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That was God’s fault, not mine. If Leo hadn’t looked so good lit up like that, I wouldn’t have been staring. Still, screw God. I know without a doubt, if Leo asks me to bed tonight, I will go.

Leo smiles at me. Dazzling. “You said we needed a plan.”

“I did say that,” I agree.

Fred shifts and slumps against a wall. “I, for one, would like to hear it.”

“You’d hear it if I had one,” I tell them, unfolding my legs to sit upright. “I’m not sure how we plan around the trials. They could be anything.”

“You were all for plans last night,” Bellamy says lowly. His glass clinks as he takes a long drink from it. His mood is rough. “Yammering about teamwork and diversifying our ranks. So you better have something.”

The way he says it… God, he can be an ass. I feel myself flush and hope the heat from the fire is enough excuse for the colour of my cheeks.

Teamwork was useless in this first trial.

I throw up my hands, inhaling the tobacco again, and I lean back against the cold glass of the window. I hear the comforting patter of rain at my back. “Well, alright. Let’s collaborate, shall we? They want promising students, but they haven’t made us choose a mantle yet. So no trial will focus solely on any of the four disciplines.”

“Well, there will definitely be elements,” Bellamy says in a tone that makes me want to slap him.

“That’s why I said solely, Bellamy. Pay attention.”

He shuts his mouth. The ice clinks in Bellamy’s glass as he stirs it, avoiding eye contact. God, we will fall apart at the seams like this. This was only the first trial.

“More drink?” Victoria asks. She procures the bottle from the floor and takes a hefty swig before she passes it along. She rocks back to lean on her hands, the uptight London-raised etiquette seeping out of her along with the stress of the day. “How many trials are there? Four?”

“Five,” I whisper. “Or at least there were five when Thaddeus took them.”

“Four when my sister did it,” Bellamy says.

“We’ll assume five,” Victoria says with a nod. Already there are so many assumptions. “Maybe the first trial was to test for the Hunter mantle…” she trails off, clearly realising there is no logic to follow here.

“Will they use teras for every trial?” Silas muses.

“Do they have that kind of access?” his sister asks. They stare at each other, probably understanding that, yes, in fact, a place such as this likely has access to whatever it wants.

“If the choice is yours, why do the thing? But if it is another’s choice, what do you blame—atoms or gods?” Bellamy slurs from his place on the ground. They are not his words, but Marcus Aurelias’. I wait for him to finish, to say, “Nothing is without purpose,” and draw the conclusion that even when we have no choice, we can own this. All of us here will fight, and either emerge victorious or dead, but he doesn’t speak again. I hear one choking sob and then he rolls towards the fire.

I feel it, then, brighter and sharper than ever. The horror. The disappointment. I wait for the acceptance to settle in my stomach, but I only have anxiety.

I look at Leo, spy the hungry, vigilant look in eyes. I want to be beneath him. I want him to fuck me; I want to be a whore who thinks of nothing but the pleasures of the body, and the only pain I will ever feel is the thrill of taking a man inside me. There will be no death. No blood. No monsters in the night. I will lose the very sense of myself to tangled sheets and sweat.

I cannot do that. I cannot do that.

I jerk upright suddenly. My body is ripe and bursting with the poison of alcohol; I am tipsy, and ashamed. My thoughts are sin. At that moment, they feel as terrible as the University’s truth.

“I have to—go,” I say, stilted. I need a Bible and a cross in my hand. I need a priest to put an end to carnal wants and to remind me what I am doing here.

“Where?” Leo says. Leo, with that honey-thick voice, and scent like something dark and aged: by God, he smells like church, like incense and old tomes. But if I keep thinking about that, I will stay.

“To pray,” I say truthfully. “To pray. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

And then I am gone.

* * *

Thunder sounds in the distance, a constant rumble like a thousand teras charging on the horizon. My heart thrums. Part of me hates this. I love the fire, love the sound of the rain when I am wrapped up inside and safe, and maybe there is that teras-bred fear in me that associates the night with death.

But I cannot sit still, and I feel tainted by the day. I know there is a chapel somewhere, because Thaddeus once spoke of it, and because the church and the University are close brethren. Wrapped in my Mackintosh coat, I set out.