Free Valiant by Holly Black Page A

made you numb to death, made you register entrails spattering across a screen as a sign of success. In that moment, Val thought that the real problem with games was that the player was supposed to try everything. If there was a cave, you went in it. If there was a mysterious stranger, you talked to him. If there was a map, you followed it. But in games, you had a hundred million billion lives and Val only had this one.

Chapter 5
    Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
    Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before—
    On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
    Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”
    —E DGAR A LLAN P OE , “T HE R AVEN ”
    The city lights were bright and the streets were clogged with smokers standing outside of bars and restaurants when Val and Lolli staggered out of the bridge and onto the street.
    A man sleeping on broken-down cardboard rolled over and wrapped an overcoat tighter around himself. Val started violently at the movement, her muscles clenching so fast that her shoulders hurt. Lolli cradled her messenger bag as if it were a stuffed animal, wrapping her arms around it and herself.
    It was strange how when crazy things happened, it was hard to follow the tracery of reasons and impulses and thoughts that got you to the crazy place. Even though Val had wanted to find evidence of faeries, the actual proof was overwhelming. How many faeries were there and what other things might there be? In a world where faeries were real, might there be demons or vampires or sea monsters? How could these things exist and it not be on the front cover of every newspaper everywhere?
    Val remembered her father reading The Three Billy Goats Gruff when she was a little kid. Trip trap, trip trap went the littlest Billy Goat Gruff. This troll was nothing like the illustration in the book—were any of them? Who’s that tripping over my bridge?
    “Look at my finger,” Lolli said, holding it in the loose cradle of her other hand. It was puffy and bent at an odd angle from the joint. “He broke my fucking finger.”
    “It might be dislocated. I’ve done that before.” Val remembered falling on her own hands on the lacrosse field, slipping out of a tree, trips to the doctor with his iodine and cigar-smoke smell. “You have to align it and splint it.”
    “Hey,” Lolli said sharply. “I never asked for you to be my knight in shining armor. I can take care of myself. You didn’t have to promise anything to that monster and you don’t have to play doctor now.”
    “You’re right.” Val kicked a crushed aluminum can, watching it bounce across the street like a stone might skim over water. “You don’t need any help. You have everything under control.”
    Lolli looked intently into the window of an electronics store where televisions showed their faces. “I didn’t say that.”
    Val bit her lip, tasting the remains of the troll’s solution. She remembered his golden eyes and the rich, hot rage in his voice. “I’m sorry. I should have just believed you.”
    “Yeah, you should have,” Lolli said, but she smiled.
    “Look, we can get a stick or something for the splint. Tie it off with a shoelace.” Val squatted down and started unlacing her sneaker.
    “I have a better idea,” Lolli said, turning toward the mouth of an alley. “How about I forget about the pain?” She sat down against the filthy bricks and pulled out her soup spoon, needle, lighter, and a glassine bag of whatever-it-was from her pack. “Give me the shoelace anyway.”
    Val thought of the moving shadows, remembered the amber sand, and had no idea what might happen next. “What is that?”
    “Nevermore,” Lolli said. “That’s what Luis calls it, because there’re three rules: Never more than once a day, never more than a pinch at a time, and never more than two days in a row.”
    “Who made those up?”
    “Dave and Luis, I think. After they were living