A male cadet at the center of the column didn’t make it half a step past the threshold. The fire closed around him like a fist. He screamed, a raw, animal sound that lasted less than a second. The flames turned white-hot. The man was gone. No body. No collapse. Just a column of white fire that flared and subsided, leaving a scatter of ash that lifted on the updraft and drifted into the afternoon sky. His uniform burned with him. Nothing remained.
The cadets on either side of where he’d stood stumbled sideways. The lines behind them buckled. Cadets pressed backward, boots scraping stone.
“Hold formation!” one of Drakken’s senior commandersbarked from the base of the stairs. “Keep moving forward!”
They moved. Bryn was in that group. My palms went clammy.
Please don’t let her die. Let her through. Let her through.
I watched her pass through the parted flames, her chin high. She made it. I exhaled. My fists unclenched.
The third group passed clean. The fourth did not. Two cadets were burned in rapid succession. The twin flares of dragon fire turned white, so close together that the screams overlapped. The courtyard went silent. The smell of ozone hung thick.
At the front of the fifth group, a female cadet broke from the waiting ranks and ran. She bolted down the stairs, shoving through the cadets behind her, sprinting for the far end of the courtyard.
“Seize her!”
She didn’t make it ten yards.
The sixth, then seventh…then tenth group passed clean. They walked through the parted fire and into the library.
Then it was the last group. My group.
One by one, the cadets ahead of me climbed the stairs and passed through. The fire parted. They walked. They lived. Cheers followed them.
The line shrank. Twenty ahead of me. Ten. Five.
Then it was my turn.
I was second from last. Behind me, Thane waited to conclude the trial. He’d been promoted recently. No one doubted his loyalty. He’d go last as a show of confidence.
Istood in front of the double doors, staring up at the wall of fire.
The heirs’ gazes stayed with me.
Caspian’s green eyes burned between faith and fear. His jaw was tight. His fingers twitched—the reflex of a man restraining himself from reaching out.
Nikolai stood rigid, his crimson eyes fixed on me with an intensity that bordered on violence. Not aimed at me. Aimed at the fire. At what it might do to me.
Aelindor’s impossible blue gaze held mine. Steady. Certain. But I could see the subtle tension in his shoulders.
Drakken stared at me. His gray eyes held the familiar loathing. But beneath it, conflict and doubt churned with something else. Regret? He’d called for this trial. Set the fire. And now, watching me approach, the dragon prince looked like a man who’d lit a fuse and wasn’t sure he wanted to see what it reached.
Every officer’s eyes fell on me. The warlock their general had singled out, humiliated, punished. From the hawkish looks on their faces, they expected the fire to solve their problem.
Show them what you are. What we are,the demon sneered at the hostility radiating from behind the curtain of flame.We’re superior in every way.
The creature always had a flair for drama and delusions of grandeur. Right now, it was the last thing I needed to deal with. My palms were cold and damp. My heart hammered against my ribs. My eyes darted between the fire and the heirs.
I hatedthe White Witch. She’d enslaved my people. Worked my parents to death in her mine. My loyalty was to any enemy of hers. I’d never betray the Zodiac Covenant. I’d never betray Aelindor, Nikolai, or Caspian.
But I didn’t extend that loyalty to Drakken. He hadn’t earned it. The fire was his—his dragon’s—and the spells woven through it could read intent. What if it sensed my grudge? What if the dragon burned me for pettiness? I’d known from the beginning that Drakken wanted to get rid of me.
“Get moving, cadet!” one of Drakken’s aides barked from the top of the stairs. “We don’t have all day.”
I hadn’t realized I’d frozen while I studied the fire, its intense heat on my skin. But I wasn’t holding the line. There was only Cadet Sergeant Thane behind me.
“Give the private a moment,” Nikolai growled. Caspian turned a look on the aide that could’ve peeled paint off a wall. “This isn’t a fish market. Stand down.”
