“No cutting, asshole! If you want to be here, get in the back.” She jabs her finger toward where the line curls around the brick postal office. The others behind us grumble in agreement.
Those who were there before him tighten ranks, pushing the man back out of the line. He stalks toward us, shoulders hunched and eyes narrowed. “Where do you get off, Braith? I was just talkin’ to some mates.”
“You have no mates, Daren.” She throws a hand over her shoulder. “Back of the line before I call the guards.”
“You two know each other?” I ask once he disappears around the corner.
“Unfortunately, he is my cousin.”
The revelation makes me chuckle. What I would give for a backbone like Braith’s.
The line begins to move faster, and my heart kicks up speed when a set of black gates come into view. Instead of continuing up the stairs where I went yesterday, we follow a second path that twists down toward a cavern cut into the rocks.
This is it. Almost there.
Four royal guards wait at the mouth of the cave, their wings spread as they scan our faces. The young woman, Braith, and I finally reach the beginning of the line. She steps through the small door cut into the bars, and I’m about to follow when the door slams in my face.
For a moment, I’m left stunned. Why did they let her in and not me?
I clasp the metal bars, letting go just as quickly when my hands start to burn.Iron. The black-clad guard on the other side barely spares me a glance as he turns a key in the lock. The Tuath behind me curse and shout, growing louder. Angrier.
This can’t be the end. It can’t.
“Please, sir,” I call. The man stops, but his flat expression doesn’t waver when his cold eyes land on me. “I need this job. My mother is sick, you see.”
Braith shoots a pitying glance over her shoulder before one of the guards urges her deeper into the cavern with a sweep of his arm. The man with the key leaves without so much as a word.
More shouts erupt at my back—vicious slurs against the king, his brothers, and all Scathians.
I understand their rage and frustration, have felt the same emotions clogging my veins the past couple of days. How exhausting it must be for them to have lived like this for so much longer—perhaps their whole lives.
I cannot believe I’ve wasted an entire day in this line instead of working. Tonight, I’ll hand over more money for yet another night at that inn and watch my funds dwindle away until I’m left with nothing.
This can’t be how today ends.
Please, I beg the sleeping stars.Please, let me inside.
It feels so selfish to plead with them on my own behalf when there are so many still waiting, yet I plead all the same.
I’m so close. So bloody close. One bit of good luck. Is that too much to ask? After all I’ve been through, don’t I deserve it?
A high-pitched scream pierces the sky, coming not from behind me but from the cavern, where two guards are dragging a woman in a soaked shift with sopping pink curls and wings from the mouth of the cave. The guard who ignored my pleas fumbles for the key to the gate, unlocking the door and yanking it aside, allowing the trio past.
The woman begs to be released, but her cries fall on deaf ears as the guards drag her through a gauntlet of cheering and jeering Tuath. They spread their wings and shoot into the sky, hauling the still-screeching woman into the clouds.
The remaining guard waves me forward. “Looks like it’s your lucky day. Hurry it on. Get inside with the others.”
I step inside, and the gates slam closed at my back.
It worked. I can’t believe it actually worked.
The dank smell of damp earth surrounds me as I descend a steep set of stairs cut into muddy brown stone that leads to a wide cave lit with flickering fae lights. My eyes take a moment to adjust to the dimness. When they do, I notice two separate lines have formed. Men to the left and women to the right.
Braith grins, waving when she sees me. “You made it.”
“By the skin of my teeth.” Perhaps the stars really are listening. “Do you know what happened to that woman they brought out?”
“They’re taking her to the pit, I imagine,” Braith says with a casual shrug.