Page 134 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

Casvian blinks at me as we cross the bridge. “Right. Right.”

The dark water glints below, reflecting a city of ghosts. If I jumped, I’d deny Dalca his spectacle. But I’m not ready to accept death, not when Pa and I have a fighting chance.

No one’s ever won the Trials, they say. But they also say that no one can come back from the Storm.

We leave the old city behind as Casvian takes me up through a tunnel. The air trembles with a dull roar. The sound of thousands of people packed into one place, dimmed by several feet of rock. The Arvegna arena must be directly above us.

Casvian slows before the end of the tunnel where light peeks around a circular door.

“You’re not going to free me, are you?”

Though his face is shadowed, his eyes glint. “Where would you go if I did?”

I’ve no answer.

He touches my hand, and I try to pull back. Honestly, I don’t really want to hold his hand right now. But he holds tight and presses two sticks about the size of my pinky into my palm. Their edges are sharpened to a point. “What is—”

“Shh.” He glances down the tunnel.

I tuck the sticks into a fold of the shawl. A grimy residue remains on my palms.

He leans close and whispers. “You’ll get through this, Vesper. I know you. You can get through anything.”

“For Storm’s sake, Cas.” I blink away the sudden emotion that blurs my vision.

He tugs once on the chain linking my hands, then steps back and pushes the door open.

Light and sound flood in. He gives me a strained smile. “Prove me right.”

My ears pop as I step out into the bright, ikonlit arena.

The Arvegna has changed.

The maze is gone; there’s nothing but a flat expanse of pale, scarred stone.

Above, an ikonshield stretches over the visible sky, exactly as I saw it in my dream. It gives off a soft, hazy glow like dreamy, artificial daylight. Beyond it seethes the Storm, a billowing curtain of perfect darkness, punctured by violet lightning.

The bad weather has deterred few; the stands are packed. Maybe they aren’t here to watch me die, maybe they believe they’ll be safest wherever the new Regia is. But it’s hard to believe that when, not fifty feet from me, a potbellied man in a bright orange overdress sells snacks and a gaggle of bejeweled second-ringers clink together glasses of sloshing amber liquid. Even fifth-ringers have shown up to watch—the highest stands are full of people wearing coarse clothes, with their long shawls drawn over their heads as if they don’t quite trust the ikonshield.

They’re all looking at me. At what I’ll have to face.

It comes to this because of all the choices I made: leaving Amma’s, giving over Pa’s journal, trusting Dalca. I wait for the regret to come, but it doesn’t.

I won’t regret wanting more, wanting better.

His gaze is already on me when I find him on the Regia’s throne. A swell of emotion rises in me as I meet his eyes, a thousand feelings, the crush of them washing over me.

Dalca wears what he wore in my dream of the future, the dream of his death. Ivory armor edged in gold and a cloak of feathers, thousands of them, each a purer white than the last. All that pristine white to mask the darkness inside him.

And here I stand in chains, several dozen feet below him, also wearing white, but the white of a prisoner. It emphasizes the distance between us. Who would think of us as equals, seeing us now?

His gaze changes, and I wonder if I’m seeing him or the Great King.

Dalca looks away first. He rises to his feet with arms outstretched, his cloak unfurling like wings, already the mantle of cold command resting easy on his shoulders. The crowd quiets; their attention is like a weight that lifts from me and falls onto him. Dalca’s gold-painted fingertips catch the light. “We are gathered here today in the wake of a great tragedy. Tomorrow the mark will be complete, and you will have a new Regia. We will rebuild. But for us to move forward tomorrow, we must seek justice today.”

His voice is all his, no trace of the Great King.

I search Dalca’s expression, but my gaze is drawn to the gold lines curling at his neck. Does he dread what awaits him? Thirty, forty years of being trapped in his own body?