3MA

3MA | Chapter 21

21
RESURFACE

Not long after Lorna's visit, I stand before Camelot's grand, gilded entryway and watch the iron gate rise to the ceiling to permit my exit. The deafening rattle of the portal's chain reminds me of the Iron Cauldron right before a match; the sinister cackles, sadistic groans of anticipation, the high-pitched wailing of black market bets.

A smile rises to my lips when I realize something: I actually miss it.

Maybe Lorna was right. Everyone has a role to play. And mine has always been breaking bones in the Octagon. Whether I win or lose or live or die tonight, I can at least take solace in the fact that I'm doing what I was always meant to do.

Behind me, Amaris, Mag and Inka wipe the sleep from their eyes and adjust the duffle bags and backpacks and tubes and cases that seem to be strapped to every part of their body.

We amble in a single file line across the dim cavern and make our way toward the rough-hewn steps that lead up to the distant Surface. A few feet from the arched doorway, I step over two hollow stones half-buried in the powdery gravel.

I realize they're not stones, but my Caster's Cuffs.

I crouch down and run a fingertip over their cold, faceted surface. They had been a part of me for so long, silent witnesses to every major event in my life. Birthdays, funerals, awkward dates. But now I hardly recognize them. Strange relics from another time.

Another me.

"Nowhere to go but up," Amaris says reaching a hand down to me.

I grasp it and pull myself to my feet, grinding the heels of my sneakers into the Caster's Cuffs, burying them once and for all into the cold, lifeless earth.

Hours later, drenched in sweat, our thighs and calves and lungs searing with exhaustion, we gather around Amaris as she climbs the final step and inserts her silver sword earring into a slot in the dark earth above us and unlocks the portal; a well-practiced, involuntary series of precise wrist flicks.

A crescent slice of sunlight cuts through the opening as the secret doorway spirals and pushes aside like the lid of an ancient sarcophagus. The dead rising from the earth.

One by one, we pull ourselves onto the bleached limestone stage of the Amphitheater, shielding our light-starved eyes with our arms, and taking in grateful gasps of pine-scented air.

Amaris leads us up the sweeping, pale stone steps. At the top, we pause to take in the view of the King's Spire cresting above Guinevere Park's silhouetted tree-line. Today, the glass tower glows an intense subzero blue, as if we're not looking up, but down upon a cold, bloodless corpse.

Amaris kneels and reaches into her duffel bag. She pulls out a fresh floral-printed bedsheet and unfurls it over the frost-covered grass. "We have a few hours to kill before show time. We should eat and rest. We'll head to the arena at dusk."

"I'm on the brink of certain death and you wanna have a picnic?" I say.

Amaris smiles and chucks me a paper-wrapped sandwich. "It's never a bad time to stop and smell the roses, meathead."

Admittedly grateful for a break, we all collapse onto the blanket and spread out on our backs. Amaris passes around what can only be a feast prepared by Lorna. We inhale peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and morsels of sweet cakes infused with carrots and raisins and some kind of creamy potato salad. Amaris passes around a thermos and we wash it all down with a hot herbal tea.

We lay on our backs watching the clouds scuttle across the sky, listening to the sound of gossiping larks and dripping icicles and chittering squirrels.