Page 40 of Hallowed Games

I bit my lip. “True, I guess.” Letting others die was the logical thing to do, but Reginald seemed like a lost child.

He looked past us and pointed. “There’s no way out.”

Hugo’s bloodshot gaze flicked to the heavens. “I think we all need to accept death at this point. Whether we’re in the labyrinth or not, we’re all mortal—”

“Not now, Hugo,” said Godric. “Write it in a song when we get out.”

I scanned the ground around the baker, but I couldn’t see anything that caught my eye. It was really hard to tell with the cobbles. “Move a step closer to us, okay?”

He nodded, and he leapt toward us. He was shaking so hard that he nearly fell when he landed, and he broke into a fresh round of sobs. “Okay,” he whispered. “I’m okay.” He gripped his stomach and leaned over, looking like he was going to be sick. “They’re trying to kill us,” he repeated. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

“I know,” I said. “But you are here, and your wife is praying for you, so you’ll be okay.”

Percival shot me an irritated look, and I shrugged at him. Of course it was a lie, but I usually knew the best thing to say—even if it wasn’t true.

Godric crouched down by the wall. “There are some loose rocks we can use to test for the trigger. And, uh… and some human bones.” He grimaced. “They really seem gnawed on.”

“Perfect.” I released a long, shaky breath.

Apart from Reginald, whose mouth was now opening and closing wordlessly, we all gathered bits of rocks in our arms.

Sazia seemed on the edge of madness, too, muttering to herself as she picked up rocks and bones from the edges of the path. “Anon the day with darkness blends. Death by its might makes us decline.”

Godric tossed a rock onto a cobble, and we watched as the blade shot out, carving through the air above the corpses.

“I got it!” he shouted. “Did you see that one?”

“Archon help us,” muttered Reginald.

“Did you see it?” said Godric, pointing. “The trigger. Just there, by the…by that, uh, that gentleman’s torso.”

“So, we just avoid that one stone?” said Hugo dubiously. He’d gone pale again, sweat streaking his cheeks.

I shook my head. “What are the chances you’d get it on the first try, though? We need to test for more.”

One by one, we tossed our rocks. And for every stone we hit around the dead bodies, blades shot out of the walls, slicing through the air. The sharp shrieks of blades against the stones made my stomach drop every time.

It wasn’t just one stone. It was all of them.

Sazia’s brown eyes looked glazed as she said, “Against my will was I exiled from that bright region, fair and fain…”

“Bloody hell,” said Godric.

“What if we crawl?” said Percival. “The blades are coming out at waist height. We could crawl beneath them, and they’d carve through the air above us.”

“It’s not the worst idea,” I said.

Percival ran a hand over his close-cropped hair, and he inhaled a long breath. “I’ll go first.”

“Are you sure?”

“Someone’s got to do it,” he muttered.

I’d never seen a knight crawl before, but we’d entered an upside-down world. I watched as he got on his hands and knees to shuffle toward the red-soaked cobbles. The blades cut the air above him, but they left him unharmed.

I closed my eyes. “Thank the Archon,” I muttered to myself.

I followed, crawling just behind him. My palms pressed into the sticky crimson that coated the stones, and I tried to block out the coppery scent of blood that spilled into my nostrils.

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