Despite the swelling of rage in my chest, I hated how my body drew instinctively toward his. It made me even more enraged. I wanted to reach for the blade at his side and sink it into his neck. I wanted to cut him where it would hurt the most.
“Are you serious? My friend is dead because of the challenge you set. Because you commanded the sprites not to help us. Because you kidnapped us to compete in challenges no one asked to be a part of. I’m not angry, I’m fuckingfurious!” I shoved away from him, pushing my legs to stalk off. I just had to make it to the med hall and then I could collapse.
Kilian had the fucking gall to reach for my arm, gripping it firmly enough to whirl me back around. His voice was soft when he said, “Not everyone is going to survive these challenges, Lirah. They’re not meant to.”
It was the straw that broke my back.
I hadn’t even had time to mourn Anama. To grieve the loss of what had truly happened in the forest. And he was implying… what? That everyone I had come to know and love here would die trying to pass the Trials? The thought of anything happening to Lana or Moric made me see red. Sleep deprivation and hunger clouded my vision, anger blossoming into an unruly, wild monster, woken from a century-long slumber.
I wrenched my arm from his grip. The voice I used was colder than any summit snow. “The problem with you elven is that you think you’re so much better than mortals. Our lives may be fragile, and death may be on the precipice each moment we breathe, but it takes strength to be mortal. To love, in spite of the overarching threat of death at any minute. To forge real, genuine friendships with no expectation of receiving anything in return. To share in sorrow and loss. Tofeel.”
Kilian’s eyes darkened. “You think we do not feel? That we are incapable of love, friendship or grief?”
“I don’t think it. Iknowit. We have something you will never understand.”
“What’s that?” he snarled.
I leaned closer to him as I drove my point home. “Humanity. And I feel so fucking sorry for you.”
I turned on my heel before he could respond and stalked toward the med hall, ignoring the rage radiating from him and fizzling in my own veins.
I slept for two days straight.
At least that’s what Midius told me when I eventually woke. My body had been so low on nutrients and energy that I had awoken attached to a drip and there was a feeding tube stuck inside my stomach. It was a miracle I had even managed to make it up the steps to the med hall before collapsing on a bed beside Lana and Moric.
My friends had woken up a few hours before me. They sat on the side of my bed, Lana drinking juice from a carton, while Midius removed all the various tubes and needles from my body.
“We were the last group to make it back,” Moric said after Midius bustled off. “Two others from the first group didn’t make it.”
That brought the total mortals remaining to nine.
“Were all the groups in the Forests of Dalhur?” I asked, still groggy.
“Two were sent up to the summits,” Moric said. “But Rayna’s group were in the forest. They were the first to find their keys.”
“Kilian was here when I woke up,” Lana volunteered.
“Oh?” I sat up, stretching my stiff limbs. “Doing what?”
“Just watching you. Snapped at Midius a few times. He left when he noticed I was awake.”
I frowned. “Weird. He probably wanted to make sure I didn’t die before the second challenge.”
“Probably,” Lana agreed.
I hesitated for a moment, not sure I wanted the answer to the question I was going to ask. “Anama… What’s going to happen to her body?”
Moric sucked in a sharp breath. He looked gaunt and exhausted. “I asked Ayden, my instructor, about it. He said he doubted there’d be anything left of her to find.”
My eyes closed, stomach churning. Yeah, I shouldn’t have asked.
“Her stuff was packed up and incinerated since she had no immediate family in Kraventhorn to send it off to,” Moric added.
“Right,” I said feebly. I didn’t know what to do with the pain in my heart. Maybe there would come a time when I would be brave enough to deal with it all. Now was not it.
I had to prepare for the second challenge, only four days away. Which was how I found myself pinned by Lana in the sparring room the next day, for the third time in a row.
“When did you become so good at this?” I grumbled, rolling the arm Lana had trapped behind my back. My blocking and dodging had improved somewhat, but I was still dreadful at the attacking maneuvers.
