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The ground shakes once more, the song growing louder and louder by the second. Lysander meets my gaze. “We need to get out of here. Now!”
CHAPTER 18
I narrowly miss the snake’s massive mouth as it lunges for me, but its teeth dig deep into my arm as I smack into the wall. It’s so dark I can’t see anything as I scream in pain, breathing in the smell of rotting. I reach out, seeing piles of bones…human bones in a corner near me. Sickness rises up in my throat. I can’t die here. Ignoring the pain in my arm, I stand up and run. I’m blindly running, the sound of hissing filling my ears and making my heart pound with fear. Snakes. I hate snakes.
I run into another wall and gasp as the air is knocked from my lungs. Leaning on the wall, I turn on my side, feeling the wall with my hands until I find an edge. Bones crack under my feet, but I try to ignore them, and the smell too. I’ll fight for my life, no matter the circumstances. I have to get back home, even if I found something here that almost makes me want to stay. The dragon kings…I can’t get all of them out of my head and some of them out of my heart. It’s too bad they aren’t human and we didn’t just meet randomly.
I blow out a shaky breath and close my eyes for one second to calm myself down. There has to be a point to this race. Snakes…what the hell do I know about them other than they should be in a zoo, behind a glass wall, and unable to eat me for dinner? I know nothing about them. This place is a maze, and maybe I just need to escape. I haven’t seen anyone else alive yet, but I hope Arty and Livia are okay.
I blow out a breath before I run in the darkness, the blue lights so dim that I can only see the outline of a tunnel ahead of me. “How am I meant to escape when I can’t see?”
I scream as the floor gives out from under me, and I roll down a tunnel, smacking my face on the ground and reaching out for anything to stop me. The ground just keeps falling with me, and I can’t do anything but fall with it. Suddenly, I crash hard into a large rock with my leg first. I hear the break, the sickening snap of my bones in my leg, and I scream out in incredible pain. Tears fall down my cheek as I gasp, blowing out breaths through the pain. I cry, touching my leg, and everything spins as I manage to sit up on the rocks. I can’t move. I’m going to die. The thought, the truth, hits me harder than the break. I’ve fought for months to survive, to get out of this race and win it, and I’m going to die down here.
“Get up. Don’t you dare fucking die, Elle!” Lysander’s voice fills my head, or at least I’m somehow imagining it does. “Get up! You’re far too fucking stubborn to die like this. Get up and use the walls, use anything, and fucking walk!”
Lysander sounds frantic in my head. He can’t be real. He actually sounds like he really cares if I die or not. I grab the rock, using it to pull myself as another scream rips out of my throat. I barely manage to stand when blue lights float up from the middle of the room, and the smell of fresh blood hits me. There’s another body in the middle of the room, one of the girls, but her throat has been cut with a blade. The snakes are biting her, but she wasn’t killed by them. What the hell is going on? The snakes, no doubt smelling my blood, turn my way. So many green flashing eyes face me, and I flinch. My mind is filled with Lysander’s voice, shouting one word over and over. “RUN!”
Dozens of snakes head towards me, slithering and hissing. I hop back to the wall, trying desperately to get away and failing as they keep getting closer and closer. I fall over within moments, and I crawl backwards until my back hits the wall. I’m trapped. The room feels fuzzy and my arm burns, and I feel hot. Too hot, I’m burning up. I look down at my arm to see something black spreading down my skin, out of where the snake bit me, mixing with my blood. That’s why I’m hearing things. I’m poisoned.
The snakes are moving so fast, and I close my eyes. “I’m going to die.”
I don’t know how Lysander hears me. Or if, in my final moments, I’ve lost my mind and I’m talking to myself. “No, get the fuck up, Elle! Don’t you dare give up!”
My heart is pounding in my chest as I refuse to open my eyes. I’m going to die in this place. I’m not surviving this. I can’t survive this. Suddenly the ground gives way underneath me again, and I fall through dirt, coughing, choking on it as I scream in pain from my leg as it knocks into everything. My stomach is filled with butterflies as I float in the darkness, right before I slam onto cold stone with my head. I groan, touching my head, feeling myself bleeding from the fall. It’s brighter here, and it’s cold as I lift my head. The room is spinning. I blink my eyes a few times to focus, and everything slowly comes into focus.
“Arty?” I quietly ask with a smile. Arty leans down in front of me, not meeting my eyes. Blood is all over her cloak and clothes, but she doesn’t look injured. “What happened to you? Are you okay? Where is the blood from? Arty, I need some help and—”
She puts her hand on my head, and I wince. She smothers her palm in my blood, and I helplessly watch as she rises up and goes to the cage bars behind her. We’re in the prisons…and she has my blood.
“Wait! Don’t—”
Arty presses her hand against the bars. The whole castle shakes. It shakes hard enough to make cracks in the walls as the bars slowly melt in the middle, darkness and shadows swirling around them before there is a big gap. I look at Arty’s back as she bows her head low and doesn’t move. Why would she do that? The woman steps out, dramatically stretching her arms to the side. Her body morphs in the mist, changing. She gets taller, slimmer, until a thin man stands in front of me, with a long black cloak falling from his shoulders. His hair is dark red, blood red, and his eyes look like black sapphires with stars within them.
Everything about him feels wrong.
The strange black marks curl around his cheeks, made of symbols, and they spread down his neck. On his hands are rings, literally on every finger, glittering in the light. He runs his fingers across the bars before stopping in front of Arty and proudly smiling at her. Something in my stomach drops.
I’m too weak to even rise up, to even stand on my feet, but I manage to sit up and press my back against the nearby wall, clutching my arm to my chest. My leg is definitely broken, and the pain is so bad that every breath hurts. Everything inside me is screaming, but not just in pain.
I still hear what the man says. “Well done, my daughter. Tell me, have you done what I asked?”
Daughter?
Her head stays bowed. “Daughter?” I ask loudly. She doesn’t answer me. She doesn’t even look my way. Neither does he.
“Yes, I killed all the others except for Hope and Livia. They escaped me and passed the race before I could get to them. I’m sorry.”
The man smacks her hard across the cheek, but she still doesn’t lift her head. She doesn’t make a sound. He walks close to his daughter. “Don’t worry.” He puts his hand on her shoulder, squeezing tightly enough that she winces. “We will hunt them together, and I will fix your incompetence.”
“Yes, father,” she quietly replies, keeping her head bowed.
“Arty! What the fuck are you saying?” I pause, looking at the blood all over her and remembering the girl I saw with her neck cut. I gasp, covering my mouth. She killed her…and Florence. Hope and Livia, she would have killed them too. My heart goes cold. “Arty, you’re a treacherous bitch! Who the hell is your father?”
The man finally looks at me. “Don’t go insulting my daughter, Ellelin. She is going to be one of the rulers of this world one day. My name is the Sorcerer, and thank you for releasing me. I’ve been trapped in there for twelve long years and been trapped in this world for far longer than that. But thanks to you, I’m free.”
The sorcerer?
He coldly smiles down at me. “I told you, if you got me out, I would tell you everything. I will, as I keep my word. This castle is all that’s left of the Spirit Court. This massive island was blown to pieces by me. I blew it up twelve years ago. I managed to escape my prison twelve years ago after being imprisoned for thousands of years, along with my trusted wards and wife, and child. I knew the fifth court was the most powerful of this world and if I took them down first, the rest would fall. They battled so strong to fight to win, and I destroyed all of them. Except you.”
