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“Dammit.” No way to grab my blades by hand now. I used my Object Summoning to slash all five of my blades out of their sheath, sending them soaring through the air. Just as the three faeries nocked their arrows and aimed.

At first, I hadn’t quite understood what the point of magic-coated weapons were when you could just… use your magic yourself. Now I knew it was perhaps the cleverest thing a faerie could do in case they were detained in other ways.

Don’t fire those things at me, I tried to command, but my Mind Manipulating was straining enough just trying to keep their innate powers at bay.

The arrows flew.

I ducked and rolled. So did they as my knives soared after them. Nothing hit my flesh, but where their arrowheads hit the ground around me, the stone went as mushy as the bones in my fingers, sucking me under. Air was ripped from my lungs, pulled like a whirlpool from the second arrow’s point of contact.

Worse yet—this had to be the third faerie’s magic, something akin to Mind Manipulating—a fabricated voice began shrieking from beneath the training ring, begging me to help it, help, help, help.

Gasping for nonexistent breath, I aimed my sight toward the many trees cloistered along the limestone bluffs. Most of them were some species of palm, but there were a few banyan trees scattered throughout.

Perfect. No. Breath. Left. But—

I sent out a mental hum, flinging it toward the nearest banyan.

Its branches unfurled, swinging down to scoop a tendril around me and hoist me out of the sinkhole. Once I was far enough from the danger zone, air came rushing back into my lungs and the screaming beneath the training ring faded away.

The banyan set me down on solid ground. I twirled.

Most of my knives were hovering against the throats of the first two faeries. Victory. The crescent knife, however, had been grasped by the third one.

Vitka leered at me, canines slightly smaller than Coen’s. He dropped my knife. Nocked another arrow. Sent it whooshing my way before I had a chance to move.

My Object Summoning moved for me, ripping the arrow out of the air and turning it right back around. It struck the patch of ground in front of him, and he winced at the screams of his own magic that were probably emanating from beneath his feet.

In his moment of distraction, I sent out another hum. The banyan’s branches shot toward him and wrapped around his throat, squeezing until his eyes bulged.

“Wow.”

A slow series of clapping made me look up. Kanuk had appeared beside Jagaros, the bamboo-woven picnic basket hanging from the crook of his elbow completely at odds with his domineering stature. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or terrified.”

“Be both,” Jagaros answered his brother gruffly. To me, he added, “You can call off your tree now… before I lose another warrior.”

“Oh, shit.” With a sharp, whistling hum, I had the banyan loosen its grip and removed my knives from the other two faeries’ throats with my invisible hands.

Vitka clutched at his throat, rasping with curses. The female warrior passed me a curt dip of her head before she stalked off. The remaining male made to follow when I called out to him, “Wait! Can you…?”

I lifted my arms. My hands flopped at the wrists like jelly-filled gloves.

He turned, saw my fingers, and began to howl with laughter. “Otli katehn ahlen du shiral.” The words sounded so similar to the Sorronian language that I could almost understand him. I shook my head with a grimace.

The next second, my fingers cranked back out, burning as if the nerves had been electrified. I muffled a cry into my shoulder, then smiled at the faerie with watering eyes. “Thank you.”

“Otli pyre.”

Once he’d turned to go spar with the others, Jagaros nodded down at me.

“You did well. You can be done for the day.”

Muscles aching and fingers still tingling with pain, I trudged up the stairwell to join him and Kanuk, where we meandered over to the edge of the walkway overlooking most of the Uninhabitable Zone on the other side of the training ring. From this vantage point, all the domiciles and plazas and gazebos looked like a beautiful, tangled root system before the domed palace itself. Fish flashed in the pond water below like a scattering of fluorescent stars.

Kanuk passed me an orange fruit from his woven basket. “Tangerine?”

“God, yes, please.” My mouth was already salivating. Once I’d peeled off the pebbly skin and taken a good few bites, I wiped my mouth with my wrist and asked, “Did that faerie really tell me I looked better with my fingers drooping like noodles?”

I wasn’t just asking about the Ranuq language. The curses and curt nods from the other faeries lingered in my mind, too. Everyone here seemed curious about me, but not necessarily friendly.