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“Playing the game,” I inform her.

My sponsors snarl and turn their attention to the competition. As I predicted, they run ahead to cut me off.

Even if they aren’t in full control of themselves, their instincts will make them want to be sure no one else can have me.

Godric’s bones snap as he shifts into wolf form. His beast looks just as I remember it, except his eyes are a strange red and smoke wisps around his guard hairs.

He dives onto one of the creatures before it has a chance to even look at me. He tears into its throat, and dark blood bursts across the ground.

Well, that proves one theory.

“The wolves are used to fighting these things,” I surmise as I head toward another shadowlike beast.

When I first met Godric on the slave ship, he claimed that the hybrids only existed because of the protection of the wolves.

Now, I think I’ve finally learned what the hybrids need protection from.

Well, some of them, anyway.

Ze’ev notches an arrow and it goes flying, bursting into dark magic as it lodges into the eye socket of the creature right when it turns toward me.

Arwan streaks his dark hand across the sky, cutting off a wave of fire arrows I hadn’t even seen coming. They splinter in thin air, and I realize there’s some sort of turret or device launching them from the castle.

At least Ze’ev didn’t kill that other candidate, I think as I turn and run, taking advantage of the gap between monsters while my sponsors are distracted. His arrows aren’t the ones on fire.

“Where are we going?” Sofia asks between deep breaths.

My lungs aren’t built for this, and no matter how much training I’ve endured underneath the tutelage of all my mentors, I can’t fight pure biology.

My left arm goes completely numb as Arwan’s power gifts me the strength to keep going. But based on the amount of magic he’s expending right now, I know it won’t carry me for long.

“Toward that sound,” I tell her as I isolate the deep hum that is thrumming across the island.

The castle isn’t what’s going to set us all free.

It’s that damned tower, just like Ze’ev was trying to tell me.

It’s always been my destiny.

It’s a nightmare I’ve had since childhood. It’s a place that has haunted Arwan all his life.

And now, it’s going to be where all of this comes to an end.

My breath knocks out of me as something slams into me from behind. Blinding pain streaks through my vision as a claw slices down my back.

I draw in a ragged breath. The air in my lungs gurgles with blood.

Shit.

“Liliana!” Sofia cries. Darkness shrouds over her before something flashes protectively between her and the beast that has attacked me.

Renalt.

A strange sense of envy and betrayal wraps around my heart as I watch him pierce the creature with a silver blade. It shrieks before it disintegrates.

Which reminds me, I can fight these things, too.

I still have Arwan’s golden whip.