Page 125 of War Hour

Tears prickle at the corners of my eyes as I stare blankly at the Calkli flicking her tail almost jovially, as if in celebration of my pain.

I will not lose her game. I can’t let her distract me.

“Who is to blame for the circumstances that befall you?” The Calkli grins widely as she asks.

This question was easier, not feeling like an attack, but more a prodding for information. My mind shifts between faces, anger swirling inside me. I could choose only one? Drytas could be blamed for almost everything that had happened. Even Torryn had his part to play, but now all I can see is Evander.

My heart clenches at the thought of him, but I shove it down. It’s not like it had been love, but now it never would be.

“Evander.” The name sounds like a threat as it leaves my lips.

The Calkli shrieks in happiness, “You can lie to yourself, but not to me. I know your mind better than thee.”

As she speaks, I notice immediately her teeth lengthening. Sharpening. Until pointed, jagged teeth line the rows of her mouth, glinting dangerously at me when she smiles. With each question wrong, she is transforming into a nightmare of a creature.

The stone under my feet crumbles under me, and I scramble, back pressing further into the blade at my back. I yell in anguish as the tips bury deeper into the expanse of my skin, but no matter how far I push myself back, the bridge keeps crumbling until there’s nothing left for me to stand.

I start to fall, screaming as I drop toward the murky water below. Grabbing onto the spikes, I try to hold myself up, feet kicking at the cave’s walls to boost myself higher, but my hands are wet, and bloody from the spikes jagged edges. My fingers slip, and I fall backward into the water.

My head dunks below the glacial water’s surface, and I have to remember not to scream. Holding my breath as I scramble forthe walls of the cave pool, kicking my legs in what is supposed to be my attempt at swimming.

Gasping, I break free from the water’s dragging pull, shrieking when something hits my leg. The Calkli’s tail whips away from me, visible from where it just cut through the water’s surface.

My body shakes and trembles, fighting the chill that surrounds it. Holding onto the cave wall with a morsel of strength, I pray to the Trial. Begging for this not to be what ends me. Begging for the chance to finish what I’ve started.

The Calkli circles the pool, cackling as I fight to keep my head above water. “I remember Evander. He Trialed with me too, a tricky one he was. Nothing that he said was ever strictly a lie, but he always managed to say just enough of the truth that it didn’t matter. Isohoped that he would join me down here.”

Evander and his little white lies.Yeah, I heard them too.I feel like sneering at her, but I swallow the remark.

“If not him, then Drytas?” I ask, sputtering out water.

The Calkli bobs with the water that rises to her black filled eyes. She shakes her head with a quirk of her lips. “There are forces at play that even I dare not name.”

That isn’t an answer.

“Only one question left. You’re keeping me on the edge of my seat here.” The Calkli says, taunting me as she nears once again.

“Why you?” The Calkli asks with a crooked grin. “Why were you the one to set this war into motion? The Court of Valor’s Trial breaking. A new war cresting on the horizon. You’ve saved lives and ended them with the same breath, so answer me this, and you will be free. Why was it you?”

I fumble for an answer, even if I’ve asked it myself a thousand times. Leaving Falland and everything that came after had been my decision. My choice. To fix things when no one else was.

But, like everyone else, I had been stuck in an endless cycle of hopelessness and fear. Not believing that things could change, so never trying to. Sticking it out to make it through every day.

The only reason that everything else happened is because of being forced to Trial. Which can’t be blamed directly on Drytas, because he wasn’t the reason I Trialed. Torryn was. And he had only stumbled upon me because I tried to save him—or at least the child he masqueraded as.

“Be-because I,” I stutter, terrified of saying the wrong answer. “I tried to protect an innocent that I met by pure chance, and it’s all I’ve been trying to do since.”

I flinch backward, waiting for my fate.

The Calkli frowns at the admission, and I brace myself for the inevitable. At least I tried. Tried to make it out of here. Make it back. I wait for her hands to grab me and drag me under. But they never do.

The spikes in the door above me retract with a clinking noise, and the door rolls open. Just as the bridge had crumbled away, a staircase pushes out from the stone of the pool’s walls.

Eyes wide with disbelief, I yank myself onto the bottom step, arms trembling under my weight.

The Calkli eyes me from the water below, glaring in annoyance. “If I didn’t know that no one can speak about their Trial to those who haven’t completed it, I would think you cheated. How else could there be two of you Trialing in the span of decades when I once could go centuries without another one of you?”

Two of us?

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