Page 136 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

The top edge was so fucking close, but there was no way I could reach it even if I propelled myself up with all the might in my legs—never mind how little I trusted the integrity of the stone now. And that meant I was going to have to maim a perfectly good blade.

How disappointing.

I slipped it free from the sheath on my thigh and struck the only thin crease within reach. It took a few tries for the rock to crumble away and get the blade wedged securely, but I was using it to haul myself up those last feet before I knew it.

I rolled over the top edge of the cliff in an inelegant movement and reached back over to wrench the poor blade free. It found its home secured back on my thigh before I pushed myself up, dusted a fine coating of stone dust off my body, and wiped at my watery eyes.

My body was built for this environment, I reminded myself, though it didn’t feel like it at all.

I glanced down at the first nytefire lantern and kicked it straight over the edge of the cliff. It shattered on the scree slope below and sent a pillar of radiant blue nytefire streaking skyward. The stadium was still silent or dampened, but I forced myself to smile.

“One down,” I huffed. “Two to go.”

The back side of the cliff descended in a steep, crude path, flanked by towering black pine trees, and it fought me with every fucking step. Loose rocks shifted and slid away constantly under my feet, sending me stumbling and sliding the entire way.

Despite keeping my stance low, my arms splayed, and my core engaged for balance, I ended up flat on my ass at the bottom.

The bruised ass cheek, I could handle; the fresh slice on my palm would be a little more of an inconvenience. But there was no time to dwell. I wiped my bloodied hand on my fitted, uniform-issued pants and hurried the rest of the way down the winding footpath, weaving through trees and jutting rock until it all fell away to a wide open vista.

The cragged gorge I’d first glimpsed from the platform sprawled out in front of me, and the only way across it was a rope bridge stretched over the gap without an ounce of protection from the howling wind. Easily half of its narrow planks were missing.

Fuck. Me.

As if the arena heard my thoughts, the bridge rattled a little harder, and one plank fell into the depths below. I never heard it land, but I took my first cautious step anyway. A gust ripped through the gorge, and the entire structure swung like a pendulum of imminent death. Foolishly, I glanced down at the thousands of feet of air and jagged rock below. Acid burned my throat.

So much for my lifelong comfort with heights.

“Goddess, take me,” I whimpered. “Take me quickly if you must.”

I gripped the rope rails with all my might, keeping my footsteps soft as I moved from plank to plank. Each got a testing press before I shifted onto it and focused on spreading my weight evenly across the brittle wood.

Light step. Settle weight. Testing press.

Light step. Settle weight. Testing press.

Over and fucking over.

I lost count after the hundredth plank, minus a few that met their end somewhere in the gorge and took pieces of my frenzied heart with them. But I was almost there—another few dozen steps, tops. If only the wind would yield for a fucking second. My vision was nothing but a blurry wash, and my face had gone so far past chilled numbness, it circled back to burning.

When I finally made it to solid ground, getting my first reprieve from that brutal wind, I sank to my hands and knees.

My lungs raged as if I’d breathed in nothing but fire, and no amount of gulping down air would do anything to ease the feeling. So, with an abundance of logic, I forced myself up and kept moving. A short set of crude stone steps led me up to a landscape so jarring, it took a second to process the sudden break in the endless sea of stone and pine.

An alpine meadow so lush, I wanted to climb into its gently rippling grasses. Pluck a few of its snow-white blooms. Knock over and re-stack a few of the small cairns dotting the landscape.

There were dozens of piles of stacked stones, after all.

Figuring out that the lantern would be entombed in one of them did not take long, and the realization whisked away my slight relief on the next breeze. The even scatter of the cairns did not seem to have any rhyme or reason, so I started with the closest and said a quiet prayer as the jagged bits of shale sliced away at my frozen fingers.

Nothing in the first one. Or the second. Or the third.

Nor the fourth, fifth, or sixth. By the tenth, blood slicked my hands.

By the fifteenth, frustration brought a new burn to the corners of my aching eyes. By the twentieth, my fleeting hold on my composure slipped.

“Please,” I whispered as I planted my palms in the grass and hung my head, resigned to talking to a fucking arena. “You’re…alive, right? So you can hear me?”

I could’ve sworn the ground rumbled back at me.