I stepped in through the giant arched doors and looked up.
High above the arena, carved with old runes and flanked by torches, a stone dais jutted from the mountain’s wall. The House sponsors sat in a half-moon formation, seven figures robed in deep silver and black, each bearing the crest of their House. Their faces were impassive and cold, like judges. All except Cassian, who gave me a hopeful half-smile.
Magistrate Corvessa stood at the center. Her presence commanded the platform, red dress rippling in the wind like blood over stone.
There were no cheers, no chants, just silent scrutiny.
The noise from the chatty initiates and their wolfkin simmered to a hush as Magistrate Corvessa stepped to the edge of the dais. She lifted the amplifier to her lips, gaze sweeping the contestants one by one. When her eyes landed on me, her smile sharpened like a blade.
“You have each passed the Hall of Binding. Some of you have bonded with strength. Others… with desperation.”
Her gaze flicked to Kaelric at my side and then back to me.
“Your first trial begins now.”
A ripple of anticipation stirred through the initiates.
“You will enter a realm bound by ancient spell work, crafted by the founders of the Arcane Trials. For the next twenty-four hours, you will know nothing but the darkness.”
Whispers broke out around me. A few contestants shifted uncomfortably.
Corvessa raised a hand, and the murmurs died instantly.
“This is not a simple absence of light. This darkness isalive. It distorts sound. It whispers, tempts, and devours.”
The silence now was absolute.
“Only those with magic will see through the veil of darkness, and not truly. For the rest of you…” Her gaze cut into me like frost. “You will stumble forward in the blackness. Only able to trust your instincts, or your wolf, or your fear. But you must reach the exit or perish.”
I gasped, my gaze snapping to Cassian, where hestood on the dais beside the others, looking down with a guilty expression. That’s what he was trying to warn us about. A magical blackness that only affected the magicless. It only affectedme.
Below the dais, a gate creaked open at the base of the arena wall, revealing a sloping tunnel carved deep into the mountainside. A heavy pulse of magic rolled out, cold and unsettling. It smelled like damp stone and the things of nightmares.
“You will be taken in one at a time. Alone.” Corvessa’s voice echoed from above, almost gleeful. “Let the first trial… begin!”
They said the mountains only gave up a new form of magic once every five years. Just one. As if the land itself had to bleed to produce it. That’s why these trials existed, why they were so brutal. Because only the strongest, the most cunning, the most worthy, deserved to take that magic and pass it down through their bloodline.
I wasn’t sure I was worthy of that.
The stone beneath my boots rumbled.
I stood in a holding cell carved into the side of the mountain. Most of the others had already been takeninto the dark tunnel. One by one, names had been called. Footsteps faded. And then… silence.
Now it was just me and Kaelric.
My fingers tightened on Valkaryn’s hilt. She didn’t speak, but the blade vibrated gently, sensing the shift in the air. Kaelric was silent beside me, still and watchful. Suddenly, he turned to me, grasping my shoulders so that I was forced to look up at him. His eyes were blazing yellow.
“I would never hurt you,” he declared.
Confusion washed over me. “Okay…”
That was random.
“The things I’ve said about biting off your fingers if you didn’t let go of my jaw, or not allowing me to eat and seeing what my wolf would do… I was messing with you. I would never hurt you.Wewould never hurt you. You can trust me. I need you to know that.”
I shifted uncomfortably on the balls of my feet, wanting so badly to believe him. But my old broken arm thought better. I rubbed the spot as if thinking of the moment that his wolf had clamped down on my bone in the Binding Hall.
Pain flashed across his face as if he knew what I was thinking about.
