Great.

Bile stung at the back of my throat, soaking the gag stuffed in my mouth.

The other guard led Evander away to an opposite platform across from me, but he kept craning his neck to keep his eyes on me. Concern etched his brow.

The king drawled, “It is well known among those bound by the covenant of marriage that the males must learn to read the unspoken signs of their females. A respectable husband must be able to interpret her needs without requiring an explanation in order for the marriage to be effective.”

Evander laughed dryly across from me, even as the words crept under my skin and boiled my blood. At least Evander, too, found this notion ridiculous. I’d never understood people who didn’t just tell the other person what they wanted, nor did I think it was anyone’s responsibility to learn to interpret—excuse me, assume—someone’s desires based on their body language.

“Through this trial, my son will demonstrate that he is able to decipher his betrothed’s mind, without the use of words between them.”

“Oh, this should be great.” Evander laughed, though he kept looking nervously at the bed of myrmecoleon crawling down beneath us.

“The betrothed will be provided a rendering of an item. She must communicate to the prince without her words what item is on the paper before the platforms descend and deliver them to their deaths.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Evander said, his words echoing my thoughts.

So our lives depended on my ability to play charades.

This was it. We were going to die.

I found myself wishing we had simply fallen from the prism. At least that death would have been quick. Not to mention less humiliating.

Would you rather smash your skull against the unforgiving earth or be eaten alive by a swarm of giant ants?

After being forced to play charades in front of a bloodthirsty stadium.

Hm. What a tough choice.

A guard handed me a rolled up piece of paper. My hands shook, and the platform jolted beneath me, descending much more quickly than I would have preferred.

Eventually, I managed to untie the knot on the scroll, but by the time I got to it, we’d already dropped a few inches.

“Ellie?” Evander asked impatiently. “I’d rather not have my flesh ripped apart today, you know.”

I unraveled the scroll and opened it before me. It was a map of Alondria. So familiar, I’d seen it a thousand times. It laid out all the kingdoms—Laei, Naenden, Charshon, Avelea, Dwellen, and Mystral—the major rivers and mountain ranges that separated us. I had half a mind to toss the scroll to Evander, as technically that wouldn’t be breaking the rules, but a guard reached down and ripped it from my hands as soon as I’d gotten a good look at it.

“Well?” Evander called from across the pit.

I groaned and pointed a finger into the air, tracing the outline of Alondria as best as I could.

“A jagged blob?”

I shook my head, though I was almost certain he hadn’t been serious, anyway.

I turned around so he could watch me trace it from behind, thinking he might understand it better if it wasn’t a mirror image he was looking at.

“Seriously, Ellie. What is that supposed to be?” His words lacked unkindness, but I could hear his pitch tighten as we descended further.

I squinted my eyes tight and tried to think. I turned back to him and broadened my hands, as if to encompass the world in them.

He squinted. As if his perfect fae vision wasn’t seeing my motions correctly. “Big?”

I nodded, excited now. Maybe I could get him to the answer step-by-step.

I lifted my arms to the side and spun around, intending to convey that it was all around us.

“A strange human dance I’m unfamiliar with?”

I shook my head, aggravated now, and flung my hands out wide.

“A big human dance I’m unfamiliar with.”

“AGH.” My grunt came out garbled from underneath the cloth jammed into my mouth. My head spun as I tried to think of a way to communicate this to him. How was I supposed to mime an entire continent? For something so large and concrete, suddenly it seemed like an abstract idea.

“Ellie?” Evander crossed his arms and tapped his foot on his descending platform. We had sunk halfway down the pit by now, and I had run out of my two ideas.

Panic set in, and if my brain had intended to help me today, it certainly had given up hope now.

I frowned and shook my head at him.

I don’t know how to do this.

My meaning must have been clear enough, because his arrogant smirk twitched and faded into something else. Panic. Fear.

“Come on, Ellie. You have to think of something.”

By Alondria, it was like I was being trapped in some horrible version of charades where everyone was about to watch the skin get ripped off my face as penalty for a brain block.

By Alondria.

That was it.

I spun around and found the ropes that were lowering my platform into the pit. The ropes slithered downward, propelled by gears at the edge of my platform.

This was stupid.

This was so stupid.

But it was going to work.

I was going to make it work.

I grabbed one of the ropes and pulled. It was taut, and it resisted me, but I finagled it to the side, pinning it between two gears. That platform shuddered to a halt, and the crowd gasped.

The guards murmured above me, something about cheating and whether to drive an arrow through my heart.

“No,” the king said. “The gears are sharp. They will simply rip through the ropes.”