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I nearly laugh. “That’s one word for it.”
She shows me to my chair. Of course, it’s smashed right between hers and Sigurd’s. The implication of that seating, closer even than his Captain of the Guard, isn’t lost on me. Or the crowd as they start to focus our way. What is that idiot thinking? I sink down into the plush armchair, begging it to swallow me whole.
A strong gust of wind rolls across the stadium, fluttering clothes and pennants before silencing the crowd. Yet, not a hair on my head is displaced. Chills race across my skin in response to what must be magic. Sigurd stands at the edge of the box, looking out at the crowd. That wind came from him. It had to have.
All eyes turn to the king. His squared shoulders and broad grin are mesmerizing.
“Begin.” His voice echoes with resonance across the assembled, so much louder than it should be yet somehow not offensive to my ears at all.
Horns blare. Sigurd’s gaze roams over me as he crosses the box to take his seat at my side. The lump in my throat is hard as ever, and I can’t help it when my shoulders hunch in further.
Below, a fae male speaks into a large horn that projects his voice through the stadium, a fae loudspeaker of sorts. He drones on and on about the great history of the games and the honor to be bestowed upon the champion.
“The winner receives the opportunity to drink from the cauldron created by the ancient queen Áine.” The announcer pauses, giving the crowd the chance to react with a chorus of cheers. “The cauldron shall grant the winner the desires of their heart if their wish should be honest and true.”
“Honest and true?” I ask.
“Áine created the cauldron as a gift for her children,” Sigurd says, just loud enough for me to hear him. “She didn’t want them to use it for ill, so she bound part of her will to it so that it can’t be used to wreak abject destruction.”
“No plagues. No wishing for someone to die,” Moria interjects. “Things like that.”
I nod. That’s fine. My wish is honest, right?
The announcer continues to summarize the games, but it’s obvious from the shifting of the crowd that they already know this part. It’s new to me though.
There are five rounds. Competitors will be eliminated in each one until a winner is announced after the final game. A winner that won’t be me, clearly. The competitors are down there, waiting to be introduced, and I’m stuck up here.
A heavy sigh slips out before I can stop it.
Sigurd glances my way, a question on his face, but I ignore it. He probably just thinks I’m bored, which I might be, if depression didn’t already crush my chest like a dropped barbell.
The announcer begins introducing the competitors. Each steps forward as their name is called to receive cheers of encouragement from the crowd. There are no boos, no jeers, until a prince from the Court of Fire—another fae kingdom?—is introduced.
Sigurd leans forward in his chair, suddenly straight and stiff. The tension swarming around him is almost tangible. “Thatboycomes to my court to compete in my games and doesn’t even bother to introduce himself to me?”
“You have been a little absent,” Moria says with a wince.
The air stirs up around us. “Who approved his entry?”
“I did,” Hawke says.
Attention snaps to him. Hawke, as always, looks completely bored and unfazed by Sigurd’s irritation.
“With all that’s happened with the Court of the Forest, the Unseelie,” Sigurd snaps in a harsh whisper. That last word coils down into my chest, all inky and wrong. “You thought it a good time to grant an outsider from a rival court free entry here?”
“I didn’t know about such…complications when I approved his request,” Hawke says.
Sigurd drums his fingers on the arm of his chair, his jaw set. Another name is announced to thunderous cheers.
“His presence could be a good signal to the people,” Hawke says. “Perhaps it will make them feel that all is well.”
His careful words aren’t lost on me. Make themfeelthat all is well, not that alliswell. Without the ability to lie, he can’t say that, can he?
Sigurd’s jaw twitches, and he leans back in his chair. “You have a point.”
Hawke nods, and the air settles. I slide back into my own chair and try to focus on the announcements. But the uneasiness, the potential war Moria mentioned, prod me like sticks. If I am stuck here, and there’s a war, it doesn’t bode well for me getting home, even once this stupid bond is gone.
“Wren Dawson,” the announcer calls.
