AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He leans forward, pressing his cheek against mine. He’s shaking slightly. I can feel it, but it’s nowhere near the nerves he had when we first started our training lessons. “I saw you win against Hope. Now I know you can fight. So, you go down there, you fight this final test. Survive for me.” He brushes his lips against my ear. “And you’ll be my queen. Not theirs. Mine. I’ll rip the earth out from under all the other courts to keep you.”
“Gray—”
I barely manage to say his name before the earth gives way beneath me, and I sink down underground, landing with a thump in a cold dirt tunnel. It’s not high in here, so I have to crouch when I stand, and I cough on the dirt and dust floating around me. It’s so dark and it takes a while for my eyes to adjust. Grayson wants me as his queen, so does Arden. Lysander wants me dead, and Emrys…I have no idea what he wants.
When this is over…I have to run from them. First, I have to survive. There are flickers of light from little blue things dotted around me, but I can barely see. The light they give off is too dim. I scream as something slams hard into my back, and I look around to see vines. My blood turns cold when I see they’re not vines. They’re snakes—snakes that are made out of something that looks very much like vines. One of them snaps at me again, cutting my arm, and I scream, running straight down the tunnel, turning at the first left and then the right. I hear more screams echoing around me, and I jump over a massive vine snake in my path. I’m running blindly when I trip, slamming into the ground. I blink in the darkness, more of the blue things floating around me, and I look up to see a boot.
I rise to my feet, looking down at the dead body. There are vine snakes wrapped around her, biting her, repeatedly choking her. But she’s already dead. Her blood is pouring down into the earth, making those blue lights.
Florence. Her eyes are wide, but she’s gone, and a wave of sadness hits me. I didn’t know her all that well, but she fought to survive. She shouldn’t have died here. No one should have died in this castle. Livia. She is going to be heartbroken.
“I’ll tell her, Florence. I’ll look after her.” I’m in shock, and I don’t move for too long. The snakes notice me, and I turn, running fast. I turn around a corner, only to fall headfirst into a hole. The ground slips out from underneath me, and I fall with a thump into another tunnel, this one stinking like something is rotting. I turn just as a massive snake jumps straight towards me.
CHAPTER 17
KING GRAYSON OF THE EARTH COURT
I pace up and down repeatedly, like keeping still is making even an ounce of a difference to Ellelin’s fate. She was born for this, so the curse claims, but I believe she was born for me.
Ellelin is in danger. I told myself that it’s one more test, one more battle for her to win alone before we can face every battle together from here on out. I’ve never been as obsessed with anything or anyone as I am with her. I can’t get her out of my head, and frankly, I don’t want to anymore.
I feel through the earth with my powers to sense if she’s still alive. I don’t give a shit if the others survive. This test is deadly, designed by my court to find their perfect queen in the most brutal manner. The snakes are from my court, bred to be vicious. They are made of vines, their bodies filled with a deadly poison. One bite and she will suffer. She could die from it.
The other dragon kings come to stand with me. Lysander, Arden and Emrys are waiting, and I wonder if they’re waiting for her, too. Ellelin has captured their attention, and I don’t like it. They want her as well, but she’s going to be mine. They don’t know about our private training sessions, and if they do, they don’t realise what’s going on in them. She’s the first person I’ve let touch me since, well, since I was a child. She may hate me when she realises that I’m covered in scars, and I’m not near as perfect and as beautiful as she is, but I can’t let her go. I won’t let her go. I carry on pacing when suddenly chills snake down my neck.
I can’t feel the earth anymore.
I lean down, touching the ground with my hand, searching for my power, but I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I meet Arden’s gaze. He sensed it, too. Lysander looks lost in his head, and Emrys is frowning at his hand. “My power is gone,” I tell them.
“Mine too,” Emrys claims, patting Lysander on the shoulder, and he snaps out of wherever he was.
Lysander frowns. “What the fuck happened to my magic?”
I walk faster until Arden slams his hand into my chest to stop me. I growl at him as he lowers his hand. “I don’t know. I can’t feel them in the test anymore or the surrounding earth.”
“They couldn’t have all died. That would mean the test is over and broken,” Arden all but whispers in horror. “She can’t be dead.”
“No, she isn’t yet,” Lysander coldly comments.
I narrow my eyes at him. How the fuck would he know that? “They were alive. Several of them were still alive, so they can’t be dead. No part of the curse talks of this.”
Emrys looks around the room. “Something else is going on.”
Fuck it, I’ll go down to the tunnels the long way. I run to the doors, but they all disappear, leaving us locked in. There’s no way out. I slam my fists on the wall. “Castle, what the fuck are you doing?”
The castle wall groans in protest, and the room goes ice cold. I step back as the ground begins to shake slightly, but not with my power. Something is really fucking wrong.
“Can you hear that?” Lysander quietly asks, and it’s the first time I’ve heard him panicked. He must be worried about Hope.
I listen, hearing a song being played from the castle walls itself, and it gets louder and louder.
Arden goes still. “I know that song.” His lips part. “I haven’t heard it in a very, very long time. I was a kid when I heard it last, but I’d never forget it. It’s the song of the fifth court. It’s the song of the shadows of spirit.”
His face is ghostly white, and no one says anything. The fifth court…they were all slaughtered. They were slaughtered in this very castle they used to live in twelve years ago, but none of them were left to explain what happened that night. The test hid their people in the darkness until there was a test, and only members of the fifth court could come here. They were indestructible until that night. We all heard the explosion of the island, saw what was left of it until it disappeared. Until this test revealed everything wasn’t lost, the castle somehow survived. My own parents died that night. The Spirit Court was the most powerful of all of us, but they’re gone.
Why is their song playing through the castle, and why the fuck have we lost our magic?
