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It was exactly the right goad to choose. Within minutes, she was satisfyingly enmeshed in a nonstop whirl of action, solving riddles and outwitting opponents on the field. Today, on Lord Oberon’s gritted command, no breaks were to be allowed between challenges—which exactly suited her purposes.

Safely back in her own body and free from the sickening fog that had trapped her in that morning’s spell, Lorelei kept every sense tinglingly alert and every mental shield raised, especially against her own partner.

Alas, she and Gerard hadn’t won that first trial—a pair of kobold twins and one long-married couple of sprites had been quicker at solving it—but with eight partnerships allowed to remain in the competition after all, due to Oberon’s concessions, they were still well positioned to take the lead by the end of the day.

… If they kept all of their focus on the competition and didn’t converse about anything else.

“Duck!” she announced triumphantly midway through the afternoon, solving their latest riddle—and as if in answer, elfshot whistled close enough to ruffle her hair with its passing.

“A bit late for that warning.” Gerard’s words were dry, but his movements were fluid as he whirled to shelter them both behind the silver shield he’d won in combat against a troll an hour earlier.

More elfshot battered helplessly against that shield, and Lorelei reached out with her magic to tug at the gorgeously scented rosebushes nearby. They climbed up a huge nearby arbor that would have made her eyes widen at its size only this morning—but in the elaborately landscaped gardens they’d been questing through for the past hour, everything was sized at least five to ten times larger than usual. It was child’s play now to send one of those massive rose stems lashing out like a whip to knock the whistle from the hands of the goblin who’d shot at her—and then bind him and his taller partner to the ground.

They were the second pair who’d tried to pick off Lorelei and Gerard in the past hour; there was one more pair lurking somewhere behind them, but she would deal with them later.

Gerard calmly lowered his shield. “… Or were you not referring to our latest attack?”

“See for yourself.” Lorelei pointed to the riddle she’d found etched into a small silver leaf that hung from the branch of a gargantuan oak tree, their fifth stopping point so far.

At home in air and water’s flow; with me you’ll avoid any blow.

“It could conceivably have served as a warning,” he said, “but I doubt Lord Oberon could have predicted the timing of our opponents quite so well.”

Lorelei snorted. “I wouldn’t trust Oberon to predict anyone’s actions, much less try to warn us against them.” Lorelei turned in place to survey the majestic lines of greenery around them. “At any rate, he’s not clever enough to design this trial by himself.”

Oh, he had definitely been the mastermind behind their first trial today—that had had his malicious fingerprints all over it with its grasping overreach and disregard for consequences—but this one was far too elaborate and detailed to have been designed in the few days that had passed since her mother had named him her proxy. No, it must have been carefully crafted across the past year by the same team of powerful spellcasters who’d been running this tournament behind the scenes for centuries.

… Which made it all the more intriguing.

For the last hour, she and Gerard had been moving steadily through the different stages of this vast garden as if they were curling around the curves of a huge snail’s shell, letting four other partnerships speed ahead of them. Each section was distinct in landscaping theme and carefully separated from its neighbors by elegantly shaped topiaries of implausible proportions—and in the center of it all, still at least half a mile distant, towered an impossibly tall castle made of rough and weathered stone, where their final goal must await them.

Lorelei did not care for the look of that castle at all.

Fortunately, she had a partner who understood the need for thoroughness. Unlike most of their rivals, when first let loose in the farthest section of the outer gardens, he had insisted on taking the time to inspect every detail of the space where they’d landed, rather than leaping to the conclusion that this challenge was a race. That methodical care had paid off for both of them in the discovery of a series of cleverly hidden riddles, each solution leading them on to the next step of the puzzle.

But as for what they would find at the end …

“Tell me,” Gerard said, his voice perfectly mild, “why did your mother cast you out from her court so long ago?”

Caught off guard, Lorelei twitched. Then she sneered magnificently. “Really, darling. Are you that hard up for gossip, after only a few days away from Otto’s court? This is decades-old news and entirely uninteresting.”

“Not to me.”

“Well, it will have to wait until after we’ve finished today’s challenges.” And I’ll make sure you forget about it by then. The last thing she needed was for Gerard de Moireul—not yet even pretending to have committed to Lorelei’s cause—to discover that she’d been chosen for that very cause by the wild, quicksilver Sylvana, the single goddess most unlike Gerard’s own humorless patron god of war and justice. “Now,” she said briskly as she strode towards the next break in the thick walls of topiary, “have you spotted any sign of ducks flying overhead?”

Gerard’s steps were steady behind her. “Judging by everything else we’ve found so far, any duck that flew over this garden would have been the size of a dragon and unmissable.”

“Good lord, are you nearly making jokes now? I knew a holiday would be good for you!” Smirking, Lorelei stepped through the arched green passageway. Her eyebrows rose. “Ah. Speaking of unmissable…”

No one could describe what spread before them now as a mere duck pond. Waves lapped at the long, shell-lined shore from a lake-sized body of glittering blue water that spread from where Lorelei stood to the castle’s massive doorstep on its other side, with no bridge or boat in sight … and with who-knew-what hiding underneath the water in between.

There had been four partnerships ahead of them earlier; now, she spotted only three questing towards the castle along the lakeshore’s curve. An ominous bubbling of water in the center of the lake indicated volumes about that last pair’s fate.

Swimming had not been a good choice for them.

The only other option for approach was to walk all the way along the curving shoreline, adding at least an extra mile to the journey. The three leading partnerships were doing just that, jostling for position along the way; as Lorelei squinted, she saw the fastest pair start to rappel up the weathered castle wall amidst a shower of attacks from their closest competitors.

“I think,” she said, “that we may wish to hurry.”