Page 63 of The Crow Games

I stuck my fingers in the water to clean them as we glided downstream. “She did. Be glad she didn’t eat your face off.”

Nola shuddered. Revenants were dangerous beings who couldn’t be killed. They could be corralled, they could be calmed, but I could never make them who they once were. They hurt their families and had to be sent away, banished to the Otherworld with all the other unpredictable and dangerous beings.

Like me.

We made it through the trial and into the forested park not far from the clock tower in half of the time it would have taken us to navigate the blasted bog.

“Hide,” Ruchel breathed.

We abandoned the rafts, diving for cover amongst the greenery. In the hurry, my hand slid against a muddy trunk, and I smacked my face on a log. Nola ran into the back of me. We toppled under the foliage together. Nola pressed her palm over my mouth to silence my groan of pain, and I froze, my legs tangled around her longer ones.

The footsteps of the nearing creature rattled the ground under my cheek. Nola and I held our breath, waiting for the retreatingthud, thud, thudto grow farther and farther away until my lungs burned, begging for release.

The creature stopped. I was tempted to peek out at the beast, to see the massive being that had threatened us inside this park since my first trial, but the desire to live cured me of my curiosity in an instant.

The creature began moving again, rustling the trees with its bulky body. The snap and boom of a trunk breaking in half and striking the ground put nightmare visions into my mind of the creature’s mass. A chill shot down my spine in spite of the humidity. Birds fled the trees. Smaller garm sprinted away, uninterested in us as a meal with the threat of death at their heels.

“We go in groups,” Ruchel hissed. “We’ll move more quietly that way and we won’t be tripping over each other. Nola and Maven are our best fighters, so they’ll need to travel separately. We meet at the clock tower.”

Nola unsheathed the Crone blade from the holster at her hip, a leather one Emma had sewn for her.

“I’ll go with the sisters,” I whispered because I knew they wouldn’t be parted from each other, and Nola would want to look after Ruchel. No beast in Hel was more fearsome than Nola when someone or something threatened Ruchel.

“Don’t engage the creature, ducky. Not if you can help it. It’s big and slow and blind. Better to run from it if you can. Fight only if you must,” Nola lectured. She grabbed my face, palms flat over my ears, and touched her brow to mine. “And don’t fucking die. You hear me? It’s rude to die on me.”

My heart squeezed. “I’ll see you at the clock tower. Alive,” I vowed.

They let us leave first. We stepped quietly through the trees. The noise of the beast was so loud in the distance it hid the smaller crackle of twigs and rustling greenery. I didn’t breathe normally again until the trees parted and we were back at the columned buildings surrounding the clock tower.

Hanging from the library walls by the neck were five red-hooded warlocks. The dead dangled, arms limp, bodies swaying side-to-side in the breeze. They’d been lifeless for a while; the sour-sweet stench of rot was starting to carry.

It said something that no garm had gotten to them. The size of the Guardian coven had become insurmountable for even Hel-beasts here. They’d outgrown the maze. The street was packed tight with their dark uniforms.

Emma came to a halt, blue eyes taking in the dead. “It’s starting again. Another battle of covens fighting over a throne no one can win. Why is there always a fool or two convinced they can become a god? Don’t they know gods don’t share power—they take it?”

“Hopefully,” I said, “we get out of here before the streets are ripped apart by war.” Hopefully they kept recruiting, kept killing each other in little bursts, buying us more time to escape.

A line had formed leading down into the tunnels of the clock tower. Guardians manned the archway. They stopped every prisoner attempting to enter, anyone not dressed in uniform, and took something from each of them, reaching inside bags and satchels at knifepoint and adding the goods to a growing pile.

The others caught up to us while we were debating how to best hide our favorite items to keep the Guardians from stealing them. Emma suggested we put something of worth on top, using it to hide what we wanted to keep at the bottom, to encourage them to grab the first and ignore the rest.

“If they try to take my Crone blade,” Nola grumbled, nostrils flaring, “I’m going to start stabbing people.”

I huffed a laugh, then moved out of arms reach, just in case. Nola had a reputation. Other prisoners shuffled out of her way too.

Blue, usually a woman insistent on not drawing attention to herself, booed the Guardians loudly. Blue had her own reputation, and the line of prisoners joined her, jeering.

Talia and her earth coven were up ahead of us. They were so mud-splattered from the bog, I hadn’t spotted them earlier. I counted them quickly, pleased that there were still nine members. None of them had died this trial. They’d lost two witches to garm earlier in the week.

Brick’s group of red rogues were in the line ahead of the greens. They fussed at the guards as their belongings were searched.

I recognized the warlock in charge, tall and slender with light fawn skin and a new hexen finger bone relic pinned to his collar beside a green pendant. He headed up the group theft occurring under the archway.

Blue whispered briefly with Talia, then returned to us to share the news. “Commander Aiden of the Green is letting his recent promotion get to his head,” she told us. “They’re demanding a tax for the ‘protection’ they offer us all by killing garm.”

The warlock commander called into the crowd, “Pay the tax to board the train or join the Guardians. Pay the tax to God King Alrick or join his army and keep your goods.”

“Pay the thieves,” Blue hollered back through her cupped hands, “or die in a war you don’t want!” Her sunken cheeks went russet with the passion of her words.

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