My teeth clenched tight and I quickly scanned the spectators for familiar faces. There weresomany people, and for a hideous searching moment I couldn’t find my friends. But there—two diamond heads bent close in discussion; a gleaming dark pate; shining seafoam eyes in an exquisite blue face.
I loosed a breath. Of course they’d come.
I looked for Luca, and when I saw him, I was barely surprised to see him with Gavin’s entourage.
Arsenault stepped into the middle of the room, by the stone dais. He seemed to have absorbed some of the room’s frenzy—a fevered light shone in his copper eyes, and his customary scowl seemed exultant. He held up the kembric Relic for all to see. It caught the torchlight and sent sharp blades of sunlight into the shadows.
“Behold the first Relic of the Scion—a crown of kembric forged from the net Meridian used to capture the Moon.” The cavern took Arsenault’s voice and flung it against the arching glass ceiling. “The first Ordeal of the Scion will test these Heirs’ mental agility—their wits, their quick thinking, their problem-solving. But most of all, it will test their intuition. Do you witness this Ordeal?”
The crowd’s response was the rumble of distant mountains.
“Then let the first Ordeal of the Sun Heir begin!”
Slowly, Arsenault lowered the misshapen crown toward the dais. The kembric Relic settled into its hollow with a dull thunk. For a tortuous moment, the only sound was a thousand breathing mouths and my own uneven heartbeat.
Every single light in the grand chamber went out at once. Panic sent thready feelers through the crowd, and I felt the answering thunder of my own blood. Then radiance blossomed above the dais—light like the sharp heart of a bonfire, blinding and merciless. Lines of fire exploded along the floor, illuminating the chamber in golden glow, until they too dimmed and disappeared.
All but two.
The light nearest me brightened the moment my boot stepped onto it, a pulse of energy flinging itself toward the deepest parts of the cavern. I followed. At last, the golden light resolved itself into an object hanging several feet in front of me. It was a crown—not the kembric Relic; this crown was large enough to sit upon my head—hanging in midair in front of my face. I swallowed, glancing quickly over my shoulder, but the rest of the chamber had faded away into the dim.
I grabbed the crown. A firework in champagne and sunlight flung itself out of the shadows toward the ceiling, arcing along the painted glass and loosing trailers as it went. A shimmering kembric dome encompassed the space above me, blurring the audience away.
The floor fell out from beneath me.
I fell to my knees, bracing myself against the chilly stone. But it wasn’t the floor that was falling down. It was the walls that were fallingup.I found my balance.
Impossible golden stones screamed up from the floor, glowing like molten metal and thick as ironstone slabs. They shifted in complex, vertiginous patterns before slamming into a tight corridor around me. The floor shuddered with the force of their arrangement. I shuddered too, trepidation and fear tangling ragged threads around my heart.
At last, the motion ceased, leaving behind a soft, endless silence. I looked up into the shimmering dome. I could still see the crowds watching, but I couldn’t make out their faces, and what should have been a full-throated roar of entertainment was nothing more than a whisper.
I clenched suddenly sweaty palms and lowered my eyes. Better not to be distracted, anyway.
I shoved myself toward the looming walls and placed a hesitant palm against the nearest glowing slab. I nearly snatched my hand away. It felt like human flesh. I buried a visceral burst of disgust, and pressed harder. The material pressed back, with an impact that jarred me to my elbow. I curled a lip, and scrubbed my too-hot palm against the skirt of my dress.
So I couldn’t pass through the stones. I lifted my gaze to their towering heights—I definitely couldn’t goover.
The only way out wasthrough.
A labyrinth? Whatever it was, I had to to solve it quickly—on the other side lay the plinth with its Relic to be won. I couldn’t let Gavin get there first.
I took a deep breath, and stepped between the golden slabs. My footsteps rang like wind chimes on the floor, and I noticed patterns etched into the tiles below my feet—circle, blade, crown, sun.Soul, Hand, Head, Heart.The symbols of the Relics flashed by as I sped along the corridor, and I loosed a breathless laugh around the shreds of fear and excitement tangling within me.
Scion, but this was really happening. I was competing in the Ordeals of the Sun Heir, to beat my cousin and prove once and for all I coulddothis. I could be the heir the Amber Empire not only needed, butwanted.An echo of inevitability glanced off the walls and reverberated like the footsteps of long-dead ancestors and forgotten family. Somehow—sometime—I was always here, always running toward that light, that power, that destiny.
The tunnel ended abruptly in a circular chamber. I slammed to a halt, my glee melting away like a dream. Four doors stared out of blank, shimmering walls. I stepped closer to the left-most door. It had a large circle etched in the spot where a knob ought to have been, and above that, in the center of the door, were two other symbols: a blade and a crown.
I frowned, and looked to the other doors. The second door had the symbol of a blade in place of its knob, and on its face it wore two other symbols—circle and sun. The third door had a crown at its knob and a crown at its heart. The fourth door had a sun at its knob, and all three other symbols marked on its face.
What in the Scion’s name … ?
I moved closer, and my boot scuffed against a raised plaque in the floor. I dropped to my knees before it, hoping for a clue or hint. The metal shifted at my touch, a few lines of verse appearing in raised letters. I gritted my teeth, and sounded out the words as quickly as I could.
To find your way you must be bold,
There is just one way through.
Only one of these doors has a truth to be told,
