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“WELCOME TO THE second trial, Pagelings.”

Sel stands like a drill sergeant on the Lodge’s front lawn, feet planted wide and hands behind his back. He’s dressed in black, as always, but his long coat is gone. His tattoos are on full display below sleeves rolled at the elbow. They wind down his forearms and wrists, and I can’t help but study them. I wonder how far up they go and how many he has before I remember that I detest him and shouldn’t care about his tattoos at all.

The only people who don’t appear to be intimidated by him are Whitty and Vaughn. Neither one of them even looks tired; they bounce on the balls of their feet. Ready. The rest of us are barely awake, dragging, and fighting yawns.

Evan, Fitz, and Tor had gone from dorm to dorm to wake us all up in the middle of the night. They’d banged on my door dressed in black tactical gear, faces covered in black and green grease, and yelled at me to get dressed in less than two minutes—or forfeit the tournament entirely. I’d gotten maybe three hours of sleep after getting off the phone with Nick.

“Tonight’s event is a scavenger hunt.” From the way Sel’s gaze pauses on us, one at a time, I get the feeling he can definitely see better in the dark than we can. “We provide each of you with a list of aether-formed objects, and you all scurry around campus collecting them. The six Pages with the highest number of objects in their possession at the end of the night will progress to the third and final trial.”

I glance down the row of Pages to my left. There are eight of us remaining. Greer, Whitty, Spencer, Vaughn, Sydney, Carson, and Blake.

“How does a scavenger hunt…” Spencer yawns, a hand covering his mouth. “Test our strategic abilities?”

“Look alive, Monroe.” Tor strides between Spencer and Vaughn, smacking her Page on the back of the head. Spencer steps forward with the force of it, indignation flashing on his face and delight rippling across Vaughn’s. “Sel left out the juiciest part. The more aether objects you collect, the more Sel’s aether hellhounds will be drawn to you. If you get cornered or injured, you automatically fail.”

Tor and the rest of the Legendborn, eight Scions and Squires altogether, have emerged from the Lodge and joined Sel, lining up in a row across from us.

Each sponsor moves to stand across from their Page, except for Evan. He’d sponsored Ainsley. I hadn’t seen her since she was disqualified, but I assume she only comes around the Lodge as needed now. I heard the eliminated Pages are still welcome for meals and events, even though they can’t compete.

When Nick stands in front of me, my stomach leaps up somewhere near my lungs. Even covered in paint, even ten feet away, his face sends a wave of relief through me. If Nick’s here, I’ll be all right. The thought rings in my mind, clear and bright as a bell.

Nick’s eyes take me in, flitting rapidly across my face. He mouths, “You okay?” I respond yes with a subtle dip of my chin. From the look on his face, he’s not happy that he’d been forced to keep tonight’s trial a surprise. Who knows? Maybe he himself only found out an hour or so before I did. He looks tired. And pissed.

My cheeks prickle, and Sel clears his throat. Aside from his eyes flicking sharply away from me, the rest of his body has gone still with tension. “Lest anyone has forgotten, your sponsor cannot aid you during the Trials. Violations of this rule will result in elimination.”

Tor produces a folder of papers and hands them to the Legendborn to her left and right. She also passes out drawstring bags to each Page. “Tonight’s hunt will pair each Page with a Scion or Squire who is not their sponsor, for monitoring purposes only. They will record your progress, report your final score, and dispatch a hound if you find yourself in trouble.”

Tor pairs us off. Felicity is paired with Spencer. Russ pairs with Whitty. Victoria and Sarah split Carson and Blake, taking one each. William takes Greer, who seems pleased with this. I curse under my breath. If I couldn’t have Felicity, Evan, or Russ by my side, I’d want William. Greer shoots me a look of genuine apology, and I send a weak smile back; I could be disappointed, but it’s not their fault.

That leaves Nick and Pete, the Scion of Owain. And Fitz. A needle of fear spears my insides. I silently beg Tor not to torture me with Fitz. I don’t know Pete at all, but I know he’s new, and kind.

“Pete, you’ll go with Vaughn.” Tor taps her bottom lip, staring at me and Sydney. We’re the only two Pages left.

If I can’t be paired with Nick, that leaves me with Fitz.

Fitz lands on this outcome a heartbeat after I do, and his lips pull back in an eager grin. He starts walking toward me when Sel intervenes.

“I’ll take Briana. Fitz, you pair with Sydney. Nicholas, you’ll stay in the Lodge behind the wards.”

The murmuring behind us goes silent. Nick looks like he’s just eaten an icicle. “Everyone else has a Scion or Squire.”

Sel tucks his hands in his pockets and strides through the grass, holding me still with his electric stare. Tiny pinpricks across my cheeks. “You heard me. I’ll keep track of Briana.” From this distance I can see he’s swapped his pea-shaped black earplugs for silver ones. He speaks to Nick without releasing me from his gaze. “The three skills and abilities tested by the Trials are fixed, but the format of those trials is left up to the chapter leadership in place during the tournament.” He shrugs and the gesture speaks for him. “And I’ve changed my mind.”

It only takes two steps for Nick to reach Sel’s side. He towers over the sorcerer by several inches. “Well, I don’t agree.”

Sel turns slowly, deliberately to Nick. “You haven’t taken up Excalibur yet, Davis, and your father named me the current leader. Further, as your Kingsmage, it’s my responsibility to keep you safe.” His low voice carries to the rest of the group in the quiet, reaching every ear over the rhythmic trill of crickets. I catch a faint gust of cinnamon and whiskey between the scents of night-blooming jasmine and crushed grass. “Until that sword is in your hands, you will stand down.”

Nick’s face is unreadable, his eyes a deep, cold blue. He stalks back into the Lodge without another word.

Sel tilts his gaze to the sky. He tracks the moon for a few seconds, then quickly scans the sky and stars around it. His eyes drop to the group.

“It is now one thirty a.m. You have three hours.”

There are forty objects on the list, but any relief I feel disappears when I read the first three clues and see how they’re written.

Eighty-eight keys and not a lock in sight.

Microfiche, carrels, stacks abound, and yet on this floor, there’s not a book to be found.

“Riddles?” I exclaim.

Sel’s lips quirk as we walk toward campus through the Battle Park forest. A handful of pairs have run ahead, but the rest, like me, are reviewing the clues before they dash off.

I point to one of the clues farther down with the light of my phone. “?‘Silver and red, white and yellow, find me flashing where the stoners mellow’?! How am I supposed to know where ‘the stoners mellow’?”

“Maybe you’d know if you got high,” Sel says dryly.

I suppress the urge to smack him. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to touch him, but maybe a kick will do. I inhale and turn back to the page, trying to ignore the prickling sensation of his gaze. “The first one is easy. That’s a piano, and the music building isn’t far.”

“Ah,” Sel says in a noncommittal tone. I ignore him and start jogging west, thankful that I’d thrown on exercise leggings and sneakers. He keeps up with me easily, his feet practically floating over the ground, silent as the dead.

After a few minutes, I fold. “Why?” My breath comes out in short puffs.

“Why what, Briana?” His voice is so even, he could be standing still.

“You know what.”

“I told you, I’m keeping an eye on you, mystery girl.”

“Because you think I’m a demon?”

“Are you saying you’re not?”

His response pulls a frustrated sound from my chest. “Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black? Aren’t you the Shadowborn here?”

His hand moves faster than my eyes can follow. He grabs my arm with hot, strong fingers, jerking me to a halt. “I don’t know what you think you know or what you’ve been taught. But I am not born of shadows.” Sel’s cheek twitches. “Planting an uchel demon in our ranks disguised as a naive Onceborn is a perfect way to sow discord, but it won’t work with me.”

I pull my arm from his grasp. “Why bother planting an uchel when your paranoia sows discord just fine on its own?” I stomp away from him, tamping down my frustration before it turns into something I can’t control.

I reach the music building, Hill Hall, a few minutes later and find it empty. I’m surprised there aren’t other Pages surrounding it; it was an easy riddle. Low-hanging fruit, really. I can’t tell if I should feel pleased with myself or worried.

Sel steps up beside me as my fingers wrap around the door handle, and I leap at least a foot in the air. I hadn’t heard him move at all.

“Jesus!” I screech.

His eyes cut to mine, annoyance flashing across his brow, quick like a shooting star. “Why so jumpy, Briana? Nervous about something?”

“Nervous” feels like Nick’s and my word now. Our inside joke. My temper flares. “You have threatened to kill me! Also, why are you so damn quiet?”

“It’s not in my control”—he narrows his eyes—“as you now know.”

Oh . “Right. Demon feet.” A thought occurs to me. “You know my feet make sound, don’t you?”

He studies me languidly. “Goruchels are said to be a consummate mimics, when it facilitates their human ruse.”

I roll my eyes. The door creaks long and loud when I open it, and slams shut behind us when we step into the building’s rotunda. I hold up my phone, flashlight app on, and shine it on the directory on the wall beside us. “Piano rooms, basement level.”

My footsteps echo on the wood floor, and the blue-white of my flashlight swings back and forth to find the stairs. “Why aren’t these buildings locked at night?”

Sel answers from just a foot behind me. “Administration is aware of tonight’s event.”

“They just let the Legendborn get away with everything, don’t they?”

Sel draws up beside me. “How do you know they aren’t Order members themselves?”

Down the stairs in the basement, there’s a long hallway of identical piano rooms, each holding an upright and a chair. “Don’t suppose you could use, like, a secret hand signal or something and point me to which room I need?”

“I only created the objects. The others hid them. I have no idea which room you need.” He flashes a satisfied smile. I glower back.

We go through four rooms in silence. I lift up the lids of the pianos, bend down to search under them and their matching benches. In each, the air is stale, and Sel stands much too close for comfort. Sel’s presence, even in the expansive hallway, makes every space feel too small, too tight.

In the very last room on the left, I see it. A plain stone mug shimmers sea-foam blue in the darkness underneath the back leg of a piano. I don’t bother hiding the joyous sound that escapes me when I rush to grab it. Sel leans on the doorjamb, watching me.

I examine the mug in my hand. Its light pulses in a slow rhythm. “Why does it go in and out like that?”

“Aether is an active element. I’m holding its shape in place.” He turns and walks down the hall. “You’ve spent twenty minutes looking for one object. Better hurry if you don’t want to end up in the bottom two.”

I stuff the mug in my bag and jog to catch up to him, curious in spite of myself. “You’re holding all forty objects together? Right now?”

Sel rakes his fingers through his hair and sighs impatiently. “I created them all at once, but I can sense them at a distance and reinforce them if this lasts more than a couple of hours.”

“Wait, what?” I stop in the hallway. “You can cast aether remotely?”

“Yes.” He pivots on his heel. “Are you coming?”

I shake my head, trying to imagine the effort of keeping up with forty anythings, much less forty castings—and that’s not even mentioning his hellhounds. I don’t know what it feels like to cast, but what he’s done tonight sounds impressive. Impossible. Both.

“You’re burning moonlight.” He stares at me incredulously. “Or do you want to interrogate me and forfeit instead?”

I catch up with him again, and we run through the building for the exit.

I work through five more items on the list without much trouble—and without any sight of a hound. The only one that catches me off guard is the one about the books. To reach the “floor with no books in sight,” I’d had to find the extremely well-hidden door to the roof on the eighth floor of the library.

I’m not particularly fond of heights.

And it took me twenty minutes to find the jewelry box inside a vent pipe.

Sel, on the other hand, had kept himself occupied by walking on the four-inch-wide raised brick perimeter of the roof, perfectly balanced. While whistling.

I keep waiting for him to jump, grab, or try to kill me again, but he seems content to watch me struggle with riddles and run from one end of the campus to the other. It’s unnerving. I’ve never spent any amount of time with him that wasn’t filled with threats, mesmers, or intimidation.

Once we’re back outside, I check my bag: the jewelry box; the mug from the piano; a flashlight from the fountain in front of the graduate school building; a very hard-to-spot tiny metal key that had been wedged between a pair of bricks on the journalism building; and a candle that had been tucked in the crook of a statue’s arms.

I look up to find Sel studying me again, as if he’s waiting for me to turn demon by accident.

“Where are the hounds?” I ask, and he shrugs.

“I created them, but I gave them a little push to make them more inde pendent. I felt one earlier near the Campus Y, but it didn’t catch your scent.”

“Oh, lovely,” I drawl. “Were you going to warn me a bloodthirsty hellhound was nearby?”

He scoffs. “Why would I do that?”

I groan and look down at the list for another clue. “?‘I was the first and my rest is the oldest, let there be no debate.’?” I pull my cheek between my teeth.

Sel, perched on one of the many low stone walls around campus, watches me with hooded eyes as I puzzle through the riddle. I’m certain he’s been figuring out the riddles before I do and enjoying not telling me the answers.

I check my watch. I have an hour left, we’re in the middle of the campus, and there’s no use walking until I figure out where to go.

I pace back and forth and Sel’s eyes, glittering in the darkness, follow my steps. “?‘I was the first and my rest is the oldest, let there be no debate.’ Just my luck this is some sort of uber obscure medieval crap.”

A hoarse bark of laughter escapes Sel, and we both blink in shock at the genuine, uncontrolled sound. The sound of someone who’s not used to laughing. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him express anything other than carefully aimed barbs, seething irritation, or dry sarcasm. He must see the thought on my face, because his expression goes stony in a heartbeat. Like he’s flipped a switch inside.

I walk to the edge of the wall down a few feet from Sel and look out over the campus. I start at my left, my eyes following the line of buildings in front of us: the low dining hall, the towering library breaking the skyline, and the Bell Tower striking three thirty.

My eyes track back to the left of the Bell Tower. “?‘I was the first and my rest is the oldest, let there be no debate.’?”

“While it’s quite poetic, it’s not a cantrip, Matthews.” Sel saunters over, shadows clinging to his gliding shape. “Repetition will not make its meaning clearer.”

“Shut up.” His left eye twitches in silent reproach.

I have a feeling I know where the next object is, but I’m not quite ready to go there. It feels too soon. But what choice do I have?

I sigh and gesture for him to follow. “Come on.”

The first was a young DiPhi boy buried in the late 1700s.

That’s what Patricia said. And, thanks to Alice, I know DiPhi is the very old campus debating society. I desperately wish I’d asked Patricia to point out the grave marker during the day, because searching for it at night is like looking for a certain shade of blue in the ocean.

The graveyard is poorly lit by intermittent lampposts, and the wide hedges and hills make it slow going. As apprehensive as I thought I might be, the graveyard actually feels… familiar to me now.

Each time I check over my shoulder, Sel is there, a silent figure blending into the shadows in one moment, limned by golden light in the next. I think I hear him chuckle, but the sound is carried away on a gust that whips dirt and twigs into my face.

“You’ve never seen me harm Nick, so why do you still think I’m Shadowborn?” I don’t know why I ask. Maybe because with me in the lead, I don’t have to look him in the face.

“You’re immune to mesmer.”

“Not true,” I retort, hiking up a particularly long hill.

“Lies.” He doesn’t miss a beat. “You wield the Sight too easily for someone who has only recently received it. You Saw the isel at the Quarry.” That surprises me, but I don’t show it. He strides up the hill with frustrating ease, and when he reaches the top to look down at me and Nick’s coin on my chest, there’s casual contempt in his eyes. “And you have enthralled Nicholas.”

I sputter, heat filling my cheeks, and tuck the necklace away. “What? Enthralled?! I—no—he—he… That’s…” Sel raises a black brow. A curious hawk, watching a frantic mouse skitter back and forth.

He makes a soft, dismissive sound in the back of his throat. Not wanting to hear any more about Nick or any sort of thralling , I turn and walk down the hill to the next section of graves.

“In addition, the timing of your appearance,” he begins, following behind me, “is too convenient. Demons are crossing through Gates at increasing rates at not only our chapter but also the others embedded in schools up the coast. It’s all but inevitable that the Table will be gathered, but Nicholas is vulnerable. Symbolic. If anything happens to him before Arthur calls and he claims his rightful title, the Order will go to chaos.”

I walk the aisles, looking for the marker on the ground in the oldest section. “I thought you hated Nick.”

Sel falls in step beside me. “Nicholas’s petty childhood concerns and daddy issues have never been of greater importance than the Order’s mission. He should have been preparing himself for the Call instead of whining about his duty.”

I stop walking at that. “I don’t think his mother getting mesmered so severely that she doesn’t remember her own child is a ‘petty childhood concern.’ She only wanted to protect him.”

“She tried to kidnap him.” He stares at me, his tone even and eyes opaque. “And the Line is Law.”

I shake my head in disgust. “Unbelievable.”

I step around him and continue down the aisle. I’m grateful that Sel at least stops talking, leaving me to look for the marker in silence. A flap of heavy wings interrupts my crunching steps as I walk over leaves and yellowed fescue, long dead from the heat of summer. I turn to point out the grave section to Sel, but he’s gone. The aisle behind me is empty.

“Sel?” Stillness and wind are the only replies. Doubt drops into my stomach.

A low growl behind me breaks the silence.

I don’t turn back. I don’t need to.

I run.