As I stood by the starting line, no one gave me a second look. The icy winter wind rushed over us, and I kept my face tilted down, my violet locks whipping around my face.
The news crews stood at the edges of our throng, cameras trained on the princesses at the front. They’d formed their own little clique near the starting line, while the rest of the common fae milled around behind them. I was happy to hang back for now.
Moria and a few of the others had decorated their faces with bright blue war paint, which didn’t help ease my nerves. Clearly, we were going into battle, not for a Sunday fun run.
At last, one of King Torin’s footmen strode to the front of the starting line, a man with long red braids over his blue uniform. He carried a silver staff that he banged twice on the frozen earth. “Thirty seconds from now, at the sound of the trumpet, the race will begin.”
His words sent my nerves juddering, and I clenched my fists, repeating my mantra to myself.
Fifty million dollars. Fifty million dollars.
Around me, the contestants were jostling for good positions, though no one seemed to be moving toward the princesses. I found myself about a row back, sandwiched between a muscular fae with pink hair and one who was mysteriously soaking wet.
I glanced to my right. A footman marched toward the starting line with his trumpet. He put it to his lips, and I held my breath, waiting for the sound.
When the horn blared, my heart thundered.
The contestants surged forward in a mad rush, pushing past the starting line and down the hill. I kept a decent pace behind the princesses, but they were running at an all-out sprint. How were they going to keep up that pace? We were all fae here, and I doubted they spent more time running than I did. They were going to burn out in half a mile.
As the distance stretched between us, a bit of concern twisted in my chest. What were they planning with this sprint?
While I raced down the hill in the stinging winter air, the sun came out from behind the clouds. Golden light shone off the stone, glinting on the drifting flakes around us and turning the iced tree branches into glittering crystals. Clouds of breath puffed from the princesses ahead of me as they ran at the maximum of their capacity.
A cameraperson raced alongside us in a little vehicle, an image that seemed bizarrely out of place here. But they were mostly focused on the frontrunners.
I’d been saving some energy, waiting until I knew what they were up to. At the forest’s edge, they sprinted even faster and in unison, without saying a word to one another.
They’d planned something ahead of time, and maybe I shouldn’t be in the front lines when the plan came to fruition. Because it wasn’t just a race, but a battle.
I drifted back into the pack of runners, remembering Torin’s warning about the forest being the most dangerous part of the race.
We crossed into the shade of the trees, and an unnatural, icy fog billowed around me until I could no longer see a thing. All I could hear was rhythmic breathing and the pounding of feet against the ground.
A few women sprinted ahead of me, out of my sight maybe five seconds before agonized screams pierced the quiet. My heart skipped a beat, and I hung back a little. Didn’t seem like a good idea to run toward the screaming.
Ahead, another horrified scream pierced the air. None of us could see what was happening, but it sounded brutal.
Clearly, the princesses had laid a trap for the rest of us. Around me, the other common fae stopped at the edge of the mist, and I could just about make out their silhouettes in the fog.
“What the hell is going on?” someone nearby asked. “What are we supposed to do here?”
No one—including me—seemed to have an answer, but time was running out. If I waited too long, there’d be no chance to catch up, and it already felt like I’d lost the race. I had to beat at least one of the princesses to make the cut, and they’d all slipped far ahead.
I considered my choices. The mist stretched into the woods. Running around the fog wasn’t an option.
The potions weren’t helpful. Gas, fog, anti-pain…
Maybe I could climb a tree?
It was at that point that I heard the low, mournful song of the bean nighe. I moved toward the sound and found her standing by the stream. She stared at me, her eyes black as coal, skin shining with silver like she was bathed in moonlight. My breath caught in my throat at her unearthly beauty.
She turned, slipping into the fog—a smudge of darkness in the cloud around me.
Wind howled loudly around us, drowning out the song of the bean nighe. When I glanced up, I saw the wind blowing the snow from the trees and shaking the branches. The freezing gale swept away the fog, too. But the wind also carried with it the sounds of torment. Screams floated between the boughs.
Had the bean nighe done this?
As the mist cleared, I caught a glimpse of four injured fae, and my stomach turned. One of them lay crumpled in the middle of the path, clutching her right ankle. I sucked in a short breath as nausea roiled my stomach. Her foot had been hacked clean off, and blood stained the snow around her. Her face was gray with shock.
“Oh, my gods,” said a woman next to me.
My gaze slid to the other contestant writhing in the bloodstained snow. Both of her feet were missing, her legs ending in bloody stumps.
I stared with dawning horror. This place—these people—were fucking barbaric.
The runners around me screamed in panic.
The princesses stood just beyond the injured runners, catching their breath. Just as I’d predicted, the early sprint had knocked the wind out of them, and they’d burned themselves out completely.
“Fucking psychopaths,” I muttered. I wanted to run, but I still didn’t know how the trap worked. And the fact that the princesses were still there—watching—made me think it wasn’t over yet.
I scanned the bloody ground, trying to figure out what had severed their legs. It took me a few seconds, then I noticed a faint shimmer in the air, a narrow line strung across the path. A few red beads of blood dripped from it, perfect round drops of red against white, like holly berries in the snow. The princesses had set up some sort of razor-sharp magical trip wire.
The screams of pain still filled the icy air.
With a grunt, I leaned down, snatched up a thin tree branch, and threw it on the wire. It sliced clean through the wood, and I heard the princesses tittering on the other side.
“Do you think this is funny?” I shouted. “Injuring and disfiguring people?” I turned. “They’ve set up a razor wire!”
Around me, the other fae were shouting curses at the princesses.
The princesses fell silent, and Moria’s smile slipped. She turned, stomping off through the snow. I watched as she started jogging again, though her sluggish gait suggested she was tired from her earlier sprint.
I could simply leap over the wire, but I had no idea if everyone had heard me. Did I want fifty million? Hell, yes, I did. But even that much money wasn’t worth a ton of severed limbs on my conscience.
I glanced at a mossy rock by the edge of the path. I snatched it up, took several steps closer, and hurled it at the wire. The wire snapped with a sharp twang.
I broke into a sprint, hoping they hadn’t set up any more. I scanned the ground while I ran, desperately trying to catch the faint sheen of wire.
Up ahead, the princesses looked fatigued. I was starting to gain on them. When we broke from the woods, I was no more than five yards behind the princesses.
With a burst of speed, I pumped my arms hard and passed the hindmost princess, a delicate beauty with dark skin who was gasping audibly. I ran past the ravaged corpse of a fae with white hair, her head ripped from her neck, staining the snow with claret.
Up ahead, a red-haired princess was raking her long claws through another common fae, tearing through her chest.
Holy shit.
But I was still moving faster, catching up with the princesses. I listened to the sound of their wheezing.
Ahead, the finish line was maybe two tenths of a mile away. With a final sprint, I could pass them all. I dodged past another one, closing in on Moria.
But as I narrowed the gap, she turned to look at me. Her elbow slammed into my chest with a force that knocked me flat on my back. I scrambled up, but another foot caught me in the side. Something snapped, the disturbing sound of breaking bone…
Oh, fuck.
It was a weird sensation, not immediately painful, but then a shooting pain lanced through me. As I started after the princesses, agony tore at my side. Up ahead, Moria crossed the finish line, her burgundy hair flowing behind her, arms over her head.
I shambled forward, trying to run.
Pain engulfed my chest, and something was wrong with my breathing. I coughed, and blood spattered into the snow. I stared with horror at the red droplets.
They’d punctured my fucking lung.
I staggered forward, spitting hot blood on the ground. Gasping, I looked up at the stands in the distance, and the princesses jogging up the hill toward the castle.
I was about to lose.
From up ahead, I heard a woman yell, “Can’t run with a hole in your lung!”
I stumbled forward, clutching at my side. Two tenths of a mile to the castle that towered over the landscape, but I could no longer walk, let alone run.
I slipped my hand into my pocket, feeling for the vials of magic Torin had given me. Did I want to run into a cloud of gas? Absolutely not. Was it the only way to get past this trial and closer to my fifty million? Probably, yes.
Shaking, I jammed my hand into my pocket and drew out one of the vials, staring in a daze at the faint orange light glimmering between my fingers. Precisely as Torin had told me not to do, I hurled it ahead of the princesses who’d taken the lead.
The vial exploded, and an orange mist billowed into the air.
Even from here, the inhalation hurt like crazy and breathing it in with a broken rib and injured lung was a blinding, maddening sort of agony. Based on the screams from in front of me, it was worse just twenty feet away.
Fortunately, I had another vial, one that would ensure I wouldn’t feel a thing.
I reached into my pocket removed the anti-pain potion. Shaking, I swallowed the contents, a slightly nauseating mixture of sickly sweet and medicinal herbs. I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth spread through my chest, and the pain disappeared immediately.
Up ahead, the runners had stopped, falling to the ground in the cloud of poison.
I started moving again, not at full speed, but putting one foot in front of the other. Tears streamed down my face as I dragged myself through the rosy cloud. The haze cleared, and the other fae—those with two functioning lungs—were passing me again. I shuffled forward, trying to keep up, dragging myself closer to the black castle on the hill and the waiting camera crews.
As a raven-haired princess passed me, she shot me a withering look, but she looked far too tired for any more attacks at this point.
One by one, the other contestants passed the finish line, someone calling out each of their names in a booming voice. A trumpet sounded, and the crowd screamed.
My feet thudded on the icy earth, and my gaze homed in on the stands.
The king sat calmly on a raised dais, claret silks above him, a silver crown on his brow, and guards all around.
Even if I couldn’t feel the pain from my punctured lung, my breath was rasping. Whistling. My head swam from a lack of oxygen.
A droplet of blood fell in the snow from my lips, but it seemed so distant, layered with shadows.
Darkness filled my vision as I collapsed onto the ice.
As if from a distance, I heard the TV host shout “—the only common fae to make the cut to the next round!”
