My breaths came desperate and shallow.

  The River Eae cut against me like a river of frigid blades.

  Every part of me screamed for reprieve, to throw myself out of the river, to escape the freezing death that felt only a breath away.

  I could not keep my eyes open. A momentary glimpse of branches and grey sky was all I could see before the water hit me again and forced them shut. The numb feeling of my feet against the sharp rocks of the river bed was all I had to be sure I was facing the right direction.

  If the water had been calm, I was almost tall enough to keep my head above the water. With the violence it brought against me, I was barely able to stay out long enough to breathe.

  My weak grip was quickly slipping.

  I would be washed away .

  The river would best me.

  I would fail.

  I reached for my aura. I tried to focus it, but every time I touched the red of my soul, the water would cut through the numbness it had created and I would lose my hold.

  My feet slipped off the stones underneath them and I went under

  Blinding cold, water in my nose, the tips of my toes scrapped against the rocks.

  A sharp pain pierced the bottom of my right foot as it caught on the pointed edge of something solid.

  I only realized I was screaming when the deafening roar of the river left my ears as I broke back above the surface.

  I fought against the current as I gasped for air.

  Taking my aura and clutching it like it was all that would keep me alive, I let desperation bring it to my left palm.

  It nearly slipped out of me before I remembered the glamor.

  Blue like Sam. Blue like a bruise. Blue like my body will be when I drown. I thought.

  Trying to do two things at once felt impossible. Trying to do two things at once while I was a stuck stone away from filling my lungs with freezing water was nearly impossible. Doing all of that while not using the power I did have was impossible.

  My focus slipped the same moment my foot did and the rushing river washed me away like the snow that had covered it.

  My light did not stain the water. I did not rise up from the torrent on platforms of my power like Tana had. I had not so much as laid my eyes on one of the silver charms beyond the bitter deeps.

  The smell of spices, hot sand, and cold glass, all of it came to me in the water. Through my numbness, phantom pains on my arms and legs reminded me of a time when I would have given anything to not feel at all. The memory of two thin hands locking a choker around my throat made me feel like I would never breathe again. Two golden eyes shone from total darkness as opulent omens of what awaited me beyond my failure.

  I had failed and had been powerless to stop it.

  My back met something pillow soft and it cradled me gently against the current. Like I weighed no more than a feather and the water was no stronger than a light breeze, whatever it was pulled me from cutting rapids of The River Eae.

  "Have you died?" Someone asked as my cradle receded and I felt myself be sat down into wet snow.

  "N-n-no!" I cried through the chattering of my teeth.

  "Are you hurt or only hurting?" The voice spoke again over the roaring of the river.

  "H-hurting." I shouted and curled myself into the tightest ball I could, barely able to think of anything but the reflexive shaking of my body.

  "Do you withdraw your name from consideration?" The voice said from somewhere very close to me.

  I wiped the freezing water from my face and pushed the long black hair back away from all the places it clung to me with my shaking hands.

  A precept I had not met stood over me to my left.

  Three feathers adorned her downy black hair. Two were as white as the snow that surrounded us. They were braided into the long locks that framed her face. A third, much longer than the others, swelled back from the top of her hair in a brilliant blue that did not match her eyes. Her eyes were blue like the cloudless skies over Erosette and sharp like the aura that had cut through the snow that had concealed the river. Her icy precepts cloak split behind her and tapered down into points that ended just above the tops of her cloth shoes.

  She glanced down at me with a piercing intensity. "Well?"

  Precept Jasna. I thought to myself, knowing that it had been her who Precept Shanti had called for and that it had been her who had pulled me from the river.

  "I hate how shocked you all look after your first time. It's pathetic. You must have known how cold you would be." Precept Jasna said.

  "S-s-sorry." I forced out of myself.

  "No," She rolled her eyes and hauled me up onto my frozen feet. "Don't do that, it makes me feel bad. Go inside before you freeze to death."

  "N-n-no." I shook my head against the force of my quaking body. She glared at me so harshly that I had to look away from her.

  "You wish to try again? Now?" She asked.

  Walking slowly from where the maidens that still had not made their first attempt stood, Precept Shanti came to us before I could speak. "Is something the matter?"

  "We have a brave one. She wants to go again. " Precept Jasna answered her.

  Precept Shanti yawned and pulled her hand from one of her uncountable pockets before offering it to me. "You shouldn't. You had so much trouble the first time. Go warm up and eat with Maiden Reese, the two of you seem to have struck up a friendship. There is no need to push yourself and there is plenty of time for you to try again. Not everyone can be like Maiden Tana."

  After she had taken me by my wrist and pulled me along behind her, Reese had thrown herself into the river. She had lasted longer than I did, but had not come away with a charm.

  She stood a small way away with her back turned to the tents, shivering as I was and waiting for me.

  "No!" I shouted, stomping my feet into the snow and making for the start point without waiting for permission.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Maiden Ire was the one who wanted to go inside where it was warm. It was her that craved a belly full of soup and to curl up under a mountain of blankets. She had nothing to lose because she had been created to fail. When the trial ended and she was still a maiden in the eyes of the precepts, she would crumble into dust like her false face did when I returned to the privacy of my quarters.

  I would be left with her failure.

  I would rather drown than suffer her consequences.

  My skin would not be good enough, Azza would come for my muscles and bones next after all the problems I had caused.

  If I had given up after I had lost my first game of points, I would never have become as deadly as I was in the silly game. If I had accepted the boundaries of the manor walls as the ends of my life like they had been meant to be, I would have never met Pyreme or had fried potatoes. If I had let my punishments break my will and spirit, I would have never come to the trail in the first place.

  Every part of me except Maiden Ire knew that I had to try again.

  When I had gone down the river bank the first time, it had been step by shrieking step. The water had been so frigid that it had felt like I was losing each part of me that I submerged. My ankles, my knees, my waist, my chest, the cold current had taken all of me piece by piece.

  The second time, in my defiant haste, happened all at once.

  My numb feet slipped as soon as they touched the slick riverbank and I returned to the bitter deeps in a sudden plunge.

  My eyes clamped shut.

  A panicked shriek slipped from my mouth in a burst of bubbles and water came rushing back in its place.

  A deafening roar filled my ears and my knuckles scraped against something rough.

  Like I was being cut from every direction, like I was turning to stone, like my limbs would shatter from my body, in all of the blinding shock, I was lost.

  My hands found the river bed.

  I threw myself up against the water and broke through the surface with a desperate, coughing, gasp.

  So brief it could have been a vision brought on by desperate desire, I saw the small silver charms that hung over the shallows above. I reached for my aura and brought it to palm with my left hand outstretched.

  The charm. Blue like Jasna's feather. Need to reach the charm. Blue like. . .

  The force tearing through my small white dress was unyielding. I could not keep my feet from sliding back over the stones underneath them.

  I slipped back suddenly.

  Charm. Blue like the charm. Blue like Sam.

  My aura answered my pleas for concurrent workings with unshakable obstinance. It was as useless as telling Sam to not ask his questions after I returned from The Well.

  Charm. Blue like Nami's eyes. Blue like the tents. . .

  The current swept me off my feet. My aura leaked out in a red flash. The river won and I was swept away by the frigid current.

  The same sensory markers of failure that had met before came once again.

  The same pillow soft force cradled me that had only moments before. Precept Jasna helped me out of the water, and she held me on my feet until I could open my eyes again.

  Precept Shanti wrapped her arms over my shoulders, her too big sleeve and its pockets the first warmth I had felt in hours. "There now, come inside. Nothing good will come of you going again right now."

  "Listen to her, Maiden. Continuing to push yourself to achieve something you are incapable of is foolishness of the worst kind. You have tried. As disappointing as it is, you will have to take pride in that." Precept Jasna said.

  Precept Shanti sighed. "You do not have to be so insensitive."

  "I am keeping her from spending the rest of her time in pointless agony. If that is insensitive, then so be it," Jasna responded as she left us and made her way to the remaining maidens. "Next up!

  Precept Shanti pulled me into movement and it took all of her to keep me from shaking myself to the ground. "Pay her no mind, Maiden. She could probably use some time inside herself. Isn't it nice that Maiden Reese has waited for you?"

  "Y-y-you're crazy," Reese chattered through a wide smile as she took from me Precept Shanti and brought me towards the camp. She carried my boots and her own shoes in her other hand and seemed to be handling the cold much better than I was. Both of our tiny white dresses clung to us and offered nothing resembling protection. She laughed as she parted the entrance of a big blue tent and led me inside. "I would have died."

  In a distant way, I was aware that my feet had left the snow and stepped onto something soft and cushioned, but they were too numb to feel it fully. Warmth washed over the rest of me and I nearly wept from the stinging relief that came with it.

  An iron lantern hung inside the peak of the tent and gave the fabric built shelter a sleep feeling that made me want to be buried in the blankets of my bed.

  "Well done, maidens. Well done," A silver haired woman said as she appeared through a flap from somewhere beyond the entrance. She carried a stack of thick white towels in her arms and handed each of us two of them. "Let me see your dresses before you dry off, I'll take care of them"

  Without either of us speaking, she reached out and placed her palms in the middle of each of our chests.

  "Cherith told me about you. You're Precept Bellum, right?" Reese said as the water began to fall to the quilted floor from the hems of our dresses.

  The woman's icy blue cloak told me that what Reese had said was true, but she looked much too old to be a sorceress. My mother was over a hundred years old and showed no sign of her age. Precept Bellum had crows feet at the edges of her eyes and the shade of her silver hair was inconsistent enough to look wholly natural. It had lost most of its darkness with age and only a sparse few streaks of dark brown remained.

  From the thin straps over our shoulders and all the way down, she pushed the remaining water from the fabric with unseen power. I thought it to be similar to how my mother had taught me to dry my hair, but she was doing it with both of her hands.

  "That I am. You must be the maiden from the medery that she has told all of us about. It is brave of you to have come. Both of you on to the right now that you are dry. "Precept Bellum said with a smile that reminded me of Ms. Lao's in its firmness.

  Reese leading the way and me following behind her, We did as she told us to.

  Through a room filled entirely with steam and sweating maidens and into a larger space that held the same quilted floors and hanging lanterns as the entrance, we crept over mounds of blankets that covered the shape of those who slept. The cold that had numbed my skin only moments before was quickly losing its battle with the cozy heat. I wrapped my long black hair into one of the towels I had been giving and dried the rest of the water off myself as we walked.

  We stepped through yet another opening, I would have easily become lost if Reese had not been guiding me, and the scent of warm food wafted into my nose. Small tables and benches, partially filled with towel wrapped maidens, surrounded a circle of tall silver pots. Each held a different simmering soup, red and spiced, golden and creamy, dark brown with shreds of meat throughout it, and something cloudy and green. Tall stacks of bowls and spoons lay next to them among glass pitchers of clear water.

  "I'm gonna try one of each, do you want to do that?" Reese asked me with excitement in her chocolate brown eyes.

  "Sure." I muttered. The shivering and chattering had left me, but I had grown cold in a way that no amount of steam or stew could warm.

  "Find us a seat, I'll get it." Reese said.

  I did as I was told. Sitting down at the one table that was completely empty, I watched the sandy skinned maiden ladle the red soup into two bowls and sprint over to our table. She nearly spilled both of them as she threw them down to the wooden table top and sat down opposite me.

  All it did was make me miss Anna more.

  "I didn't think they would get that hot that fast," She laughed as she handed me a spoon. "I say we eat until we are full, go steam for a while, you can take a nap if you really need one, and then we can go again."

  "Sure." I agreed. She nodded at me and then raised the bowl to her lips and drank from it like it was a cup. I was the only other soul I had ever seen attack eating with the violence that she did. I wished I could have produced the laugh that the sight of it created within me. I wished I still had the vigor for the trial that Reese was bubbling with.

  I wished I could have found comfort in the fact that I was no longer cold.

  I would go out with her when she was ready. I would even throw myself back in The River Eae, but I would not be trying again. To see her succeed, I would pretend, but I could not pass the trial. My second plunge into the river had taught me that.

  I had the wrong sort of soul.

  It wasn't fair. I should have never had to have stepped foot in the snow. I should have been allowed into Rhiannon's garden. I should have been a rose. My sandals should have been wrapped around my feet and ankles, not laying at the bottom of the chest underneath the window in my quarters.

  A swell of excited cheers rose up from somewhere within the camp. There was clapping, shouting, and I thought I heard the willowy sound of someone crying. It echoed into the soup tent and a maiden I did not know poked her head through the closed flaps, a towel around her hair just like mine.

  "Another maiden passed!" She called and the other girls that were eating all reacted to her news.

  I didn't.

  There were only three slots left, but I no longer cared.

  There could have been an infinite number and I still would not be one of them.