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“Just try to think of anything else,” I said instead.

The ledge forked out in front of us, narrower than ever. My legs shook against my will as I led us onward, and Quinn’s grip actually tightened in mine.

In a careful voice, she said, “I don’t even know who I was when we were growing up in Alderwick, you know. It was like I was in a constant haze, always under my mother’s Mind Manipulating influence. As soon as we stepped foot on the Esholian Institute campus, it was like… waking up.”

A flicker of guilt passed through me. I felt severely wronged by Quinn, but she clearly felt wronged by me, too. I glanced backward.

“I wish I would have done more to help you.”

It was the truth. I’d been a child, yes, but I could have told Fabian and Don about how Quinn’s mother controlled her, and they might have been able to help.

She shrugged. “I didn’t realize I hated you so much until I was free to think for myself. Then it wasn’t just that you reminded me of Alderwick. It was that you didn’t want to escape it, too, because it had treated you better than it had treated me. You didn’t have a bitch for a mother. You didn’t have a mother at all. Just two fathers who loved you and would never use their magic to hurt you.”

No mother at all—except I did, the lost princess of Sorronia who was still lost. And two fathers, one of whom might be dead and the other who was chained up right here in a bloodstained section of campus.

But our suffering wasn’t a competition. Eyes forward, I spotted the edge of the chasm and kept talking to keep Quinn distracted from the hallucinations.

“What about Lander?”

Quinn sucked in a breath, which told me a shadow had probably just fake-killed her again. Then she sighed. “I really thought I loved him until I realized he was the only boy our age I ever knew. Besides, you know, Wilder.” For some reason, she sounded truly ashamed for the first time. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

“Sorry, what’s ironic?”

Even if Quinn had decided to answer, her words would have been cut short. We’d made it back onto solid, widespread ground, only for droplets of water to pepper us from the ceiling scattered with stalactites overhead.

Not just droplets of water. Drops of burning water that felt more like melted metal against my skin, so hot that it scorched where it landed. I threw my arms over my head with a hiss. Quinn herself spit out a curse.

Moments later, the smattering of pain stopped. I looked up to find that it was still raining, but each droplet was skirting around us.

My throat clogged with an emotion I couldn’t name. Two years ago, Quinn and I had walked to the beach together under a sprinkle of rain that she’d only shielded herself from. She still hated me now, I knew, but today, in this tunnel, she’d decided to shield us both. Maybe her magic was just more advanced after years of practice, but I’d probably be burned to a crisp right now without her.

“Let’s go,” Quinn said. “We might still have a chance of winning this thing.”

Winning. It felt like such a simple difference between Quinn and me, when it was actually the cavern that had split us apart. I merely wanted to survive. To live in the best way I could. She wanted to win. To be first and to come out on top.

Good thing our goals aligned in this case. Surviving meant getting through these death traps as quickly as we could.

We sprinted forward. The rain only pounded down around us harder, splattering onto the rocky ground. Quinn’s focus on it must have dissolved her focus on my ankles, because the frost casting my skin had melted away, and they flared with blistering heat. Although, come to think of it, that might have been due to the boiling water that was slowly collecting in the dips and crevices of the tunnel.

Soon, our feet were splashing through scorching puddles. With another curse, Quinn waved her hand as if to clear away a cobweb. More frost blasted out in front of us, coating the entire inside of the tunnel like a breath of cold fog.

The rain turned to icicles. They still skirted around us, sharp pings clattering against the ground, and the stone turned slippery with sheets of ice.

“This is why I hate our Climate Control instructor,” Quinn muttered as we ran and slipped and slid. “Stupid old loon never wants to teach us about moderate temperatures, only extreme ones. Maybe this will…”

She swiped her hand again. The ice melted instantly, flooding the tunnel with knee-high water. But it wasn’t scorching or freezing. Only mildly warm.

The rain stopped. We did, too, panting and leaning against the glistening wet walls. Somehow, Quinn’s fire had never stopped burning, so the lit sconces above us reflected off the water in ripples of dancing orange.

“Okay,” I said. “So we made it through the Object Summoning, Mind Manipulating, and Element Wielding tests. Now we just have Wild Whispering and Shape Shifting left.” And between the two of us, we had all five powers.

Maybe we really could get back first. If we got back at all.

“I don’t sense anything that’s been Shifted.” Quinn straightened up. “What kind of plants and animals usually live in caves or tunnels?”

I thought about it. “Bats.” The vampire bat mutants that Jagaros had killed in that abandoned classroom flapped through my memory. “Worms.” Kitterfol Lexington’s mental form thudded to the forefront of my mind again. “Centipedes.” The giant arthropod bored down on me. “Scorpions.” Rodhi seized in his chair.

“Lovely,” Quinn murmured.