Page 37 of The Ordeals
A swish of a tail, lupine features, but the werewolves have already moved on for now.
Alden takes the next watch as Edmund slumps in the corner and I huddle back under the blankets, eyes on the door to the hallway. As I fall into a fitful slumber, all I can see are Alden’s eyes on mine, dark molten pools reflecting the crackle of flame.
We leave the hunting lodge as dawn whispers through the trees. The Locke brothers part with a quick handshake, Edmund whistling as he makes his way back through the woodland to Morlagh Manor. Alden watches him for a moment before he disappears from view, and I almost imagine I catch something, a wistfulness.
We walk in silence through the forest, following Alden down old hunting trails, the birds, small animals and insects waking around us. It takes us a couple of hours and none of us mention the claw marks raking some of the tree trunks we pass, or the occasional spatter of dried blood. We don’t see any bodies, or anyone alive for that matter either. Greg’s progress becomes slower the further we walk, and I take it in turns with Tessa to prop him up, Alden scouting ahead of us.
When we find them, the mirrors are together, twin pools of grey reflecting back the courtyard, a few haggard-looking hopefuls milling about, one young man crying quietly. Greg’s hanging back, obviously not wanting to step through before us, but I nod my chin at the mirrors. ‘Go.’
He sighs, features pinched in pain as he steps through first, pale and stiff, but still standing. Tessa goes after him, squeezing my arm briefly and whispering, ‘Thank you.’
Which leaves me and Alden. We step through the twin mirrors and leave the Morlagh and its monsters in our wake.
As my shoes skitter on the cobbles, the uneven stone leaving me unbalanced after the sleepless night in the hunting lodge, I’ve never been more grateful to be at Killmarth. ‘Let’s not make a habit of all … that,’ I say to Tessa.
‘Until the next Ordeal,’ she says, raising an eyebrow.
‘Of course.’ I scrub a hand down my face. There are three more to conquer.
‘I wouldn’t mind repeating some of it,’ Alden says softly, so only I can hear and, despite myself, my stomach clenches.
‘And why exactly is that?’ I say quietly back, though my voice comes out huskier than expected.
A small smile plays on his mouth and I have to look away as a flush rises to my cheeks.
Alden slides an arm around Greg. ‘I’ll get him to the medical wing, get them to administer more wolfsbane,’ he says with a nod to Tessa. My stomach clenches involuntarily as he turns to me. ‘Well played, DeWinter.’ And with that he walks Greg to Professor Hess, leaving me with the lingering moments of the past few hours; the softening of his gaze in the Morlagh, that comforting hand on my shoulder, his arm slung over me protectively in the hunting lodge, that almost kiss, the hard ridges of his stomach, pressed against mine.
Again, I have that acute awareness of him, and of myself in his orbit, and it feels as though something has shifted. Something intangible, something I cannot measure and dissect with ease. Hess nods and Alden keeps walking with Greg, disappearing into Gantry, but not before he glances back at me. As though he’s keenly aware of me, too.
‘Can’t help being heroic,’ I say quietly to myself, scrunching my nose as more hopefuls stagger in through the mirrors. One catchesmy eye, a young woman with blonde curls who nods to Tessa in greeting before she passes. Frances, I think her name is. But it’s not the nod that snags my attention, it’s the blood flecking her chest and neck in spatters. I still before sliding my gaze away and wonder if I’ll always picture that night and Dolly whenever I see that same shade of red.
‘You know, he’s growing on me.’ Tessa shrugs. ‘I wouldn’t quite say Itrusthim, there is still a murderer about, but I do like him for you.’
‘Good gods, I need tea. And sleep.’ I wander towards Gantry, turning away so no one sees the blush marring my cheeks, and hear Tessa chuckling in my wake.
The professors address us all in Gantry Hall over breakfast. Professor Hess goes first, congratulating all the pairs left alive, his enthusiasm for theexemplary pair workmaking me feel slightly murderous as I clutch a spoonful of porridge. Does he have any idea what we faced out there? What he sent us into? Of course he does. Now he’s praising us like we just passed a written exam, not danced with death in the Morlagh. Then Professor Grant moves to the edge of the raised platform where the professors and chosen scholars dine, eyeing us all with a pinch more severity.
‘Forty-eight entered the forest and thirty-nine will progress to the next Ordeal. The hopeful that entered the forest without their partner was oblivious, and we have decided to be lenient and allow them to stay on for the next Ordeal. Particularly as they survived and returned unscathed.’
A ripple of murmurs run up and down the table as we all soak this in, looking around us to work out where the gaps are, who did not make it out of the forest. Nineteen pairs survived. I press my lips together. That means that five pairs either didn’t find each other in time before one succumbed to the poison like Kipling, orthey never found the mirrors again to leave the forest and return to Killmarth. Maybe the four pairs that didn’t return will get lucky and make it to a hunting lodge.
Maybe they’re werewolves now.
Or worse, they met that pale monster.
‘One hopeful is being treated in the medical wing and thanks to the quick thinking of a few of you, they will survive their … affliction.’ She wets her lips. ‘Mentors have been chosen for each of you, and your first sessions will begin this coming week. Dates and times will be posted on the door of Hope Hall. Please take note.’ I glance up at the platform and find Professor Lewellyn looking at me. I smile and she nods as Professor Grant continues. ‘A number of you have the use of a common room; enjoy the privilege for now. You may not keep hold of it for the next Ordeal. Which leads me on to announce the next Ordeal. The Ordeal of Illusions. The same rules apply when you choose a partner, you must both survive, or you fail.Bona fortuna, hopefuls.’
We trudge back in a gaunt line to Hope Hall after breakfast. I should be celebrating passing the first Ordeal. I shouldfeelvictorious. But I’m strangely … hollow. Nine hopefuls will never return, nine people, and I can’t even place their faces or remember their names. I thrust my hands into my jacket pockets, feeling the cold metal of my switchblade brush my right knuckles, the wooden stake I fashioned in the Morlagh still in my belt, digging into my hip. The Ordeals are a contradiction. They encourage teamwork, pairing us up, congratulating those of us who helped Greg. And yet, they pit us against each other. Actively encourage this cut-throat competition to whittle us down to the final twenty. They want us strong. Theywant only the best, I realise. The most resilient. The ones that can walk into a dark forest, teeming with monstrous creatures, and walk back out alive.
But I’ve been beating the odds for years, scraping through situations that should have seen me caught, in prison, or dead. I’ve learned, adapted and somehow come back with the marks I’ve been sent to gather countless times. Yet this does not simply feel like a college for wielders. It feels like something more. A stray thread of breeze creeps under my collar and I frown at the vast, tumbling sea in the distance.
‘Did you notice that?’ I ask, catching up with Tessa as we near Hope Hall.
‘What?’
‘What Grant didn’t say. About the next Ordeal.’
She looks thoughtful, as though running through the professor’s words, the ripple through Gantry Hall when Grant announced it would be the Ordeal of Illusions next. Then she gasps, turning to me. ‘She didn’t saywhenit would take place.’
