Page 33 of War Hour

Understanding clicks into place as I look between them. Thewhatbecoming clear, drawing focus to the unansweredwhy.

My breathing quickens as the portal behind them cinches smaller until it closes like a blink of an eye, and I black out.

Chapter 14

“You found her.”

A female voice jolts me awake, the soft tone mere feet from me. My eyelashes flutter against my upper cheeks as I struggle to keep them closed in a way I hope is natural. Grinding my teeth, I fight the urge to cinch them shut, which would surely give me away.

“I told you we weren’t talking about that,” a male voice retorts.

A moment of silence lingers before the woman sighs. “Shewasn’t a part of the plan, Torryn.”

At his name, the last moments in the throne room flicker in my mind. Torryn. Torryn is Ardis, or is it technically the other way around?

I try to concentrate through the pounding radiating in my head.

Torryn answers back, “Well, now she is, Sar.”

I hold my breath in their awkward beat of silence.

“She’s Untrialed. How do you think it’s going to go if we walk into the capital with her in tow?” Sar continues when he doesn’t respond. “Torryn, she’ll be eaten alive—”

“Sar! He wouldn’t have brought her unless he had to.”

The voice is familiar, and I realize it belongs to Ardis. Just not the Ardis I knew.

“Don’t interrupt me, Ardis.”

It’s silent for a beat and then another. Just long enough for me to shift slightly, waiting for them to speak.

Had they walked away?

Torryn whispers in a foreboding tone, “She’s not Untrialed.” There is a pause once again before he continues. “If it was up to me... she still would be.”

A nervous tremble echoes in my fingertips, and I slide them further into the corners of my body to hide it. The dagger concealed in my boot presses painfully against my ankle, but knowing it’s within reach eases my growing anxiety.

Sar moves past what was the beginnings of an argument. “You’ll have to explain... everything this time. We’ll figure out a new plan, but we only have one shot at this.”

Her voice gets softer as she speaks, and when Torryn responds, I realize they are moving away from where I’m crumpled up on the ground.

“Yeah, a new plan that involves her.”

Their words become nothing more than mumbled mouthfuls.

My body screams for me to move. To stretch the limbs that have gone stiff in their curled-up positions. I sit still until I can’t decide if it’s their footsteps moving away in the distance or my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

If Torryn had lied about who he was, who’s to say he hadn’t concealed his true intentions about why he was in the Court of Valor in the first place? Would a lord of another court care to save Falland? Did he fabricate his promise about helping the Untrialed, too? And what of Thoman?

Cracking my eyes open when I’ve decided it’s been long enough, I wince at the sunlight flooding my vision, my hand coming up to break the beam.

We are not where we landed when we first fell through the portal. The grass under me might be the same I had stumbled onto, but I had seen a glimpse of great trees towering above, covering us in shade and letting only spots of light move between the clustered leaves.

Pushing up into a sitting position, I brace my weight behind me with my palms and examine the empty field around me. It strikes me I’ve never seen one before, my universe having centered on stone and metal, buildings and walls. Nothing so utterly... open.

White-flowered weeds sway under the whisper of a breeze. The field is not endless, with a line of woods spanning the expanse to my right like a wall without stone. On the opposite side of the forest, across the sweeping green, my eyes trace up a rising hill. It swells in size, surging into a mountain towering over the valley field. At its mount, a staggering structure that can be only described as a castle stands in its grandeur.

Trampled grasses trace a path from where I rest, moving toward the peaking monument.

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