“I will come with you.” I faced Silver Eyes. “I will not run. Just don’t hurt her.”
He surveyed me with the same uninterested expression, as if he kidnapped mortal girls all the time and this was a dreadful bore to him. “Say your goodbyes. You have one minute.”
I broke his stare before he had even finished his sentence, swinging around to hurtle the remaining distance to Umma. She met me halfway, words choking in her throat, unable to pass her lips. She clutched me in an embrace so tight it hurt, pulling away only to stare at me with glistening eyes.
Love shone clearly through her eyes and the kiss she pressed to my temple. I dropped my forehead to hers as cold misery embraced me.
“I know,” I whispered. She did not need to speak to convey her message. “I will come back for you. Once this is all over. I promise.”
Umma drew back, shaking her head ferociously.
Run, she mouthed.
I blinked, hot tears trickling down my cheeks. “I will not. I will keep you safe.”
Umma’s eyes were wide and feral as she pushed something into my palm. I glanced down for just a second, noting the burlap. Umma must have pocketed one of the blades earlier, as a precaution before bed, when I wasn’t looking. I shoved it into my cloak before anyone could notice.
Rough, large hands wrenched at my shoulders, pulling me away. Yanking me from the only family I had ever known. I didn’t even get a chance to tell Umma I loved her before I was shoved out the door.
Something hard slammed against the side of my head. And then I was falling.
Sinking into nothing.
CHAPTER 2
There was daylight and nightfall.
I woke intermittently either at dusk or dawn, but never the same time in a row. I couldn’t comprehend how many days I had been asleep for, since I was never allowed to remain awake for longer than the minutes it took my captors to realize I was conscious. Then they’d force something with a sweet scent beneath my nostrils, and I would drift off into a dreamless sleep until the next day. In the twilight zone between wakefulness and sleep, I thought I saw a glimmer of silver peering down at me. It carried through to my befuddled dreams.
Once, the disorientation faded momentarily for my body to register a soft rocking beneath the hard surface I slept on. An almost imperceptible swaying had my stomach twisting, threatening to upturn whatever meager contents remained. That was before the ever-present guard swiftly sent me back to sleep.
When my eyes eventually fluttered and stayed open for long enough to assess my surroundings, it was early morning. A strip of pale sky was visible through a window near a slatted ceiling, illuminating a large room. Its walls were painted an eggshell white and a solid wooden door was wedged near the left corner. I sat slowly, wincing at the crick in my neck and the ache in my joints from having slept far too long and uncomfortably.
Where was I? Memories slotted through my brain, foggy and condensed. Umma, the elven, the Trials–
“You’re up.”
The words came from my right. I turned to find a girl who looked to be about my age, seated in a bed similar to the one I occupied. She was pale, paler than most of the people in Serila, so I assumed she was from one of the northern islands, perhaps Concorde. And she was ethereally beautiful, so much so that I had to triple check her ears to make sure she was not elven. Strands of lilac framed her face, but the rest of her hair was the color of cornsilk, her eyes a cool blue. Dark circles shadowed those eyes. She looked as tired as I felt.
She tracked my face too, no doubt also making a mental note of everything she saw there. She gingerly folded back the covers of her duvet, swinging her legs off the side of the mattress and letting out a loud yawn.
“Gods, I feel like I’ve been asleep for years,” she muttered, stretching her long limbs.
It seemed like a good thing to do considering how sore my body felt, so I pulled my arms before me, tentatively rotating the joints. My muscles winced in protest, and I gave up stretching in favor of rubbing the knots out.
“As do I,” I said. “Do you know how long we’ve been asleep for?”
She snorted. “I tried counting for the first week. Gave up fairly swiftly.”
A week? We had been asleep for aweek, maybe even longer? My heart stuttered in my chest at the thought of Umma, voiceless and unable to do anything about it. I wasn’t even there to help her.
“I take it you’re another one of the candidates, then?” she asked.
“Hm?” I fixed my gaze back on her, though my thoughts still lay with Umma.
“One of the candidates,” she repeated. “Chosen for the Mortal Trials.”
“Oh. That. Yes.”