Chapter 30
Talisa
Seven minutes and forty seconds left.
The crowd roared all around me. Theron’s smug smile was visible even at this distance, his graceful hands guiding his guardian with casual confidence. Lyra’s guardian advanced at the same slow pace beside his, its sigils blazing crimson, its stone feet crushing the sand with each deliberate step.
I forced myself to breathe. Deep, steady, in through my nose and out through my mouth, the way Mama had taught me to do before a difficult healing spell.
My pulse hammered in my throat. My hands shook.
But behind the fear, behind the terrible, sick certainty that we were about to lose, something cold and clear was waking up.
Study them. There has to be something we can use to defend ourselves.
I fixed my eyes on Theron’s guardian. Not on its massive bulk or its swinging cudgel, but on the intricate pattern of glowing sigils covering its chest. They pulsed in a steady rhythm, bright then dim, bright then dim, like something breathing.
No. Not breathing. Feeding.
Every time the sigils flared, I saw a faint current of Earth magic flowing from Theron’s outstretched hands into the sigils on his guardian’s chest. It wasn’t a continuous stream—it came in pulses. A pulse of power, the sigils blazed, and the guardian moved. Another pulse, another step.
Lyra’s guardian was the same. Her magic was subtler, more controlled; the flow of power steadier and less obvious. But it was there. I could see it now that I was looking for it.
Of course! Why didn’t I make the connection earlier? The statues drew their power from the mages commanding them, and that power flowed through the sigils like blood through veins.
That made the sigils a point of vulnerability.
“Elio.” I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on Theron’s advancing guardian. “Maybe we don’t out-muscle them.”
He was still pouring Earth magic into our remaining statue, his hands trembling with effort, sweat darkening the hair at his temples. “No kidding, Talisa. Any other words of wisd—” he began sarcastically.
“But we can starve their statues of magic.”
The words hung between us. I felt the shift in him before I saw it—the sudden, electric crackle of understanding snapping through the connection we’d forged yesterday. His anger and desperation didn’t vanish, but they transformed, hardened, crystallized into something fierce and purposeful.
“Water spell?” he breathed. “To purify and disrupt their sigils?”
I nodded. “Exactly what I was thinking. We hit them hard. They won’t be expecting it.”
“Share with me?”
For a heartbeat, I was afraid. What if yesterday had been a fluke? What if I couldn’t open that door between us again, couldn’t reach for his magic the way I had when desperation had driven me past every limit I knew?
I didn’t need to worry.
The moment I reached for our connection, it was there and waiting, like a path I’d walked a hundred times. My magic flowed toward his with eager, rushing certainty. No struggle. No resistance. Just the effortless click of two things that belonged together becoming one.
My power braided itself around his with no need for a spell. It felt like stepping into one of his embraces.
Elio’s hands rose. The blue shimmer of a Water spell gathered around his fingers, brighter and steadier than any spell I’d seen him cast in practice. His voice was low and clear as he chanted the words of a purification charm.
The spell unfurled from his fingertips like a ribbon of glowing blue silk. Then it slid through the space between Theron and his guardian and blocked the pulsing thread of Earth magic flowing into the statue’s chest.
The effect was immediate and catastrophic.
Theron’s guardian stuttered mid-stride. Its right foot came down and stayed there, planted in the sand as if it had struck root.
Its left knee locked, the joint grinding audibly.
The sigils on its chest flared wildly, amber light strobing in erratic bursts, and then dimmed to a sick, guttering orange.
For one perfect second, the guardian was completely frozen. A statue again, not a weapon.
Theron’s face contorted. He snarled something I couldn’t hear over the crowd’s rising noise, and thrust both hands forward. Earth magic surged from him in a visible wave, thick and amber and violent, crashing into Elio’s spell as if trying to push it out of the way with brute force.
“Now!” I shouted.
Elio abruptly cut off his Water spell. The blue ribbon of magic vanished with a sound like a sigh.
Theron’s surge of Earth magic hit his guardian at full strength.
The statue didn’t crack. It exploded.
Fragments of black stone shot outward in a radial blast, peppering the protective wards overhead with silent explosions.
The guardian’s torso collapsed inward, its arms shearing away at the shoulders, its legs buckling.
What remained crashed to the sand in a heap of splintered rock and fading amber light.
Silence. For one heartbeat, two, the amphitheater held its breath.
Then the commoner sections erupted. Whistles. Shouts. The thunder of hands clapping in rhythm.
Theron stood frozen, his hands still outstretched, his face blank with shock. Lyra had taken a step back from her own guardian, her fine-boned features tight with sudden, sharp alarm.
The clock above us read 5:12.
Now we had to disable Lyra’s guardian without losing ours.
Lyra recovered faster than her partner. She turned to her remaining statue and raised her hands, her movements as she sketched runes in the air quick but controlled. Her guardian stirred, its sigils flaring back to life, and took a single, deliberate step toward us.
She raised a shield of Air magic.
Elio was panting beside me. Sweat plastered his chestnut hair to his forehead. But his gaze was sharp, moving between Lyra’s guardian and Theron with the calculating focus of a merchant assessing a rival’s ledger.
“Maybe the same trick won’t work twice,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to.”
Before I could ask what he meant, his hands came up.
The spell he cast wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t clever. It was showy to the point of absurdity.
Water magic erupted from his fingertips in a coruscating fountain of blue-white light. It spiraled upward before descending in a wide waterfall aimed directly at Lyra’s guardian.
It looked devastating, as if Elio was throwing everything he had into one massive, decisive strike.
But it was almost entirely decorative, loud and bright and impressively complicated, but the actual magical force behind it wouldn’t have disturbed a puddle.
Lyra didn’t know that.
Her eyes widened. She barked something at Theron, who was still standing in shock beside the wreckage of his guardian. He jerked to attention, and together they raised their hands.
Earth magic surged from both of them in tandem as they tried to destroy what they thought was Elio’s killing blow.
Their counterspell crashed through Elio’s decorative curtain of water and into their remaining guardian’s chest with enough force to make the statue rock backward on its heels.
The sigils blazed crimson, then white, then a searing, painful gold that made me squint.
Too much power. Far, far too much.
The guardian’s sigils didn’t just brighten. They overheated. The amber light flared white, then blue-white, then a sick, pulsing violet that made the hair on my arms stand on end.
“Stop!” Lyra screamed. But it was too late.
Cracks appeared in the stone around the sigils—fine, hairline fractures that spread outward in a radiating web.
The statue stuttered. Its right arm froze mid-swing, the cudgel hanging motionless in the air. Its left foot lifted, then hung motionless. All the sigils went dark, like candles snuffed out.
“Talisa,” Elio said, his voice tight with strain. “Now would be good.”
I didn’t need to be told twice.
I reached for Air and found it waiting, warm and singing and eager. The power flowed through me without hesitation, unlike the strange reluctance of Earth power today.
I didn’t cast a complex spell. I didn’t need to.
I summoned a targeted gust of wind using the same spell Mama had taught me to use for clearing smoke from our apothecary stillroom when the stills overheated… except much, much stronger.
It hit the frozen guardian square in the chest.
Without active magic flowing through its sigils, it was just stone—massive, unbalanced stone standing on a narrow base.
It toppled like a felled tree.
Its arms shattered on impact, shearing away at the shoulders. Its legs broke at the knees, fragments of black stone skidding across the sand. Its head separated from the body. The torso lay on the sand in three lengths of shattered rock.
We’ve won.
The realization landed in my chest like something physical. I turned to Elio.
He was staring at the wreckage with the dazed expression of someone who’d just watched a miracle happen.
Then his face split into a grin so wide it looked like it hurt.
“Talisa,” he said. “We need to—our statue—”
Right. The rules. Disable both opposing guardians while maintaining control of at least one of our own.
I turned back to our remaining guardian. It stood where Elio had left it, its sigils glowing a steady, patient amber. I reached for it with a thread of Earth magic, and fed it a gentle, coaxing spell. I didn’t need it to do much. Just prove that it was still active.
The guardian’s right arm lifted in a slow, creaking motion. It waved its cudgel at the crowd.
The closing bell rang.
“Victory to Miss Talisa of Bernswick and Mr. Elio Ferraro,” the herald’s voice boomed. “Advancement to the next round of the Aurelian Trials.”
What happened next was the closest thing to chaos I’d ever witnessed at the Imperial Academy.
The first-year students, commoner and aristocratic alike, surged to their feet. They whistled. They shouted. They clapped until the sound echoed off the curved stone walls of the amphitheater like summer thunder.
I saw commoner students hugging each other and jumping up and down. I saw mage-instructors and visiting dignitaries leaning forward in their chairs to get a better look at us.
The upper-division aristocratic students did not move. They sat in perfect, rigid silence, their eyes moving between us and the wreckage of Lyra and Theron’s guardians with stunned expressions.
Beside me, Elio let out a whoop. He turned and grabbed me around my waist. I flung my arms around his neck. He lifted me off the ground and spun me around, then set me down and didn’t let go.
I held onto him. His body was warm and solid against mine, his heartbeat hammering against my bodice in a rhythm that matched the current of our shared magic still pulsing beneath my skin.
Standing in his arms felt like coming home.
His hands went to the small of my back, pressing me against him with an urgency that made my breath catch.
We fit. Our bodies, our magic, our desperate, foolish, brilliant selves—we fit.
Then I felt it.
A prickle of awareness, sharp and cold as a needle pressed between my shoulder blades. The sensation that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
I looked up over Elio’s shoulder and saw Lukhan FitzMurad watching me.
He sat perfectly still in the nobles’ section, his posture elegant and composed, one hand resting lightly on the marble bench beside him. His black hair fell across his forehead in its usual perfect arrangement. His emerald eyes were fixed on me with an intensity that made my stomach clench.
It wasn’t hatred. Not this time.
It was the predatory focus of a bird of prey fixed on its quarry.
Beside him, Damien Corvellan studied me with his cool gray eyes. His expression was like a soldier assessing terrain.
Then his mouth twitched, and I saw the barest hint of a smile before he gave me a slow nod.
It looked, against all reason and expectation, like admiration.