For a heartbeat, there is nothing. Just silence. My pulse is a ragged drumbeat in the void. Then, reality slams into place. I didn’t fail.
Kaelzar is beside me, alive. My trembling fingers tighten around his arm, as if to reassure myself that he is here. A second slower, and I would have been reaching for a corpse.
His breath shudders out, slow and controlled. His eyes flick to me with some reluctant acknowledgment that I have done what he doubted. That I have reached him in time.
A single beat of silence passes between us, taut and weighted. Then he exhales, voice rough. “You cut it close.”
I manage a breathless laugh, my chest still tight with exhaustion. “You doubted me?”
His gaze lingers, the ember-light of his magic casting sharp shadows against his face. “I did.” A pause, his voice lower. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have.”
The admission is quiet, almost imperceptible, but it rings louder than any insult he’s ever thrown at me.
I don’t allow myself to dwell on it. The Trial is far from over, but the victory tastes sweeter now.
We stand there for a moment, caught in the stillness, and a strange, tenuous peace settles between us, as fragile as the frost that lingersaround our feet.
Then, as if the moment itself shatters, the magic surges again. The ice quivers and the Challenge presses onward as the world bends around us.
And we disappear.
We return to the Sevenfold Shrine, and the crowd looks almost unchanged, as if the horror lasted seconds instead of hours. The bodies are gone, the carpets stripped away, the rot scrubbed clean, and only one other thing has changed: the guards.
More men in gilded armor line the walls. Where there were barely ten before, there are now four dozen.
Inside me, a dangerous magic churns. And suddenly, I understand why so many Goldspears have been added on top of regular guards. They’re here for me, an unpredictable, volatile new Champion.
I’m too exhausted to be offended. And maybe, I admit, it’s not the wrong choice.
With the connection between my Godbeast and me severed, relief floods over me.
I’m done with his constant judgment invading my mind… or so I tell myself. Because the moment his presence vanishes, it feels like the rug’s been yanked out from under me, leaving only dry, cracked earth beneath my feet.
I stand before the dais alongside four other Champions.
Alaric Voidreaver, the Champion of Iskavelle, the Goddess of the Air and Knowledge, stands silent and grim beside his yellow dragon.
Seraphina Bardot is accompanied by her scarred green dragon, its golden eyes gleaming with an unexpected intelligence.
A diminutive girl with slicked-back white hair—whose name escapes me—stands with a smaller, pale pink dragon at herside.
And, to my disappointment, Zyrel Falcon stands with his beast. The man glares at me, eyes gleaming with manic excitement, like he’s glad I survived, just so he can be the one to destroy me later.
I ignore the murmurs of the crowd and the eerie chants of the Sibyls, my focus narrowing on Ryker, doing my best to ignore Mael standing right behind him.
Ryker’s bright blue eyes shimmer with relief and concern as they lock onto mine. Standing on a dais amongst the consuls, he extends his arm, presenting a gleaming ring—a symbol of honor and hope. One by one, the Champions kiss the ring and accept the king’s accolades, while I stand rooted.
The shock and disbelief of surviving the first Challenge, of becoming one of the Champions, of the possibility that I might make it through this and even win, makes my head spin. Somehow, all of it dulls the sting of Ryker’s refusal to offer forgiveness, or demand an explanation for what happened between Mael and me.
My mind and body can’t hold it together any longer. I start to tremble, wishing Ryker would just hold me, unafraid of my touch, and tell me it’s going to be alright, despite everything.
“Are your legs still working, Trouble, or should I just sling you over my shoulder?” Kaelzar’s gruff voice fractures the silence. “Unless groveling over the king who rejected you is your new strategy?”
I glare up at my Godbeast, towering beside me, his words both humiliating and infuriating in their precision. How easily I slipped back into the role of the silenced would-be queen, hoping for her king to fix everything.
And I hate Kaelzar for seeing it, for naming it so bluntly.
“I suggest you stop fixating on my legs,” I hiss as I start to move, “or one of them might just kick you where it hurts.”
