Out of the Shadow at Last novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The First Trial

Linnet holds a ward against a staged vampire raid in chalk and blood while Posy's fails in front of the crowd; Bram says Ivar has given her a wing nobody has slept in for seven years.

The night before the trial I hid in Ivar's stable, the only quiet place in his hall.

He came to find me there.

"You haven't asked why I named you," he said.

I kept my eyes on the horse's hoof I was cleaning.

"I assumed you'd tell me when you wanted me to know," I said. "Alphas generally do."

"The wards over Northgate failed once," he said. "I want the one who can fix them."

"Then you'd have hired a mage."

"Every Alpha along the Greywater knows the Rooke wards held for seven years," Ivar said.

"Somebody was holding them," he said. "It was never your father."

I looked up.

He was watching me with no smile at all.

His face was so still that I thought he had said less than he meant.

"Sleep," he said. "You'll need your hands."

The trial field was a ring of packed sand the width of a village square.

Raised benches stood on three sides, and the whole Fair watched from them.

Each champion had a circle chalked at the centre, and each circle faced a gap in the barrier fence.

A horn would sound, and masked wolves in grey cloaks would charge out through the gap, playing the Dusk Court.

The champion had to hold her ward until the second horn.

I stood in my circle with a stick of white chalk and a rune pen, and no Seal.

Posy stood in the circle beside mine with the Seal on its cord around her neck.

Her hands were wrapped in the cloak.

Mother sat in the front row on the Rooke bench, close enough that I could hear her.

"Left curve first, darling," she murmured. "Then the downstroke. Then the long line. Keep your eyes on me."

Posy nodded without turning her head.

The first horn sounded.

The masked wolves came through the fence at a dead run, forty of them, snarling for the benches.

I pricked my finger on the pen and let the blood run into the chalk.

I drew the border rune in one pass: left curve, downstroke, then the long line out to the edge of the sand.

The line caught, pale silver, and rose in front of me as a wall as high as my shoulder.

The first masked wolf hit it and bounced back.

The second one did too.

I did not look at the crowd.

I had done this every night for seven years in the dark with nobody watching.

The only difference now was the noise.

Beside me, Posy was drawing.

She drew the left curve too wide and the downstroke too short.

Then she looked at Mother instead of the line.

Mother's mouth said the next stroke.

Posy drew it backwards.

The chalk flared a dull red and went out.

The first masked wolf ran straight through her circle and knocked her flat on her back.

She screamed.

It was a real scream, high and terrified, and the sound of it went through me.

Four more wolves were running at her.

I stepped over the chalk line I had drawn and put my hand flat on the sand beside her shoulder.

"Don't move," I told her.

I drew a second line, short and quick, from my wall to the edge of her circle.

The silver rose again and closed around the two of us.

The masked wolves hit it and bounced.

Posy lay in the lee of my ward with her eyes wide and her chest heaving.

"You're not supposed to help me," she whispered.

"I know."

"Why did you?"

"Because you were screaming," I said, and kept my hand on the sand.

The second horn sounded.

The ring went quiet.

I stood up slowly, with my finger bleeding and my shoulder aching.

Inside a wall of silver two circles wide, every Alpha on the benches was on his feet.

"Hold," the herald called, his voice cracking. "The champion of Northgate holds. The champion of Rooke does not."

Mother was standing at the front of the benches with her hands pressed to her mouth.

She was not looking at Posy.

She was looking at me, and she did not look pleased.

I stepped out of the ring on legs that did not feel like mine.

Ivar was at the fence, and he did not say anything.

He put his hand on the small of my back and steadied me through the gap.

He kept it there three steps longer than anyone needed.

I noticed exactly how warm it was.

I told myself it was because the day was cold.

Bram caught up with us at the gate and fell into step beside me.

"Congratulations," he said. "You've just made yourself the most hated woman at the Fair."

"That sounds like home," I said.

"Good. You'll want to know about your room."

"What about my room?"

"The east wing," Bram said, in a lower voice.

"Nobody's slept in it for seven years," he said. "He keeps it locked and he won't let the maids in."

"He gave you the key yesterday," Bram said.

I looked across at Ivar, who was talking to the herald with his back to us.

"Why?" I asked.

"That," said Bram, "is the question I'd like to know the answer to as well."

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