Page 155 of A Game of Veils

In her haste, she clamps her fingers around one of the sharp metal shards. A yelp breaks from her throat.

I can’t help glancing over at my rival. Blood smears across the artificial slope as she scrabbles for other purchase.

Her pupils have blown wide with panic, her sallow forehead shining with sweat.

Leonette’s blue-clothed form vanishes over the peak. Another piece of the precipice breaks away from the edge nearest to Fausta. I shove myself higher, my legs trembling with the effort.

Fausta’s breaths follow me, turning more ragged by the second with a hint of a whimper.

Was she hurt that badly? She’s never let much distress show before, even when we had to handle those scorching-hot serving dishes.

I grasp the top of the makeshift bridge. At a glimpse of the other side, my stomach lurches.

The structure descends just as steeply there, down toward the rocky terrain along the shore of the broad river.

I’m just swinging my leg over the peak, which is barely as wide as my palm, when the entire precipice shudders.

More chunks tumble away from the edges—including a slab of wood beneath one of Fausta’s feet. She swings to the side with a shriek of pure terror.

I expect her to yank herself closer to the middle with her arms and the foot that’s still braced on another protrusion, but she freezes in place. When I hesitate, peering down at her, her limbs look as if they’ve locked up against the steep slope.

Blood seeps from her cut hand over the stone knob it’s wrapped around. Her eyes have squeezed closed, her breath coming in tiny hitches.

She is terrified.

Wouldn’t it be quite the joke if the woman who’s fought so hard to reach the loftiest position in the realms is afraid of heights?

It might be, but as I look at her, I can’t find any humor in the thought. Nothing remains of the woman who challenged me so boldly in the hunched, quivering figure clinging to the precipice.

She is still just a woman. Just a human being caught up in the machinations of the court, in a world that told her she had to prove her worth with the connections she could forge and the favors she could curry.

She fought me to win. She fought me because the alternative was death. And the ones who threw us into this lethal conflict, the sadistic emperor and his equally merciless heir, are the only real villains.

No matter what Fausta’s done to me in the past, nothing about this moment feels right. Tarquin has finally succeeded in knocking the fierceness out of her. He’s found a way to break her just like he’s broken so many others before, here and all across the continent.

With a rush of anguish, I extend my arm toward the other woman. “I’ll help you away from the edge. You have to keep moving before it breaks more.”

Fausta’s eyes crack open to stare at me. She sputters a laugh, but it sounds more pathetic than mocking.

She hesitates for a few seconds, obviously reluctant to trust me. Whatever she sees in my face must convince her that I mean it.

Or maybe she realizes she can’t get much worse off than she currently is.

She shifts her weight and leans toward me.

Our fingertips are just an inch apart when the slope lurches with another quake.

Fausta could still make it. One heave toward me, and I could grasp her arm, haul her out of the way.

But panic grips her with a flinch that sets her off-balance. She teeters and freezes up, her expression blanking and a whine spilling from her lips. Her other foot slips off into the air.

With the jerk of her full weight, her wounded hand slides from its blood-slick hold. She swings toward the edge. The snap of the impact shocks apart the fingers still clutching on.

Her fingernails rasp against the crumbling wood for an instant before her body tumbles away from me.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Aurelia

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