The pain in his voice floods me with hot, heavy, guilt. Ryker, who has given so much to those around him in the name of duty. Who claimed one small bit of happiness for himself in our love, only to watch me toss it away.
I should say yes. I should give him this one last gift.
“Make your decision,” the Sibyls intone, “Champion.”
It would be a quiet life of peace and solitude. I would help others, form a sanctuary for those touched by this horrible curse. But then what? I would grow old and frail, and more women would fall in the name of prejudice and judgment.
“I refuse your offer, kind as it is,” I say, straightening as Ryker watches, his blue eyes soft with disappointment. “I am called to answer to a different destiny.”
As disbelief ripples through the people around us, the Sphere above the Sibyls’ heads flares and dissolves into thin air. Before I can make any sense of it, the world shifts beneath me… and vanishes completely.
Iam wrenched into my new surroundings as if shoved through the narrow slat of an hourglass neck—compressed, reshaped, then flung into open air. My stomach flips, my skin tightens, and a gasp claws its way free as I thrust my arm forward, seeking balance. Sensation slams into me all at once, but I still find it difficult to open my eyes.
Calista’s magic, sinuous and invasive, coils through my insides like a great worm. Nestled within its folds, there’s also that airy, delicate bubble. It’s foreign and fragile, as if the wrong breath might burst it and send whatever cottony sweetness contained inside spilling through me.
And then there’s something else.
A presence pressing against my mind, grabbing for space. My own head feels too small, too crowded.
I squeeze my eyes shut and swallow against the loud rasp of my own breath. What is happening? How can my single body contain so many different things, things that don’t belong.
“Pull yourself together,” a voice says, one I know and currently hate.
My eyes snap open, and I whirl around. Gray stone walls rise in every direction, ivy clinging to the cracks, small green flowers creeping through like nature’s defiant invasion. Paths snake away left, right, two more ahead. A maze. But behind me? Nothing. No one.
Am I hallucinating?
“No, you’re not,” Kaelzar growls, his voice sliding throughmy skull, thick with contempt. “The Sphere has released its magic. Our minds are tethered. This Trial decides whether you’re worthy of your Godbeast. Worthy of me.” A pause. Then, scathing, “Though I think we both know the answer to that.”
Worthy? Bloodied and humiliated, I feel worthy of nothing.
But who is he to remind me? Anger licks up my spine, hot and quick, curling tight like a whip ready to strike.
Coil and settle. Controlled and contained.
I exhale sharply. “You’re my Godbeast. Worthy or not, you’re bound to me now. So get out of my head so I can think.”
“I’d love to, but that’s not how this works,” he says, his disgust so tangible I can almost taste it. “You have to find me before it kills me.”
Kills him?
“If I die, you fail,” he continues, voice like ice. “No Godbeast, no Champion. No second chances.”
A cold pit opens inside me. This is not just a race through a maze, it’s a battle against time. Against the other Champions. If I don’t find him first, if something else gets to him then I am unworthy.
He speaks as if he’s already written off my chances. The thought makes me want to punch him in the throat, just to cut off his insufferable voice.
“You could try,” he murmurs, amused.
I hadn’t spoken aloud. The realization slams into me. “You can hear everything in my head?”
“Unfortunately.”
And it goes both ways. His voice, clipped, unwilling, those must be the thoughts slipping past his guard. The ones he doesn’t mean to share.
My mind is a battlefield of chaos and locked doors, and now it’s open, exposed, to him.
I force myself to focus. I have a goal. Find my Godbeast. Nothing else. “Tell me what you see,” I snap.
