GREED
The only thing more eye-watering than the charred smell of lava was the scent of burning hair and flesh. Both of which permeated the foggy air around the cliffside.
Her golden cage was floating just in arm’s reach of a rocky mountainside above the great sea of fire. As she squinted through the rolling steam to her left, she could make out the glistening of another cage about a hundred feet away and could only assume it contained another contestant. Before she could summon Blackwell, her cage shook violently. She stumbled forward and gripped onto the bars for balance.
Above a fiery abyss, your gilded cage must rise, but when it does, others will dive.
For a second, a part of her was impressed at her increasing ability to remember the wordy clues under such pressure. The other part of her was acutely aware that she was slowly being lowered toward the sea of lava.
Scanning the golden vessel for anything that might make it stop moving, it became clear that there was nothing special inside the cage—no levers or cranks to lift it back up. Behind her there was a thick chain that descended all the way down into the fire, but when she reached out to tug on it, the metal scorched her skin, and a scream of agony ripped from her throat.
“Hell,” she hissed between her clenched teeth when she finally managed to catch her breath from the blistering pain. A nasty burn was bubbling up on her palm, the charred skin turning a grotesque mottled brown, and she worried for a moment that the heat had melted her skin down to her bone. Tears slid down her cheeks, and she swatted them away with her good hand.
I never let pain get the better of me, Genevieve’s voice pierced through her panic. I’d much rather let it bring me clarity.
Her cage dropped again, and this time it knocked her to her knees.
She took a deep breath and pushed the throbbing fire in her hand to the back of her mind. She wondered if everyone else’s cages were moving as well, and when a few shouts of panic echoed somewhere out in the thick mist a moment later, she got her answer. Enough of this.
“Blackwell,” she summoned, repeating his name twice more while the cage bounced down another foot.
Her stomach was beginning to roll from the suffocating heat of the atmosphere, her hair sticking to the back of her neck with sweat.
“I’ll have to strip down to nothing just to avoid a heat stroke,” she gasped to herself, wiping the back of her good hand across her forehead.
“As much as it pains me to say this,” Blackwell’s voice rang out, “keep your clothes on, angel.”
She spun to face the direction of his voice, but he was nowhere to be seen. A wave of paranoia washed over her. “Blackwell?”
“Yes, I’m here,” he assured her. “The magic of the cages balances each contestant’s exact mass. And even in my most ghostly form, energy carries weight. Which means I can only project my voice in here.”
“And how do I know it’s really you?” She narrowed her eyes at the empty space before her.
“How shall I prove it? List out every biting remark you’ve given me over the last few days?” She could hear the amusement in his tone. “Or maybe I can go into detail about the expressions you make when I bring you to the edge of pleasure—”
“Okay, enough.” The burn on her hand was beginning to ache with an unbearable pain and her patience was wearing thin. “I believe—”
The cage dropped again, two feet this time, cutting off the rest of her sentence as her teeth clanged together from the abrupt halt.
“The wall in front of you,” Blackwell directed with haste. “You’ll have to reach between the spaces of the bars and climb your way up to find circular weights embedded in the rock. You’ll clamp those weights around the chain behind you—carefully—and the enchanted pulley system will lift your cage. Each time you make it up a yard, however, the magic will counter the movement by lowering the other contestants. And considering the rate this contraption is falling, I’d bet several others have already begun to figure out their task.”
Her breath hitched. “You mean… surviving might mean killing someone?”
“If the others aren’t fast enough to recover. But that’s not your concern,” he told her. “Remember what I told you about having a soft heart. Now isn’t the time or place.”
“My hand,” she blurted, sticking it out toward his detached voice to show him the angry, blistering welt. “I touched the—”
“That’s why your summons felt so faint,” he murmured. “What did I tell you about getting injured? And summoning me immediately?”
“I don’t know what to tell you if you don’t think being distracted by a giant abyss of lava is a reasonable excuse to make a couple of mistakes,” she retorted.
He was quiet for a moment, and she could just picture the look of exasperation on his face. Then, “I can’t heal you.”
She swallowed. “But… I have to use my hand to climb.”
“I know.” A loaded pause. “I can only heal you in my fully corporeal state, and that amount of weight would trigger the cage to drop too far down.”
His voice sounded strained now, his words taut with something she couldn’t quite place, and she wondered if it was anger or frustration at her foolishness for touching the hot chain, or if it was… something else. Something considered dangerous here.
She shook her head. There were too many other things to focus on right now than whatever was going on between the two of them. Taking a deep breath and rolling her shoulders back, she braced herself.
She put her hands through the bars of the cage, grabbed a rock protruding from the cliff, and pulled down as hard as she could. The motion propelled the cage upward on its pulley. The pain that clawed through her wounded hand from the rough rock and the effort of hauling herself and the cage upward was almost enough to make her pass out. Even the skin of her uninjured hand was becoming chafed with the grueling effort, and just when she wondered if she was capable of doing this trial, she saw something shining within the rock above.
Gritting through the agony, she hauled herself up another foot, toward the golden weight peeking out of the cliffside, and began digging to unearth it. Bits and pieces of the mountainside crumbled to her feet and wedged itself beneath her fingernails. The heavy ring-shaped piece was thick, almost bigger than her head. And when the weight finally came free, her pride spiked with the accomplishment.
She felt the cage shake and bounce down a few feet as she walked across it with the new added mass. The weight had hinges that allowed her to pry it open before clamping it shut around the scalding chain on the outside of her cage. When she let it drop down the chain, like an enormous charm around a necklace, several clangs vibrated up the metal links, until the distinct sound of a hiss reverberated from below as the gilded hoop plunged into the sea of lava.
The cage shot up several feet.
“You’re doing excellent,” Blackwell praised. “Keep going.”
His encouragement made her push herself harder. As much as she hated to admit it, she craved confirmation when she did something well. Something her mother hadn’t often bothered with.
She managed to haul herself up the rocky surface a few more feet before her injured hand began bleeding profusely, sending lightning pain shooting up her arm. But she ignored it.
“That’s it, angel,” Blackwell continued. “The next one is just a little further.”
She didn’t bother to wipe away the tears that streamed down her cheeks, any qualms about being vulnerable in front of Blackwell replaced by the pride his words were igniting in her belly.
A few excruciating minutes later and she found another weight. This time, when she sent it into the fiery sea below, however, the splash it made was accompanied by a string of agonizing screams. Worse was the whiff of charred hair and flesh that permeated through the bars of the cage a moment later.
No.
Ophelia leaned through the bars and heaved up the contents of her stomach.
No.
She could feel the Shadow Voice begin to unfurl in the back of her mind, eager to feed into whatever spiral was about to take over her senses. If the contestants’ screams didn’t haunt her for the rest of her life, the Shadow Voice would be sure to.
You killed someone, little monster. What a terrible sin to have forever marring your soul. But if you knock on the rock three times, you can absolve yourself of murder, the Shadow Voice tempted.
And damn herself to Hell if she didn’t rush back over to pound her knuckles into the mountainside.
One, two, three.
Again, it laughed.
One, two, three.
Again.
One, two, three.
“Ophelia.”
At the sound of his voice, the Shadow Voice shriveled up and disappeared. A sob caught in Ophelia’s throat as she spotted the blood now coating her knuckles.
“The Shadow Voice…” she whispered. “It won’t stop unless I do what it says.”
“Tell me who the Shadow Voice is,” Blackwell pressed gently.
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.
“Angel?”
“I don’t know,” she finally answered, sniffing. “Sometimes, I think it’s me. All the bad parts of me. But the things it tells me to do… I know I would never want those things. I hate it.”
“Hey,” he murmured, and she suddenly felt a warm static sensation envelope her, like he was wrapping his arms around her even though he wasn’t physically there. “Listen to me. It’s just the two of us here right now, alright? Take a deep breath.”
She did.
“Two more,” he directed, knowing.
She took two more gulps of air as instructed, something inside her swelling with a foreign emotion that he had so shrewdly observed such a specific detail. Always in threes. Her locket began to warm.
“Now, we will get to the bottom of this Shadow Voice later, but right now I want you to listen to my voice and my voice only,” he directed. “You only need about five more weights. We’re going to take this one at a time.”
She let his voice steady her nerves, clung to the reassurance lacing his tone. If he thought she’d be fine, she’d be fine. He wouldn’t lie to her. He needed her to get through this competition unscathed. To succeed. With him was the safest place she could be.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Ready?” he prompted. “Start climbing.”
She did. As Ophelia pulled herself up one foot at a time, her biceps were screaming at her to stop, and she was chiding herself for having such a lack of upper-body strength. She was going to start lifting books in the library after this.
A few minutes later, she found another weight. Then another. When she came across a third, her bones felt like gelatin from the strain, but Blackwell’s encouragement and confidence never wavered.
“Two more,” he promised.
When she pulled herself up another couple of feet, searching for the next piece of gold, she reached a thick patch of fog. Coughing, she hauled herself out of the damp, white mist and into the clear air above. She gasped when she saw at least six cages already sitting at the top of the cliff, empty.
“How did they get up that fast,” she complained.
Then, immediately to her left she saw none other than Cade, clawing his way above the haze. She was actually quite shocked to see that he—being in such good shape—hadn’t already completed the trial. Then she saw what was sitting at his feet. At least six of the gold weights.
“Why would he keep them—? Wait.”
…decide if your life, is worth its weight in gold, the clue had said. Apparently, Cade thought his was.
“Level three. Greed,” Blackwell said. “The weights are pure gold. If you can manage to haul them up with you, you can keep them, but it’s a risk. Those with the most weights fall the furthest when someone else moves up.”
And as if Cade had heard Blackwell’s words—which for all she knew, he had—his gaze cut to hers. Mouth twisting with determination, he began pulling himself up at twice the speed he was moving before, the veins in his arms protruding so distinctly they looked as if they were in danger of bursting through his skin. Scrambling back into action, she began pawing her way up the side, her injured palm nearly useless at this point. Still, she kept going, slow and steady, and soon enough she found another weight. This one was so deeply embedded into the rock that she tore her fingernails apart trying to excavate it. Soon, enough of it was out, and though Cade had already added his weight and moved up a story above her, the moment she sent her own down, she watched him plummet with a scream back below the mist.
Blackwell laughed in delight as a small pang of guilt shot through her core. Only a small one, though.
“You’re almost there,” Blackwell announced as the cage rose. “One more.”
She could see the glorious edge of the cliff so clearly now she almost wept. Well, she was already weeping, but this time it would be in joy.
When she found the final gilded weight, another two cages sprung up in the distance to her right, but she didn’t allow her gaze to linger on them. Blackwell was right, she could not have a soft heart in this moment.
I can do this, she told herself as her jaw clenched with the strain of her movements. I can redeem my soul later. Genevieve is waiting for me somewhere. I will make it back to her.
Flesh shredded around the tendons in her hands, blood splattering the charcoal-colored earth before her. Her body ached like it never had before, her limbs and muscles growing tauter by the second, until she worried they’d seize up and stop working altogether. But she didn’t stop digging. Blackwell’s presence never wavering in the air around her.
With a guttural heave, she dragged the final weight from the cliffside and hauled it to the chain. Forcing open its hinge, she let it snap shut and fall into the chasm below, propelling her up to freedom. When the screams rang out beneath the mist, she didn’t even flinch. Her focus was set only on the exit.
Crawling through the portal out of the level, Ophelia barely made it to the edge of the arched entryway of the dining hall before she fainted.
