We make camp by a small rock face, clustered in thorn trees.
“Are you sure this is safe?” Selestra asks.
“As safe as we can be in a haunted forest.”
At the very least there’s no unsteady ground that might try to eat us in our sleep, or ghosts swarming. The sharp blades of the trees surrounding us give some protection, and with our backs to the rock face, we can keep an eye on the one entry point to this small cove.
Besides, the nearby stream will give us some much-needed drinking water. Assuming it isn’t poisonous.
Selestra slumps onto the gravel and throws a stick of wood onto the small fire I’ve started.
It sizzles and flickers, spitting embers up into the air.
I wish Lady Eldara let us pack supplies before whisking us off to this place. No bedrolls, no food, and no kind of map. If it wasn’t for the small stream we’d stumbled across while making camp, we probably would’ve died of thirst already.
If this is her idea of a trial for allies and queens, I’d hate to see how she treats real prisoners.
“I’ll go and see if I can gather berries for us,” I tell Selestra. “We’ve had training on wild fruit species in the Last Army, in case we were ever stranded during a mission. I’m sure I can find something.”
“As long as you do the first taste test,” she says.
“These are your trials,” I remind her. “Shouldn’t you lead by example? You’re the future queen.”
“I never said I was anyone’s queen.” Selestra settles against a large log. “But if I was, I’d delegate this responsibility to you.”
“How kind.”
“I’m a benevolent leader.”
She smiles nonchalantly.
“We can’t stay long,” I tell her. “We’ll rest until sunrise and then we have to keep going.”
Selestra looks uncertainly up to the sky, marred by night.
“Are we sure this place even has a sunrise?”
“No matter where you are, the sun always has to rise,” I say. “Not even the darkest of days are permanent.”
They were words my father always used to echo to me. I’m not sure why I speak them now, but Selestra blinks over to me, her eyes as bright as the fire that flickers between us. I wonder if he spoke those words to her once before too.
I hear the sound of her swallowing over the howls of the forest monsters.
“Be glad that nothing is permanent,” she finally tells me. “Or you’d be stuck with that haircut forever.”
I reach up a hand to touch my hair, but then I see that she’s grinning.
I pick up my sword. “Try not to die while I’m out collecting food.”
I dust myself off and head back into the forest.
“You try not to die either!” Selestra calls after me. “I need someone to keep the fire going while I sleep.”
It only takes an hour or so for me to find enough berries that don’t look like they’ll kill us and should fill our empty stomachs. I return to our makeshift campsite to see Selestra curled up on the ground beside the fire, already fast asleep.
“So much for being hungry enough to boil my bones,” I mutter.
I set the fruit—which I’ve gathered up in the waist of my shirt—in a small pile on the floor. It’s stained my clothing a mix of purples and reds.
I take a handful, and though it’s sour and a little grainy, it doesn’t kill me, so I consider it a success.
I stoke the fire and Selestra stirs on the ground by my feet.
I’m tempted to wake her so she can eat, but something in me is reluctant to disturb her. For someone stuck in a haunted forest, she looks so peaceful. Covered in mud and forest dirt, her hair pulled up and away from her face, she’s a far cry from the Somniatis heir, wrapped in ballgowns like some kind of trophy.
I turn to the fire with a sigh.
“You’re back,” Selestra mumbles.
I glance down at her, sleep coating her face in the firelight.
“It’s freezing,” she says in a shiver.
She’s clearly not used to the cold. Vasiliádes never experiences true winters compared with the other islands, and I’d bet that up in Selestra’s tower she is surrounded by thick blankets and large, roaring fires.
She gets closer to the fire and to me, shaking as the breeze takes hold. Summer seems unable to reach this forest, the chill like a permanent breath on the backs of our necks, tingeing even Selestra’s lips blue.
“Maybe Eldara is trying to test how long it takes for us to lose a finger to the cold,” I say.
I pull off my jacket and hold it out to Selestra.
“Here.”
She takes it with a grateful smile and I ignore the chill that settles into my bones.
“You should sleep,” I tell her.
“You should sleep too,” she says.
I keep stoking the fire, trying not to look at her again. Things always seem so much more complicated when I do.
“I’m fine.”
“Oh, I forgot.” Her voice is quiet. “You don’t sleep.”
I hate that she knows that about me.
It feels like a weakness has been uncovered and laid bare for her to see.
I clear my throat and then settle stubbornly into the ground beside her, reclining where Selestra does, as though it proves something.
I can sleep if I want to, I lie to myself. You don’t know me that well, princess.
Wordlessly, I pull a corner of the jacket from her so the edges cover my chest too. My arm grazes hers, pressed against her side as I nudge closer to share the heat. Being this close to her is like being close to a volcano, waiting for it to erupt and burn me whole.
I brush off the gnawing in my stomach.
“Nox,” she says.
I stiffen as Selestra’s voice tickles at my ear.
I wish she’d stop saying my name so softly. I hate how it jars everything inside me.
“Do you think things will change after the trials?” she asks.
“Change how?”
“I thought Lady Eldara was different, but it’s all the same,” she says, sighing into my jacket. “Constantly trying to prove that I’m good and worthy. Never having it be enough for anyone.”
The world goes quiet for a moment.
“It’s like I never even left the castle. I feel the same as I did in my tower, trapped by expectation.”
The grief in her tone takes me by surprise.
I thought these trials were a way for Selestra to gain more magic and take on the king without needing to be afraid. To boost her power.
I never thought she’d think they were a way for her to feel worthy.
Proof that she was good enough.
I don’t answer. I’m not sure what I can say to make her feel better, or if I’d even want to. I’m supposed to be angry at her, aren’t I?
Selestra sighs, and as the night draws on, her breathing turns deep and soft. The firelight flickers across her pale skin, embers dancing over her lips.
My father trained her, just as he trained me. He may have hated the king, but he thought Selestra worthy. He wanted her to know how to defend herself against someone like Seryth.
Did he sense how different she was from the king and her mother?
I breathe in the night.
Selestra was just a child when she saw my father die. I wonder how much that helped shape who she is today. The responsibilities put on her then were as grave as those my father put on me. He wanted me to save the world while her family wanted her to destroy it.
Why are the sins of our parents something we have to bear?
Selestra turns a little, the dirt and leaves rustling underneath her. I hold my breath, just in case she wakes.
I keep hold of it for far too long.
Selestra wakes me at the crack of dawn.
I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until she kicks me in the shin and says, “Rise and shine!”
To my surprise, it’s daylight when I open my eyes. Turns out the forest really isn’t coated in endless night.
I can’t believe I slept for so long and that I actually feel rested. Years of sleepless nights and now, despite being in a haunted forest filled with an old queen’s sadistic trials, I didn’t wake up once during the night.
How can it be that beside the heir to my greatest enemy, I was able to so completely relax?
“For someone who says they don’t sleep, you were like a dead man,” Selestra says. “Not to mention the snoring.”
I still.
“I don’t snore.” I slip my jacket back on. It smells like her. “And I wasn’t sleeping. I merely rested my eyes for a brief moment.”
Selestra snorts, seeing easily through the lie.
I don’t even bother trying to convince her further.
Across from me, she’s busy putting out the fire, and I notice that her hair is once again a bright green. There’s not a speck of mud left on her.
She notices me staring.
“I washed up in the stream,” she explains. “I couldn’t stand the smell of myself any longer. You should do the same.”
She grabs a handful of fruit and holds it out to me.
I shake my head.
“I nearly ate it all while you were asleep,” she says. “I woke up ready to start trying to cook the tree bark.” She sighs wistfully. “I miss the fresh buns dipped in cherry sauce that Irenya and I used to steal from the kitchens. Oh, and potatoes. With garlic butter and garden herbs, crispy on the outside and fluffy enough to melt in your mouth.”
I could swear she drools.
I stretch into a yawn, shaking off the long sleep. It’s not something I’m used to.
“Who needs potatoes when you have forest dirt and berries?” I say.
Selestra takes another reluctant mouthful of fruit, wincing at the bitter taste. “Which way do we go today?”
I lean over to grab the compass from the ground beside me.
“Looks like north is that way.”
Selestra sweeps her hair back away from her face. “Let the trials begin,” she says, but the way she sighs tells me that she’d much rather stay here and eat sour berries than face whatever else the forest and Eldara have in store.
We walk for several long hours without the sight of ghosts or much else before we finally come across a large canyon.
The forest pauses, cleaving in two like a walnut shell. The drop is large enough that I can’t see to the bottom. Holding the two sides together is a rickety bridge, with ropes that look fit to crumble to dust.
“I don’t suppose there’s another way across?” Selestra asks.
I hold up the compass. “This is north. Looks like your aunt is trying her best to kill us.”
Selestra grimaces at the use of the word aunt, like she hasn’t fully accepted that Lady Eldara is her family.
“Technically she’s my great-great-grandaunt,” she says, eyeing the bridge with disdain.
“I’m starting to think she doesn’t like you very much.”
“You think this will hold our weight?” she asks.
I pocket the compass. “Only one way to find out.”
I step onto the bridge and hear a crack, like a splinter. I wait a moment, and when it doesn’t snap, I take another step.
The bridge sways but holds my weight.
I clutch the ropes and look over my shoulder to Selestra.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
She groans but follows me onward.
With each step we take, the bridge creaks and rattles. The wood is disturbingly soft underneath my feet and the rope we cling to is thin and frayed.
We barely make it halfway across when my foot slips through the rotten wood. The force of it brings me to my knees, slamming me across the bridge floor.
My leg dangles, the wind gnawing at my ankles, trying to pull me down into the pit below.
Selestra rushes to my side. “Souls,” she says. “Can you be careful?”
She tries to pull me up, but it’s no use.
“My foot is stuck,” I say.
“We could chop it off?” Selestra offers.
I glower at her and grab on tighter to her gloved hands. “Just pull a little harder.”
“Maybe you should save yourself,” she says, mimicking my own words back to me. “Float yourself out like a paintbrush.”
Her tone is wry as she continues to try to pull me up, ignoring the way I glare up at her. Really it would serve me right if she left me here.
I wiggle my leg and see it’s starting to get free when Selestra suddenly stops pulling. She pales, eyes focusing on something behind me.
At the edge of the bridge where we just came from is a dead man.
I recognize him as the ghost from yesterday, who watched us in the forest and chased us down that damn hill.
He is stained in blood, skin dripping from his face like candle wax. He wears the same armor that Lucian wore during our fight, sword drawn and ready for battle.
This is a forest of fallen warriors and we are trespassers.
“It’s back,” Selestra says.
The dead man charges toward us.
“Go!” I yell.
I slip one hand from her grip and free my sword from its fast.
“Take it and run.”
I push my father’s sword into her hands. I will not let the savior of the Six Isles die because of me.
Selestra gapes, like she can’t quite believe what I’m saying. But the surprise quickly turns to a frown that’s all too familiar to me now.
Souls forbid she does what she’s told for a change.
“Don’t try to be noble,” Selestra scolds, dropping the blade to her side. “It doesn’t suit you.”
She grips tighter on to me and leans back, putting all her weight into helping me out of the hole. To my surprise, it works, and within moments I’m freed.
I slump to the floor just as the dead man reaches us, its sword ready to swipe across my neck.
Selestra blocks it.
Before I have time to reach for my blade, I see it’s already in her hands and she is thwarting blow after blow from the fallen warrior.
She brings the blade back and stabs into its stomach, but the metal passes through the man like smoke.
Still, she keeps him on the defense, never letting down her guard. She is an adept fencer. My father taught her well.
“How do I kill it?” she asks me, breathless.
The warrior is unrelenting.
“The jewel on its neck!” I say, spying a green gem around his throat. It looks far more solid than he does. “Smash the jewel.”
Selestra nods and whips around to smash the sword across the warrior’s necklace.
The creature begins to fade, its legs turning to wisps.
But before it goes, it lifts its arm in one final blow.
The blade tears across Selestra’s stomach.