Chapter 4

Lyra

The chamberlain led us out of the chamber in single file. The stone in the corridor was cool under my feet, and my dress still clung damply to my back.

He stopped at the foot of a wide staircase and counted us with a slow finger.

Eleven. Less than half of what had walked into the chamber that morning. The others had not walked out.

"You are the surviving tributes," the chamberlain said. "You have advanced to the second round."

The sapphire girl pushed forward as if the chamberlain had been waiting for her.

"My name is Elin Vance," she said, "and there will not be a second round."

I leaned against the corridor wall and let her speak. My knee was burning under the bandage. Whatever this was about, I wanted no part of it.

"Everyone saw me stand in the King's pet's fire," Elin said, rolling back her sleeve. The skin beneath was only pink.

The sapphire at her throat still held a faint cold glow.

"That is the queen's gift," she said. "I am the one he is looking for."

For a long second I could have kissed her.

Let her be the queen. Let this end here, and let me go home, or anywhere that was not this place.

The chamberlain did not even look at her arm. "Only His Majesty may end the selection. You will all be shown to the dormitory and await his decision."

Elin's smile flattened.

We were marched through stone halls and up a flight of narrow stairs into a long room with cots along both walls. There were trunks at the foot of each cot. Ten of the trunks already had dresses laid out on them.

The eleventh cot was at the far corner. I made for it without speaking to anyone.

My head was crowded with other things. Gates. Kitchens. Keys. Any way out.

A hand caught my shoulder.

I had not heard her say my name. Elin was right behind me, and her face had gone tight.

"I was speaking to you."

"I'm sorry," I said, because that was easier. "I was distracted."

"I asked you for that necklace."

I looked down at my own dress. The chain rode high, just above the neckline. I had forgotten it was visible.

"It belonged to my mother," I said.

"It would suit me better."

I looked up at her face, and for a strange moment I was looking at Delilah instead. The same chin. The same easy assumption that what was mine would be hers because she had asked.

"No," I said.

She did not even bother arguing. She nodded at the two girls nearest her, and they came at me from both sides at once.

I closed both hands over the necklace. One of them got a fistful of my plait and yanked my head back. The other tried to pry my fingers open. I bit her, hard, and tasted soap and skin.

Then there were hands on my shoulders, and the floor moved out from under me, and I was in the corridor again with the dormitory door swinging shut on my back.

The lock clicked.

I sat very still on the stone tile and waited for my breath to slow. The necklace was still in my fist. There was a ring of red around my throat where the chain had caught. Otherwise I was unhurt.

I would not knock. I had not planned on sleeping anyway.

The corridor was empty. The torches at the far end had been left lit. I picked one off its iron bracket and started walking.

I did not know where I was going. I knew only that I had to learn the shape of this place — doors, stairs, gates, anything that might matter if tomorrow turned worse than today.

I moved with my eyes down and my torch low, the way I had moved when my father had visitors.

Most of the wing I crossed was lived-in. Clean halls, polished doors, the smell of beeswax in the wood. Then I came to a corridor where the dust on the floor had not been swept and the torches had gone out.

That was where I found him.

He was on the floor against the far wall. One knee was up. His head was tipped back against the stone, and his eyes were closed.

He was the most handsome man I had ever seen, and there was nothing soft about it. Dark hair, a hard jaw, a long mouth, brows so straight they could have been drawn. He looked older than Ethan, younger than my father, and exhausted in a way that made him seem dangerous instead of weak.

There was a knife by his hand.

The blade was bloody. So was the sleeve of his shirt. The way the knife lay near his fingers, with the handle pointed at his palm, he had used it on himself.

I should have walked away.

I knelt instead. I touched his wrist below the bleeding cut, searching for the pulse the way I remembered Mother doing when I was small.

His head shifted toward my hand.

Something in his face changed. The hard line between his brows eased. He breathed out, a long, slow breath, the way a man lays down a weight he has been carrying for a long time.

"Sir," I said, very quietly. "Can you hear me?"

He did not answer. But the next breath was easier, and the next was easier still.

That was when I heard the boots in the corridor behind me. Two men, by the sound. Soldiers, by the weight.

I would die if they found me out here. He was wounded, well-dressed, and lying in the King's own halls. Someone would tend to him.

I left him. I hated myself for it, but I ran. My torch went out against the wall as I passed, and the dark fell behind me. I cut through two corridors and a servant's stair and did not stop until I was crouched outside the dormitory door.

I sat there with my back against the wood, replaying the route in my head: two corridors, a servant's stair, and a small back gate I might be able to find again. My knee had begun bleeding through the bandage.

I slept.

A boot prodded my shoulder.

I came awake all at once. The corridor was gray with morning light. The chamberlain was standing over me. Behind him in the open dormitory doorway, ten girls in various states of dress had crowded close to watch.

"Did you leave the dormitory last night?" the chamberlain said.

There was no point in lying. I sat up. "Yes."

Elin pushed her way to the front in a clean blue dress, the sapphire moved to a fresh chain at her throat.

"Only her," she said. "All of us were locked in. Only she was outside."

"Per the rules of selection," she added, helpfully, "a tribute who breaks confinement is to be put to death."

The chamberlain looked at me for a long moment.

Then he bent forward at the waist — slowly, formally — and bowed.

"Tribute Walker," he said. "His Majesty is asking for you."