Chapter 40
Talisa
The next morning, the winter air bit at my cheeks as my sisters, Elio, and I climbed the marble steps to the commoner’s section in the amphitheater.
After last night’s assembly, the world felt different—brighter, sharper, charged with a wild hope that made the hair on my arms stand on end even before any spells had been cast.
The stands were already half-full when we arrived. Students streamed through the entrance archways in chattering clusters, academic gowns billowing around their legs in the icy morning breeze.
We found seats with Dante and Mavia. Dante greeted us with a broad smile and a warm handshake. “Ready to scout your future opponents?” he asked.
“I’d rather be facing you two tomorrow,” I admitted.
“Next year,” Mavia promised.
The dignitaries’ box was a solid wall of imperial blue uniforms and glittering jewels today, packed with generals, admirals, and nobles in formal court dress.
Chatelaine Lirelle mounted the dais on the arena floor with her usual unhurried grace. Her dark hair was dressed in an elaborate chignon with jeweled hairpins that sparkled like stars in the bright morning sunlight. Today, her imperial blue formal gown was even fancier than last night’s gown.
“Honored guests, students, and faculty,” she began.
Her voice carried effortlessly to where we sat in the upper tier.
“Today, we resume the Aurelian Trials with the second semi-final match. Lady Cresta of Pomerado and Lord Bernardo de Espola will command the blue standard. Opposing them, Lord Jofre de Bellmont and Lord Berengar de Rocafort will command the crimson standard.”
On cue, the two replacement banners rose from the arena floor. These were larger and sturdier-looking than the banners in our match, their poles made of polished bronze rather than wood. The silk caught the morning light and held it, rippling with the living shimmer of spell-threads.
“The rules for today’s match are as follows,” Lirelle continued. “Each team must attune with, charge, and maintain control of its assigned banner. The winning team will advance to tomorrow’s final match against Miss Talisa of Bernswick and Mr. Elio Ferraro.”
The teams took their positions. Cresta and Bernardo approached the blue standard with the same arrogance as usual.
Today, Cresta’s dark hair was arranged in an artistic masterpiece of braids over a wire frame that must have taken hours to create.
Bernardo walked with a swagger that made his heavily embroidered academic gown look like formal court wear.
Across the arena, Jofre, tall and narrow-boned, inspected the crimson banner with a sour expression. Berengar, built like a siege engine with a neatly trimmed beard, simply planted his feet and waited.
The starting bell rang.
Both teams reached for their banners simultaneously. This time, there were no malfunctions, no wild resistance. The spell-threads drank in their magic with eager, obedient thirst, pulsing from amber to gold to a steady, brilliant white that cast sharp shadows across the arena sand.
Elio leaned close, his breath warm against my ear. “So that’s how the banners are supposed to behave!”
“Watch Cresta and Bernardo,” I whispered back. “She’s holding back. Saving her strength, I think.”
He was right. Cresta’s hands rested lightly on the pole, her posture relaxed, almost bored.
But the threads above her pulsed in that slow, rhythmic cadence that spoke of controlled power being carefully husbanded.
Beside her, Bernardo poured magic into the banner in a steady stream, his sun-streaked curls falling across his forehead as he concentrated.
Jofre and Berengar took the opposite approach. Their banner blazed white-hot within thirty seconds, the threads vibrating at a frequency that made the air around the pole shimmer. It was clear they intended to launch an overwhelming attack from the outset.
“At that rate, they’ll burn out before the match is over,” Elio murmured. “They won’t be able to recharge the banner if they need to top it up.”
“Or they’ll overwhelm Cresta and Bernardo before they can mount a defense,” I countered.
The herald’s voice boomed: “The attuning and charging period has ended. Competitors, you may now engage.”
Jofre struck first. A lance of compressed air shot from his banner with enough force to kick up a plume of sand where it hit. It crashed into Cresta and Bernardo’s defensive ward with a sound like a thunderclap.
The ward held, but barely. I saw Cresta’s shoulders tense, her jaw set. Then she smiled.
Her counterattack came not as a single spell but as a sequence—three pulses of Air magic in rapid succession, each one angled to strike a different point on Jofre and Berengar’s banner.
The first two pulses hit the pair’s wards and dissipated.
But the third slipped through a gap so narrow I wouldn’t have spotted it if I hadn’t been watching for exactly that kind of opening.
The crimson banner shuddered. Its threads dimmed, then flared back to full brightness as Berengar poured more power into it.
For the next eight minutes, the duel settled into a pattern of attack and counterattack that would have been beautiful if I hadn’t known the woman casting half those spells had nearly killed my sister just days ago.
Cresta’s Air spells moved with the precision of a fencer’s blade, each strike calculated, each feint designed to draw a specific response.
Bernardo’s Earth spells anchored their defense, turning the sand around their opponents’ banner into a shifting, treacherous maze of ridges and hollows that forced Jofre and Berengar to constantly adjust their footing.
Jofre was good. His attacks had a fluid, adaptable quality that reminded me of Elio’s magic, yielding when they needed to yield, relentless when they found an opening. Twice he nearly breached Bernardo’s defensive wards with spells that curled around them like searching fingers.
But Berengar was the liability. His Earth magic was powerful but crude. Each of his spells left behind a visible signature that Cresta read like a written warning. By the nine-minute mark, I observed she’d figured out his rhythm, and she was using it ruthlessly against him.
“Watch Lord Berengar,” I told Elio, pointing. “Every time he draws on the banner to power a spell, he plants his right foot and leans forward. Lady Cresta’s been timing her strikes to hit during that exact moment.”
Elio’s eyes narrowed. “She’s reading him like a book.”
“She’s reading both of them,” I said, storing the information away in case we ended up facing her in the finals. “Lord Jofre telegraphs when he’s about to feint. His left eyebrow twitches.”
Sure enough, three exchanges later: Jofre’s left eyebrow flicked upward a fraction of a second before his spell veered sharply to the left. Cresta’s counter was already in motion, intercepting his actual attack while Bernardo’s wards absorbed the feint.
It was masterful. It was terrifying. And it made me realize what we’d be up against tomorrow.
At twelve minutes, Jofre overextended. A sweeping attack spell meant to overpower Cresta and Bernardo’s wards from multiple angles left his own banner momentarily under-defended. Berengar tried to cover, but he was half a second too slow.
Cresta’s strike hit the crimson banner’s pole not with a blast but with a focused pulse that traveled up through the spell-threads like lightning climbing a tree. The threads flared blinding white as stored magical energy discharged harmlessly, then dimmed to a sick, pulsing amber.
Jofre shouted something I couldn’t hear over the roar of the crowd. He and Berengar poured everything they had into stabilizing their banner, but the damage was done.
As Elio had predicted, the two of them had spent most of their energy charging the banner earlier and couldn’t muster enough to replenish it now. Its spell-threads flickered erratically overhead and brightened only a minuscule amount.
Cresta didn’t let up. A second pulse, then a third, each one timed to hit during the vulnerable moment when the crimson banner tried to recharge. Each impact discharged her opponents’ stored magic further until their banner’s spell-threads were barely glowing at all.
Then Bernardo cast an Earth spell aimed at the arena floor beneath Jofre and Berengar’s feet. The sand liquefied, then hardened into grasping ridges that seized their legs and held them. Jofre swayed and nearly toppled. Berengar caught him, but the momentary distraction was all Cresta needed.
Her final attack swept the crimson banner clean off its base. The pole toppled, the limp crimson silk flopping into the sand like the wing of a wounded bird.
The herald began his countdown. Cresta and Bernardo kept Jofre and Berengar from reaching their felled banner until the allotted time elapsed.
The closing bell rang, and the audience roared its approval.
The herald’s announcement cut through the noise: “Victory to Lady Cresta of Pomerado and Lord Bernardo de Espola. They advance to the final round.”
The aristocrats’ sections erupted with whistles, cheers, and the rhythmic thunder of hands clapping and feet stamping in unison.
Cresta curtsied toward the dignitaries’ box with fluid grace. At her side, Bernardo bowed with elegant grace, his sun-streaked curls falling across his forehead, his smile wide and genuine.
I watched them accept their victory and remembered Juno lying in the infirmary with broken bones and internal injuries.
Tomorrow, I’ll make her and Bernardo pay for what they did to my sisters.
Elio’s hand found mine under the fold of my gown. His fingers were warm and steady.
“Well,” he said. “Now we know what we’re facing in the finals.”
I nodded and tried not to imagine what it would feel like to crush Lady Cresta of Pomerado’s perfect, smug face with a spell attack.
∞∞∞
A half-hour later, the awards ceremony unfolded with the bloodless formality of a state funeral.