Trial by Blood: Fantasy romance by Terina Adams

Author:Terina Adams [Adams, Terina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

Three days since Arturo’s announcement, and everyone in Dreven was surly about the speed at which the trials would take place, none more so than Teo, which made Marlee turn ugly. Thankfully, she stayed clear of me, and I wasn’t sure if that was Teo’s doing, or maybe Cherri’s.

The atmosphere at The Marshall vibrated with a low thrum of anticipation. It seemed that everyone in Jericho had turned out for the naming, shouldering up to each other and cramming the streets. The chatter hummed like beating wings, rising like a fog to where we stood upon the platform.

From up here, those gathered spread like a river flushing along the alluvial streets, all faces upturned to us. The crowd was two blocks or more deep, and I was sure I’d never seen this many people in one place. The chrome council could never gather such interest as this. For those gifted with super sight and hearing, standing down the street would not be a problem.

It seemed the trials were Jericho’s best, perhaps its only, form of entertainment.

The destroyed buildings on either side of the street towered inward like giant clawed fingers, with the crowd resting in the palms of giant hands. The sun slashed through murky clouds, sending golden shards of light to catch on the jagged edges of the buildings, which fractured the light into scattered patterns on the crowd below. At night, they relied on vast solar panels and thermal energy to light their city, the few surviving remnant technologies from PFTs.

In Launceston, the people fought the wilderness, keeping it outside the boundaries of the city. In Jericho, the wilderness was their home. Only the impenetrable metal, glass, and asphalt, deep at the heart of Jericho, kept the wilds at bay. Beyond that, nature thrived.

The Marshall formed a confluence between four streets. It was one of many patches of ground this far inside the city where greenery thrived. Perhaps once manicured, now it was a forest in miniature. Most of it got trampled during times like this, but hardy low-lying shrubs clung on.

A shell of a building loomed up behind the pillars. The foundations had the largest imprint by far within the city. Judging by those, it once would have reached high into the sky. Now it looked like an ugly gray flower, the crumbled walls its petals opened to the sun. It was on the concrete foundations that the trials would take place.

Arturo stood in front of me, calling all those who would join the trials forth to have their name registered. The alpha was a snarly, psychopathic-looking transhuman, who was the closest I’d come to believing all the chrome council’s lies about transhumans being savage killers devoid of any humanity.

He was a mountain of a man with faded blue eyes, so faded they looked like glass. His russet lion’s mane of hair flamed behind him like wildfire. Close-cropped facial hair disguised an intricate pattern of tattoos he’d had since before his days as a transhuman, so Cherri had informed me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.