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‘You have to choose, Thea…’Those words echoed once more.

As if in answer, her magic surged. Its current coursed through her, from her chest to her fingertips and toes, demanding to be felt, acknowledged.

She had come to love that part of herself, had accepted it wholeheartedly into her life, into her identity.

And now?

Thea kept the panic at bay. She cast aside the versions of herself that she’d been shown – those that terrified her, those that made her heart ache.

She wanted so much more than she’d ever realised. But if there was a price to be paid, she would pay it.

Shaking, she crossed the threshold, towards her Warsword self.

A scream tore from her throat.

Eyes streaming, she could only watch as her lightning ruptured all around her, as it was violently severed from the very fabric of her existence. In an unimaginable blaze of pain, her power was ripped from her. It left her body in forceful waves, as though someone were physically wrenching it out of her blood, her bones, her soul.

The agony went beyond the pain itself.

As the final forks of lightning left her skin, Thea watched a piece of herself go with them.

And when at last the torture was done, she was hollow, on her hands and knees, panting in the dirt. Trembling and exhausted, she wiped a trickle of blood from her nose and hauled herself to her feet.

A portal materialised before her and she staggered towards it.

How many hours had she endured so far? How long had she battled with herself amid the maze of mirrors? Thea squared her shoulders. It was far from over.

Strong of mind, strong of body, strong of heart, she chanted to herself again, as she stepped from one ring of fire into the next – into the second trial of the Great Rite, without her storm magic.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

THEA

Thea had danced with death her whole life, believing that the piece of jade around her neck somehow held her ultimate demise at bay. But as she craned her neck, staring up at what was now in front of her, she wondered if she’d been wrong all along.

Perhaps this would be the moment death claimed her after all.

She was on the outside of the mountain again, a wall of utterly vertical ice before her, reaching up into the swirling mist, so high she couldn’t see the top, so high that looking up at it was dizzying.

Its surface shimmered in the pale moonlight, and Thea abstractly noted that night had fallen. What night, she had no idea; she had no concept of how long she’d taken trekking up the mountainside, no idea how long she’d been trapped in the maze of mirrors. She felt the faint pang of hunger low in her gut, and the distant craving for water, but neither meant anything. The sensations, the light… There was no telling what was real and what had been manufactured by the gods themselves.

Thea took a breath and studied the frozen titan before her, the way it seemed to defy gravity and any semblance of mortal courage. It was a testament to the unforgiving nature of the Furies, a vertical deathtrap that shot skyward, an endless barrier, stretching out of sight on either side.

Towards the top, there was a shadow beneath the ice as well… It looked like a great chain trapped beneath the freeze, its presence stark against the pristine surface.

Everything else was white and glasslike, except for a small pile of items at the foot of the wall. With the frigid air biting at her skin, Thea crouched to examine what had been left for her.

Ice axes. Spikes.

The challenge was clear.

They meant for her to climb the wall.

Heart slamming against her ribs, Thea picked up the spikes, hardly feeling their weight in her already numb hands. How was she meant to scale a wall if she couldn’t feel her limbs at the base?

Gods, it hardly ever snowed in Thezmarr… Now here she was, facing the most perilous wintry ascent imaginable. As she fitted the spikes over her boots, she cursed herself for not training harder throughout her travels. She had always known there would be some test of her bodily strength during the Great Rite – how had she not prepared herself better? It didn’t matter how many monsters she had slayed if she couldn’t lift her own fucking body weight.

Monsters…The thought roiled through Thea suddenly, and her attention went back to the line of shadow that cut through the white. She had fought reapers, wraiths, reef dwellers, arachnes and howlers, but this was deep beneath the ice… and there were human-made contraptions just as terrifying as monsters. She had heard of a device employed around the walls of Aveum that, when released, shaved an entire layer from thefacade, raining chaos and carnage down on anyone who might be bold enough to attempt the climb.