— THE GILDED BLADE | BONUS CONTENT pt 1
n — next parts will be linked at the bottom once I can get them up (might take a few hours, please have patience !!
warning, this will spoil a bit but also won't really make sense if you haven't read the book.
Oren was going to kill me for shutting down the security cameras on the yacht, but I had a limited window of opportunity. I knew it was a risk, but the note I’d received seemed to merit one: A drawing of a calla lily. Four words. A lone initial.
Once the cameras were off, she came to me, clothed from head to toe in white. White cloak. White boots. White gloves.
My own hands were bare. In one of them, I held my phone, Jameson’s number already pulled up, and in the other, I held a knife I’d stolen from the yacht’s galley. I let the Woman in White see the knife—but not the phone.
“I got your note,” I said.
Gloved hands lowered her white hood. The cloth covering her face came down with the hood. Alice Hawthorne, in the flesh. She looked a good decade younger than she was—at least.
“I’ve called it.” Those were Alice’s first words to me.
“Called what?” My thumb hovered over the phone screen. Jameson would kill me for doing this, but he wasn’t the only one who got to take risks, and I’d never gotten over that night in Prague.
Fearing that something had happened to him.
And, once he’d come back, knowing that someone had hurt him.
“What is it,” I repeated, putting a bit of Grayson in my tone, “that you have called?”
“Our name for it is the Crucible.” Alice’s voice and mannerisms reminded me more of Skye than Zara, and that surprised me. She spoke like the two of us were having this exchange over martinis, not a knife. “Each of us chooses a Candidate. The Candidates are trained. They are tested. One ascends.”
That couldn’t have sounded more cultish if she’d tried.
“I would advise against calling my grandson,” Alice said, her voice still light enough.
She knew about the phone. Oh well. “You made Jameson bleed,” I said.
“I saved my grandson’s life,” Alice corrected, “by issuing a warning he would deem worthy of heeding—for a time.” I opened my mouth to object to the idea that Jameson had ever stopped heeding that warning, but Alice waved any and all objections away with a gloved hand. “Nothing happens by accident, Avery. The Watcher has made her move, and I must make mine. And so I have.”
“The Crucible.” The words felt heavy on my lips.
“We don’t have much time. All you need to know is that Candidates are able to bargain for immunity for those they love. Say yes, and I can grant that to you—to them. The boys. Toby. My daughters. Your sister and the babies she carries. My family and yours.”
“I called the Crucible to give Jameson and Grayson a chance.” Alice’s voice still reminded me so much of Skye’s. “I called it so that you might bargain, and, in doing so, I have ensured my own days are numbered. For a new Candidate to ascend, my time must end.”
Die, I realized. Alice was saying that when the Crucible was over, she would die.
“I will not be able to protect them much longer,” Alice told me. “And so, Avery Kylie Grambs, you must live up to that name of yours and do so in my stead. Bargain for my grandsons’ lives—and do it fast.”
“This is wrong.” She’d correctly identified my weak point. I would do anything for the people I loved.
“Then change the game,” Alice told me. “Say yes. Come with me. Compete in the Crucible, and change the game.”
“What happens if I lose?”
“Those who pass the Crucible but do not ascend return to life, forged and made and ready. Four years ago or nineteen or five hundred—you would have been placed somewhere of use to us, but I’ve seen to it that you are already there. You already have power, Avery, not the mere proximity to it but power all your own. Prove yourself in the Crucible, and the only thing about your life that will change is that you will be part of something bigger than yourself.”
“Something wrong,” I said.
“We are not all True Believers, Avery Kylie Grambs. There is a path forward, if you can find it.”
The knife in my right hand suddenly felt very heavy. I wondered if stabbing her would end this. I didn’t think it would. “What happens if I say yes? If I bargain with you to keep the others safe?”
“You’ll disappear without a trace—except a note, I think, in this case, telling them not to look for you.”
“They’ll look for me regardless.”
Alice lifted a gloved hand to the side of my face. “I’m counting on it. Do feel free, dear girl, to sign that note with a lemniscate.”
I left the note. I signed it with the infinity symbol. And in return, Alice rendered me unconscious with a single touch.
I woke up in a white room. White ceiling. White floors. White walls. The room had no windows. It had no doors. My first thought was of Jameson.
And my third was that the white room wasn’t just white. Etched into every surtace, there were indentions-twisting, turning lines that connected just so.
It took me longer than it should have to realize what I was looking at. This room had no windows. It had no doors. And built into the walls and ceiling and floor, there was a very complicated maze.
It took me hours to solve the maze room, and when I did, it opened to another. Another room. Another puzzle. And another. And another.
Thirst crept in long before hunger.
My throat was so dry it hurt by the time I stepped into a room covered with locks. The ceiling was seemingly nothing but keys.
I started with the locks and found one and only one with writing on it. Four words.
Eventually, two more rooms and a small eternity later, there was water.
There was food. I drank. I ate. I waited. And this time, a door opened of its own volition. My body on high alert, I stepped through it, expecting to see Alice.
The room with blades for walls.
The room of a hundred doors.
Time lost all meaning as I worked my way through challenge alter challenge, but 1 knew objectively that it had to have been days, not hours. ra slept more than once to stay sharp. I was starting to believe tha there would be no end, that I should just stop.
But I could practically hear Jameson urging me ora fresne thing you know how to do, Heiress, it's play.
Finally, finally, I stepped into a room that felt different larger, more open. There were visible tunnels spiraling off it, but some sixth sense told me to ignore them. I focused all my attention on the golden table in the middle of the room instead
On top of it sat three ornate goblets. Inside each, there was a liquid.
A voice—somehow familiar to me—spoke from somewhere behind me.
I whirled, but there was no one there. I turned back to the goblets.
Poison. I got the distinct feeling that wasn't a metaphor. I waited for the voice to say something else—or for its owner to reveal herself-but there was only silence.
Silence and those three goblets full of liquid.
I picked up each one, those sickening instructions echoing in my mind. Pick your poison.
It took me a tew minutes to find the riddle, engraved on the under-
side of the golden table:
ONE TO SLEEP ONE TO DREAM
I had to be sure. It had been a full day, but I had to be sure, because as far as I could tell, the only way of solving this room was to pick up one of those goblets and drink.
I'd already explored the tunnels spiraling off the room. Id already looked for clues, but there was nothing but the table and the riddle and the gob-lets, each one unique—one gold, one silver, one bronze, all set with jewels.
I came back to the goblet with the triangular-cut jewels again and again. There are always three."
At this point I spoke out loud just to hear a human voice, even if it was my own.
"There are always three, and a triangle has three sides." There was a logic to that, but I had to be sure. I had to be sure, and I wasn’t...
____
(will be linked once posted)
@moonlitbrews @coffeexsmmrsblog @reminiscentreader @theoneandonlymillz
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
izzy806
baratheonpilled
