Chapter 29

Twenty-Nine

Swallowing to wet my suddenly dry throat, I assess the space. We're in some sort of two-story foyer lit by red faelight sconces and a rickety chandelier hanging in the middle. The same foliage that covers the exterior has made its way inside, and even though the spores on the shade ivy have to be activated with heat, I steer clear of them.

From our position in the foyer there are four possible directions to go. There are closed doors to the right, left, and in front of us, and a curved stairway that leads to a landing on the second floor. I suppose from here we're meant to decide which direction to go, but if this is a trial of wits, then there must be a way to determine the right path.

I wander around the foyer, looking for a safe spot to run out the clock.

"Sabine's not here," I hear a competitor say to another.

Sabine. The wolf shifter from another school. That's who's missing.

"I hope she's okay," the other says, a fae named Raven with two-inch gauges in her ears and a dark braid that reaches her waist.

The first competitor, Caden, a gorilla shifter with short black hair and muscles for days, shakes his head. "After what happened to that other guy who didn't show to the last trial, it's stupid to miss this one."

"She probably didn't do it on purpose," Raven says. "It's not like any of us were prepared to be woken in the middle of the night."

"Like it matters whether or not it was intentional or not. She's going to pay the price regardless."

"Hey," yells Kiaro, the snake shifter I fought in the cages, "shut up and help figure out which way to go. When we get out, you two can braid each other's hair and gossip all you want."

They grumble under their breaths but break apart and start to search for clues. Kiaro catches my eye and sticks his forked tongue out, wiggling it suggestively. I turn away and run into Titus, who's inspecting one of the faelight sconces.

"Whoa," he says when my hands land on his bare chest to steady myself.

Stepping back quickly, I mumble an apology and he waves me off.

"No problem. Just watch your step."

My eyes catch on the parts of his tattoo curling over his shoulders. The swirls of veins and deliberately placed flowers are quite beautiful, delicate, yet somehow still masculine, and if it wasn't completely weird I'd ask him to turn around so I can check out the rest of it. But instead I ask if the tattoo means anything, thinking of how Becks got his dragon tattoo after being named dragon heir.

Titus looks down at me, his mouth a hard line, "Yes," he says, and then turns and walks away.

I suppose that was a rather personal question, so I don't take the dismissal to heart as I head to the corner of the foyer to get out of the way of the other competitors. Standing with my arm's crossed, I watch the other competitors scour the room for clues and come up empty.

"We're wasting time," Kiaro says from the middle of the foyer, drawing everyone's attention. "We just need to split into groups and try the different rooms."

"You want to leave this up to chance?" Raven scoffs, and Kiaro rounds on her.

"Do you want to waste an hour searching one room? If so, be my guest. That will be one less competitor I have to go up against in the final trial."

The room dissolves quickly into an argument about picking doors at random and continuing to look for clues.

"The game master said there's more than one path through the building," Titus says, raising his voice above the arguments. "As much as I hate to agree with the snake shifter, we've already lost ten minutes here. We have to start moving."

"Whatever," Damon, a tall and lanky vampire says. "I don't care what the game master said. I don't trust any of you anyway. I'm going on my own." Before anyone can stop him, he yanks open one of the doors on the ground floor and we all freeze.

I can't see anything in the adjoining room. It's pitch black. Damon pauses, but then gathers his courage and enters. He's swallowed by unnatural darkness almost immediately, but after several moments when nothing happens, two more competitors take off after him.

I look for Talon, waiting to see what he's going to do, and find him on the stairs, not even paying attention to what's going on as he inspects the sconces. The ones running up the stairs are all a little crooked. Talon straightens one and then moves on to the next. I take a step toward him, curious about what he's doing when someone shouts, "What is that?"

When I look over my shoulder, black mist is trickling out of the open doorway Damon and the other competitors went through. It brushes up against the toe of Raven's shoe and then latches on, clinging to her as it snakes its way up her body.

She yelps when she moves away but the mist doesn't disengage from her. Everyone else quickly backs away from her and the growing mist as she frantically tries to shake or wipe it off her, but it keeps creeping up her body until tendrils of smoke wrap around her limbs, torso, and neck.

My heart leaps into my chest when the sinister black substance reaches her face, and she lets out a scream of agony and drops to her knees. She swipes furiously at her eyes, wailing that she can't see. When she stops rubbing her face and looks up, her eyes are completely white, and I gasp. My heart speeds up and I'm torn between going to help her or backing away.

"Someone help," she begs, but no one moves.

Suddenly, the blackness starts pouring out of the open doorway, heading straight for us. I'm frozen for a moment as the competitors split and bolt for the other doors, desperate to escape the blinding mist.

There's no way I'm waiting out this trial in the foyer anymore. Forcing myself to move, I start toward the nearest door, the one on the other side of the foyer, when someone grabs my hand and jerks me in the other direction.

"Talon," I yell, as he pulls me up the stairs behind him.

"You don't want to go that way," he warns.

"How do you know?"

"Look!" He points toward the wall as we zip up the steps. All the sconces are straightened and the faelight has changed from red to purple, revealing arrows painted on the wall that point up to the second floor.

Shock runs through me. He figured it out while the rest of us were waiting to see what happened to the first couple of competitors.

Reaching the landing, Talon grabs the knob and throws open the door, pulling me in after him. The room we pour into is full of books, shelves and shelves of dusty tomes from floor to ceiling, and covered with shade ivy. It looks like the books haven't been touched in decades.

A scream from somewhere below pierces my ears. Talon and I twist around in time to watch three bodies barrel in after us: Titus, Kiaro, and Stryder, a dragon shifter who graduated from Nightlark the year before. The black mist crawls up the stairs behind them.

"Shut the door," Talon yells, and Titus slams it shut. Immediately, any noise from below is cut off. The only sound filling the room is our own ragged breathing. Hopefully that means the door is barrier enough to keep the mist at bay.

We regard each other warily as we catch our breaths. This might not be the grouping any of us would have chosen, but it's the one we're stuck with now.

Talon checks his watch. "We're twenty minutes down. Let's get working," he says, and we fan out.

There's only one door that leads out of the room, but we quickly find it locked.

"We must be looking for a key of some sort," I say, and a moment later Stryder comes across a small, locked chest.

Talon immediately snatches it from him and tries to break it open, but it doesn't so much as dent.

"The lock needs four numbers," Titus says, after coming forward to inspect it.

"Check the books," I say, and start carefully pulling books down to inspect them, doing my best to avoid the shade ivy's thorns.

The guys join the search, and after less than a minute I pluck a thick book from the shelf and there's a number written on the wall behind it. "You guys, look."

"Keep checking," Talon orders. "We need three more numbers."

"And then we need their order too," I remind him.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

Stryder pulls a book from the shelf and then yelps and jumps back. When I look over my shoulder he's revealed a hole in the wall that a rat is crawling out of. Kiaro curses, and I jerk my attention to him to see he's uncovered another hole that spiders the size of my fist are scampering out of.

"Wait!" I shout, searching through the pile of books at my feet for the one that revealed the number. I remember it was a burgundy leather cover and find it quickly. "It's a copy of the Ancients. Look for more of them on the shelves."

Talon finds one and there's another number behind it. Stryker, Titus, Talon, and I look for the remaining two copies while Kiaro is busy stomping the spiders, which is honestly fine with me. I don't want those hairy little beasts getting anywhere close to me. It's only a few minutes before we've revealed all four numbers.

"We have to check the books for clues on the order," Talon says, and I start flipping through the burgundy copy I first pulled. It only takes me a few seconds to realize I don't have the full copy, it's only a volume of part of the Ancients. I ask Talon for the one he found and see that he has another copy.

"They're different volumes," I say, getting all the guys' attention. "The one I pulled is volume three. Talon's is volume one. That must be the order of the numbers."

"You're right," Titus says and then goes over to the chest and asks for the numbers in order. When we give them to him he puts them in the lock, and it springs open to reveal a key inside.

We did it! We figured out how to get out of another room.

"Give me that," Kiaro says, and snatches the key from Titus. He jams it in the lock and the knob turns.

The rat Stryder released skitters across the wall near his head, spooking him, and he immediately shoots a stream of fire at it.

"No!" I yell, but it's too late.

Stryder fried whatever creepy crawly spooked him, but he also charred a bit of the shade ivy. There's a visible plume of spores hanging in the air around him. Talon's the closest and tries to twist out of the way, but coughs when he inhales some of the spores. Stryder, who got a faceful of the spores, falls to the ground batting at his clothes like they are on fire, shouting for us to put it out.

Before I have a chance to react, Kiaro slams his fist into Stryder's face, knocking him out cold, and then spins toward Talon with his arm raised.

"Try it, and I'll break your hand and every finger," Talon warns, and Kiaro sneers at him.

"I don't know how much of that you inhaled, but if you slow me down I'll put you out just as easily," he says, and then walks into the next room without a backward glance.

Titus looks into the next room with weary eyes, and then turns to Talon and me. "Come on. We'd better keep going. Who knows how many of these little hellscapes we have to get through to get out of this place."

He slips through to the next room, and rather than following right after, I wait for Talon to near.

"Are you okay?" I ask, trying to catch his eye.

"I'm fine," he says, but the next step he takes he has to steady himself on the wall.

"Are you two coming?" Kiaro calls from the next room.

"Yeah," I yell then lower my voice to hiss at Talon. "You're not fine."

His eyes are glassy. He shakes his head as if trying to clear his now hazy mind.

"I'll make it through. I can't fail this trial," he says as he grits his teeth. But I easily see the spark of vulnerability and fear he's trying to hide. He knows he's in trouble, but he's not going to stop until he reaches his goal.

"Come on," I say, pulling him forward. "I'll get you through the rooms."

I can't believe I have to endure this entire trial for nothing. When this is done, Talon is going to owe me another huge favor.