Page 44 of Manor of Wind and Nightmares (Fae of Brytwilde #3)

Now

S creams rent the air as the contestants began to panic. My eyes flew to Callista, whose gaze was wet with tears. Bentley reached for her, squeezing her hand reassuringly and gesturing to the envelope in her hand. Throat tight, I raced to them, tearing open my own envelope as I went.

I nearly stumbled over my own feet as I ran, hardly noticing that Florian was on my heels.

“Au-Auri,” Callista gasped, shaking her head as she scanned her paper. She glanced at Bentley, her eyes frantic. “If this is a test of who we can trust, does that mean every member of the court knows the answer to the riddle? Can you share it?”

His mouth pinched, his expression apologetic. “I’m afraid not. They wouldn’t make it quite that simple.”

Trembling, Callista lifted a hand to her temple, groaning. “It hurts.”

Seizing her hand, I lifted my copy of the riddle with my free one and scanned it repeatedly, analyzing and reanalyzing each word.

I’m as silent as the deepest of tombs,

I’m as gentle as a lover’s caress.

I roar with the violence of battle.

I build and destroy, bring life and death.

A taste is all you’ve been given,

A test to know what you will endure.

With courage and strength, you’ll find

Within this room, lies your cure.

Before I’d finished, pain shot through my veins, like fire sweeping through my body.

My chest constricted; my vision blurred.

I tried to block it out, to clear my mind as I started running through the names and characteristics of every fae poison I’d learned.

Nothing seemed to fit the flavor I’d tasted or the symptoms I experienced.

Dropping the riddle, I pulled Callista into an embrace.

“It cannot be poison,” I murmured into her ear, hoping she could focus on my words rather than the agony tearing through her.

“The prince was furious that they’d sent us all into the maze as possible sacrifices to the uhgmil.

He wouldn’t permit a test that would poison every one of us and risk that none would survive. ”

I tried to believe my words. The darkness in Kaede’s eyes when he’d approached me earlier, dipping his mouth toward my neck, continued to haunt me. What if the contamination in his magic had changed him so dramatically that he craved all our deaths? He’d confessed to bloodlust, after all.

I repeated the riddle in my head, considering possible answers and how it would relate to whatever we’d been given to drink. Water, I thought. Sometimes silent, sometimes roaring. Life-giving and deadly, both. But if the answer is water, how does that apply?

It had tasted like blood. Blood runs silently to our ears through our veins, but roars in our ears. It gives life, but not death unless it is spilled...

“We can help,” Florian announced, cutting into my frenzied thoughts.

“How?” I demanded, pulling away from Callista only enough that I could turn to look at him as I supported her on her unsteady feet. “How can we trust any of you when you stand by and watch us suffer so? When Bentley himself said you cannot give us the answer?”

His jaw worked. “I did not know it would cause pain.”

“ It ? What were we given?”

Florian glanced pointedly toward my discarded paper, lying on the polished floor. “The answer is within the riddle. We are not able to say—we were forced to make a vow only allowing us to share certain things.”

Across the room, Emily was shrieking at Audrey, gesturing wildly toward the cups on the table. “The cure is in this room! One of those cups—one of those will save us! But there aren’t enough.”

She seized one of the goblets with both hands, downing its contents in two greedy gulps.

For a long moment, it seemed as if the entire room held its breath.

Everyone stared at Emily, waiting to see if her pain would abate.

Then she frowned, wiping at her mouth. “It is only water.” She groaned as another wave of agony made her muscles spasm and her body contort.

She collapsed against the table, sobbing.

“What is happening to her?” Callista spun toward Bentley, tears streaming down her face. A shudder of pain wracked her body, and her face turned white. “Are we next? Did you choose to murder us?”

Shouts from the courtiers and guards across the room drew our attention as glass shattered and a form burst through the window. Though the figure appeared almost like a fae woman, everything was all wrong. Red, cloudy eyes. Sharp fangs and claws. Unnatural speed and grace.

Though the shattered glass must have sliced into her skin, the monster showed no signs of pain. No blood leaked from its skin.

I took a step back, shoving Callista behind me.

“What—what is wrong with her?” Hattie cried out.

A vampire from Kaede’s contaminated magic.

And then, all at once, the answer came to me.

What if the tang of blood I’d tasted in the cup was the prince’s blood?

“Magic,” I muttered. “The answer to the riddle is magic , is it not?” I glanced at Florian, whose wide eyes were trained on the vampire. “We drank the prince’s blood and the magic that runs in his veins. We’ve all been dosed with magic.”

He gave a wry laugh. “Ah, I knew you’d solve it. We did not poison anyone. Your mortal bodies must be in shock from feeling the magic’s power coursing through you.”

“We need to get out of here.” I clung tightly to Callista’s hand. “Tell Ji I’ve solved the riddle. Make him unlock the doors.”

Bentley’s throat worked nervously. “Solving the riddle meant you had to follow the riddle’s instructions as well. The manor shut us all in, and only it will release us. There’s no telling if it will obey us now, even when the test has been...changed.”

I scanned the room, searching for guards. “Where are the guards?” I demanded.

“Ji thought they were needed outside to prevent escape more than inside the hall for this challenge,” Florian muttered dryly.

Fear spiked through my chest. Would the fickle manor even unlock the doors if I did follow the riddle’s instructions?

I ran through the final words in my head again, remembering it had claimed to be a test of endurance.

W ith courage and strength, you’ll find within this room, lies your cure.

Since we hadn’t been poisoned, there wasn’t a “cure” for magic.

But suddenly experiencing Kaede’s magic course through our mortal bodies was causing pain for which we sought a cure.

“How does one cure the pain magic brings to a mortal?” I asked, wiping sweat off my brow.

The vampire turned her red eyes toward the fae and mortals on the other side of the room.

Callista opened her own mouth in terror, but I clamped a hand over her lips and shook my head at her, casting pointed looks at both Bentley and Florian.

The vampire bolted with unnatural speed toward the nearest courtier, leaping upon him and tearing into his throat.

Blood stained his jacket and sprayed across the floor.

Screams rent the air. Someone wretched in a corner, but the vampire was too focused on gulping down the now-limp man’s lifeblood to pay any heed to the noisy chaos unfolding throughout the rest of the room.

“Don’t let her hear you,” I whispered to Callista, and gestured for the nearest window, hoping those were not also locked. “Try the window and help as many others as you can to escape the manor.”

Nodding, my sister took Bentley’s proffered arm, and he helped lead her away, gesturing toward others to join them.

Satisfied that my sister was protected, I forced myself to ignore the fiery pain still churning through my muscles and strode toward one of the tables near the center, the one upon which countless weapons rested.

Florian seized my arm. “What are you doing?”

I set my jaw. Florian was unaware of my training, so of course my choice to stay behind and fend the vampire off from everyone else who was trapped in the room would seem like madness to him.

Even with my training, it was likely madness, for the speed and strength the vampires possessed was even greater than that of the fae I’d sparred with. But I had to try.

“I will not abandon the others,” I said firmly, pulling my arm away from him.

“Brave, foolish woman,” he muttered under his breath, but he didn’t try to stop me, instead joining me in selecting a weapon from the table. While he grasped a sword with an ornate hilt, I gathered a bow and quiver of arrows, hurriedly stringing one and taking aim.

As I set her within my sights, the vampire pulled her head back, blinking red eyes at the ceiling as she wiped the blood from her mouth and dropped the dead man. His pale body struck the floor, wide eyes staring at the ceiling, his mouth frozen in a cry of terror.

My vision blurred as magic flowed within me, pure agony slicing through my veins. Arms trembling, the bow shook in my grasp.

The vampire leapt away, charging for a fae trying to force open the bolted doors.

They were all unarmed, trapped between the vampire, who blocked the way to the table of weapons, and the unyielding doors.

Fae and mortals pounded on them together, crying out to Kaede, to the manor, to anyone who might hear and be able to free them.

One had the presence of mind to summon her magic, calling upon a flash of light that pained my eyes.

Unfortunately, the vampire was all but blind, and that did nothing to halt her progress.

Another conjured flames in his hand, aiming them toward the vampire as she slowed her steps, tilting her head to listen to the cacophony of sounds and narrow down her next victim.

As I tracked the creature’s movements, I watched as the flames roared through the air and consumed her—and yet didn’t.

Though her body was enshrouded in dancing fire, she walked on as if unaffected.

They licked at her form, charring her dress but never touching her pale skin, never slowing her movements.

She sprang at the man wielding fire, snapping his neck and plunging her fangs into his throat.

Stomach churning, I released my arrow. It slammed into the vampire’s back, having as little effect on her as the flames had.

Pausing, she lifted her head, chin dripping blood, and sniffed the air, as if seeking the source of the projectile now protruding from her back.

Florian grasped my arm, pulling me backward as if we could move quickly enough to avoid the vampire and her speed.

If she targeted us, we were doomed. My throat clogged with panic, but I forced myself to think through it.

Kaede had been able to slay one of his vampires, probably because they were connected to his magic and the contamination altering it.

And we had all just been dosed with some of his magic. I wondered, vaguely, if whatever darkness lurked within it would alter us in some way as well, or if, as non-magical humans, we would be immune.

However...wasn’t absorbing the magic the key to the riddle? To endure the pain the magic put us through as mortals, and then to find a way to embrace and wield it? To prove that the land of Willowbark accepted us, that we were worthy of carrying its most powerful magic?

My head swam. The pain was not abating for me, and I feared it wouldn’t until the dose of magic I’d ingested wore off. Kaede hadn’t forgiven me, so why would his magic and the land, both extensions of himself, find me worthy?

Laura.

She wasn’t among the women trapped near the vampire, nor was her sister. I scanned the room, finding her pushing her twin beneath the table they’d stood nearby before the chaos had begun. Her complexion pale, she scanned the space, seeking out an escape.

As the vampire dashed across the room in the direction my arrow had come from, I abandoned my bow and raced toward Laura.

Florian remained silent, though the sideways glances he shot my way as he ran alongside me made it clear he thought I was mad.

He, like the others, hadn’t yet realized that the vampire was blind, relying on her hearing and sense of smell in a room full of an overwhelming assortment of both.

Curls hanging damp and wild about her face, Laura peered up at me in alarm from her position crouched beside her sister.

“She is blind,” I hissed as soon as I reached Laura, kneeling beside her. “But she can hear, so you must be quiet. Prince Kaede’s magic can stop her—and we were all dosed with some of it. You have to concentrate on the magic flowing through you and try to wield it. Use it to stop that vampire.”

Laura gaped at me, a mixture of confusion and fear shining in her bright eyes. “I— How would I do that? Why me?”

I squeezed her arm. “Focus on the magic. Imagine what you want it to do,” I begged. “For everyone’s sake. You are our hope.”

She looked at me in despair. “Why not you? You are so knowledgeable, so confident—”

“He cares for you! You are connected to him. His magic will work for you. I know it will.”

Laura scrunched her nose in concentration, closing her eyes to block out the horrifying sight that was the vampire, red-eyed and bloody, staggering into the weapons table like a drunk.

My mind flew back to that evening that now felt like a lifetime ago, when Kaede and I shared a room in an inn and knew each other by different names.

He’d offered me a violet, showing off his magic in such a charming, endearing manner.

He’d been considerate and gentlemanly, kind and attentive.

.. I swallowed. And he’d told me how his magic was connected to his emotions and intentions, like an extension of his will and state of mind.

“Let your determination to defend us guide you,” I whispered to Laura. “Think of your need to save your sister. Use your feelings.”

Rising from my crouch, I crept backward to give Laura space to work as she crawled from beneath the table and squared her shoulders.

Still in her hiding place, Hattie pressed a trembling hand to her mouth.

Florian’s gaze flicked between Laura and me.

I took another step back, breathing deeply and closing my eyes, praying that this would work.

There was a creaking sound and a dizzying, shifting sensation. My stomach rose in my throat as I was jolted, like the entire room had moved.

When I opened my eyes, I was in a new hallway full of flickering candlelight and dancing shadow, facing two new forms. They were grappling together in the darkness, all fists and flashing teeth as they struggled along the length of the hall.

One charged while the other backed up until they staggered into a gap of starlight painting the space from a pair of windows.

I didn’t recognize the vampire, bloody and snarling, but I knew the disheveled, bleeding figure it was battling.

Kaede ducked as the creature snapped at his throat, landing a punch to its jaw and then grimacing, revealing his own teeth—but they were different.

My stomach churned when I saw that his canines were elongated into fangs that matched those of the vampire.