Whatever Kaelzar sees in my expression is enough to make him pull back, his earlier frustration fading. He gives me a cool once-over, shakes his head, and orders me to rot a flower instead.
Over the next several hours, we both discover that I cannot rot a flower.
I can’t even summon my magic, which Kaelzar declares is self-sabotage and entirely my fault.
We stay until the sun dips behind the trees, and my stomach growls louder than the wolves in the depths of the forest. Only then does he finally relent, allowing us to head back.
For the next two weeks, morning to night, we’re out there in thesame meadow. Kaelzar coaxes, commands, intimidates, and comes just short of begging me to use my magic. But it is erratic, and every time I feel it stir, surging toward the surface, I sense its chaotic current, threatening to spill out of me in uneven bursts I know I would not be able to control, let alone direct at will.
I grit my teeth and tense my shoulders, trying to gather it into something coherent, something I could measure and guide. Instead, nothing happens at all and the magic retreats.
Kaelzar brings food so we don’t have to return to the Palace except to sleep. Not that I’m eager to go back. The stone guards follow me through the Palace, letting me out of sight only in my rooms or when I cross into the forest.
I stopped trying to see Ryker after my third attempt when the guards turned me away from the royal wing without explanation, restricting me to my chambers and the narrow hallways I needed to pass through to come and go. I haven’t tried since.
Wouldn’t, even if given the chance.
Maybe Ryker didn’t know everything. Maybe Mael didn’t tell him the whole truth. But Ryker’s refusal to ask, his choice not to look deeper, sits inside me like a thorned vine lodged in my throat. It tears at me every time I swallow. Refuses to go down.
And while I’ve gotten good at avoiding everyone at court—leaving before dawn, slipping back in long after nightfall—tonight, I won’t have that luxury.
Tonight is the Spectra Judicium. The event Kaelzar won’t stop grumbling about. Where, he insists, we’re both doomed because I still haven’t shown the ambition to survive.
After another endless set of hours, I fail to summon and control my Decay magic, and Kaelzar’s patience finally snaps.
“You have a choice,” he barks. “Embrace what you are. Or lose.” The wind shifts, carrying the scent of wildflowers, of life. And I wonder, will it really come down to choosing between unleashing my deadly magic… or letting myself perish?
I lift my chin. “What do you care if I lose?” I snap back. “You’ll probably just go back to wherever you were and forget any of this everhappened.”
Kaelzar stills. For the span of a breath his every muscle draws tight. His fists curl, his jaw locks, and his shoulders go rigid.
And then it shifts. A flicker in his expression, small, but unmistakable.
Fear.
It flashes through him like a crack of light, gone almost as soon as it appears. But I catch it. And he sees that I do. His searing gaze lifts and for a moment, it’s not armor he wears, but fury at being seen without it.
“No.” The word is a hiss, venomous and final. His shoulders draw back, his form rigid once more, but the afterimage lingers in my mind, the truth behind the mask. “I won’t let you lose.”
He takes a step toward me, and I flinch. His face twists, something savage and terrifying flashing across it. “I will make you win. Even if you’re bleeding out on the ground, tangled in your own entrails. I’ll drag you across that finish line if I have to. You don’t get to lose, not while I’m still breathing.”
The sheer venom in his voice leaves my mind reeling.
It’s as if winning this Trial means everything to him— more than my life, more than his own. My pulse stutters. The raw force in his voice stirs a memory of the mental connection we shared during the first challenge, when every feeling of his became a tremor beneath my skin.
Fragments of our mental connection flood back. His guilt, his desperate hope for salvation, the crushing despair when it was ripped away. And beneath it all, hatred.
So much hatred it nearly drowned me.
But one memory surges forward, blurred but vivid: a gentle hand cupping his cheek, words spilling through his mind.“When evil seeks to break you, remember this?—”
I didn’t hear the rest, but I know what those words meant to him. Everything. Just like this Trial. Is he so desperate to win because ofher? Because he promised her something that he can’t let go of?
A spark of rage flares through me. I have people depending on me,too. I also know winning is my only option. Yet I don’t treat him like a tool or threaten to drag him to victory wrapped in his own entrails. Who does he think he is, to speak to me that way?
I glare at him. “You know, now that I think about it, I remember feeling your desperation to go home. And I remember you saying that when this is over, when I’ve won, you’ll finally be free of me. A burden, you called me, wasn’t it?”
His lips twitch, as if it takes everything in him not to respond. I see it, but I keep going, unable to stop.
