Chapter Twenty Eight
Gideon led them into another room that looked empty at first glance.
A simple square, floors and walls paneled and lined with rune circuitry glowing a faint blue.
He turned to a panel on the wall beside the door and engaged a series of glyphs.
The lines on the floor flared brighter and panels in the floor and walls, and even the ceiling, slid aside to reveal an obstacle course—platforms of varying heights, narrow beams, swinging pendulums, and what looked like a maze of hanging ropes.
“Trust exercises,” he said, his tone implying this wasn’t a suggestion. “You’ll work in pairs, one person navigating blindfolded while their partner guides them through verbal commands only.”
Cassara felt her stomach clench. After everything that had just happened, the last thing she wanted was to depend on someone else’s guidance while she stumbled around blind.
“This is ridiculous,” Verena grumbled, but there was less venom in it than usual.
“Verena, you’re with Barrett,” Gideon continued, pulling black cloth strips from a storage compartment. “Oliver, Liri. Cassara, you’re with me.”
He handed out the blindfolds, ignoring the various expressions of reluctance around the circle.
“Barrett, Verena—you’re first.”
Verena approached the starting line with her usual aggressive confidence, but Cassara caught the slight tension in her shoulders as Barrett moved to tie the blindfold around her eyes. His hands were gentle—the same way he might handle an injured creature.
“Can you see anything?” Barrett asked.
“Nothing.”
“Okay. Take three steps forward, then there’s a platform about knee-high.”
Verena moved without hesitation, but the moment her foot found the platform, uncertainty crept into her posture. The Verena who commanded every room she entered was suddenly just a girl trying not to fall.
Barrett’s directions were methodical, patient. “Left two steps. There’s a beam—narrow, but stable. I’ve got eyes on you.”
For a few minutes, it seemed to work. Verena navigated the first few obstacles with growing confidence, Barrett’s steady voice guiding her through each challenge.
Then she reached a gap between platforms that required a careful jump.
“About two feet,” Barrett said. “You can make it easily. Just go slow and be careful.”
Verena gathered herself and leapt—but misjudged the distance, landing hard and stumbling as her ankle twisted.
“Damn it!” She ripped off the blindfold, whirling on Barrett with familiar fire in her eyes. “You said two feet!”
“I said about two feet,” Barrett replied, maddeningly calm. “You jumped too far.”
“I jumped where you told me to jump!”
“I also told you to be careful. You weren’t listening to the whole instruction.”
Verena’s face flushed, and for a moment Cassara thought she might hit him. Instead, she just stood there, breathing hard, before finally stalking away.
“Oliver, Liri,” Gideon said into the tense silence. “Your turn.”
Liri accepted the blindfold from Oliver with a small, encouraging smile. “I trust you,” she said simply.
Oliver’s cheeks reddened. “I’ll… try to be more precise than Barrett.”
And he was. Painfully, overwhelmingly precise.
“Left four and three-quarter inches,” he called out as Liri felt her way forward. “Duck seventeen degrees from vertical—no, wait, horizontal reference point—”
“Oliver,” Liri said, halfway through an awkward crouch. “What does seventeen degrees mean in actual movement?”
“It means… um…” Oliver’s voice cracked slightly. “Duck? A lot?”
Liri tried to adjust, but the pendulum caught her shoulder anyway, sending her spinning sideways into a foam barrier. She went down hard, Nym immediately materializing to flutter anxiously around her head.
“I’m sorry,” Oliver said, staring at her with something approaching horror. “The angular calculation was imprecise, and I didn’t account for reaction time variables, and—”
“Oliver.” Liri pushed herself up, brushing foam particles from her hair. “It’s fine. Really.”
But it wasn’t fine, and they all knew it.
“Cassara.” Gideon stepped forward with the blindfold.
She stared at the black cloth like it might bite her. Around the room, four pairs of eyes watched her with varying degrees of expectation and skepticism.
“I don’t need to prove anything to them,” she said quietly.
“No,” Gideon agreed. “You need to prove it to yourself.”
Cassara took the blindfold and tied it around her eyes, the world disappearing into soft darkness. Immediately, her other senses sharpened—the sound of breathing, the scent of charred ozone that meant Gideon’s griffin Vangal was near.
“Three steps forward,” Gideon’s voice came from beside her, low and steady. “Platform, knee-high.”
She moved carefully, finding solid wood exactly where he’d said it would be.
“Good. Left about four feet. There’s a beam. It’s narrow, but you can handle it.”
His confidence in her was unexpected and steadying. Cassara stepped onto the beam, arms out for balance, and found her footing.
For several obstacles, it worked. Gideon’s directions were clear without being overwhelming, and his voice held an assuredness that made it easier to trust. She navigated platforms, ducked under pendulums, even managed the gap that had tripped up Verena.
Then she reached the final challenge—a narrow ledge that required edging along a wall while avoiding hanging ropes.
“Careful,” Gideon said. “Rope about six inches from your face.”
Cassara felt forward, found nothing, and took another step.
“Stop.” His voice was sharper now. “The rope—”
“I don’t feel any rope,” she said, irritation creeping in.
“Trust me. It’s there.”
But doubt crept in with his words. Trust me.
She'd learned young that trust was a weapon people used when they wanted something.
Her father wielded it to secure alliances.
Julian had tried to trap her with it. Even here, at Vallemont, everyone angled for advantage, assessed value, measured what you could offer against what they might gain.
She took another step.
The rope caught her across the throat, and she stumbled backward, foot slipping off the ledge. Strong hands caught her before she could fall.
Cassara ripped off the blindfold to find herself staring up into Gideon’s dark eyes, his arms steady around her waist.
“You didn’t trust me,” he said quietly.
“No,” she admitted. “I didn’t.”
The silence that followed was heavy with disappointment—not just from Gideon, but from herself.
“Right,” Gideon said, helping her straighten. “Again. All of you.”
“Again?” Verena’s voice cracked slightly.
“You think real combat gives you one chance to get it right?” Gideon’s expression was unforgiving. “Again. Barrett, Verena—different approach this time.”
The second attempt went better. Not perfect, but better.
Barrett learned to give Verena time to process his instructions, to read the tension in her shoulders that meant she was overthinking. Verena learned to listen to the whole instruction instead of just the first part, to trust that Barrett wouldn’t let her fall.
Oliver discovered that Liri responded better to simple, clear directions than technical precision. “Big duck” worked better than angular measurements. “Careful jump” was more useful than distance calculations.
And Cassara…
Cassara learned that Gideon’s voice stayed steady even when hers wavered, that his hands were there to catch her even when she didn’t trust his words.
By the third run, something had shifted.
“Left,” Barrett said as Verena felt her way along a beam. “Trust me.”
And she did.
“Duck now,” Oliver called to Liri, and she dropped without hesitation, the pendulum swinging harmlessly overhead.
“The rope is there,” Gideon told Cassara at the final obstacle. “Six inches out. Duck under it.”
This time, she believed him.
When they finished the fourth run—clean, synchronized, successful—the silence in the training hall was different. Not heavy with frustration, but light with possibility.
“Better,” Gideon said, approval in his voice.
Verena was breathing hard, but her shoulders had lost some of their rigid tension. Oliver was actually smiling, a small, proud expression that transformed his usually serious face. Liri beamed at everyone, her Sparkfly Moth’s glow steady and warm.
And Cassara…
Cassara felt something she hadn’t experienced in weeks. Not confidence, exactly, but its foundation. The sense that maybe, just maybe, they could figure this out.
“Same time tomorrow,” Gideon said, already moving toward the exit. “And remember—two days until the arena.”
As the others began to gather their things, Cassara found herself standing next to Verena. Neither of them spoke, but the earlier hostility had dimmed to something more manageable.
Cassara found refuge in the east wing library—a narrow, tall-ceilinged hall stacked with ancient tomes and still-ticking rune compasses.
The scent of parchment and crystal dust calmed her nerves more than it should’ve.
It was one of the few places Julian never came.
Too quiet, too studious, too beneath him.
The silence settled around her as she spread her notes across a corner table, magelight casting a soft glow over pages of careful observations.
Tomorrow’s arena exhibition loomed like a storm on the horizon. Cassara had spent the evening cataloging everything she could remember about their potential opponents—team compositions, individual strengths, the little behavioral tells that might reveal tactical preferences.
Her own team’s pages lay open beside the others, filled with brutally honest assessments she never intended anyone else to see.
Oliver’s technical brilliance balanced against his tendency to overthink.
Liri’s unexpected combat instincts undermined by her reluctance to take aggressive action.
Barrett’s protective nature that could be both asset and liability depending on positioning.
And Gideon…