Page 139 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

Not just from a single poor soul, either.

The modest, infirmary-staged room had a row of small cots spaced out along its far wall, and close to half were occupied by other water-logged contestants with their heads in buckets or curled up on their sides.

No one looked in my direction.

Another cot was set in the center of the room, a small table beside it, and I was getting more confused by the minute. I leaned against the wall to give my ardently protesting legs a break and shot a glance over at the woman who’d led me in, but she was standing with her hands clasped behind her back and her attention set on the floor.

As I opened my mouth to ask her what in the hell we were doing, the door swung open and left me even more confused.

Malakai, the shifter lord, strode in, looking every bit the arrogant ass I was learning he was after only a handful of interactions. The longest was in the aftermath of the shifter incident in Embervale, when I’d never been both insulted and thanked so many times in a single conversation. In his hand were three tiny, rounded bottles, all corked and with papers tied to them, and a fresh wave of unease bloomed in my stomach.

“My Lord,” the woman purred as she curtsied.

“Thank you, Sadie. As you were.” His pale-green eyes tracked her as she rose and hurried over to the ailing contestants. When his attention turned to me, I stiffened. “Miss Wynn. Lovely to see you again, and after such a triumph, too.”

“Save it.” I grasped my arms and squeezed them a little tighter to my body, but it did little good to stave off the shivers wracking my body. “What are we doing in here?”

Malakai’s eyebrows climbed, and he let out a quiet huff. “Your second trial, of course. Sit, please.”

There was no way he’d just said that.

I blinked between him and the cot he was gesturing me toward. “Excuse me?”

He smiled, placing the three bottles on the small table and motioning at me again. “You were told you’d be assessed on your knowledge, yes?”

“Of course I was.” I hadn’t moved an inch from the wall. “But we just…”

Malakai’s predatory grin only grew, as if he realized what I had pieced together. I’d just run a goddess-damned trial that left me exhausted and freezing, with more wounds on my hands and bruises on my body than I could count, and now, my knowledge was going to be tested under the weight of that all.

I should’ve fucking known this would happen.

Moisture vacated my mouth entirely as I fought down a lump in my throat and took uneasy steps towards the cot. It gave a protesting groan as I sank onto its surface and covered up my shaky exhale.

At the table to my side, Malakai straightened out the bottles before taking a step back and pausing for a lengthy moment, his lips parted and canines exposed, as someone else in the room let out a belabored wail and began retching.

“Now, the terms of your second trial,” he finally said when the noise settled. “In the bottles before you, one is a simple warming tonic, while two contain compounds that will leave you violently ill for the next several hours. A clue as to the contents is attached to each respective bottle, and you can only unseal the one you intend to drink.”

My chest tightened a little further with every word that came out of Malakai’s mouth as I studied the three unassuming bottles. They were all simple glass with clear fluids inside, and the papers tied on had been folded in half so I couldn’t glimpse anything written yet.

“Oh, and you have three minutes to make your choice,” he added, and my attention snapped up. “Starting now.”

I didn’t have a chance to fumble out any noise of protest, because Malakai flipped over a small sandglass on the table, and the grains inside began pooling in the bottle.

Goddess help me. I was so fucked.

A few quiet curses were all I managed as I grabbed the first bottle and read its hint.

White death.

The words washed over me with absolutely no immediate association in my mind and only amplified the tightness in my chest, but for the sake of my rapidly dwindling time, I moved on to the next bottle.

Green night.

And the last bottle?

Blue dawn.

It took everything to stave off the wave of panic that lapped at my mind.