Devin scans us, attention settling on Lyra, Aelia and me for a moment before he dips his head and says, “Your trial begins…” He slips off the way he came. Once he’s out of view, he says, “Now.”
We all rush to the exit. But as we turn the corner out of the circle, we are only met with empty paths. He’s gone.
“Right and left turn. Which means, to get back to that door, we’d need to take a left and then a right,” I call out to those in front of us.
We all take a left and walk down the path. Confusion races through us as everyone stops when we turn the corner to the right. I nearly collide with the woman in front of me. As one of the taller women, I lift my chin to look over the crowd.
The pathway before us slips down into a body of water.
“How is that possible?” Willow murmurs at the front of the group. “We just walked through here?” She looks over her shoulder at me, and all heads snap back to follow her attention. “Are you sure it was supposed to be a right?”
A heavy, repeating echo of displaced air rises in the distance as I open my mouth to respond. A roar follows it, and the sound gets louder.
Lyra gasps, and Aelia and I turn to look at her. Her pale skin is ashen, eyes wide as she takes a shaky step back from us. “Run!” she screams and bolts down the opposite direction from where we came.
Aelia and I race after her as a massive red figure appears in the distance and glides over the maze toward us.
A fire dragon.
It opens its jaws, screeching again as it surveys the maze below it. Then it dives down closer, locking in on our group. All of the women burst into screams and are hot on our trail, with Lyra now at the lead. We pass the center circle we were left in, and Lyra stops at a fork in the path.
“Pick a direction and go!” I scream.
“Go right!” Aelia yells beside me.
Lyra skirts right, and we swallow up the distance between us, a few paces behind her. She’s not fast. We get to a dead end, and someone slams into the back of me. I catch myself on staggered feet and whip around.
All of us are crowded into the small dead-end square. Some of the women begin to push and shove, hard enough that some fall and others trample around them.
It is utter chaos.
Lyra winces, curling in on herself and clenching a fist to her head.
I rest a hand on her back and whisper, “What, what is it?”
“We’re sitting ducks here!” Willow barely whispers over the crowd, then begins to squeeze and elbow her way to the front. “We can’t stay here!”
Panicked, all the other women follow after her in an unorganized stampede. Shoulders and elbows jostle us as I try to hang on to Lyra. “We have to move, Lyra,” I grunt.
Aelia asks from the other side of her, “What’s wrong with her?”
I grab Lyra’s arm, trying to pull her forward. When she doesn’t move, I grab her chin and tip her face to me. Her eyes are completely white.
She’s Seering.
Shit.There’s no telling how long she’ll be in it for, and we can’t let any of the women notice her. I glance up and meet Aelia’s gaze.
“Go ahead, we’ll catch up.” I jerk my chin toward the exit.
She shakes her head. “I’m not leaving her, she’s my friend.”
I link my arm into Lyra’s with a grunt. “Fine, then. I’m not fighting you. Grab her other arm and let’s move.”
Aelia follows my instructions, and we’re the last ones to leave the dead end. The other women are nowhere in sight. All that surrounds us is the beating of distant wings. That, and three separate paths to take.
“We have to take a right!” Aelia blurts.
I look at her over Lyra’s hunched form. “How do you know?”
