I opened my mouth to bite out that this was none of my doing and alltheirfault, but he was already striding away toward the others in the center. Lana elbowed me forward and we took position beside two other mortals: a boy who looked a few years older than me, and a girl no older than sixteen.
“Hi,” Lana said to them, clearly the chattiest of our bunch.
The girl surveyed us shrewdly. She sported a nasty gash above her eyebrow, while her counterpart crossed his muscled forearms.
“This is Lirah,” Lana continued, pointing me out. “And I’m Lana.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, in an attempt to be friendly.
“Is it?” the girl drawled.
She clearly did not want to be friends.
The boy clicked his tongue at her. “Ignore her. She’s pissy because the arrows nearly caught her.”
Arrows?
“Nearly?” the girl shrieked, pointing to the cut on her brow. “I beg to differ.”
The boy ignored her. “I’m Moric. From the isle of Foulkan.”
“Rayna, from Oulis,” the girl grumbled. She held a tiny lighter in her hand, which she flicked on, then off.
“They let you keep that?” I asked, noting that the blade Umma had given me was missing. Kidnapped and now defenseless. Just great.
Rayna shrugged. “Seems like it. You look terrible.” She said the last part specifically to me. “What happened to you guys?”
“We had to find a key to unlock our door before the floor dropped out,” I summarized.
“We had to find a key too,” Rayna said, the little flame in her hand striking again. “Our floor didn’t fall, but we had about ten dozen arrows shooting at us.”
I didn’t know which was worse.
“What are we doing here?” Lana asked, peering at the elven gathered in front. “It looks like they’re waiting for something.”
“Yeah. The last three.” Moric’s eyes scanned the other mortals. “There should be thirteen.”
Rayna scoffed bitterly at the elven. “What even stops us from leaving? I didn’t ask to be kidnapped in the middle of the night. If I don’t die from these dumb challenges, I’ll die during the Rite. So, what’ll happen if I refuse to compete?”
“They’ll kill you,” Moric muttered.
“None of us are getting out of here alive,” Rayna said. “Whether I die now or later, it doesn’t matter.”
“Itdoesmatter,” a deep voice boomed from across the room, and all heads swiveled to survey the elven now entering.
Dark hair, familiar silver eyes.
“I think he heard you,” Moric said.
“No shit.”
Great. I filed away super hearing in the mental cabinet I was slowly beginning to grow on all things elven.
“And youwillcompete,” Silver Eyes continued, striding purposefully across the room. He was so tall and his shoulders so broad that I didn’t even notice the two mortals trailing behind him, until he swerved around our group to join the other elven.
The remaining mortals joined us, their faces ashen. Tear tracks marked the face of an older woman. She was the eldest of the group, it seemed.
“Aren’t there supposed to be three of them?” Lana whispered.