He leans back on the wall. “Oh, Aleksander never mentioned to us about his blood slave being as beautiful as you are.” My cheeks burn as he looks me over. He’s handsome, very handsome, and it’s hard to look away from him. This man is perfect in every sense. He reminds me of a prince from a fairy tale. He watches me with a smile that shows his red fangs tipped with silver. Aleksander told me his fangs were dyed red as a symbol of nobility, but the silver Valerian has is new to me. It must mean something, and I will ask the professor about it if I get out of here alive. “Why don’t I show you around the castle? I think you’d like it.”
“I was told not to leave here, and breaking my owner’s commands is punishable by death,” I retort.
“Unless he directly told you not to leave from the window, you won’t be breaking any laws.” He pushes the window open. The icy wind blows right in, and I shiver. “I regularly walk around the edge of the castle, and I know the way to somewhere special.”
“Why not just walk around inside the castle?” I question.
He shrugs a shoulder, his eyes flickering to my neck, and he gulps once. “It’s a way of getting around with no one seeing you.”
Clearing my throat, I tug my hood closer around my neck. “I don’t like heights.”
“I won’t let you fall.” He offers me his hand. “Come on, do something fun with a stranger who means you no harm on this tragic day. We only live once.” A funny saying for a vampyre who will live a lot longer than any fae. I look at his waiting hand, at his beautiful, handsome face, hearing both the professor and my mother’s voice screaming in my head not to do it. You only live once. I take his hand, which is ice cold, and he helps me out through the window onto a ledge that’s only two feet wide. My heart is in my throat as I look down at the harrowing hill below us that the castle is perched on. How easy it would be just to fall for those trees down below, for them to impale me before I even hit the ground.
Valerian takes my hand, and he links my fingers like we are lost lovers escaping a villain’s castle. No one’s ever held my hand like this. I can’t help but blush at this absolutely gorgeous vampyre who wants to hold my hand at all. I should run away. My mother would tell me that this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life. She would probably be right. But I want to spend more time with him, with this stranger who told me he wouldn’t hurt me.
Valerian helps me walk around the entire left side of the castle before we get to a courtyard garden on the same floor, enclosed by thick walls, and I don’t see a door anywhere. When we get to the edge, he jumps down first before reaching back for me, his hands wrapping around my waist as he lifts me and puts me down right in front of him. I lift my head to look up at him as he lowers my hood.
“Do you like gardens? Your hair is as beautiful as some of the flowers here.” He runs his fingers through my hair, his eyes darkening into a sea blue instead, reminding me that he is still a vampyre. He steps back, offering me his hand again. “Come, let me show you the exact flowers I mean.” We walk through the gardens, which feel like they go on for miles, all hidden inside this courtyard. He shows me every kind of flower, picking various ones for me of all colours before we get to the flower he meant. “These are black lotus flowers, and these are special ones that somehow turned red in the centre. I’ve seen lotus flowers all around the world but never ones of these colours.”
“They look like my hair,” I admit. “How strange.”
“Or a sign from the deities that we were meant to meet.” He steps closer, cupping my cheek. Suddenly his lips are on mine, cold and gentle, a perfect first kiss. My first kiss was with a vampyre. I blink a few times as he pulls back, smiling brightly at me. “I hope that was okay.”
“It was,” I breathe out. My entire body feels like it’s burning as hot as my cheeks, and I clench my hands around the flowers in my hands. Valerian lets me go, heading to the flowers. He rips the entire bunch out by the stem, and my mouth parts as he adds them to the bunch in my hands. He just destroyed those beautiful flowers. I don’t say anything as Valerian leads me back to the wall, out of the courtyard and across the ledge until we are back in the room. He sits on the edge, looking in at me, holding the flower bunch I gave back to him. I can’t keep them, and he knows it.
“How will I ever see you again?” he asks.
“You won’t. This can just be a tale you tell your friends about,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “I don’t have friends, but I want to see you again. We have a connection.”
“I know we do, but I am a blood slave for someone else and happy,” I truthfully tell him. As happy as a slave will ever get to be. “Forget me, please.”
“Never.” He smiles at me. “We will see each other again, Story.” My heart leaps as he jumps out the window and disappears into the thick of the trees below, the flowers falling with the snow now dropping from the sky. I didn’t know it then, but meeting Valerian was about to change my entire life—for the worse.
I cough as I wake up, tasting cold, stale water in my mouth that is as bitter as my haunting dreams of the past. I don’t want to remember my past any more than I want to do the Decidere. Waves wash over my legs and threaten to pull me back with every lap. I look down at the pebbled beach as I pull myself up, wincing at the pain of leaning on the pebbles until I’m sitting. Dragon roars shake the walls as I cough out the water in my lungs and try to breathe. The corner beach is filled up with dozens of red pebbles that almost look like crystals under me, millions of them that glitter in the moonlight as it dances around from above. I glance up and realise that I must have fallen into some kind of lake, and I shouldn’t be alive. Not the first time I’ve survived something I shouldn’t have. Ziven’s man tried to kill me and likely hoped there were rocks down here.
“Fucking assholes, the both of them,” I whisper. I rise to my feet, my clothes sticking uncomfortably to me, and come face to face with rows and rows of pillars. They look the same as the ones above, but there’s so many more down here. Thousands of them stretching far into the thick darkness, so far that I can’t even see most of them from here, just outlines. Light shines from above, reflecting off the water, but it’s still so much darker than above. Touch a pillar. Daegan’s warning comes back to me. I can’t just leave here, and at least if I find a pillar, it’s one step closer to getting out of here. I need to touch one of the pillars and take the trial.
I can’t stop shivering from the cold as I walk to the first row of pillars, wondering how I’m meant to feel a calling to one of them. The best way is to move. I can’t just stand here, waiting for a dragon to come down and eat me. I look at the pillars just as I swear I see a red light shining in the far distance. My feet are moving before my brain has even caught up with the idea of following the light. Rushing through the space between the pillars, I’m very careful not to touch a single one, feeling in my bones that it would be a terrible mistake. The dragon roars echo below, above, and around me so loudly that I’m not even sure where they came from or how close they are.
My hands shake as I continue to walk until I get to where the glow is coming from. Deep within the lines of pillars is one pillar taller than the others, and on it is a glowing red dragon symbol. The dragon is curled round what looks like a gem, a ruby maybe, and the ruby is half of a sun and half of a crescent moon put together. All of the dragon is red, a long spiralling tail that’s wrapped so many times to make a circle, and it’s glowing a beautiful, vibrant red. My heart is racing like a drum as I lift my hand, and the second I touch the red stone, everything fades. I’m suddenly not standing in the pillars, and the floor under my feet seems to morph into red mist until I’m in a small grey cavern room.
On the floor at my feet is a giant puzzle that reminds me of a game I played with the professor years ago. Deep grooves like snakes twist around the stone, and there are five giant holes at my feet. I glance down at one of them to see there’s nothing but empty darkness below. At the edge of the room are spheres. Each one is a crystal sphere, all beautiful shades of red, orange, black, silver and gold. In the game I played with the professor, I had to choose a ball to start with and get to the prize in the middle before the other players. It was a race, but this seems pointless as I’m playing alone and I don’t see a prize. The professor always used chocolate drops as the prize. I quickly notice there’s as many spheres as there are holes in the middle, all spread around me. Could it be as easy as that?
The ground shakes, nearly knocking me over, and the walls crack before my eyes, hundreds of slim fractures on every wall of the cavern. From the cracks, silver lava begins to spit out, burning and sizzling as it drips down onto the ground. It’s going to burn me alive. I have to play the game and get all the spheres to the holes before being burnt.
I run to the nearest sphere, getting behind it, and begin to push. It’s huge, nearly as big as me, and so heavy. I follow the track all the way around the bends, the twists, and it feels like forever before I manage to get it towards a hole and push it in. It simply falls into the darkness below, and there’s no sound, no bang as it hits anywhere, just nothing. I glance at the next one and run to it, knowing I can’t waste time. They must be the key to getting out of here.
Lava spits at me as I get to the sphere, struggling to slide behind it. A tiny drop of embers lashes at my ankle, and I wince, knowing that’s going to burn. I know it’s adrenaline or something like it pumping through me that’s making me not feel the pain right away. Pain is something I’ve gotten used to over the years, and I know I can absolutely push through it to survive. I’ve done it before, and I can definitely do it again. With a grunt, I push behind the sphere, this one black, and I keep pushing it until it eventually goes down the hole.
By the time I look back this time, breathless and sweaty, the lava has started to spread on the floor around the spheres, getting into some of the holes. Deities help me! It’s harder this time to get to the next one, and the one after that. But I keep going until sweat is covering me from head to toe, both from the heat of the lava and from the sheer exhaustion of doing this. My bones are aching, every inch of me is aching, until I get to the final one. I feel I can’t breathe as I realise that the steam, the lava, is burning everything around the final sphere. I will have to step into it to get behind the sphere.
I can’t do that. I can’t do this. I just can’t. I fall to my knees, sobbing as I cover my face. “Get up!” I tell myself, but it doesn’t work. I can’t move, I can’t breathe. I hear my best friend’s voice, like he’s shouting in my ear that he didn’t die for nothing and I need to stand. I need to get up off the ground, because dying here would just mean that the Moon king, the asshole, was right, and he gets what he wants. He tried to kill me, and he didn’t deserve to get his wish. This isn’t another trap that is going to end with me dying. No. Just no.
I stand up and run over, stepping right into the lava as I jump behind the sphere. A scream echoes out of my throat from the pain, and it completely takes my breath away as I try to rise. Silver lava spreads closer, not waiting for me to manage to stand through the dizziness, and I scream as it burns into my thigh just before I quickly stand on my good foot. Now the room is nearly full of lava, and there are only certain spots I can manage to put my good foot into as I push the final, much lighter sphere towards the remaining hole. When it finally falls through, I stand in the middle, looking around, feeling relieved only for that relief to drop into dread as I realise that nothing has happened. All of that was for nothing! It didn’t work.
The lava doesn’t stop. If anything, it’s gushing out faster and travelling towards some of the holes, blistering hot lava pouring through them into the unknown. There’s only one left that the lava hasn’t touched. The lava’s inching towards it, and I know there is one way out I haven’t considered. My choice is simple—stay here and burn or jump to fall into the unknown and a chance of living. I don’t want to burn, and falling is my worst fear. Blowing out a breath, my stomach is turning. I don’t want to fall either, because I hate heights. Fresh tears fall down my cheeks and disappear before they touch the ground in the heat.
“I can do this. I’ve got to do this,” I repeat as I climb on my knees, crawl over to the hole, and push my legs on the edge. The wave of lava comes close to me, like a promise of death if I don’t jump. I look up and I pray to the deities to save me before I jump through the hole. I scream as I fall into nothing, a place so dark I can’t see anything else. I rapidly fall through the air, right before I slam straight into a pool of water. I gasp in the water, coughing on it as I swim up to the top and the silver light. When I open my eyes, I recognise I’m in the pool again, in front of the pillars.
Lifting my hand up into the moonlight, I see there’s a dragon mark right on the back of my left hand. A beautiful dragon. The black dragon mark is moving slowly on its own, spinning round, almost like it’s happy. I did it. I survived the Decidere. The first night, that is. I glance up to see shadows of people coming out of the pillars above. I’m not the only one. The moonlight shines down, illuminating everything, including steps in the cave wall that lead all the way up to the top, back to the bridge above. Dragon’s roar around me as I swim straight for the steps.
Straight towards my freedom and the Moon king, who I fucking hate.
Chapter Seven
Page Seven.
I have been engaged to the Dawn Dynasty prince since I was a baby, uniting our strange outcast dynasties once and for all. Yet, I spend my days with the sun and my nights with the moon.
There’s no one around when I finally come to the stone door, soaked to the bone and dripping water in a line behind me. The door slides open with a slam of stone on stone, and I step out into the brighter light, blinding me for a second. The cheering crowds even make the dragon roars sound small, and my instinct to run heightens to a buzzing in my ears. My clothes make noise with every step, but I can feel that all of my burns are gone—healed. I’m not sure if the water healed me or I was healed when I won, or if none of it was real.
Daegan walks towards me, clapping loudly, and he has a massive friendly smile on his face. Go to him, Story. Don’t be reckless. I can barely see him or listen to my own thoughts through the burning fury in my heart singing in my ears. I search for another person—my enemy. Anger fuels me like an illegal herb, only heightening when I find him. He is smug as he pats the back of the man who threw me off the side of a bridge. Almost like he can sense my eyes on him, he turns his head and meets my eyes. There is no surprise that I lived, remorse that he tried to kill me, or anything but humour as he smirks at me.
I storm right up to Ziven, who crosses his arms when I get closer, towering over me like a mountain. “You fucking monster!” I screech at him, slamming my hand into his shoulder. Several of his people step forward to defend their king, but he holds his hand up, and they stop. “You tried to kill me before I got a chance in there! It was a cowardly move!”
