Chapter 11
Torren
I had one brazier left.
The first burned behind me. The second had required three attempts after Leander’s Frost extinguished it. The third waited several feet ahead, close enough that I could see the fire rune carved into its base.
Beyond it stood the Crown Gate.
I could finish my path with one strike.
Flame gathered between my hands, dense and controlled. I had already measured the distance, the amount of power required, and the angle that would keep the heat from spreading across the bridge.
Then Talia’s voice came through the fire.
“If you light it now, Rafe’s platform collapses.”
The flame brightened.
“I’m one strike from the gate.”
“I need you to trust me.”
Trust was easier when I could see the danger myself.
It was also easier when the person asking for it had rank, experience, or a plan she could explain.
All I saw was the final brazier.
The gate behind it had begun glowing around the edges, ready to open the moment I completed my objective. Every instruction we received said the first heir through would win the Trial. Leander, Rafe, and Sebastian had accepted the same rules.
Talia had not been given any.
She had still found a way to see what none of us could—not because anyone had prepared her for the Trial, but because the Trial had placed her where the rest of us refused to look.
That made her the only person qualified to give the order.
I closed my hands around the flame and extinguished it.
The flame disappeared.
My torc burned hot around my throat, reacting to the abandoned power. The Fire path shook beneath me, and part of the bridge broke away behind my left foot.
“Tell me what to do,” I said.
Talia released a breath through the connection. “Don’t light the third brazier. Rafe needs to reverse one of his vanes first.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
The bridge shifted again.
“That answer needs improvement.”
“I’m working with four paths and no instructions.”
“Tell him to move quickly.”
The fire between us faded.
I looked at the Crown Gate.
I had been raised to recognize opportunities and take them before another soldier did. Delay cost ground. Hesitation cost lives. In the Trials, both would cost the crown.
But firing without understanding the field cost more. A commander who ignored the only scout with a view of the battlefield did not deserve the victory waiting in front of him.
I had learned that once.
I would not learn it again over Rafe’s broken body. No crown was worth carrying out of the mountain over another heir’s corpse.
The second brazier flickered.
Cold seeped through the bridge beneath my boots. Leander was freezing the lower channels again.
“Talia.”
No answer.
“Talia.”
The fire in the trench bent, but her voice did not come through it. She was speaking to one of the others.
The stone supporting my right foot cracked.
I moved toward the second brazier. A section of bridge collapsed between us, leaving a gap too wide to cross in human form.
The trench burned below.
I could shift, but the path was too narrow for my full body. My wings would strike both walls, and the heat rising from the trench would catch beneath them before I could gain height.
Partial shift offered more strength but no additional distance.
I backed up as far as the remaining bridge allowed.
The second brazier dimmed.
If it went out, the rest of the bridge would follow.
“Talia!”
Clear light appeared inside the nearest flame.
“I’m here.”
“The bridge is failing.”
“I told Leander to stop freezing the lower channels.”
“He hasn’t.”
“He has. The cold in your path is residual.”
Another piece of stone broke away.
“It doesn’t feel residual.”
“Can you maintain the second brazier without increasing its heat?”
“Yes.”
“Do it.”
“I need to cross a gap.”
“How wide?”
“Ten feet. Increasing.”
Silence followed.
“Talia.”
“I heard you. I’m thinking.”
The gap widened by several inches.
“Think faster.”
“I’m going to ask Leander to freeze the runoff beneath your bridge.”
“More ice is the problem.”
“Uncontrolled ice is the problem. If he creates a support beneath the gap and you heat it gradually, you may be able to fuse the fractured stone around it.”
“Or melt it and drop the rest of the bridge.”
“Do you have a better option?”
I looked toward the sealed Crown Gate.
One strike would open it.
Talia seemed to know where my attention had gone.
“If you finish the path, you could kill Rafe.”
“I know.”
The clear light withdrew.
I fed a narrow stream of fire into the second brazier. Its flame stabilized without rising.
Cold gathered below the gap.
A pale blue surface spread across the trench, growing upward through the flames. Leander’s ice should have melted before reaching the bridge, but he reinforced it faster than the heat could break it.
The first layer struck the underside of the stone.
“Now,” Talia said.
I lowered both hands and released fire across the broken edges.
Not enough to burn.
Enough to soften.
The ice hissed beneath it. Steam filled the gap, obscuring the new support. I kept the heat steady while the bridge shuddered under my boots.
“Torren,” Talia warned.
“I have it.”
The fractured edges glowed dark red. Melted stone dripped toward Leander’s ice and hardened against it.
I reduced the flame.
Steam cleared.
A rough black surface filled the gap. It was narrower than the original bridge and uneven where fire and ice had met, but it held.
I stepped onto it.
The support cracked.
I shifted my weight forward and crossed before it could break.
The moment both feet reached the opposite side, the fused stone collapsed into the trench.
“Across,” I said.
Talia’s relief traveled through the flame as clearly as her voice, warm and immediate enough that I felt it beneath my torc. “Go back to the first brazier.”
“The first?”
“You need to extinguish them in reverse order.”
“That takes me away from the Crown Gate.”
“We aren’t trying to reach the individual gates anymore.”
I watched the outline beyond the third brazier.
“What are we trying to reach?”
“Each other.”
I went back.
The second brazier died when I pulled my power from it. The bridge remained intact, supported now by the Frost Talia had directed beneath it.
At the first, I placed both hands around the flame and drew it inward.
Fire absorbed into my palms.
The brazier went dark.
The wall at the beginning of my path opened.
The center chamber waited beyond it.
Talia knelt inside the clear rune with one hand pressed to the Fire channel and the other stretched toward Storm. Wind tore through the room, pulling loose strands of hair from her braid and whipping them across her face.
She looked too small at the center of four competing powers, her injured shoulder held rigid while the channels pulled at her from every direction.
She also appeared to be the only person in the mountain who understood any of them.
I crossed the threshold.
Her head snapped toward me. “You’re back.”
“You told me to come back.”
“I wasn’t certain the path would release you.”
“You could have mentioned that.”
“You might not have listened.”
“I listened when you told me Rafe was in danger.”
The wind intensified.
Talia’s body slid several inches across the floor.
I caught her around the waist and pulled her away from the Storm channel. Her back struck my chest, fitting against me with a force that drove the air from her lungs. She grabbed my forearm to steady herself, her fingers warm against my skin.
The instinct to pull her farther from every channel hit hard enough to feel like another command.
“Rafe is reversing the fourth vane,” she said. “I have to maintain the connection.”
“You can do that without sitting inside a wind current.”
“I lose the view if I move too far.”
I lowered myself behind her, bracing one boot against the raised edge of the clear rune. My legs formed a barrier on either side of hers, and I kept one arm locked around her waist.
“Try now.”
She pressed her hand to Storm.
The force returned immediately, but it pushed both of us only a few inches before my boot caught against the stone.
Rafe appeared inside the silver channel.
He stood beside the final vane with both arms raised. Wind rotated around him in the opposite direction, drawing darkness away from the damaged platform.
“Talia,” he called. “I could use better news.”
“Torren is back in the center.”
Rafe looked past the connection as though he might see me through it. “He abandoned his gate?”
“Yes.”
“Then I suppose I have to survive long enough to mock him.”
“Reverse the third vane next.”
The silver light flickered.
Rafe moved.
Sebastian’s Shadow retreated from the Storm path as each vane slowed. Cracks remained across the platform, but the visible stone beneath Rafe’s feet widened.
“How does he return?” I asked.
“He has to stop all four vanes, but without the wind, Sebastian’s Shadow will settle inside his own corridor.”
“And Leander?”
“His water level is rising because he diverted Frost to your bridge.”
Everyone’s path remained connected.
Saving one of us endangered another.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked.
Talia shifted her free hand to Shadow.
“Sebastian needs light to rebuild his bridge. Can you send a low flame into his channel without igniting anything?”
“Not through the floor.”
“The hearth in the Fifth Wing changed when all of us approached. The channels may do the same.”
“That isn’t evidence they’ll carry my fire where you want it.”
“No.”
The answer held no apology. She was past asking any of us to protect our pride.
She had already asked me to build a bridge from ice and molten stone. It worked.
I placed my palm beside hers.
Clear light moved through the Fire channel and surrounded my hand. It did not smother my power or feed it. It held the heat without burning Talia’s fingers beside mine.
“How low?” I asked.
“Enough to illuminate, not burn.”
I released a small flame.
It entered the stone.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then red light traveled from the center rune into Shadow.
Sebastian’s corridor appeared beneath Talia’s hand. A flame no larger than a candle burned beside his feet. It cast enough light to expose the remaining breaks in the floor.
Sebastian looked directly toward us.
“Torren?”
“He’s with me,” Talia said.
“Rafe has stopped two vanes. When the third stops, pull your Shadow back from the nearest lamps.”
“I’ll lose most of the corridor.”
“You’ll gain the bridge.”
He nodded.
Rafe reversed the third vane.
Sebastian withdrew his Shadow. Lamps ignited one after another, extending the stone beneath him.
“Now Leander,” Talia said.
She moved her hand to Frost.
I followed.
Leander stood waist-deep in water.
His ice shelf had broken apart while he supported my path. Frost covered his arms to the elbows, and a thick layer of white scales had appeared along the sides of his neck.
“You need to release the lower channel,” Talia told him.
“It floods the room.”
“Rafe is reversing the vanes. I can send the remaining wind through your upper vents and lower the water pressure.”
Rafe had not agreed to that.
Talia moved to Storm before I could point it out.
“Rafe, direct the final vane inward instead of reversing it.”
“Into what?”
“The central shaft.”
“That sends it toward Frost.”
“I know.”
“You’re welcome, Leander,” Rafe muttered.
The final vane turned.
Wind entered Leander’s chamber from above. Water flattened around him, then spiraled toward the lower channels.
He released his Frost.
The remaining ice melted fast enough to pull the water level below his knees.
“Go back,” Talia told him.
Leander looked toward the blue gate at the far end.
It was open.
He could reach it before any of us reached ours.
“You’re asking me to abandon a completed path,” he said.
“Yes.”
“For three competitors.”
“For four other heirs.”
His jaw tightened.
The Frost connection dimmed before he answered.
Talia shifted to Shadow. “Sebastian?”
His lamps were relit. The entry to the center stood open behind him.
“I’m returning,” he said.
He reached us first.
Rafe emerged moments later, carried through the Storm entrance by a final gust that sent him stumbling into Sebastian. The two nearly went down together.
Rafe recovered and looked at me.
“You gave up your gate.”
“So did you.”
“Yes, but I intend to complain about it.”
Talia stayed over the Frost channel.
Leander’s path remained visible beneath her hand.
He stood before his open Crown Gate.
One step would complete the Trial.
“Leander,” she said.
The chamber shook. Stone fell from the ceiling and shattered near the Frost door.
“You have to decide now.”
He looked through the connection toward Talia. Water streamed from his hair, and the open gate behind him painted the entire chamber blue-white.
Then he turned his back on the Crown Gate.
He retraced his path.
Not quickly. Not happily. But he came back.
The moment he crossed into the center chamber, all four elemental doors slammed shut behind us.
The clear rune expanded beneath our feet.
For the first time since the Trial began, all five torcs illuminated together.
No one had reached an individual Crown Gate.
No one had won.
We were alive, and we were together because each of us had chosen the others over an open Crown Gate.
The outer entrance remained sealed.