Chapter 25
Talisa
I strained against Elio’s hold on my wrist, my body leaning forward as if I could catch the tangle of woody stems through sheer force of will as the vine mass dropped toward the amphitheater’s sandy floor.
If it touched the ground, Mira and Juno would automatically lose their round.
“Up,” I shouted. “Raise it back up!”
Below me, Mira didn’t flinch. She didn’t step back. She planted her feet wider and thrust her hands higher, the green magic flaring around her fingers so brightly I could see it from where I stood. Juno recovered a heartbeat later. Her hands came up, palms out, and Wood magic surged from her.
They were shouting instructions to each other over the shrieking alarm, their voices swallowed by the crowd’s roar, but I could read the shape of their argument from the way their bodies moved—Mira saying up, Juno saying steady, both of them refusing to concede.
Around the arena’s perimeter, chaos reigned.
Then the completion chime sounded and a golden sunburst appeared over Station Two. An amplified voice announced, “Lord Lukhan FitzMurad and Mr. Damien Corvellan. Challenge completed in eight minutes and five seconds. They advance to the next round.”
The glowing blue dome vanished over their station.
I saw both young men grinning at each other with unabashed joy.
Lukhan looked even more beautiful than usual without his usual sullen expression and cruel smirk.
And Damien’s smile and sparkling eyes made my breath catch.
I was so used to seeing him with a serious expression.
At Station Seven, a third-year team was drenched by the sudden overflow of a Water puzzle.
At Station Twelve, the Air runes had escaped their matrix and were whirling through the air like panicked birds, trailing blue-white sparks as they battered against the wards.
The chime sounded again and the golden sunburst appeared over Station Nineteen. “Lady Zoriah and Lord Darien de Divona. Challenged completed in eight minutes and fifteen seconds. They advance to the next round.”
Most of the first-year teams were in bad shape. A pair of commoner boys at Station Nine stood frozen before their Air puzzle, hands raised in identical gestures of helpless confusion while the floating runes above them rotated faster and faster, emitting a rising whine that made my teeth ache.
The aristocratic opponents who’d been assigned against Mira and Juno had abandoned any attempt to solve their vine puzzle. They stood watching the twins struggle with expressions of naked glee, shaking with derisive laughter.
I wanted to throw them both off the amphitheater’s highest tier.
Then something changed.
The air between Mira and Juno shimmered, and the two separate streams of green-tinged Wood magic that had been flowing from their hands twined like two ribbons of silk braiding themselves into a single cord.
A pulsing, unified flow of Wood magic hung in the air between them like a rope of living green light.
“Divine Mother,” Elio breathed beside me. “Did you see that?”
I couldn’t answer. My entire being was focused on my two sisters.
Down on the arena floor, the twins’ merged stream of magic wrapped itself around the falling vine mass and raised it without the desperate, straining effort that had characterized their earlier attempts.
Now, the flow of their combined spells was smooth as it lifted the mass of writhing stalks and tendrils in the same smooth way Papa lifted a wounded patient.
Once the vine ball reached its previous height, it hung suspended in midair for several heartbeats. Then it slowly unfurled once more.
Each vine unwound itself from its neighbors, and together, they arranged themselves in a spiral lattice, ascending from the center in perfect, symmetric rings.
And then the flower buds swelled. All at once, they opened into pink and white blossoms.
I heard the completion chime sound. The golden sunburst appeared over Station One.
“Juno and Mira of Bernswick. Challenge completed in nine minutes and seventeen seconds. They advance to the next round.”
When the protective dome vanished over their opponents’ puzzle, the female half of the losing team screamed, “Impossible! Those first-years must’ve cheated!”
Her teammate added: “No first-years can work a Wood puzzle that fast. They must have rigged it somehow.”
Beside me, Elio made a disgusted noise. “Like they weren’t too distracted watching the twins to work on their own puzzle!”
Everyone seated in the commoners’ section surged to their feet, yelling and clapping, and drowned out the sore losers’ continued complaints.
My sisters stood with their hands still raised, their faces flushed and smiling as a flurry of completion chimes and announcements sounded from other stations.
At Station Two, Lukhan FitzMurad turned his head and looked at my sisters. His grin vanished. For once, his expression wasn’t contempt. It was… calculating, and I didn’t like it any better.
The end-of-round bell sounded. Twenty domes of protective magic dissolved all at once, and the amphitheater erupted in thunderous applause.
I ran down the stairs to meet Mira and Juno, Elio hot on my heels. The twins saw me coming and sprinted towards me. I caught them both in an embrace.
“You did it,” I said into Mira’s hair. “I knew you could!”
“You’re squeezing too hard,” Juno complained, but she was laughing, her arms locked around my waist.
“We told you,” Mira said, her voice muffled against my shoulder.
Above us, triumphant music swelled—trumpets and drums and something that sounded like a thousand silver bells. A ribbon of glowing script appeared in the air above the amphitheater, listing the names of the teams that had advanced to Round Two.
There were fewer than I had expected. In some of the paired stations, neither team had solved its puzzles before time ran out.
Pride flooded through me as I saw twins’ names, written in light for everyone to see, alongside Lukhan and Damien’s and four other teams composed mostly of third- and fourth-year students.
“I knew it,” Elio said, grinning down at the three of us. His amber eyes were bright with a fierce pride that made something warm and complicated blossom in my chest. “You girls really are brilliant!”
I laughed and told my sisters, “He told me ‘they’ll do fine’ about seventeen times, and he was right.”
His grin widened. “I love it when you tell me I’m right. Say it again?”
I rolled my eyes at him, but couldn’t stop smiling.
As we returned to our seats and the tournament staff rushed to set up a new set of puzzles during the break between heats, I studied my sisters’ faces. They looked exhausted. And Mira had a minor cut on her temple where one of the lashing vines had grazed her.
“How did you do it?” I asked. “Synchronize your spells like that? I’ve never seen you work magic that way.”
They exchanged glances.
“We just—” Mira began.
“Felt it,” Juno finished. “It was like—”
“—being one person,” Mira said. “Not two.”
I frowned. I’d read about perfect magical resonance, but all my instructors, even Mundise, claimed it was impossible, and any claims otherwise were just wishful thinking.
Elio clapped his hands. “You two should go to the refreshment stand and get something to eat and drink before you fall over from exhaustion. Talisa and I have approximately twenty minutes before Heat Two starts, and I need that time to be properly terrified.”
The twins laughed, and the moment passed. They made their way over to the tables crowded with bottles of juice and plates of fruit and snacks, stopping every few feet to accept congratulations from admirers.
∞∞∞
The break between heats lasted a half-hour.
New puzzles replaced the ones used in Heat One, and mage-instructors cast domes of protective wards over each refreshed station.
Mira and Juno returned from the refreshment stand, and the Circle of the Open Hand converged on them like a flock of chattering birds.
The twins sat in the middle of it all, beaming and accepting handshakes and shoulder-claps with the dazed expressions of people who still couldn’t quite believe what they’d done.
I tried to share in their joy, but my stomach roiled and I felt sick with nerves as the clock counted down to the beginning of the second heat.
Then it was time. The bell sounded, and the herald’s amplified voice started calling out names and station numbers.
An eternity passed before I heard my name.
“Talisa of Bernswick and Elio Ferraro. Station Fourteen.”
My mouth went dry as sun-baked clay, and my heart began pounding so loudly against my ribs that I was sure the spectators in the upper tiers could hear it.
“Talisa.” Elio’s voice, close to my ear. “Ready to go down there and show those aristos what we’re made of?”
I was anything but ready, but I swallowed hard, nodded, and wobbled to my feet.
Elio held out his hand, palm up, and grinned at me with his usual rakish confidence. The effect was undermined by seeing his other hand clenched into a white-knuckled fist. Beads of sweat glistened along his hairline despite the chilly breeze.
I placed my hand in his. His fingers closed around mine, cold now and slightly damp.
“We’ve got this,” he said, and pulled me into the aisle.
“You’ll do great,” Juno assured me as I passed her.
“You did better in the practice exercises than we did,” Mira reminded me.
I managed a shaky smile but felt completely off balance as, hand in hand, Elio and I walked down to the arena floor to join the other competitors.
Hundreds of stares pressed against my skin like physical weights. I couldn’t help glancing around the amphitheater. Most of the students and staff watching us looked merely interested. A few—like Lukhan and Damien—appeared openly hostile.
“Twenty denarii on Miss Fishwife and the merchant’s brat failing before the four-minute mark,” Lukhan called, his voice easily carrying above the murmur of the crowd.
Elio’s hand tightened around mine. “Ignore him,” he murmured. “He’s just being an ass. Like usual.”
I tore my gaze away from Lukhan’s malevolent presence and tried to gather my tattered composure as Elio and made our way across the sandy arena.
All around us, the other teams for Heat Two were streaming into the arena as the herald continued to announce names and stations.