Bond of Shadows

Chapter Four continued

The herald stepped forward, scroll in hand, armour catching torchlight. His staff cracked against stone; a hush fell that wasn’t quite silence, because fear has a sound.

“Attend,” he called. “The First Trial is the Hunt.”

A low murmur breathed through the stands; even the banners seemed to lean in.

“The rules,” the herald said, voice rolling. “You will cross the iron line only when the horn sounds. Prey will be released into the arena and the warrens beyond.” He gestured—a sweep that took in the far gates and the shadowed tunnels carved into the walls, a honeycomb of dark. “Your aim is simple: claim a token and return it to this dais.”

He lifted his palm. A guard stepped forward with a shallow iron bowl, and in it lay a scatter of discs—dull black, thumb-sized, stamped with the King’s sigil. A collar’s seals, by the look of them. Fifteen.

Fifteen? I looked around, and there were at least 30 heirs here.

“Fifteen tokens,” the herald said, thin smile like a knife. “Fifteen of you will advance. The rest-” he let the word hang “-will not.”

Fifteen. A strangled breath snagged in someone’s chest three bodies down, and the sound skittered along my spine.

“You may run,” he continued, “you may shift, you may take a token by claw, by bite, by blade. You may steal from another’s hand.

You may form alliances if you are foolish enough to trust a stranger. You may break those alliances when your need grows teeth. The Trials favour no friendships.”

A laugh rippled from the stands - ugly, appreciative.

“Do not attack the stands, the dais, or the enforcers,” the herald added, voice flattening. “Do not cross the outer boundary. Do not attempt to flee the grounds. Do not interfere with my staff. Any breach will be punished with immediate forfeiture.”

Forfeiture. The way he said it made the word feel like a neat, clean euphemism for a very messy end.

He lifted his staff again; a guard came down our line with a narrow iron spike set into a leather-wrapped haft, the tip dark, wet. A thorn. The guard halted before each heir, offering the haft for a thumb.

“By iron and oath,” the herald intoned, “you submit to the Hunt.”

One by one, heirs pressed their thumbs to the thorn. A hiss, a flinch, a smear of red across iron. The chain at our feet drank it up.

Blood strengthening blood.

When the guard reached me, the spike glinted—too clean, too hungry. I set my jaw and pushed my thumb down. Pain bit sweet and bright. A droplet welled, slid like a ruby along the metal and disappeared into the rust-dark links. My bindings gripped; I breathed through the pinch until my ribs stopped stuttering.

Kai stood to my right, hands shaking. He pressed his thumb too hard; blood welled fast. He swiped it clumsily across the spike. “By iron and oath,” he whispered, like an apology to a god who hadn’t come.

On my left, Soren made a show of boredom - thumb, press, the barest twitch, a lazy half-smile up at the herald as if to ask, that all?

He smelled like pine after rain. It cut through my perfume for a heartbeat and left me off-balance.

Farther down the line, Kaelen smirked as the thorn bit him, then lifted his blood-slick thumb to show his lackeys like it was a joke only bullies find funny. Brant cracked his neck. Torren muttered something that made Kaelen’s grin sharpen.

“Understand this,” the herald said, lowering the staff. “The enforcers intervene only if ordered by the King or if you break oath. They will not save you. They will not mourn you. They see what they are told to see.”

A prickle ran across the back of my neck. The enforcers stood at the edges of the pit and along the tunnels—armour too heavy for dawn, no skin showing, movements too smooth, too precise. The air around them felt… hollowed. Like a space where breath should be.

The herald rolled his scroll closed. “Prey will be released from the east gates. Collars bear ten sealed discs stamped with the King’s sigil. Break the seal, take the disc, and return it to this dais. First ten advance. If the prey takes you? Then you feed the throne.”

A roar from the stands swallowed the last word. People love tidy rules for messy deaths.

The King lifted his hand again, lazy, indulgent. “Make me proud,” he said, and though the words might have been kindly from any other mouth, from his they felt like permission to kill.

The chain rattled. A mechanism hidden beneath the dirt whirred and lifted it from the ground; it rose link by link until it hung at our knees, our thighs, our hips, then hovered - one breath between restraint and release.

The eastern gates shuddered. The sound was deep, old, like something that remembered when these walls were still wet.

“Eyes,” Soren murmured, not looking at me, but somehow to me all the same. “Up.”

I stared straight ahead. The tunnels beyond the east gate were black mouths. The air coming out of them was colder than dawn had any right to be.

“On the horn,” the herald called.

Around me: bodies leaning forward, weight on the balls of their feet. A handful of heirs dropped hands to the dirt, ready to spring on all fours. Bones popped; someone failed to stifle a growl. The smells sharpened-adrenaline, sweat, the bright metallic tang of fear.

My bindings dug until it felt like they were part of my ribs; my palms itched for claws I would not show.

Beneath the noise, the crowd waited with an intimacy that felt obscene. Thousands holding one breath with us.

Kai’s lips barely moved. “If it gets bad out there… will you watch my back?”

The words were soft, shaky, but not pleading. Just a boy asking another boy not to let him die alone.

I didn’t look at him. Couldn’t. My bindings dug into my ribs with every breath.

“Yeah,” I said, steady enough to sound like a lie. “I’ve got you.”

A hush swept the stands. Even the banners stilled.

The horn did not blare so much as split the morning in two.

The chain snapped up.

The gates flew open.

Cold poured out, along with a sound that wasn’t quite a roar and wasn’t quite a scream, and the Hunt-finally, savagely-began.