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  Lunge, parry, strike. Duck, dodge, slash. Lylia’s dagger flies out again and again, and at first, it’s all Mercy can do to block each strike as it comes. Lylia wants this almost as much as she does; her every movement is laced with the same hunger Mercy has felt for seventeen years—to prove her worth, to swear the vow she has held sacred from the moment she set foot in the Keep. A twist of Lylia’s wrist sends Mercy’s poisoned dagger flying from her grasp. She dives for it, but Lylia tackles her before her fingers make contact, their heavy armor ringing over the shouts of the crowd.

  Mercy grunts as Lylia straddles her hips, grabbing the straps of her breastplate and pulling her almost upright before slamming her back on the ground. Mercy’s neck snaps back and she grits her teeth, prying at Lylia’s grip on her breastplate. The wretched girl is enjoying this too much to end it with the dagger sheathed at her hip; she’s going to take her time proving just how much better of a fighter she is than ‘Xiomar.’ Mercy’s other hand grasps only grass and dirt as she searches blindly for the poisoned blade.

  Her fingers close around the leather grip just as the weight is lifted off her.

  “Oof,” Lylia groans as Faye drags her off, her bloody dagger in hand. Mercy scrambles to her feet and glances about the ring. Cianna is nowhere to be seen, but she doesn’t have time to wonder what Faye had done to her. She shifts her grip on her dagger and leaps into the fray.

  Faye whirls and slashes with her knife, only inches from a vulnerable part of Mercy’s arm. Mercy backs away, feigning intimidation. The poisoned blade isn’t meant for her.

  They’re panting, sweating, grunting as their blades clash, and the crowd is silent, watching in rapt attention. Even the forest seems to be holding its breath. It feels like they are the only three people for miles.

  She wouldn’t trade this moment for anything.

  When Faye lunges again, Mercy flips the knife in her hand and slams the pommel down on Faye’s helmet. Faye sways—not from pain, but from the jarring noise amplified by the thick metal helmet so close to her ears. Lylia seizes the opportunity to leap on her, landing on Faye’s torso with her full body weight.

  Something crunches.

  The crowd sucks in a breath.

  Faye’s breastplate is dented, caved in and crumpled under Lylia’s knees. Her eyes flutter shut as she shudders once, then goes still.

  An inhuman roar of rage escapes Mercy’s lips. Lylia doesn’t have time to glance back before Mercy is on top of her, knocking her sideways off Faye’s body. They roll twice in the dirt, scrabbling for a hold, kicking and punching and slashing with their daggers in the tight space.

  Then Lylia yelps.

  Mercy’s dagger is buried in her thigh.

  She howls and yanks the dagger out, bright red blood painting the black of her armor. She throws the dagger to the side, out of the ring, and climbs on top of Mercy, pinning her legs beneath her. Again, she lifts Mercy up and slams her to the ground, sending shooting stars through Mercy’s vision.

  This time, though, the impact knocks off her helmet.

  Lylia freezes, her eyes widening in shock.

  Up on the platform, Mother Illynor jumps to her feet. Trytain leans forward in her chair, her mouth agape.

  “Mercy,” Lylia hisses.

  “Hello.”

  Mercy’s hair has sprung from its braid, sticking to her face in sweaty tendrils, and her cheeks are flushed bright pink. Her smug grin slips when she realizes Lylia’s blade is hovering an inch over her eye.

  Lylia is going to kill her.

  Judging by the outraged shouts from Illynor and the crowd, they won’t stop her.

  The point of the dagger doesn’t move. Lylia straightens, her face slackening with shock and confusion when the blade slips out of her hand seemingly of its own volition, nicking Mercy’s cheekbone as it falls.

  “What—What have you done?” she spits, eyes widening in fear as the poison takes hold. “You are . . . an abomination,” she forces out. Her eyes fall shut and she shudders, then slumps face first into the grass.

  Mercy snatches up the dagger Lylia had dropped and pushes to her feet, choking on a laugh as utter chaos erupts around her.

  Mistress Trytain leaps from the platform and crouches at Lylia’s side, checking her neck for a pulse. She shouts to Amir and Nerran to carry Lylia to the infirmary, then runs to Faye, who moans but remains unconscious. Everyone else is yelling over one another, their enraged voices blending into a cacophony. Mother Illynor and Hewlin are standing atop the platform, attempting to calm their fury.

  Mercy remains in the center of it all, the eye of the storm, grinning like a madwoman.

  She won.

  She won the Trial.

  Leveling her dagger at anyone in her way, Mercy shoves through the crowd and grabs Lahrenn by the arm. “Lylia will be fine as long as the antidote is administered quickly. I wrote out the recipe, and all the ingredients are sitting on the desk in the infirmary. Take them to Trytain.”

  Lahrenn nods, her chin bobbing up and down. She doesn’t move.

  “Now!” Mercy growls, and Lahrenn yelps, bolting into the castle. She follows at a leisurely pace, heading up the spiral stairs when she comes to the fork in the hallway. From here, the apprentices’ wing, the shouts and cries from the courtyard are muffled.

  She gasps as exhaustion unlike anything she has ever felt settles deep into her bones.

  Her iron knuckles clatter to the ground. The metal plates around her forearms follow, then she removes the cuisse and chain from her right leg. Another ten steps down the hallway and the left leg follows. Her bedroom door is within sight. She closes it behind her and leans against it as she undoes the straps holding her breastplate closed. She slips the metal over her head and tosses it to the opposite side of the room.

  She grins.

  She won the Trial.

  9

  A small earthquake beats down her door.

  A thousand fists, it sounds like. Looks like it, too, from the way the door shudders under them.

  She’s sitting against the wall in the back of her tiny room, legs stretched out in front of her, hands folded in her lap. A cool breeze sweeps in through the open window above her head. She has changed into a clean white tunic, simple pants, and her hair is loose around her face, dripping water from the ewer in the corner.

  She’s calm.

  She knows the rules of the Trial, and still she cheated them. She knew there would be consequences. She knew she’d have to pay for cheating the competition.

  She’s not sorry.

  The Guild is her life. She didn’t choose it, didn’t want it for years. But when she stopped fighting it, stopped resisting all the ways the tutors were trying to change her, she realized she enjoys it. All the teasing, all the mocking, all the quips about pointy ears and the girl whose own parents didn’t want her—they don’t matter in a fight.

  She’ll be hated for the work she does—by the Daughters who will see every success as a personal slight, by the families whose lives she’ll ruin.

  She will be hated.

  And she will love every minute of it.

  10

  The pounding on her door has stopped.

  She has been sitting in the same spot for hours. The sun has risen and set, and the moon which should hang bright and full in the sky is obscured by clouds. She doesn’t bother to light a candle. Come morning, she’ll either take her vows or be killed. Mother Illynor has spent almost eighteen years turning her into a fighting machine, a weapon for the Guild; she won’t let Mercy leave with a head full of the Guild’s teachings.

  The Guild is serious about its rules.

  The last time one of the Daughters was killed by her Sisters, she was trying to run away to a man with whom she’d fallen in love.

  Her name was Llorin.

  The same woman who had brought Mercy here is now a cautionary tale.

  Mercy stands and eases the door open wide enough to be sure no one is in the hall, but at this hour
, they have all either gone to bed or are drinking in the great hall. Luckily, Mercy’s destination is in the opposite direction.

  Her fingers curl around Lylia’s dagger and she tucks it into the waistband of her pants, adjusting her tunic so the folds of fabric hide the shape. She hadn’t had the chance to retrieve her own weapon, and she doubts they will trust her with one anytime soon. When she reaches the spiral staircase at the end of the hall, she lightly trails her fingers over the stone wall as she ascends. Before she steps onto the landing, the clash of angry voices drifts from afar. At the end of the hall, the door to Mother Illynor’s room is ajar. Trytain’s voice is the first Mercy can make out.

  “Can’t be allowed to stay—”

  “—did complete the Trial—”

  “Tradition! An insult to the Guild!”

  “We’ll have a riot on our hands if we let her live—”

  “Enough,” Mother Illynor says. “Mercy did complete the Trial, but she broke one of our most important rules, and that is not an issue taken lightly. She not only disgraced herself, but the Guild as a whole. The punishment is death—at dawn, in the courtyard.”

  Soft footsteps sound behind her, and Mercy whirls to find Lylia standing at the top of the stairs, the point of the dagger angled at her stomach.

  “Make a sound,” Lylia growls, “and I will have you gutted like a fish before they make it through that door. Nod so I know you understand.”

  Mercy obeys, itching to reach for the dagger concealed in her waistband. Lylia is still weak from the poison running through her veins; she shouldn’t have been allowed out of bed for another day or two. The poison and antidote are still warring in her system, making her sluggish. If Mercy pretends to trip on a stair, maybe in those brief seconds she can grab the dagger and disarm Lylia.

  The apprentice glares at her. “I know that look. Don’t think I didn’t notice you steal my dagger. Hand it to me—slowly.” She pricks Mercy through her shirt in emphasis. When she passes it over, Lylia smiles, but there is no kindness in the gesture. “Now walk.”

  Lylia shoves her forward, guiding Mercy down the stairs with the dagger pressed between her shoulder blades. “Just down the hall—through there,” she whispers when they emerge on the main floor. With her free hand, she points to an archway, a narrow, almost hidden staircase just within.

  If Mercy could run—

  The staircase ends at a half-rotted redwood door. The bottom has been chewed away by tiny teeth, and piles of rodent droppings are scattered about the floor.

  After a prod from Lylia’s knife, Mercy reaches forward and tries the handle. It turns a quarter of the way, then stops. Locked.

  Lylia sighs, like this shortcoming is somehow Mercy’s fault. “Open it.”

  She leans her shoulder into the door, planting her feet on the stone floor. After three hard pushes, the door flies open with a crack! as the lock snaps.

  A burst of wind slaps Mercy in the face.

  They’re standing on the battlements.

  Weathered and weakened by various attacks over the past millennium, whole chunks of gray stone have broken off and fallen into piles inside and outside of the yard. Mother Illynor has never bothered to have them fixed, and they have since sprouted a thick film of ivy and red moss.

  A heavy hand on Mercy’s shoulder propels her forward, and she risks a glance at Lylia, marching stoically behind her. “What are you doing, Lylia?” She tries to sound weary, but a note of fear slides in when her foot catches on a loose pebble which goes skittering into the yard twenty feet below. “Think of what Mother Illynor will say if she finds us out here. Do you think she will forgive you for threatening me?”

  Lylia shoves her, hard, and Mercy’s stomach drops as she pitches toward the edge. Like a cat toying with its prey, Lylia catches her before she falls. “Oh, I’m going to do much more than threaten you, Mercy. By the time I’m done with you, they won’t be able to recognize what’s left.”

  “I’ll forget about this. We can just go back.” She eyes the edges of the wall, barely a foot away on either side.

  “No.” Lylia spins her around, and her face is more rage-filled than Mercy has ever seen it—which, she’ll admit, terrifies her. “You have humiliated me for the last time. This Trial was supposed to be mine—not yours, not your pathetic friend’s. All these years, everything you’ve ever done has been to undermine me. Around that corner. Go.”

  They slip through the watchtower, and Lylia stops in the center of the battlements, above the gate. Does she intend to hang her, or push her off? Either way, her body will be on full display for anyone who sets foot outside.

  Lylia pushes her forward until the toes of her boots hang over the edge, the cool nighttime air an empty void in front of her. Her knife rests at Mercy’s throat, her mouth a hair’s breadth from the point of her ear. “Look down,” she whispers. “Can you see it? Can you imagine yourself lying there? Broken, bloodied, pitiful Mercy.” A smile sounds in her voice, and Mercy swallows painfully. Lylia’s hand is splayed in the center of her back. Not pushing—not yet.

  “The walls are high, but they’re not high enough to kill you. I imagine they’d break some pretty significant bones, though. How long do you think you’ll last, lying there, before the agony becomes too much for you to bear? I bet after a few hours you’ll be begging me to kill you. Can you see it? Lying in a pool of your own blood, feeling it get colder and colder around you, tasting the dirt in your mouthful of broken teeth.”

  Her knees begin to quake.

  One push is all it takes.

  “I will enjoy hearing you beg,” she whispers.

  Mercy swallows. “I would never.”

  The pressure on her back intensifies until she can’t keep her balance anymo—

  Something clicks.

  “Let go of her.”

  In one dizzying instant, she is yanked away from the edge. Lylia’s hand is knotted in her shirt. Her free arm snakes around Mercy’s throat, tightening, choking. Calum is standing fifteen feet away, a crossbow aimed straight at Lylia.

  Mercy is caught between them.

  Calum stalks closer, pausing when Lylia tightens her hold on Mercy, cutting off her air supply entirely. Mercy sputters, her hands clawing Lylia’s arm.

  “This is not your business,” Lylia spits.

  Calum steps closer, his eyebrows furrowed, the rest of his face obscured by the enormous limb of the crossbow. His feet are planted, his posture tense, his finger on the trigger. “I assure you it is my business. Should any harm come to her, I will show you just how serious I am.”

  Lylia’s grip doesn’t waver, but Mercy feels her hesitate. Mercy’s lungs are gasping, igniting, failing. Stars dance in her vision.

  “A demonstration, then?” Calum says, his voice betraying no emotion.

  The crossbow’s string releases and the bolt whizzes through the air, cracking as it thuds against stone.

  He missed.

  Lylia sucks in a breath and releases Mercy, who crumples to her knees, gasping as she sucks in the cold night air. Without so much as a glance in her direction, Calum strides past Mercy and murmurs something to Lylia in a low voice. A second later, Lylia’s running footsteps pound past Mercy, then the door to the battlements slams shut.

  Kneeling atop the wall, Mercy presses her forehead to the cool, rugged stone. She chokes on a breath, wincing. Two arms encircle her gently, but it doesn’t stop the alarm going off in her head. She elbows Calum and scuttles a few feet away, then glances at the grass far below and thinks better of it.

  Strong hands clasp hers and she stills.

  “You’re okay, love,” Calum whispers. He kneels in front of her, his earnest gaze searching her face. His hair is loose and hangs in front of his face, softening the lines of his sharp features. “You’re safe,” he murmurs.

  Mercy pulls her hands away and stands. Her knees are trembling, but she’s determined not to show it. “You should be asleep by now, like everyone else.”

  H
e pretends not to hear the tremor in her voice. “We’re lucky I’m not.”

  She tugs on the hem of her tunic. “Thank you,” she whispers, and Calum nods gravely.

  He steps around her and picks up the crossbow as if it’s made of nothing but air, which—given the Strykers’ skill—hardly seems impossible.

  “What did you hit?” Mercy asks, then swallows the words as her gaze lands on a crossbow bolt embedded on the stone tower several yards behind her, at exactly the height of Lylia’s head. The bolt is buried up to the fletching, a spider web of cracks blossoming across the brick. “Oh.”

  “I never intended to kill her. Usually a demonstration is enough to scare people away.”

  Mercy tugs on the bolt. Except for freeing a chunk of pulverized stone from the wall, it doesn’t budge. “You’re not getting this back anytime soon.”

  “I can make more.” Mercy turns to find his gaze locked on her. “I did not kill her, Mercy, but make no mistake,” he says, “if she ever comes for you again, I promise I will not hesitate to drive a bolt through her skull—or anyone’s, for that matter.”

  “Why do you care?”

  Calum stares at her for a long time, his lips a tight line. When it becomes apparent he isn’t going to answer, Mercy hugs her arms around herself and shivers.

  “I should go inside, make sure Lylia isn’t plotting her next murder attempt.” Mercy says it lightly, but one look at Calum’s expression and the joke falls flat.

  “You should leave.”

  “Leave?”

  “No one needs to explain to me the punishment for breaking the Guild’s rules, especially over something as sacred as the Trial. I know”—he holds up a hand when Mercy objects—“that I pushed you to do it. I had thought when they saw the way you fight—the way you really fight, like you have everything to lose—Mother Illynor would change her mind. She didn’t. Leave, Mercy. Pack your things, grab the daggers you won, and run.” He closes the distance between them and presses a heavy iron key in her palm. “I stole this key for the smithy from Hewlin. Take the daggers, mount your horse, and ride north.”