Page 85 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

“Dalca—” I start, touching Ma’s locket. “If you were in my place—if you had to choose between your mother and the city—the whole city, down to every last fifth-ringer—what would you do?”

Dalca’s gaze bores into the side of my face, but I keep my eyes on the arena. I need to know if he’d put his mother first. If this is about fear—or if I can trust him to make things better, for all of us.

I ask, “Could you give up your mother?”

Pa uses the blood seeping from his shoulder as ink. With it he draws something on his palm and thrusts his hand into the hedge right below the woman.

The hedge bulges. Within seconds, the branches thicken, leaves widening and twisting as a square section of hedge shoots up into the sky. The woman stumbles, her feet caught. She falls, landing with a crack on her back. Pa holds the axe to her neck.

I recoil, reflexively raising a hand to shield my eyes. Is this my father? It’s one thing to hear about a Regia falling at his hands; it’s another to see him ready to take a life.

Pa lowers the axe and takes precious minutes of his time to draw another ikon to bind her into the hedge. I exhale, shakily. I knew Pa wasn’t a murderer. Can’t they see?

The man in green traces Pa’s path, his wild-eyed hound tugging him forward. As Pa hacks the rope from his hands, they close in.

Freed, Pa runs deep into the maze, but as long as his shoulder drips a trail of blood, there’s no place he can go that the hound can’t follow.

He knows this. Pa doubles back into a dead end. With his axe, he hacks at the ground. He’s setting a trap. For the first time, the buzzing in my veins is from excitement instead of fear. Maybe he can do this. Dalca’s right—winning the First Trial isn’t unheard of.

Pa works as though he’s done this a million times. It reminds me that he had a whole other life, one I know little of. One where he was more than a quiet ikonomancer in a home for the cursed.

The hound’s tongue wags as it gets a taste of Pa’s blood on the air. Its muscles ripple under its coat as it bounds closer and closer to Pa. His owner’s arms bulge with the effort of keeping him under control. Both man and beast hurtle through the maze, feet thundering, howling at the thrill of the hunt.

They turn the corner and have Pa in their sights. His back is to them—he’s still hacking at the ground. The beast snarls, the crowd screams, and Pa spins, rolling out of the way, and the beast’s claws swipe his calf instead of his chest.

Pa scrambles out of the roll, stiffly getting to his feet. His body may remember how to fight, but it’s been a long twelve years since he was in prime condition. He staggers backwards, and the beast pounces.

The crowd hushes. I look through my fingers.

The beast is caught in the ikon Pa carved into the ground. The dirt rises over it like the petals of a flower snapping shut, and then it sinks into the ground, flattening out. The hound’s trapped, buried with only the tip of its snout poking free, just enough for it to breathe. The crowd roars.

The man in green, however, is less impressed. He’d let go of the leash when the hound pounced, saving himself.

Pa holds the axe in a two-handed grip, keeping the blade pointed at his opponent. The man swats it away as if his arm is made of steel instead of flesh and bone.

Beside me, Dalca hisses. I grab his hand tight, and he squeezes back with callused fingers.

Pa tries the hedge-growing ikon again. The man in green tears the vines with his bare hands, a snarl twisting his features. It won’t slow him down for more than a few minutes.

But a minute is all Pa needed to finish scrawling an urgent ikon.

The ikon flares skyward in a tower of fire. The flames spread in a perfect ring—five paces across and twice as tall as the hunter. He breaks free of the branches, but as he takes a step toward the flames, the ring shrinks. He takes another, and the ring shrinks again, flames now threatening to lick at his clothes. It’s a cage of fire—and the man’s safe only so long as he stays put. He throws his head back and releases a furious bellow that echoes through the arena.

Pa backs out of the flaming corner of the maze without waiting to see if the hunter will find a way out.

With his shoulder and leg bleeding, Pa half runs, half limps through the maze. He uses the long handle of his axe as a walking stick to propel himself forward.

He’s zeroing in on the center of the maze.

The last hunter, Ragno Haveli, closes in.

Pa hurries, no longer stopping to set traps. He runs through the maze, forced to double back three, four times as he hits dead ends. Pa moves faster and faster, his actions frantic, his focus gone. He’s afraid.

“Dalca—”

“I know. He’ll make it. He has to.”

A chant rises from the crowd.