was that something that Lukas could say? Could he really ever forget what had happened to him as a child, enough for him to rule fairly? It hadn’t sounded like he did or wanted to.
“Finally she gets it,” Iris said, watching my face. “For a moment I thought I’d have to slap you. It’s no fun when you’re throwing a pity party, you know that?”
“I didn’t mean to. It’s just a lot to process right now.”
“No!” Iris gave a mock gasp, pressing a hand dramatically to her heart. “Trying to become an ancient ruler, all while being chased by other paranormals and pressed by power-hungry psychos on all sides? Who would’ve thunk it?”
I frowned. “Okay, the sarcasm is slightly less helpful.”
“It comes with the whole package.”
“Don’t I know it.”
I took a seat on my bed while Iris went over to the edge of the wall beside hers. Part of the stone floor had begun to chip away and Iris began to chip at it even more, breaking off pieces, examining them, then tossing them away when they didn’t meet some unspoken criteria I couldn’t begin to guess. I waited for her to tell me what she was doing.
“Thanks for being here with me,” I said. I looked up at the ceiling and the darkness outside the bars at the top of the door. “Well, not here here, but with me during the trial.”
“No problem.”
“No, really.”
Iris stopped picking at the stone. She glanced my way, a bit wary. “I said no problem.”
“I mean it,” I emphasized. “I’m not sure I would have made it through this without you.”
Iris stared at me a while longer before turning back to the floor. Her voice was thick as she said, “Well thank you for saving me. And so you know…I hope you know—just because your mom and dad assigned me to help you through this, I would have done it anyway. I didn’t do it just to make up for what I did to you.” She swallowed hard. “Because you are, and always have been, my best friend.”
“I know,” I said, and the pure wave of relief that seemed to hit Iris was enough to make my heart clench. “At least I know that now. Iris.”
I slid from the bed and crouched beside her. I had something she needed to hear as much as I needed to say it; something that’d been nibbling away at me from the inside and I hadn’t even realized how much it was hurting me. “I can’t forget what you did. I hated you for it, I really did.”
“I know,” Iris said. “I know. Hell’s teeth, I know, and every day I hate that I—”
I hugged her tight, squeezing off her words. “But I forgive you. I still love you as the best friend I’ve ever had. I don’t know if things will ever go back to the way they were before, but I want to forgive and move on. I hope you can forgive me for not saying that sooner.”
Iris’s grip on me tightened and I took that as a yes. In an instant, I felt lighter than I had in a long, long time. Like a balloon that’d been overinflated in my chest had been released, leaving me free to breathe in a way I’d almost forgotten.
