Chapter 61: Sixty One
Valka
"Me?" Lilith echoes incredulously, as if the suggestion itself is an insult. The great black doors slam shut behind us with a final, echoing boom, sealing us in. "You’re deciding to throw me off? I am the strongest of you--"
"And the most selfish," Soraya cuts in, her voice trembling with hate. "This stage demands teamwork. You cannot function as a part of a whole because you are self-serving cunt."
Lilith’s green eyes flash and her smile tilts coyly. "Why don’t you come say that to my face?"
Soraya takes the bait and I catch her wrist, tugging her back. The woman narrows her eyes at where I hold her and rips her arm from mine like I’m something unworthy of her attention. Frowning, I take a step back. "I’m just trying to help. She’s goading you. You take one more step forward and you are within her line of attack, and there are no rules this time against using your powers. You have to be careful."
Her stare remains hostile. "You know, I cannot tell whose side you are on."
Understandable, I think. Even I don’t know whose side I’m on. Maybe... mine?
"Closer," Lilith laughs, turning in the circle we’ve surrounded her in, her hands aimed out before her. "Go ahead. Choose me. But if I go over, I’ll drag every last one of you down with me."
And we all know it’s not an empty threat.
Streaks of black leak from Soraya’s hands, forming into sharp talons. Faster than I can catch, they encircle Lilith’s ankle like whips, and pull her off her feet with a vicious tug that snaps her bone. Lilith screams, an enraged howl that shakes the mountains and fire detonates from her palms in wild, uncontrolled arcs.
"Move!" Evadne yelps, knocking me down, and we barely miss the searing bolt that had been slicing for my chest. It grazes my elbow, leather hissing as it catches flame.
But Dahlia of House Solmire isn’t so lucky.
Her scream is a sound I will never forget, ripped straight from the gut. Fire devours her hair in an instant, crawling over her scalp and licking down her neck. She staggers, thrashing, slapping at the inferno climbing over her body. But it spreads faster, as though taking a life of its own.
It happens too fast to stop.
Evadne screams for her to use the snow to douse it, but we know it is useless. There’s nothing to smother it with. Nothing to stop it. She stumbles in circles, her hands clawing at blistering skin as leather ignites and her white Solmire armor blackens and curls. Her voice breaks into choking sobs. "Ma! Mother! It hurts!"
Tears prickle at my eyes and I swivel to Lilith, nursing her broken foot, whilst glaring viciously at the flames, fanning it even higher. "Stop this! Please! She’ll die!"
Her green eyes lift to mine and there is nothing human in them. "Then let her die. "Better one liability now than six corpses later."
Dahlia circles too close to the railing. The planks underfoot shriek. A heel slams against rotted wood. The ropes above strain like the last breath of a dying thing. And snap as she pivots into it.
I move, because I can’t do anything else. I lunge, hands out, wanting to drag her back into safety. I reach her shoulder. I miss by inches, hands closing only around the heavy rope that will keep the second right of the bridge in place. Her foot clips loose and the world tilts sickeningly.
For one impossible slow heartbeat, our eyes lock.
Dahlia’s face is a melting mess, the white of her eyes impossibly plain as the wicked flames eat away at her chest now. She mouths words I can’t hear because they are swallowed by the wind and the roar of the crowd and the hiss of flame. She tilts her head, and the motion is somehow gentle.
"We apologisssssse," she breathes, smoke curling on each syllable, voice thin as paper. Yet, all the air on my skin rises at the depth of her voice, familiar and yet, not. Masculine and yet, feminine. It is old and new, like listening to a deity speak through a vessel. "For your lo--sssss."
Then she topples over the edge.
There is no splash. The fog swallows her whole before the sound can reach us. Only the echo of her apology and the reek of burning flesh hangs in the air.
I stare down at the rope in my hands, knuckles white around the fraying fibers. My loss. My chest feels hollow. What does that even mean? Was she talking about Ilya? My father? Something worse? The words gnaw at me until they’re all I can hear, and still I find myself leaning forward, peering into the white abyss below, sadness pressing heavy in my lungs.
Did she know? Did she see her death long before this moment and walk toward it anyway? Is that why she wanted to withdraw?
"You stupid bitch!" Soraya shrieks, breaking through my thoughts. She thrashes against the arms holding her back, murder flashing in her eyes, all of it aimed at Lilith.
"Stop it!" Evadne snaps, shoving between them. "We need her to get across. You can claw her face off later. We need to move. Now!"
And that’s when I notice it. The groan beneath my boots, the hard pull of weight on the rope that nearly sends me across. Staggering back, I tug hard on it, eyes widening as it finally sinks in that the rope is all that’s keeping the plank from giving way. A single snapped thread, and we’ll follow Dahlia into the fog.
"Don’t move!" I bark. They all freeze and turn toward me. "The bridge won’t hold."
Altheira comes running forward. "What do you mean it won’t hold?"
"Precisely what I said," I growl between gritted teeth, inclining my head to the sole rope in my hands and the swaying monstrosity ahead. "At this rate, it won’t hold all of us at once..."
And it dawns on me as soon as the words leave my lips, how utterly foolish we are. "The Elder had said we needed to decide who wouldn’t make the crossing. He didn’t say the seventh had to die."
My voice cracks on the last word and silence falls as we mince over it. We were so used to the violence that we never considered that all he’d meant was one person had to sit the journey out because of the frailness of the bridge and the appropriate weight distribution that would allow it to hold--six people.
Altheira crouches beside me. "We’ve already failed before starting." She stares at the rope in my hands. "What do we do now?"
"The second part of the rule contradicts itself," I murmur, my heart racing. "Even if six people were meant to cross... someone has to step on first. Then another. Then another. There will always be less than six at some point. If that were truly fatal, the bridge would collapse the moment the first sets foot on it."
Soraya seems to be completely done with her hysterics, now leaning over on my right. "Speak clearly, Nythorn."
I wet my lips, thinking fast. "What if ’six’ doesn’t mean six people in the line up?" I say. "What if it means the total weight touching the bridge at all times?"
Blank stares.
"If two of us stay here and hold this rope," I continue, "our weight counts. If Evadne and Soraya grip the other side and brace it from there, that’s another. The rest of you move across one by one, keeping the load steady until we are all across, holding it together. The bridge never bears more, never bears less. It simply holds."
Understanding dawns slowly across their faces.
"And how do you get across if you’re the one anchoring it?" Eva asks.
I shrug, the rope biting into my palms. "That’s the part I haven’t figured out yet. All of this is theory, spoken aloud. I could be wrong..." My voice lowers "And the first person who steps on might take the plunge."
Soraya turns to Lilith, who’s pretending not to be listening, and strides, before shoving her upwards on her broken feet, towards the starting point. "Let her be the first one to test your theory."
Lilith shoves her off. "I’ll get on myself."
We set to work, Altheira breathing hard as we tug as one, Soraya and Evadne holding on to the other end, and as Lilith takes the first unsure step onto the plank, a large part of me wishes I was wrong, just so I can see the look on her face when she falls. But there is a small part of me that doesn’t want that at all.
Nothing happens.
She limps onto the second step and the bridge holds. On the third, it begins wobbling, until Fawn, Lyssandra’s daughter, hops on, nearly startling us. She is so damned quiet most of the time, I’d almost forgotten she was there.
The crowd outside begins cheering. This time, it is a steady chant; Ly-ra. Ly-ra.
Evadne shoots me an intense look just as she takes a step onto the bridge. "Be careful, Lyra. I’d hate to lose you to the altitude. And I’m sure Lucien would hate that, too, even if he’d never admit it."
I seriously doubt that, but I nod, watching her sway with the bridge. And when she makes it across, keeping still on the third to the last step, while Soraya and Altheira stand simultaneously on the last two, and Lilith and Dawn grip both ends of the railing, I let go of the rope.
The bridge shakes dangerous and someone ahead yells, "Hurry!"
I take the running leap. And the arena roars to life as my feet slams onto a plant, snapping it and the bridge sways left, nearly throwing us all off. Soraya steps off on instinct and the ropes begin to fray.
My breakfast rushes up the my throat and I breathe in deeply. In and out. Don’t look down. Don’t you dare look down. You’ve done this over training a hundred times. This bridge is nothing.
The wind roars in my ears, along with the cries that seem to thunder from every direction as I speed across the bridge, the wind at my heels and a burst of speed to rival any of mine.
And in the blink of an eye, I am bursting across the other side, running way to fast to stop myself and the crowd bursts into laughter, yet again, when I slam against the door of the crypt and rebound, on my ass.