LOGINLexa“Look at me.” Kaleb clutches my face between his hands. I can’t see past him. I can’t hear past the echo of Chessie’s scream piercing me from all angles. My chest contorts as I try to fill my lungs with air, but it’s useless. “Lexa, open your eyes.”I shake my head, blubbering as raised voices erupt all around us. Silas is screaming at the top of his lungs in the language of the fae, but I can’t make out a word he’s saying. It doesn’t matter. I imagine Meg bringing down that sword over and over, and the way Chessie closed her eyes at the last moment before her life was torn from her body. “NO!” I screech, but Kaleb shakes me violently, trying to drag me out of an anguish induced stupor. He presses his forehead to mine, panting, as the lifted voices reach a peak. There’s activity all around us, but he shields me from what I assume are the bodies–her body–being dragged from the arena. “Listen to me,” he breathes against my cheek. “You will go out there and take what’s thrown at
LexaNo one wakes me up. Hot midday sunlight spills through the window, barely muffled by the curtain. It’s definitely past noon when I roll myself out of bed, out of the coarse, woven sheets and onto the hard but freshly swept floor. Something inside me shifted yesterday. Something cold and gnawing I’ve been struggling with since I was young. It’s easy to forget that I’m still a person beyond the weapons and my skills in battle, but when I look in the rusted mirror hanging on the wall by the bed, tugging the strings that pull my shifting dress into shape, I see her. Me. Just Lexa. Lexa, who watched her mother prime and fire that arrow that didn’t make it in time. Lexa, who watched a man she cared about–maybe even a man she could have grown to love–grovel for her affection before seeing him get cut down in cold blood. Lexa, who worries about her friends more than anything else. A daughter, a sister, a friend. A fucking princess. I untangle the strands of my hair with my fingers be
KalebSilas’s manor center rests high above the sprawling, gold-washed city. In the distance, through the glare of evening lights, I can see the castle and the shadow of the wall around the Glade behind it. I had no reason to come here tonight other than Silas insisted, and Chessie and Lexa backed him up. I have no idea where the women are as it stands, but they’re safe here, even in the latest hours of the night. Lexa not being tucked at my side still makes me uneasy, however.Silas shrugs out of his cloak and drapes it lazily over an armchair bedecked with red and white embroidery. Everything about his manor screams luxury–the born kind. Our mother was a wealthy heiress of one of the king’s advisors. His father was a lord from one of the ancient high fae families with ties to the royal family in some way, shape, or form. I’ve ignored the details for as long as I can. Silas is as good as a prince with coffers to show for it.“Drink?”“Yeah,” I murmur, turning from the window to face
Lexa“Stay close,” Kaleb whispers sternly over the top of my head as we follow a set of fae guards through the bowels of the castle. “It’s not like I can go anywhere,” I reply under my breath, trying to wrench my arm free of his iron-like grip. He hasn’t let go of me since the moment Lis and I stepped out of his house and met him in the courtyard, where, unfortunately, the man had effectively stolen my breath away. His hair is loose, falling just shoulder-length and brushed back. Instead of grubby, coarse fabrics, he’s wearing a finely made suit that fits his body like a glove and makes him look like a man I’d find in Maeve’s castle–royalty. It sent a jolt through my system, to say the least, and after the slightly open moment we’d shared in the sparring ring today, I can only assume that the look on his face when he’d seen me had him feeling the exact same way. Shock.The thin, almost satin-like fabric of my dress ripples over my body, every curve and muscled angle on display. Tw
LexaDays pass in a blur of pain, hunger, and little sleep. From the moment the stars begin to fade in the sky to the second the moon rises over the Glade, I’m in the sparring ring. Kaleb is always there, always watching, always discerning every movement in a cutting silence that I believe made it possible for me to dissociate my feelings, worries, and outright concern over my situation and the welfare of my friends and the task at hand. I can’t get out of this. There is nothing I can do to change my circumstances. “Again,” Kaleb says with no emotion, his tone dry and heavy as it bounces through the ring, off every curve of rusted metal. I throw the spear. Again and again, until my shoulder aches, and I have to switch sides. I’m right handed, but he has me practicing on the left side as well, just as often, in the event I… lose my arm. “Again,” he bellows. I send the spear tearing through the hot, sticky air. It pierces through the abdomen of the practice dummy in the center of t
LexaThe pack house of the Glade is remarkably similar to the ones in Silverhide and Endova. It’s a single wide, airy room with multiple entrances to the outside world but no windows. Long tables stretch in its center, but smaller tables and wobbly stools meant for moving around are scattered throughout the space. There’s a kitchen in the back–crude, however, with not much more than a few work tables and a wood-fired stove for cooking. But it’s the storeroom off the kitchen that takes my breath away, and not for the reason it should have. It’s nearly empty. Bags of flour, oats, and rice are depleted to near critical levels–barely enough to feed a single family. Dried, smoked meat hangs from hooks on the ceiling, scrapped down to the bone. I step out of the way as another set of fae–servants, I believe–step past me carrying bags of what smells like grain. They keep stacking and stacking but barely make a dent in what’s needed, and some of the ice guarding my heart melts at the sight o







