“But what’s really the point of all this?” Selen cuts him off. Her gaze pins Zeriel, holding him motionless. “Regain the empire’s favor? The same empire that executed your family? Thatstripped you of everything?” Her voice sharpens. “Is that truly justice, Zeriel? Or is it just another form of submission?”
The words strike like hammer blows. Zeriel goes still, jaw tightening, a muscle ticking hard in his cheek. The air around him feels heavier, as if a storm gathers just beneath his skin. His eyes flick away for a heartbeat—toward the others, toward me—before snapping back to Selen, darker than I’ve ever seen them. When he speaks, his voice is low, rough, edged with restrained violence.
“Don’t presume to know what I want.”
“Oh, but I think I do,” Selen replies, voice lower but unflinching. “You want justice. Restoration. To reclaim what was stolen. To make your name mean something again.” She steps closer, undeterred by the danger in his eyes. “But you're looking in the wrong direction.”
“The tournament is my path,” Zeriel says coldly.
“I don’t believe it’s the one you truly want,” Selen replies. “It's the path they've allowed you to see. The one that keeps you exactly where they want you. Fighting for scraps of their approval.”
The others have gone quiet, watching this exchange with varying degrees of discomfort and curiosity.
“What exactly are you suggesting?” Zeriel asks, his voice razor-sharp.
Chapter 36
Selen's smile is cold and just as sharp as Zeriel’s expression. “First, you must survive the games, whether you're able to use your gifts or not.” She steps back, surveying the ravine, seeming to suddenly shift focus. “Speaking of which… let’s take a moment to introduce the rest of the class.”
She turns to face the rest of the group, who have gathered closer now that the danger has passed. “Each of you has been practicing. How about you show us what you've learned? One by one. Just a glimpse.”
Nyx steps forward first, rolling her shoulders like she’s about to break up a bar fight. Her gaze sweeps over the rocky slope until it lands on a half-buried spearhead, long since snapped from its shaft. She raises her hand, palm open, and the metal stirs, shivering loose from the dirt like a snake waking from hibernation.
It slithers across the gravel into her grasp, where it coils lazily around her wrist before going rigid again. She smirks.
“For some reason, metal calls to my blood,” she says. “Must be the smithing side of my family.”
I watch, transfixed, as she uncoils the metal from her wrist and lets it fall back to the gravel. Not smithing. More likely a remnant of the old forge traditions. Bloodlines once tied tocraftsmanship and transformation, fae who could shape what others only wielded. Perhaps Nyx is descended from them.
Lira moves next, every step fluid and sure. She kneels and presses both palms to the ground. The soil ripples under her touch, then splits. A tiny seedling forces its way through the crack, stretching upward with unsettling speed. Its leaves unfurl in a slow curl, their edges serrated like tiny blades, and the stem bristles with hooked thorns that catch the light.
My mouth hangs open. Life where there was none a moment ago. Growth that should take seasons forced in seconds. A briarblood, maybe. I’ve heard stories of those; fae whose ancestral magic was bound to living growth…
“Who knew I had a green thumb?” she says, grinning, pride bright in her eyes.
Vex hesitates before stepping forward. She flicks a quick glance at Zeriel, then at me, before closing her eyes. When she opens them again, the color has deepened, her gaze unnervingly focused.
She nods toward a small stone about twenty feet away.
“That rock’s got a quartz core with three different mineral bands. There’s a fossil shard on the east side—looks Third Age—and a hooktail tucked under the base.”
She blinks, and her eyes soften back to normal.
“Not magic sight exactly,” she says. “More like tuning in to every detail. Shifts my perception into… overdrive.”
I guess that would’ve been a useful tool for an assassin. But I’m not sure what her bloodlines might be…
Talyra moves with quiet confidence. She shifts her stance, and for a moment my eyes can’t track her properly. Her outline seems to waver, flicker, split into two, then three overlapping shapes before settling again.
It’s not speed so much as misdirection, a trick of movement and angles that makes my focus slip.
“Displacement,” she says. “We probably picked it up from…” The words catch, her teeth pressing into her lip. Her gaze flickers to the empty space at her side, and for a moment her eyes shine wet. Then she backs away without another word.
I can’t help wondering where her twin is. It feels wrong to see them apart. Even without speaking to them, I’d sensed they were inseparable. Hard to imagine one enrolling in this without the other.
The chestnut-haired fae, who introduces herself as Maris, cups her hands and exhales slowly. The air between her palms whitens, moisture crystallizing into a delicate frost that creeps across her fingers. “Temperature shaping,” she says with a modest shrug.
Tessan, auburn-haired and wiry, simply steps toward the ravine wall. Her movements are measured, controlled, and, to my shock, she walks upward as though the incline is no different from a flat road. “Gravity magic,” she explains.
