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50 AELIA

Flames flickered around the circular room. In the center, another golden book sat. I swallowed hard, exchanging a knowing glance with Amolie. Walking up to the pedestal, I pricked my thumb and lay a bloody print on the pristine golden parchment. The blood disappeared and a message took its place.

Hello, Traitorous Queen. Although you are not fully human… not anymore, I will accept your offering.

“Great,” I said under my breath.

The humans were created to care for the land and so their bodies nourish the soil once they have passed. Their mortality was a gift from the Goddess Ammena in hopes they would treasure the small things in life.

You have faced many trials, Queen of the Dead, but this one will take you closer to death than you’ve ever been before.

A chill ran down my spine.

Before you lay six vials. Five are deadly, one is benign. Choose wisely.

The script disappeared.

I looked up to see a table spread with six vials of brightly colored liquid.

“Amolie, do you know any of these?”

“Uh, it’s hard to say without smelling them.”

I stepped forward and a wall of flames rose behind me, stopping Amolie in her tracks. I called out to her, but she did not respond—I was on my own in this.

Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm my nerves.

You’ve dealt with toxins before. You can handle this.

The knot in my chest whirled like a cyclone.

“Not now,” I said. “I need to focus.”

I picked up the first vial filled with a lavender colored liquid and smelled it. The scent of rotten eggs overwhelmed me, bringing bile to the back of my throat.

Absolutely not. There’s no way this can be it. Anything that smells this awful will surely kill me.

I set the vial back in its holder and moved on to a bright blue one. The scent of salt and sea tickled my nose.

What in the water could kill me? Possibly anything really. Everyone knows the sea is filled with poisonous creatures. There was a story about how the soldiers of the Midlands would cap the end of their arrows with sea anemone poison. Could that be it?

The third was a verdant green and smelled of pine and sap.

Hmm… there are hundreds of deadly trees, but is there a specific pine that is more poisonous than others? Yew tree, balsam, juniper? Which one was it? The witches were said to use Ponderosa pine needles to get rid of unwanted pregnancies… but would that kill the mother too?

I capped the lid. This would take longer than I thought. Any of these vials could kill me.

The fourth was the color of sunflowers in late summer and smelled of sweet grass.

Surely sweet grass couldn’t be deadly. I’d played in it all my life. But had I ever ingested it?

How was I supposed to know which one of these was poison and which was benign? They all smelled of familiar things and nothing like any potion I’d smelled before.

Blowing out a breath I picked up the next vile. A bright orange liquid swirled within. The smell of pumpkin and fall spices burst into my nose reminding me of the harvest festival the Midlands hosted. I replaced the cork and moved on to the next one. A fiery red, the color of cherry wine. It smelled of cinnamon and winter snow berries.

How was I supposed to know which one of these was safe to drink?

I ran through the options in my head. Each of these trials had been tailored to us, so this one must be no different.

Starting with the violet vile, I sniffed it again. There was no way I could stomach drinking it, so I set it back down.

Running my fingers over the smooth glass, I tried to conjure a memory from each. What could the Trinity want to tell me?

My eyes kept going back to the red vial at the end of the table. The one that smelled of the Yuletide season. The memory of my family—my mother, Baylis, and Caiden, huddled around a roaring fire, exchanging gifts and playing games filled my heart with a longing for simpler days. I had yearned for freedom then—to shed the chains of my past and forge a new path with Caiden by my side. A breath slipped between my lips. Oh, if I’d only known what awaited me.

But holly berries are poisonous.

My eyes fell to the orange vial and smelled the sweet and savory scent of pumpkin and nutmeg. A memory of the harvest festival surfaced in my mind. During the harvest, everyone pitched in—rich, poor, or royal, it did not matter, everyone did their part to bring in the year’s crops, and when all the grain had been stored, the vegetables dried or canned, and the herbs hung from the rafters, we danced and sang under the harvest moon to honor the Goddess Ammena for giving us such fertile and bountiful lands.

Baylis always judged the pie contest, where women from all over the kingdom would present their most inventive pies and hope to win the coveted title of “Best Pie in the Kingdom.”

A tear streaked down my cheek. In my youth, I thought the harvest festival simple in comparison to the grand balls and festivals of the sylph, but now I yearned for its comfort—for the belonging I felt in the company of my own people. I sniffled and set the vial back down.

The Reaper carries a harvest scythe.

I pushed the violet and blue vials aside; they invoked no memory and therefore could not be the correct choice. That narrowed it down to four. The pine scent had to represent Tharan and the Woodlands, but what did the golden vile mean? A memory of Baylis and I laying on our backs on the bank of the river during hot summer days as children passed through my mind. Our mother would watch from the shore as we splashed and played all day until the sun set behind the clouds and our skin turned a deep tan. A simpler time, when we were free to be children, and our family was intact.

My chest lightened. This is what the Trinity wanted. They wanted me to smell the scents of my past… of my life and appreciate the beauty in it.

I picked up the blue vile again and breathed in the salty air. Nothing. Our kingdom had a sea border, but we rarely went there; only when we needed to take a ship to one of the northern kingdoms. Although… a memory rose to the surface of my mind. Something long buried. The feeling of the wind against my rosy cheeks mixed with the scent of salt water. The sound of waves crashing against the shore echoed in my ears. I was five, holding my father’s hand as we gazed out over the ocean.

“What sort of monsters do you think are in there?” I asked.

“They say giant sea serpents hunt in the water. That’s why it’s so difficult to cross.”

My little heart twisted in my chest.

“But you’ll never cross the ocean, right Father?”

He squeezed my hand, peering down at me with his sparkling gray eyes. He looked so young, so happy, with his dark hair and square jawline. A far cry from the man I watched lowered into the ground. “Of course not, princess.” He kissed me on the forehead before scooping me up into his arms. “I’m never going to leave you, and you can count on that.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he pulled me in for a hug.

The memory faded. A tear trickled down my cheek. Was I becoming soft? Setting the vial aside, I picked up the violet potion once more. A rotten stench leached into the air and up into my nostrils. This had to be it. All the other ones would kill me. This was the only vial without a memory, and a hasty person would immediately assume this was the poisoned vial and disregard it immediately, favoring one of the potions that brought back a happy memory, but that wasn’t right.

Ammena protect me.

Tipping my head back, I opened my mouth and downed the purple liquid.

The taste of moldy eggs overpowered my taste buds and bile burned in my gut, but I kept drinking, forcing the disgusting liquid down my throat. It settled in my stomach like a rock, but I did not feel faint nor ill.

I waited, fully expecting the toxin to take effect, but nothing happened. My shoulders relaxed and I let out a sigh of relief.

The fire behind me dulled and died. Tharan, Caiden, and Amolie came running through.

“You did it!” Amolie shouted, throwing her hands around my neck. “How did you know which one to pick?”

“I picked the one without a memory,” I said, only now noticing the whirling in my chest again.

“Good work,” Tharan said, kissing my forehead. A heat flooded my cheeks.

“All in a day’s work,” I replied, relieved I had passed the test.

Behind us, another stone door slid into the wall revealing the final chamber.

We all stood silently, staring at our destiny… or our doom.

My heart beat wildly in my chest.

Taking Tharan’s hand in mine, I took the first step into the next chamber.