Page 106 of The Incendiary

“Really, Mav?” Mina groaned when he devoured a grossly large forkful. “Have some manners.”

“What? I worked up an appetite with Yara last night. She’s insatiable.”

I giggled while his sister made a gagging sound.

“At least use a comb.” Mina stood up, licked her palm, and tried to tame her brother’s bright mess of hair. “It looks like a rat burrowed and died in it.”

Her brother swatted her hand away. “Who are you, Mom?”

Mina scoffed. “Just be grateful I’m not Marin.”

“You’re right, she’s definitely worse.”

As they argued in typical sibling fashion, I let the loud swell of voices drown them out and found my eyes drifting toward the far end of the hall. Elias’s chair in the center of the long head table was still empty. I hadn’t seen him in a week, after I bit Finch’s arm and Elias kissed me. Without his eyes always on the back of my head, the week had been peaceful.

Voices hushed when the main door opened and he entered, flanked by two lieutenants who looked as tired as he did.

“Great,” I whispered to myself.

“What?” Mina asked.

“Nothing.” I straightened in my seat.

Elias’s tight jaw had a shadow of stubble over the yellowing bruise from where I’d struck him. Peeking out of his shirt collar was bandaging that appeared to wrap up his torso and over his shoulder. His thick bronze hair was still perfect, and he looked too beautiful for a man with bags under his eyes.

I’d forced myself to forget what his lips felt like. That wasn’t the hard part. It was the feeling of being tricked that I couldn’t get past. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t kissed him back, that I’d frozen with my lips clamped shut, denying him entry. I still felt dirty, made worse when the smug asshole winked at me in passing.

I could feel two identical sets of eyes on me, one on each side.

“Please don’t look at me like that,” I muttered under my breath. “You’ll make it obvious.”

“Make what obvious?” Mavic took a swig of water, then whispered, “Your Highness.” He shouted “Ow!” when Mina whacked the back of his head.

An hour later we were taken outside of the fortress for the second test, farther out on the western side where the terrain was rockier and more hazardous. After the previous night’s storm, the smell of rain hung heavy in the air, and the sun hid behind flat, low-hanging clouds. Most unnervingly, the buzz of Simeon’s wards was even fainter than the day before.

Wanting to stay as far away as possible from Elias up at the front, I stood in the back of the sea of cadets with the twins. Our large group came to a halt before the edge of a cliff where the drop-off appeared to be steep.

A female cadet at the front jumped and screamed at whatever she saw below. Gasps and shrieks sent nearby birds and wildlife scattering from bushes and trees.

“What the hell?” Mavic stepped in front of his sister.

“I’ll go,” I muttered, retreating around to peer down from the edge instead of pushing through the crowd.

There were five different, restless beasts chained securely inside a circular, rocky enclosure. One was shaped like an oversized frog with the face of a fish and sharp teeth. Another was a bat-like creature with two sets of long wings, beady red eyes, and huge claws. The third had the head of a wolf, the body of a massive bear, and antlers of a buck that were shedding bloody velvet skin. Drool dripped off its jowls; the beast was clearly ravenous. The fourth was shaped like a boar with three eyes and thick, dark fur. Five tusks, sharp enough to impale a human, emerged from its massive head.

“I wasn’t planning on dying today, but now I’m not so sure,” Mavic murmured beside me. I’d been too grossly entranced to notice people gathered around me.

“You aren’t dying, and neither is Mina,” I answered. Over my dead body would I let that happen.

“Are those spikes on that one’s tail?” asked a girl while pointing toward the opposite side of the pit.

The fifth and most agitated beast was a huge lizard with opalescent scales and a winding, spiked tail. It hovered low to the ground on four short legs, giving the appearance that it was slow. I had a feeling it wasn’t.

To my right, Elias watched me like this was all a game to him. Like I was a game to him. Maybe I was, but the lives of these cadets were not. The war was near. I understood that Molochai would not show mercy. Letting our soldiers believe otherwise would be doing them no favors, but these cadets weren’t even through training. This was no test. This was a mass execution.

I had come across two of Molochai’s corrupted beasts before. Without Gavin against the first and without my powers against the second, they would have devoured me.

Had Elias been rounding up these monsters for the past week? It would explain the bandaging. I gave him a silent, pleading look, but a smirk tugged at his mouth before he addressed the crowd.