Chapter 24 #2
The chatelaine gestured to the ten pairs of puzzle stations arranged around the arena’s perimeter.
“Each team has been assigned a puzzle station. You will work in pairs to solve the puzzle before you. You have been paired with another team whose station contains a similar puzzle. The team that completes its assigned puzzle first will advance to Round Two. The slower team will be eliminated.”
A collective intake of breath moved through the amphitheater.
“If neither team successfully completes their puzzle before time runs out,” Chatelaine Lirelle continued, “both teams will be eliminated. You have ten minutes. When the bell sounds, begin. When the bell sounds again, stop. Any team still working on its puzzle after the second bell will be disqualified.”
She paused, her gaze moving across the forty mage students standing on the sand. “Is that clear?”
A chorus of voices answered in unison: “Yes, Chatelaine.”
I watched Mira and Juno, my heart hammering against my ribs hard enough to bruise.
They were directed to Station One, where a massive, tangled knot of dormant woody stems hung suspended in mid-air beneath a shimmering dome of wards.
I nearly wept with relief. It was a Wood magic puzzle. Mama had trained all of her daughters in the healing arts, and healing spells and charms relied heavily on Wood magic. The twins had been working Wood spells since their powers awakened two years ago.
Then I saw who had been paired against them.
Two first-year aristocrats—a boy and a girl I didn’t recognize, both wearing academic gowns embroidered with the crests of noble houses.
The boy was tall and lanky, with the entitled slouch of someone who had never been told no.
The girl had honey-blonde hair pulled into an elaborate braided hairstyle and an expression of bored contempt that suggested she found competing against a pair of commoner first-years beneath her dignity.
They glanced at Mira and Juno once, exchanged a smirk, and turned away to study their vine puzzle with the air of people who expected to win with little effort.
Their opponents were pretending to be bored. The male half of the team was glancing around the tiers of spectators with his arms crossed. The female half seemed intent on examining her nails.
Then the starting bell rang, and the floating clock started counting down.
The amphitheater exploded with noise as the audience cheered and shouted encouragement.
Twenty different spells being worked simultaneously sounded like twenty different instruments being played at once by musicians who had never met—discordant, overwhelming, and somehow thrilling.
The air inside the domes shimmered with the collective discharge of elemental energy, and the scents of ozone and growing things and burning metal filled my nostrils.
I couldn’t look away from Station One.
Mira and Juno conferred briefly, then began casting their spell, their hands moving in perfect synchronization. I watched the familiar green glow of Wood magic gather around their fingertips as the tangled mass of vines hanging suspended above them shuddered.
One by one, the gnarled stems unwound. It was slow work.
Wood spells always took time. Wisely, the twins weren’t trying to force the vines apart through brute magical strength.
They were coaxing them, the way Mama had taught us to coax delicate seedlings in our apothecary garden.
Wood spells required you to be patient and persistent, and to let the object of the spell do the work rather than forcing it to comply with a magical demand.
Across from the twins, their aristocratic opponents had adopted a very different approach.
The boy was channeling what looked like Water magic directly into the vines, and his technique seemed to be all force and no finesse.
The girl had resorted to what appeared to be a series of powerful Air spells, presumably trying to blow the tangled mass apart.
Neither approach was working. The vines remained stubbornly knotted, responding to the aristocrats’ magical assault with resentful immobility.
“Five minutes remaining,” announced a magically amplified voice, marking the halfway point of the challenge.
My hands twisted the coarse wool of my academic gown into tight spirals. My jaw ached from clenching it. Each time the twins’ puzzle emitted a loud creak or their opponents’ station flashed with misdirected magic, I flinched.
Elio’s arm settled around my shoulders with reassuring weight. “They’re doing beautifully,” he murmured. “They’ll have it solved before the final bell.”
He was right. What had been a chaotic mass of interlocked vines was gradually resolving into a symmetrical spiral of ascending vines, each one crowned with a cluster of dormant flower buds, just like the one Mundise had shown us in practice.
Once Mira and Juno finished untangling the last knot of green stems, those buds would burst into bloom to signal the successful completion of the puzzle.
Four minutes remaining.
The aristocratic team had abandoned any pretense of coordination. The boy was shouting orders at the girl, who was ignoring him in favor of working what looked like a complicated Air spell. Above them, the mass of vines was still a tangled ball with no visible pattern.
I allowed myself to hope.
Then the alarms blared from each station, piercing, whistling shrieks that drove into my ears like needles. Crimson light erupted from the base of Mira and Juno’s spiraling vines, flashing in staccato bursts that painted the sand and the twins’ faces in alternating washes of red.
Despite being warned about false alarms, Juno flinched. Her hands dropped, the flow of Wood magic stuttering. Mira kept channeling, her jaw set, her eyes fixed on the vines, but their synchronized rhythm of spellwork was broken.
The vines shuddered.
Not the gentle, cooperative shudder of growth, but something violent and wrong.
The entire mass lurched downward as though the magic suspending it had been briefly disrupted.
I heard sharp cracks as the vines unwound from their neat spirals and tangled together once more.
The flower buds, halfway to blooming, shivered and turned brown at the edges.
“Juno!” I heard Mira shout, her voice thin with strain. “The center—hold the center—”
Juno recovered her composure. Her hands came up again, green magic flaring around her fingers as she fought to regain her harmony with Mira’s spell and stabilize the puzzle.
But the alarm was still blaring, the crimson light still flashing, and the aristocratic team had stopped working entirely to watch Mira and Juno’s struggle with expressions of barely concealed delight.
Two minutes remaining.
The vines lurched again. This time, the entire mass dropped a full foot toward the sand, the suspension magic clearly failing. Several of the outer stems whipped free of the central tangle and lashed outward like angry tentacles, missing Mira’s face by inches.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no—”
I was on my feet without realizing I’d stood. Elio’s hand caught my wrist. “Have faith in them,” he urged fiercely. “They can do it.”
He was right. I knew he was right. But knowing didn’t make it easier to watch as the twins’ spells continued out of sync. The vine puzzle threatened to collapse entirely.
Down on the arena floor, my sisters had abandoned any attempt at finesse.
They were channeling Wood magic with all their might, faces twisted and bodies rigid with the effort of trying to halt the undoing of the progress they’d made so far.
But even at a distance, I saw that their magic clashing rather than working in smooth partnership.
Then the vine mass lurched and dropped towards the area’s sand floor.