Warrior of the Wild(11)

And if I die or lose, I will also be gone from her sight forever. Either way, she wins.

I return my gaze to the creature just in time. A jolt runs up my arms when we make contact, my ax connecting with the creature’s neck. I’m bigger, stronger, and the ziken skids backward, its neck trapped in the space between the ax blades. A sharp crack ricochets around me as the tips of my blades connect with a stone wall of the maze.

My finger slides across the switch, and the spike drives from the tip of my ax, piercing the creature’s neck. With the ziken’s next cackle, brown blood bubbles from its throat.

I brace a foot against its body and pull my ax free, a liquid slurp coming from the wound as I do so. I flip the switch again, allowing the spike to slide neatly back into place. The ziken falls to the floor, blood oozing from the wound. But almost instantly, the skin starts to heal over. Before it can recover, I lift my ax above my head and bring it down on the creature, successfully severing the head from the body—the only wound the beast can’t recover from.

Blood drips from my ax as I look up into the seating once more. My father stands and clashes the rod of his ax against the ground in approval. Everyone in the crowd stomps their feet. My eyes seek my mother’s face. She still watches me, and I swear I see the almost-imperceptible movement of a nod. If it was a nod, was it one of approval? Was it her face turning downcast in disappointment? A physical sign of her resigning to her fate?

I am a skilled warrior. She knows I will not fail. She will have to walk this world knowing I’m in it, too, somewhere, keeping her husband from her as Father trains me, dotes on me.

“Well done,” Torrin says, pulling my attention back down to him, “but the next one’s mine.” The eagerness is apparent in his voice.

“Of course. I bet I can kill more than you by the end, though.” We’re running again, searching right and left for more signs of the creatures.

“Are you willing to wager on that?”

“Of course.”

“All right, what do you want if you win?” he asks.

I know what I want, but I’m still not brave enough to ask for it. No, I will surprise him with a kiss after the trial. “If I win, you have to clean and polish my ax after the trial—and every day for the next month after we start taking rotations guarding the village boundaries.”

“That is easily doable.”

“What do you want if you win?” I ask.

“That’s—”

A ball of smooth black skin attaches itself to Torrin’s back. For a moment, I’m unable to move, horrified by what’s in front of me. He can’t be banished. I need him.

A second later, I’m launching myself forward. Grabbing the ziken with my bare hands, I tear it from Torrin’s back and throw it in the opposite direction. The beast is heavy; it doesn’t sail more than a few feet. But by then, Torrin has turned around, fire in his eyes, ax straight. He takes a swing at it, severing off an arm and biting into the neck. With a second swing, he detaches the head.

“Torrin,” I say, barely above a whisper, staring at the little drops of blood falling from his neck. He probably can’t hear me over the sounds of the audience’s loud exclamations.

“It’s okay. Those are claw marks. It didn’t bite me.”

I don’t dare believe him without checking. I inch down the armor at his back to get a better look at the exposed skin of his neck. Yes, claw marks. And he hasn’t started shaking from the venom spread through their bite.

I sigh in relief.

“Did you honestly not believe me? Or were you simply desperate to see beneath my shirt?”

I glare at him. “Don’t you scare me like that again.”

“It’s all right. I won’t. Come, now. We’ve done the hard part. All that’s left to do is survive without sustaining a bite. Let’s go on.”

We’re running again. Despite the previous scare, we’re still eager to reach more of the deadly beasts.

“What were you going to say?” I ask. “What do you want if you kill more of them than I do?”

“That’s easy. I want you to put in a good word for me with your father.”

“Oh.” It makes sense, I suppose, but it bothers me that he wants to use me like that.

“Get that frown off your face, Rasmira. I want you to put in a good word for me so he’ll give me permission to court you.”

I nearly drop my ax.

“Don’t look so surprised.”

“I’m disappointed that I have to let you win now.”

He smiles at me, and it makes the future seem so bright. I don’t even care if I have to deal with my mother’s hate. My teacher’s false praise. My father’s single-minded adoration. As long as I can protect this village, spend time with my sisters, and have Torrin, I don’t need anything else.

We round another corner and stop dead in our tracks.

Five ziken beasts block our path, almost as if they were waiting for us.

They cackle at the sight of us, and the sounds send a shiver down my back.

“The one in the middle is enormous,” Torrin says.

My grip on my ax tightens. “Then I’ll kill it and leave you to deal with the hatchlings.”

Torrin snorts. The others can hardly be called newborns. They are only marginally smaller.