No one had offered him a drying cloth.
He coughed again, then looked around in utter confusion, all animosity washed from his expression by the shock of survival. He was trying to say something, but the words seemed stuck.
Pryce spit out more water. Then more. He cleared his throat. Then he said something, the syllables cracked and broken. Disjointed.
“What was that?” the Bluehelm demanded, lifting the hem of her robe out of a puddle as she stepped carefully closer.
“I said, you can breathe it!” Pryce shouted. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. “You can breathe the star-cursed water!”
Silence descended across the arena.
“He’s delirious,” a professor said softly at my back. “Mad from the experience of near death.”
“No, he’s right,” Raelah said. “And it’s thedamnedestthing. I ran out of air, and I couldn’t find the center of the arena, and I thought I was going to die. I held my breath as long as I could, but then…my mouth opened. I couldn’t help it. And water…I was choking on it. Sucking it into my lungs as if it were air, because that’s what lungs do, whether you want them to or not, and—” She blinked, staring at the glass beneath her feet. “I didn’t die. I was breathing the water. It was thick, and it was hard to push in and out, but itworked.”
“You can breathe it…” Pryce repeated, his eyes wide, hair plastered to his skull and trailing down his cheeks.
And finally, as we all stared at one another, and at the hole, and at the glass surface in wonder and astonishment, but mostly in confusion, the Bluehelm stepped down from her place in the stands and cleared her throat.
“I don’t yet understand how it happened, but today, for the first time in the history of the White Trial in its current incarnation,allof the participants have survived!”
“Number eight was Pryce,” Keryth said, clearly unaware that I was sitting at the Refectory table behind her, shielded from view by a large potted fern. “That’s really all there is to it.”
“But he cheated,” Lennox insisted softly, punctuated by the sound of him sipping from his teacup. “We all know who made that torch, and she wouldneverhave given it to him. Amber Fallbrook wouldn’t spit in the mouth of a man dying of thirst, especially if that meantshewould die of thirst, and if that man were Pryce Wishart, she would pour his mouth full of sand instead.”
I scowled into my own tea. I wouldnotlet a man die of thirst, if I could possibly help him. Though Ididwish upon Pryce Wishart the biggest metaphorical mouthful of sand one could imagine.
“To rebut, I have two points,” Keryth said. “First, Amber saved Yoslyn during the Black Trial—”
“She had areasonfor doing that,” Lennox insisted. “She needs Yos for something related to her research, or she wanted to show off the fact that her elixir, while slow to produce, was by far the most effective.”
A sick feeling churned in my stomach. Had I shownnokind sentiment to my classmates before I’d lost my memory?
“Andsecond…” Keryth continued, her tone combative in a way it often was to defend her opinions in class. “There were no rules for the White Trial, so it is not possible for Pryce to have broken any.”
“But he wentbackinto the water after he came out, and—”
“He didn’tgoin,” Keryth snapped. “Wilder stole his breathing mask andshovedhim in.”
“Which is not breaking any rules, according to your own logic,” Lennox concluded, somewhat smugly. “Andmypoint is that Pryce was still in the water when Amber came out, making her the eighth victor.”
“The seventh,” Keryth said. “According toyourlogic, Wilder would have been eighth, since he reemerged after her. And I’m not sure eventhatis accurate, because Amber did not emerge from her own efforts. Not exclusively.”
“Neither did Pryce,” Lennox insisted. “He used Amber’s torch.”
“Well then, I suppose your point stands,” Keryth conceded, and I grinned into my porridge. “Ultimately, Pryce was tenth out of the water, after Raelah, and whether or not we take into consideration that he stole Amber’s torch, both making use of her efforts and robbing her of them, as tenth, he should be eliminated from the competition.”
“Indeed.” Lennox sounded very pleased with himself. “And yet, a week has passed with no announcement.”
A great frustration to the entire Mastery cohort.
“That’s not about the victors,” Keryth whispered, lowering her voice until I could hardly hear it above my own slow chewing. “It’s about the breathable water. Cressa says the Bluehelm has put great pressure on the staff and faculty to figure out how that was accomplished and who did it. They expected one of us to take credit, but obviously no one has.”
“I truly thought Pryce would,” Lennox mumbled.
I snorted, then froze, afraid I’d been overheard until Keryth replied.
“There is no way Pryce Wishart is capable of—”
