Chapter 24
The night before the second task I received an ornate invitation to dinner. I didn't want to go— it seemed like a colossal waste of my time, considering I was nearly frantic for having not cracked the clue— but something about the phrasing gave off the impression that I didn't have much of a choice. It might have been the word "MANDATORY" written in large, bold letters that gave it away.
I took solace in the knowledge that at least Frey and Nikolas would be forced to suffer right by my side. Professor Aragon claimed these competitions were actually more divisive than they were uniting, and while I agreed, I personally felt closer to my fellow champions than I did just about anyone else. There was comfort in knowing that, while my immediate future looked about as promising as Lyra's History of Magic OWL, their futures were nearly as grim.
I couldn't forget, however, that they still weren't yet "lucky" enough to have suffered attempted murder. I tried to take it as a compliment. Surely if I was being so thoroughly targeted that meant someone thought I was the greatest threat to their challenger.
Or it had nothing to do with the tournament at all, a sinister voice in the back of my head whispered. Maybe Professor Darlington was wrong this time.
I shook off the thought and continued on my way.
Since they didn't specify a dress code in the invitation, I didn't bother to change out of school robes. They weren't exactly what one might classify as clean for a formal dinner, with wrinkles stretching across just about every last square inch of the fabric, and Lyra had to stop me before I left to wipe soot from the tip of my nose, a result of Altair trying to incinerate me with a fireball in the name of task practice.
"If we can't prepare for one thing," he said, sending volley after volley of curses my way, "We'll be prepared for everything."
Sound logic, though I didn't appreciate him drafting Lyra, Cassius, and Damon to attack me, too. Lyra took a frightening level of enjoyment out of the experience, and Damon wasn't much better. He seemed to use it as therapy, and although I doubted it was a particularly healthy way to move on from his mother's unexpected passing, I was hardly the poster child for healthy coping mechanisms.
Abiel alone continued to work at cracking the clue, offending the others with the implication that brute strength wasn't a key that opened all doors. His temper soared over the following days and I wondered if he even bothered to sleep. Every moment I saw him he was either slaving away over the clue in our common room late into the night, fiddling with the egg in the abandoned classroom we'd been using to prepare, or simply glaring holes through the thing during meals.
After all the exhaustive four against one dueling, what little sleep I was granted was arguably the best sleep I'd gotten in weeks. No dreams, no nightmares, just nothingness the second my body hit a horizontal surface, be it floor, table, or bed.
Even five minutes late to the dinner, due to wrestling the egg out of Abiel's hands to force him to take a break, I wasn't the last to arrive.
I waved lamely at Nikolas as I entered the room. "No Frey yet?"
He shook his head, tapping his finger impatiently on the table. "Are you surprised?"
"I'd only be surprised if he was on time," I admitted, sliding into a seat across from him. There were far too many chairs for just the three of us. "This is pretty weird, right? I mean, I've never heard of this tradition before, have you?"
Nikolas shrugged. "I'd take a meal over what we're going to face tomorrow any day."
That gave me pause. Did that mean he'd solved the clue? I nearly asked if that's what he meant, but I didn't want to indicate how utterly unprepared I was for what was to come.
Instead I laughed, hoping it didn't sound as hollow as it felt. "That's true. Tomorrow's bound to be an absolute nightmare."
His eyes, an amber so stark in the dim torchlight to nearly be mistaken for gold, pierced through me, calculating. He leaned back slowly in his seat, regal and confident. "So you've figured it out then? I'm not surprised. It was so simple I barely had to do anything at all."
Simple? Simple? He thought the clue was simple!
Working to mask my annoyance, I lied, "I know what you mean. It's unbelievable how easy it was. How'd you figure it out?"
"Same as you, I imagine." He drummed his finger along the side of the goblet in front of him and brought it to his mouth. "Just slept on it really, and the answer came to me the next morning."
Wow. That was incredibly unhelpful. Thanks.
"Look at all these tense faces!" Arms spread wide, Frey glided effortlessly through the room, only stopping once behind my chair to reach forward with both hands and contort my cheeks into a smile. I bit down the sudden urge to jerk backwards into his gut. "Well, never fear. I have come to bring light and joy back into your miserable lives."
As he pulled it the chair beside mine and fell into it, I couldn't help but share a look with Nikolas and ask, "Frey? Do you know what day it is?"
He looked at me, intrigued that I'd ask. "The twenty-third, of course."
"And tomorrow?" Nikolas prompted, staring at him over his goblet.
"The twenty-fourth?"
"And?"
Seeming utterly confounded by our line of questioning, he hesitated before replying, "The second task?" I frowned, and Frey fidgeted under our combined, contemplative gazes. Finally, he broke, "I'm used to being gawked at all hours of the day, but you two are making me feel less admired and more in fear for my life."
"We're just trying to determine how strong a Confundus Charm you're dealing with, since you've obviously forgotten that we were thrown into an arena with a cockatrice for our last task. This is no time for levity." I placed my palm to his forehead, ignoring his pout. "Not sick, either. Maybe you've just lost your mind."
"Just because I choose not to let the perils of tomorrow dampen my day does not mean I'm crazy. You two," he crossed his arms, one of the other, and speared a finger in each of our directions, "are just bitter."
Nikolas, deciding whatever reward that could be acquired from reasoning Frey back into reality could not possibly be worth it, visibly receded back into himself. I envied his restraint.
"Bitter?" I echoed, already regretting rising to the bait.
"I'm delighted you asked!" While he spoke, platters of sumptuous dishes began floating into the room of their own accord, ordering themselves on the table between the three of us, not that he appeared to notice.
I backtracked. "I didn't, actually–"
"When I was just a child, still beautiful, still enchanting all the other children around, boys and girls alike, the truth came to me: one such as I should not waste my time with despair. Like my mother always said, one should—" He caught my eye, taking in the great pain in my expression as I braced for yet another of his long-winded accounts of his so-called magnificence. He laughed, "Just kidding. You should have seen your face."
I loosed an audible sigh of relief.
Table set, we began filling our plates. Frey grabbed a little bit of everything, piling enough food to feed four people, while Nikolas was more discerning. For myself, I settled on a roll of bread to settle my nerves. If I could handle that without losing my stomach maybe I'd try something else.
Frey took a fork full of a mystery dish I was certain must be native to around Durmstrang, since I'd certainly never seen the likes of it in Hogwarts and hoped to never see the likes of it ever again, and began pointedly raising it to my mouth.
I leaned away, wrinkling my nose. "What are you doing?"
"It's Surströmming."
"I didn't ask you what it was," I said, at increasing risk of falling from my chair. "I asked what you are doing."
"Keeping true to my promise! I told you that you would be my food taster after that little mess at the Yule Ball. I'm a treasure. The world can't risk losing me, but you, on the other hand..." He fixed a stern look onto his face that couldn't entirely mask his amusement. Matter-of-factly, he finished, "Someone needs to test if it's poisoned, so say 'ah'."
I batted him away. "That's not even close to funny."
"I certainly find it funny. Nik, what do you think?"
The only sign Nikolas heard us came in the form of his hand tightening almost imperceptibly around his goblet, his knuckles flexing white beneath his skin.
His eyes held a challenge, something along the lines of 'call me that again and see what happens', but either Frey didn't see it or he was a lot braver than I gave him credit for.
Something thick and oily touched my cheek, so I refocused on Frey, who'd used my distraction to his advantage.
I began to say, "That's disgusting," but midway through he saw an opening and shoved the spoonful in my mouth. I gagged.
"Maybe it is poisoned," he wondered. "You do look rather green."
"That's not because of poison," I said, wiping at my eyes that had begun to water from the brief choking spell. "That's because it's disgusting."
"Actually, it's a delicacy, love."
I poured myself a cup of water to rinse out my mouth, sniffing it once, because, despite how I pretended for everyone else's benefit, that whole poisoning situation had left me slightly suspicious of anything I didn't personally take from the hands of a kitchen elf. "If delicacy is a synonym for disgusting then sure."
"And I thought I was the dramatic one here."
That was the last straw. "I'll show you dramatic," I muttered, and lunged. I took the roll I'd been planning to eat myself and pressed it into his mouth, nearly tackling him to the ground in the process. "How do you like being force-fed?"
"You're both children," Nikolas sighed. Luckily, he sounded less disapproving, and more resigned.
"Do not lump me in with him," I defended, affronted at the mere implication.
Swallowing the mouthful of soft bread, Frey dropped his hand to my waist and released a long, sorrowful breath. "I always knew it would come to this. You just can't keep your hands off of me."
On cue, I jolted back, as though I'd been shocked, but Frey held firm, enjoying my discomfort. All at once I became aware of our compromised position, how close we really were with my leg on his thigh and my hand wrapped in a fist around his robes to keep my tentative balance from sending his chair careening backwards. My cheeks flamed a furious red.
Which was absurd. What did I have to be embarrassed about? He brought it upon himself.
"If it wasn't against the rules to harm you outside of the competition, you'd be in grave danger," I forced out through gritted teeth, bared in a dangerous smile.
His own smile didn't falter a bit, and neither did his grip. "No need to be bashful, love. You aren't the first to force yourself on me. You're not even the most bold."
That was it. I was going to have to kill him. Nikolas would win the tournament by default because Frey would be six feet under and I'd be warming up a cell in Azkaban.
Just as I thought of him, cutlery cluttered with a sharp clang in my periphery. Nikolas raises a hand slowly to his head, looking dazed, fingers trembling.
"Nikolas?" I asked. Frey, too, watched our fellow champion with concern, even going so far as to forget he was trying to hold me in place. "What's wrong?"
Nikolas blinked once, slow, then slumped over in his chair. He didn't move again.
I leapt to my feet. "Nikolas!"
I took one step— no, that gave me too much credit. I attempted to take a step, but my legs wouldn't hold. I tried to catch myself on the table, but my vision diverged into swaying doubles and lapsing triples and all I managed to do was send my empty plate collapsing down on top of me.
Frey dropped to my side, shaking my shoulder. I only noticed he collapsed as well because a moment later he slumped over on my outstretched arm.
This wasn't anything like the last time I'd been poisoned. The last time someone spiked my drink, or perhaps it was my food this time, my whole body had burned. I'd been set alight, each nerve individually aflame until it was too hot, too painful to breathe.
This time, I was sinking through water, deeper, deeper, until I was too heavy, crushed beneath the pressure of the ocean and it was too dark to see.
Not again. Not again.
With effort, I pulled my arm free and crawled towards the nearest door. Everything shook, my limbs feeling like they were made of lead. Something was wrong. I needed to get help. I needed to—
I didn't even notice myself slip out of consciousness, my fingertips just slightly grazing the polished oak door. So close. Not close enough.