“Are you all right?” Lilith asked, her eyebrows knitted together as she helped Seren to her feet.
Shame rushed over her as she brushed the back of her pants, sending a shower of debris to the ground. She looked at her elbows and found scratches on both of them. “Just some scrapes. It will heal in time.” Her cheeks burned with embarrassment, and she felt like a child again. A scared and helpless child. Something she had vowed never to be again. She found she couldn’t meet Lilith’s eyes.
A feminine laugh floated from the other side of the wall, making it clear the person behind it found what had just happened to be amusing.
“I believe the professors find their little tricks funny,” Seren muttered, her breathing still rapid from the scare. She focused on each breath and the rise and fall of her chest, remembering how Bella would hold her tight and tell her to breathe in and out as she counted. She held her arm at an angle, examining the injury.
“Let me,” Lilith said, taking Seren’s arms into her hands. She closed her eyes and hummed from deep within her chest, magic flowing from her hands and over Seren’s skin, healing the shallow cuts. The flesh knitted back together, leaving only the spilled blood behind.
Seren watched, enthralled by the show of magic. “How do you know how to do all of this?”
“A blood witch’s power lies in their very veins. I can pull from myself to work healing magic. I don’t need a magical object to channel my magic through like the augeres your kind do. Truthfully, I don’t even need to cut myself since my magic comes from my blood, it’s just an easier way to access it quickly. I have a sharp claw-tipped ring to make it easier to access my blood, but they took it from me for the trials,” Lilith explained, her voice timid as if expecting to be judged. “I am also technically a second year. I’m transferring from Dragunreach, provided I pass this last trial. Calami is the best school for witching. If I am to help my country, then this is where I must be.”
Seren looked down at her healed skin and back up at her new friend. “It’s amazing.”
Seren watched as a pink tinge rose to Lilith’s dark cheeks and her eyes rimmed with silver as the blood witch shrugged off the compliment.
“Spiders!” a young woman screamed in the distance. “They’re all over me.”
Seren and Lilith ran ahead, finding a witch swatting herself. The woman’s pale skin was red and covered with raised handprints. Lilith grabbed the woman’s hands, pulling them away.
“Nothing is on you,” Seren insisted, yet she could feel her skin crawling with the sensation of insects all over her.
Lilith dropped the woman’s hands and was now swiping at her own clothing. “They’re everywhere.”
Seren could hear the panic in the other women’s voices, and terror gripped her again. She focused on her breathing again and felt her chest rise and fall with each breath, her mind calming with each exhale. In and out. She wiped her sweaty palms on her pants and clenched her hands, digging her nails into the skin, letting the pain ground her.
“This isn’t real,” she whispered as she called on the magic she felt within her, and, like a flower unfurling at first morning’s light, it answered. The magic conjuring the vision of insects and spiders shimmered in the air as she reached for it. The illusion shattered as she ripped it away. Spots swarmed in front of her eyes from the effort of the magic she had used. She swayed on her feet.
The woman collapsed with relief, sobbing on the ground in front of them, and Lilith gave her shoulder an awkward pat.
“Well, are you coming with us?” Seren asked.
The witch cried louder and wrapped her arms around her knees, rocking back and forth. “My mother was a Calami witch and her mother before her. How am I to go home and tell them I’ve failed?”
Despite her declarations, the woman made no attempt to get up and continue the trial. Seren locked eyes with Lilith, and the blood witch gave her a shrug.
They left the witch behind and walked further into the maze. The sound of voices, at first a muffled quiet noise, soon grew louder, and they walked faster, almost giddy with excitement at the thought that the end was close.
“Perhaps it’s over?” Lilith asked, a hint of hope in her voice.
Seren and Lilith found themselves with twenty-two other women at the center of the maze, voices crying out in confusion as to what was next. It was a far cry from the sixty witches who had begun the trials.
A woman with a sour face strode through the opening behind them and barked, “Pair up.”
Seren and Lilith stepped closer to each other, their shoulders touching. The other women around them shuffled to do the same, each finding a partner.
“Calami has only twenty spots, and it appears we have twenty-two women who have made it here.” The woman smiled, but it didn’t reach her muddy brown eyes. “So, you will duel your chosen partner to earn your place. First two to fall will hang their heads in defeat and leave.”
A witch with more freckles than bare skin raised her hand, her voice trembling. “What are the rules?”
“Rules?” The woman laughed as the other professors appeared behind her. “There are no rules.”
Seren turned to face Lilith and squared her shoulders. She was tired and her connection to her magic felt weak as well, but she would make it into Calami or die trying. “I will not go easy on you, and I expect the same.”
Lilith grinned as she stretched out her arm and pricked her hand again on a thorn. “It seems push has come to shove.”
Seren was unsteady on her feet, and it was through sheer force of will and extreme stubbornness that she still stood. Her untrained magic burst from her, renewed by her need to win. It came so close to the other witch’s face that it singed a lock of her hair.
