The Gauntlet (The Cage 3)

Tipping downward.

Plunging.

Crashing.

Dark water pouring in through the windows.

Cora’s limbs started shaking violently, as if the bridge accident had happened just moments ago, not years. She squinted into the rain and dared to lift one hand, staring at the tremble. Her mind was too tender and painful to be able to make her hands stop shaking. The wind howled harder. Something cracked not far away. She twisted her head to see one of the pines attached to hers by a rope bridge crashing its way to the ground.

She screamed and held on tighter as the tree fell, ripping away the rope bridge, ropes snapping and whipping in the air, the entire platform shaking violently. A few boards ripped away, but the platform remained intact. There was now only one way off her platform, though—a narrow ladder to another pine. The storm roared, and the next pine began to groan as well. She let out quick breaths as she forced herself to crawl to the edge. She had to do this. For Cassian. For everyone. When she dared to look down, amid the swirling rain and sleet, the ground did that awful dizzying telescoping thing, making her feel like she was already falling.

Drip.

A drop of blood from her nose fell toward the ground. Her head was throbbing in a way that made her more certain than ever that something had gone wrong when she’d strained her abilities. She tried again to think of her brother’s name. Alex? Carl?

Panic started to crawl up her throat.

The tree groaned again.

Dozens of bridges and ladders spanned the forest, giving her hundreds of possible paths to get from her platform to the last one. But she’d run this course before. Thanks to Lucky, she knew the quickest path. It couldn’t be a coincidence that it was the exact same puzzle as in the cage. Cassian must have arranged it somehow, to give her an edge. He couldn’t cheat, of course, but he was skilled at bending the rules.

“Thank you,” she whispered to him from afar.

She wiped away another streak of blood from her nose and gripped the first rung of the ladder that connected the platform to the next. It was coated with ice, and her hand slipped off. Panic tried to take control of her limbs, but she forced herself to carefully grip each rung, climbing as fast as she dared. She reached the next platform, which was swaying, the tree creaking dangerously. Lightning cracked overhead, lighting up the swirling sleet. This platform connected to the next in two ways: a wooden bridge and a rope ladder. She mentally ran through the course she’d taken with Lucky—he’d taken the bridge. She steadied herself on the slick bridge, her feet threatening to slip on every icy step.

A nearby tree cracked in the storm, plunging to the ground. She cringed, bracing herself, as it crashed straight into the rope ladder. She gasped. If she’d taken that rope ladder, she’d be dead.

The biting rain numbed her hands and feet. Don’t look down, she told herself. Lucky had held her in his arms that first night, warming her with talk of home. She concentrated on that memory, letting it warm her again.

She pushed through the wind. Crossed another bridge. Climbed a twisting rope.

And then, at last, she was at the final rope swing.

With numb fingers she unhitched the rope from where it was wound around a giant tree trunk. She couldn’t get a good grip, no matter how much she tried to shake the blood back into her hands, but she stepped toward the edge of the platform, knowing she didn’t have a choice.

Wind howled at her.

If she didn’t land on the opposite platform on the first swing, she’d be stuck out there, dangling in the abyss. She clutched the rope, counting down.

Five.

The wind whipped harder, blinding her with sleet.

Four.

She blinked away the sleet. Three. She breathed into her hands, trying to warm them. The plunging distance to the ground made her stomach twist.

Two.

Suddenly the tree she was on groaned. Something snapped and it lurched. Inch by inch, it started to tilt.

She sucked in a breath. “One!”

She jumped a second before the tree buckled.

Wind whipped her hair back. She let out a shriek and clutched the rope hard. It all happened so fast. The final platform came rushing toward her. Closer, closer—but something was wrong. It was too far. The wind was too strong, whipping her around. There was no way the rope swing could possibly reach.

She let out a desperate cry as the rope reached its farthest point and came swinging back the other way. “No!” She kicked out, trying to reach the platform with her toe. The movement made her body twist around, as the rope swung in big loopy circles instead of a smooth arc, tossing her like a leaf in the storm. She kicked furiously, trying to hook her feet around the rope.

Almost—

But her numb hand slipped.

Suddenly she was back in the car with her father, plunging off that bridge, every fear in the world coming true in one terrible squeal of brakes, and her pulse started racing faster and faster.

But then her other hand closed over the rope. She clamped on hard. Got her feet wrapped around it.

Her pulse throbbed, quick and urgent.

She hadn’t fallen.

She was alive.

Suspended between two platforms, blinding rain soaking her, but alive. Blood was flowing again from her nose, streaking her arms, dripping to the forest floor. She looked around desperately. There was no way out but down.

And falling meant losing.

Death.

A rumbling sound started above her head. She squinted into the storm overhead and saw a sight that made her laugh a little deliriously. A dark square formed in the middle of the black clouds.

The next door. There, at the top of the rope.

And then her delirious laugh threatened to overtake her. To reach it, she’d have to climb. And her hands were so numb. Her muscles wrung out. She reached an exhausted hand up, forcing herself to climb inch by inch on a rope that was slippery with ice. She ignored the nosebleed. Ignored the wind trying to push her back down. Ignored that awful throbbing pain in her head as she climbed, and climbed, and at last touched the edge of the door with a rush of relief.

A hand reached down to help her.

A hand so big it could only belong to a Kindred. Cassian.

She let her muscles go slack. She clutched the hand, letting her eyes sink closed. She’d made it. Round one was done. She didn’t dare think about the rest of the Gauntlet or whatever sabotage Fian was planning. She just wanted out.

Cassian pulled her the rest of the way up, through the floor of the central vestibule, between those blinding lights. She collapsed gratefully on the familiar ground, eyes still squeezed closed.

“Thank you,” she breathed, opening her eyes.

Only it wasn’t Cassian.

Fian blinked at her, not an ounce of mercy in his eyes.

28

Nok

KEENA WAS STILL SICK in bed, fading in and

out of consciousness, unable to lead.

Nok couldn’t help worrying about what would happen if Armstrong’s de facto leader didn’t recover soon; she certainly didn’t like being the one everyone turned to for answers in Keena’s absence. It had been a few grueling hours since the refugee ships had landed. Nearly forty battle-scarred Kindred, Gatherer, and Mosca ships that each carried a ragtag group of survivors who were now recovering in the shade of the old slave tent, which, with Rolf’s help, they had set up as a makeshift hospital.

Now, she and Rolf and a few head citizens congregated in the sheriff’s office with Makayla and a Gatherer named Brother Paddal to hear about this new threat. Nok glanced out the window at the eerily calm skies and then at the Gatherer. Eight feet tall, gray skin, fingers like crab legs. She chewed on her lip. She seriously wished Keena were here.

“Start from the beginning,” she said.

“Does he really have to be a part of this?” Makayla jerked her head toward Dane, who was standing near the sheriff’s office doorway, arms crossed.

Nok gave Dane a long, untrusting look. “Believe me,” she said, “I wish we didn’t have to include him, but the mine guards chose him as their representative. They deserve a voice.”

Makayla folded her arms, glaring at Dane, as she explained how war had broken out on the Kindred station, how they’d heard on the ship’s communication system that it had actually been an Axion battalion in disguise, and how Fian—to their surprise—had been an impostor. The real one had been imprisoned for months in the same cells as Cassian.

“And you saw Mali and Leon?” Rolf pressed.

Makayla nodded. “They were okay, last I saw. But the station was in bad shape. The Kindred didn’t stand a chance.”

Next to her, the towering Brother Paddal nodded. “The Axion’s attack was well orchestrated throughout the galaxy,” he explained. “From what our communications officer could gather, they attacked at least eleven Kindred stations simultaneously, reaching as far as the Lehani province. We also received reports of attacks on the Mosca planets of Drore and Dramaden. Our entire Gatherer east-sector fleet was wiped out. My ship’s tracking device was broken, which is the only way I was able to escape.”