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Everyone shuffled about immediately, reaching for each other and grouping themselves into pairs. I stood there awkwardly, not knowing anyone except for Quinn, who… who was also left standing by herself in the aftermath, rubbing her own arms.
There was no other option. I took a half step toward her and she took a small one toward me, neither of us looking at each other as Mr. Gleekle continued.
“Excellent, excellent. So as all of you know, being an elite means protecting our island and upholding the worthiness of our people.” Once again, he sounded as if he was regurgitating a well-rehearsed speech. “As such, if you make it into the Good Council, you will either enforce our rules within the villages, protect our orders of operation on Bascite Mountain, or help run the Esholian Institute itself.”
Nobody muttered a word, but I could hear the murmurings within everyone’s minds. My interest perked up. A sense of competition was brimming in the air, with several pre-elites eager to snatch a rule-enforcing position like Kitterfol Lexington had once held.
The thought made my opinion of this whole damn thing sour even more. I filed the information away for later and returned my focus to Mr. Gleekle, who had turned and swept a hand in front of the line of iron doors.
“In order to prove that you can handle any opposition, your test today is to retrieve that which lies at the end of your path.” His wind whistled forward, and all ten doors cranked open. Beyond them, all I could see were narrow, suffocating tunnels. “The first pair to return will get a personal recommendation from me and their choice of job assignment from Dyonisia Reeve upon graduation.”
Now a flurry of muttering rose among the pre-elites. A young man next to me cracked his knuckles one by one. The woman with the coil of hair smirked and nodded at her partner. I simply frowned, trying not to look at Quinn.
Retrieve that which lies at the end of your path? If we didn’t know what it was, how could I use my Object Summoning magic to conjure it?
There was no time to ponder. Mr. Gleekle jerked his head, and we all moved toward an open doorway until each pair stood facing a different tunnel.
“And… begin!” Mr. Gleekle called.
CHAPTER
32
RAYNA
As soon as Quinn and I stepped through, the iron door creaked shut behind us. The single click of the latch echoed through the darkness.
Quinn huffed out a sigh of annoyance, although it might have just been an attempt to mask the fear creeping in. With a spitting of sparks, her palms bloomed with fireballs. They went soaring outward until dead sconces flared to life one by one, lighting up the twisting and turning of the tunnel before us.
“Thanks,” I said quietly, and glanced over my shoulder.
The keyhole looked to be made of iron, too, with no deadbolt in sight. When I tried to use my Object Summoning hands to fiddle with the latch, something about the metal seemed to muffle my power similar to Fabian’s chains.
We were locked in here. Trapped. Retrieve that which lies at the end of your path. That had to be the only way out, so I surged forward without another word.
For much too long, the sound of our footsteps slapped against the ground. Every hair on the back of my neck stood on end as I waited for something to happen—the walls to start caving in or hands to reach out and grab us—but the tunnel wove forward endlessly with nothing to break the monotony.
Without glancing at Quinn, I asked stiffly, “Have you ever done one of these tests for Mr. Gleekle before?”
Just as stiffly, she said, “Yes, last year.” I thought she’d refrain from giving any more information, but after a moment, she blew out a breath. “It wasn’t anything like this, though. It wasn’t even beneath the Testing Center, but out in the jungle in a canyon. I don’t know where the hell these tunnels lead to.”
I nodded and forced myself to keep going. Honestly, thank the God of the Cosmos that Quinn was an Element Wielder, because I’d be stumbling in the dark without her power. Even if it was awkward.
As soon as I’d formed the thought, Quinn spoke again. Her voice seemed to rebound off the tunnel walls even louder than before as the path widened slightly.
“I just don’t understand.”
“What?”
She waved a hand at me. “Why you’re here.”
I felt my shoulders tense. “I’m here because you came to me with a letter from Mr. Gleekle requiring my presence, remember?”
“Yeah, I know, but… it’s just that you’ve never had any ambition. No desire for more status or power or anything, so what did you do to gain their attention? Why is everyone so interested in you? Who are you?” She raked her fingers through her glossy hair and glanced at my wild curls with such obvious disdain that something in me snapped. I stopped in my tracks.
“Who am I? Really? Maybe you’d know if you’d stayed my friend, but you thought you were too good for someone with no ambition.”
It was true. My friends knew that I was half-faerie, that I wasn’t just double-Branded but triple-Branded, that I was Dyonisia Reeve’s niece. They knew about the shapeless power brimming within me and my relationship with the Fated General of a foreign faerie nation and what I’d endured.
