Retaw: Adraa moves with the gushing blue wave trying to capsize her.
Raw: Hundreds of purple arrows materialize from the next pillar and Adraa redirects them back into the stone from which they came. Quick. Precise. Perfect.
The sun beats down on us. It’s already been more than an hour. She’s so close now.
“Laeh is next. We have nothing to worry about here,” Maharani Belwar says.
She’s right. Pink happens so fast I don’t fully catch it. One moment pink smoke encases Adraa and in the next it’s gone. Finished. Pride inflates my chest. That’s my Smoke.
“You’ve taught her well,” Father tells Maharani Belwar.
Black magic quickly swallows the scene, slithering from its pillar in shadow form. Adraa moves low and fluidly, weaving the God’s test with her own shadow. She turns into darkness and for minutes I can’t see her dance. My heart spikes. Her parents don’t seem concerned, though. In a flash she’s back and the temple lightens.
“Well done. Nearly there!”
Only white left. Yet nothing happens. We all watch the pillar, awaiting the final test, but there’s nothing. Whispers start to seize the crowd. Adraa turns around, and for the first time in hours, our eyes lock. And in her eyes, I see terror.
In a violent burst, white magic surges out of the pillar.
“Adraa!” I yell, but it’s too late. She moves to perform the first step of a spell, but then she’s knocked off her feet.
Maharani Belwar gasps beside me.
A spell readies on my lips. My father, sensing my body language, clutches my arm. “It would hurt her,” he says.
Even knocked down, with a white fury building up against her, Adraa fights back. She stands, stamps one foot, and begins dancing. And yet it looks wrong. Her body wobbles in the casting. There’s too much white magic. Surely Dloc never cast this much magic against me in my trials. A roar of wind rips through the temple. Many people retreat in fear.
“We have to do something!” I yell.
My father shakes his head. “She must work through it herself. If we intervene, she will fail.”
My entire body clenches, all muscles engaged and yet motionless. I can’t do anything. I’m useless.
Adraa is a blaze of color within a torrent of snow and wind. It’s like when I first saw her all those weeks ago, lying on the ground in front of my carriage amid a sea of chaos. But back then, she raised her hand to notify everyone she and the boy were safe. Now, there’s no reassurance, no sign, only the flash of red in the middle of vast whiteness.
“What’s happening?” someone yells as we lose sight of hercompletely.
This is wrong. I have to do something. I step forward, feeling the icy breath of Dloc down to my bones. “Adraa?”
A flash of red fire hits the temple ceiling and the stone cracks. Ice swallows the opening and the rock splinters. Someone screams and the Belwar servants scramble backward.
“Oh Gods,” I think my father says.
Maharaja Belwar and I catch each other’s eyes, and without a word, we run forward. But as soon as I step into the freezing white mist, it disappears. A loud slurping sound echoes, and with a whoosh the white magic flies back into Dloc’s pillar. Have I just ruined everything?
I spot Adraa a few meters away, the rainbow ribbons in her hair mangled and sliding down her back. The next moment is quiet. No one dares speak. She did it! She must have. Relief swells inside of me. We were worried over nothing. She’s passed their trials.
“Adraa?” I call.
Why won’t she turn around?
Another breathless second ticks by. Something’s wrong. Dread swarms my throat and with a swallow it spreads throughout me. Why won’t she turn around? Why won’t she move? But she is moving, her body vibrating, shaking uncontrollably.
Before anyone takes another step, Adraa tumbles to the ground as if her strings have been cut. It’s a death fall. Riya shrieks and Maharani Belwar screams bloody murder.
My body numbs. I don’t know I’m running until I skid to a stop and fall next to her, the first by her side. With trembling fingers I touch her shoulders and gently pull her onto her back. “No, no,nooo.Please, no.” I lift her lifeless form into my lap and fumble at her throat to find a pulse.
The Belwars collapse on the ground next to me. My father stands above us with liquid eyes and one hand to his mouth.
