In front of them, Graydon was finishing up. “You will find yourself driven to the brink. Hold fast to the ideals and teachings of your House. If you waver even a tiny bit, you will find yourself dashed against the rocks as so many of your predecessors have been.”
“That’s not grim or anything,” Raider muttered.
“Reminds me of the speech they gave at the academy—except for the whole rocky death part. That’s new,” Jin quipped.
Kira’s smart-ass response died as her senses tingled.
Movement from the tree caught her attention as the branches extended. They reached out, almost as if stretching.
The buds that dotted the limbs with barely opened flowers in varying shades of pink bloomed. Their petals lengthened until the tree was covered in blossoms.
So many that Kira could no longer see the bark of their branches.
Gasps let her know she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the tree’s change.
Light started to gather in the blossoms. More and more until Kira had to shield her eyes from the piercing glow.
She looked away from the tree, surprised to find the walls of the rotunda shimmering. Almost as if the heat from the blossoms was creating an optical illusion much like you might encounter in the desert.
A familiar sensation built as her hair stirred.
Kira didn’t even have time to draw breath before the bottom dropped out of her stomach. The tree and its blossoms shattered, the pieces exploding outward.
There were screams as the initiates ducked away in an attempt to protect themselves.
Raider grabbed Kira, yanking her down and covering her head with one arm and his with the other.
The pain they braced for never arrived.
Kira lifted her head to find the shards from the tree suspended in midair. The world dropped out from under her in the next second, sending Kira and everyone else into a dizzying free fall.
twenty
When the world finally stopped revolving, Kira became aware of the fact she was crouched on a flat floor covered in a fine-grained substance very similar to sand. Unlike sand, it was firm under her feet as she rose to standing.
A roar assaulted her ears.
Next to her, Raider pressed a hand to his head, his snarl a touch murderous. “Have I told you today how much I HATE Tuann technology?”
Kira made a preoccupied sound as she took in their surroundings.
They stood on the floor of an arena, stands full of cheering Tuann rising in a sharp slope around them. The colors of the five major Houses dominated but the smaller Houses were also represented. Their numbers, if taken together, almost equaled that of the major five.
The swath of midnight blue caught Kira’s attention as she located the box holding the higher-ranking members of her House.
Harlow and Wren looked down on her.
There was an amused cant to Harlow’s mouth that said he found Kira’s reaction to the exploding tree and her subsequent teleportation amusing.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure it’s hilarious,” she muttered.
Movement beside Wren showed Elena peeking over the side of Roake’s railing.
Her niece’s face lit up as she waved, saying something to the person beside her.
Being smaller than Elena, Ziva had to resort to grabbing the railing to hoist herself up so she could see those on the floor.
“That’s interesting,” Jin observed, spotting the two. “I would have thought they would keep Elena out of sight.”
