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Kneeling down, I get to work on Ro’s shackles. Using the bottom of the robe, I wrap it around my fingers to protect my skin from any iron burns while I’m handling the harmful metal.
Once I release Ro from her restraints, she lets out a sigh of relief because the cuffs are no longer clamped around her ankles.
I drop the chains, and I softly rub my thumb over the redness on her skin. It must be sore, and I wish I’d insisted on removing the shackles before I put on the Valonite necklace so I could heal her.
“It’s okay,” she whispers as if she can read my mind. “Really.”
I have no choice but to believe her, and after I stand, I kick the chains, sending them skidding across the floor.
“And so it begins!” Armand announces boisterously, prompting four poorly dressed men to file into the room.
The burlap material they wear is so worn, it’s become soft over time. Their ripped shirts hang from their bony shoulders, and their pants have holes in the knees.
With spears in hand, they surround us in a square formation. Their eyes are dead, their skin is gray, and they’re bald. Honestly, they look like walking corpses.
“Stand proud,” Armand harshly orders the men. “Shoulders back, heads high. Look ferocious.”
I scoff loudly, earning irritated glances from Armand and Yugo.
Ferocious?
I could take these guards down as easily as swatting flies, and we all know it.
As Armand and Yugo meet in front of our group, I hear a quiet slurping sound behind me. I glance back and notice the man to the right of Ro focusing on the bare skin of her shoulder. He’s leering, literally salivating as spittle runs down his chin.
Like a starving animal, his lip lifts to show his teeth, and he licks one of his fangs.
Reaching over, I pull the robe up to cover Ro and give the man a hard stare. “Look at her one more time and I’ll extract your eyeballs from your skull with my bare hands.”
Ro gasps at my sinister warning as she grips the material at her neck to keep it in place, and the man drops his gaze to the stone at his feet.
“Now, there are instructions you must follow,” Armand goes on cheerfully as if I didn’t just issue a gruesome threat. “Once you believe you’ve overcome a challenge, you need to call out the theme of the test—mental, physical, or of the heart. But the challenges won’t necessarily come in any particular order. You have to figure out which test is which, and you have to get it right to move onto the next challenge.”
Spinning around, he begins walking from the room with Yugo at his side. The two of them link arms as if they’re simply going for a romantic stroll.
Our gangly escorts move that way, and since Ro and I are boxed in, we have no choice but to trail behind Armand and Yugo through the foyer.
Two guards are stationed at the exit, and they’re so weak they struggle to open the heavy door for us.
“What happens if I get it wrong?” I ask at Armand’s back as we go outside into the gloomy landscape.
“You lose. And,” he tacks on without pausing his trek toward the maze, “you must recite your claim with an official poem. Here’s an example:Challenge number one is done. The mental test is fought and won. And you must be inside the maze when you say it.”
“Inside the maze… What do you mean? Of course that’s where we’ll be. That’s where we’re going.”
“You must beinsidethe maze when you say it,” Armand repeats, not clarifying at all.
Ro clears her throat. “What if Kai can’t say it? What if he’s unable to talk for some reason?”
Turning his head to squint at her, Armand gives Ro an assessing look as if he’s surprised by her cleverness to think to ask. “Then you may call it out for him.”
“What if Kai dies before the challenge is over?” she prods candidly. “Or what if I die?”
Those are good questions, and I’m glad she voiced them.
I’m not a strategist, unfortunately, and I realize it might be beneficial to have Ro with me on this journey. My role in Valora includes taking orders and applying brute force. I don’t have to think. I just do what I’m told.
Ro’s obviously smarter than I am, and she knows Armand’s tricks better than I do.
