“One more chance,” called the boy on the edge of the pit. “I’ll make sure he makes it across the boundary tonight.”
“Make sure of it, or we leave you both behind. You hear me?”
With a rush of wind, Rudderkin hurled my thin frame across the pond of mud, and I crashed onto the grass beside Sam, landing on my back. Pebbles dug into my flesh as Sam’s face appeared at the edge of my vision, an amused smirk twisting his lips.
“You heard him, we’d better get a move on if we’re going to make it before nightfall.”
I didn’t respond. My mind had finally reached a breaking point in its attempts to make sense of anything around me. My thoughts melded together in a blur, and the side of my head throbbed with such intensity I wasn’t sure I could trust them as it were.
“Azrael. Can you hear me, or did Rudderkin burst your eardrum again?”
“I hear you,” I finally answered, dragging the back of my hand across my muddied face.
“Come on, then. You can’t let Kaine and Rudderkin make a fool of you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sam knelt beside me, his dark eyes glinting in the daylight. “Don’t play thick, Azzy. We both know how you ended up face-first in the muck pit. Kaine is up to his old tricks again, and I can’t see why you put up with the foolishness. We have enough to worry about here on the Gauntlet than other Urchins fucking with us.”
Gauntlet. The word echoed through my mind, shattering through walls of tempered will. Rudderkin had created it decades ago to test the resolve of those who followed him. It wasa cruel environment, a stretch of wilderness that he worked till it resembled nothing in nature. It was cruelty, pounded into the earth for miles.
“Something isn’t right. I’m not supposed to be here.”
Sam offered me a smile that made my bones ache. “It’s your first time, Azzy. We all think that on the first run. But it gets easier. You’ll get stronger. Look, I told Rudderkin I wasn’t going to let you lose, so now you have to keep going. For me, yeah?”
I struggled to right myself, wiping more of the muck from my face. “That’s not what I meant?—”
“I know what you mean,” Sam interrupted, tearing the end of his sleeve and spitting on it before he wiped it across my forehead. “What, you think I don’t hear you at night, talking to yourself? You miss your pops, and you’re worried that you made the wrong choice, joining the Rebellion. I was the same way. Except, of course, my pops was actually dead, and I didn’t have anywhere else to be. You know what I mean.”
The golden sunlight dimmed around us, and I glanced overhead to watch rolling clouds overtake the shining orb. Thunder rolled in the distance, giving us foresight into what was coming.
“You’re not supposed to be here either,” I said, looking back at Sam, though he couldn’t know what I meant.
Something flashed behind his eyes, and for the briefest moment, I thought that maybe he did understand. But then he flashed his fanged smile at me once more, shoving the muddied cloth into my hand. “Come on, short stack. The rain will take care of the rest of the mud. We’ve got to get moving, or we’ll never catch up.”
What other choice did I have? I needed answers, and selfishly, I wanted more time with the boy I’d so admired as a young urchin. Sam led us away from the muck pit, down the dirt path that had been stomped by all of those initiates who hadcome before us, following it as it wound into the wooded area up ahead.
There, among the canopy of branches, I noticed the shadows lurking in my periphery. At first, I thought them just my imagination. A trick of the mind caused by sunlight peeking through the clouds overhead. The shadows seemed to move separately from their tangible counterparts, as if the dark branches they cast upon the ground were grasping limbs, stretching out to pull me into their depths.
“You never told me where you’re from, Azzy.”
Sam’s voice rippled along the fallen leaves at our feet, pulling me away from my conspiracies of sentient shadows.
“The countryside,” I answered, marveling once again at how different my voice sounded. Gone was the commanding confidence I had earned through my years as a leader. “My father serves a notable house of Adored. I was born there, at their chateau.”
Sam let out a low whistle. “Sounds right posh. How did you end up on the streets, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“The lady of the house. She wasn’t happy with my father. He’d been speaking with another of the Unseen about leaving. So, she sent me away as a punishment to force him to keep working for her.”
“Gods, Azzy. And here I thought I had a right awful sob story. I’m sorry, short stack.”
The real Sam had never heard this story. He died long before I ever knew the truth of why Adoranda sent me away. Why my father never left Chateau Greene. It was cathartic to be able to share with him in that way.
“So, that’s why you joined up with the Rebellion, huh?” Sam continued, glancing over his shoulder as we began to ascend a steep incline. “You want to get revenge against those posh snobs who did your pops wrong?”
“Maybe at first,” I agreed, my breathing becoming labored as I climbed after him. “But it became more than that. I became more.”
“How’s that?”
