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I couldn’t wait to see his stupid face when he got a load of House Phoenix without the magical cuffs on.

“If that’s all?” Tarquinius swept the now-silent crowd with a scathing look and then nodded in satisfaction.

“Head to the stone overhang with your flag in front of it and wait for my call to begin. Good luck.”

“We’re going to kill it, I can feel my magic better even than before,” Ross said, rubbing his hands together gleefully as we made our way to the far-right corner of the Coliseum.

“Yup. We just have to stick to the plan,” Caterina agreed, falling into step next to me.

I was about to go over the strategies we’d discussed in the days leading up to the event, when a firm hand gripped my elbow, tugging me to a stop.

I turned to find Typhon eyeing me expectantly.

“Can I help you?” I asked, immediately on guard.

“Be careful.”

I frowned and shook my head.

“It’s just a game.”

He held my gaze.

“Typhon . . . Isn’t it?”

He waved a hand as he let out a long-suffering sigh.

“It’s never just a game, there are too many people who want to make a name for themselves.

So just be careful.” His eyes were fathomless, giving away nothing.

“Get your bracers off, as soon as you’re in there.

” He took my hand and traced a quick rune against my palm.

He let my hand go as Tarquinius approached our group, a smile dusted by his moustache. “House of Phoenix. I truly wish you the best of luck. You have come a long way, in a short time.”

Damn, praise from the man himself. The group shifted, no one smiled though.

“However, I do detect some magic that is not allowed.” His eyes landed on me. “You have something in your satchel.”

My heart stopped. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“The satchel. Give it to me.”

Without a word, I handed my pack over. When he was done rifling through and confiscating all my miniature eggs, rolls, and even the bacon – God, the bacon – he tossed it back to me with a tight smile. “Your team just lost twenty points for contraband.”

Twenty down, before we even started. “That’s not fair!” Fable said.

Typhon’s face was tight. “Sir, is that –”

“No. They will do this my way, or they will not do it at all.” Tarquinius shook his head. So much for praise. “May the best team win.”

“Don’t worry. We will,” I shot back with a wink.

“Well that sucks the big one,” Marina mumbled.

I tried not to think about the food we’d lost. We had rations spaced out through the arena, which meant we wouldn’t starve. But man, I’d gone hungry a lot in my late teens. More times than I’d cared to count.

And I hated being hungry.

Don’t think about it.

“Tarquinius is a real donkeyhole,” Ross added.

By the time we reached our designated starting spot, my mind was already onto other things as stone rumbled and cracked around us.

I stared across the massive Coliseum, barely able to make out the figures of Typhon and team Draconell in the distance.

Maybe I wasn’t classically trained like all the Draconells and Kirinashes, but this would be different.

All of the tutors and fancy prep schools money could buy couldn’t prepare them for what was about to come their way.

“Ready team? This one is for Zeed!” I held out my fist and bumped my way through the group, knocking knuckles.

“For Zeed!” they echoed with gusto.

Fable sidled closer to me as slabs of magic-infused granite rose from the ground, consuming us in ever-increasing darkness. The roof closed in shortly after, and Tarquinius’s voice rang through the cavern a final time, as if coming from the stone itself.

We watched as the other teams got the go-ahead. I counted down from sixty, my skin prickling with the need to move.

Tarquinius lifted his hand and pointed at us. “House Phoenix ... Begin!”

All the hours of practicing runes that wouldn’t work for us finally came into play.

I wove a quick lighting rune on instinct, feeling it work even before it lit up, glancing at the forked hallway ahead of us.

The whole place buzzed with subtle magic, and there was nothing obvious making one path more attractive than the other.

In the first hall we stopped. “Wait. Typhon said to get the bracers off.”

“What?” Marina crowded close. “The muting should be off here. Shouldn’t it?”

“It should be, but I’m willing to trust him on this.”

“How do we do it?” Fable asked.

I scrunched up my face and traced the rune Typhon had set in my palm over Fable’s bracer. It flung itself off her arm, like it had a life of its own.

“Whoa, me next!” Ross pushed forward. I wove the rune over each of their bracers, then held my arm out and Marina wove the rune over my arm.

The Phoenix bracers littered the floor.

I took a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”

We slipped into the Coliseum; the walls around us were solid sandstone, a dusty light brown.

I turned toward the rest of House Phoenix only to find seven sets of eyes staring right back at me with varying degrees of anxiety in their expressions.

Fable was the first to speak. “Which way are you thinking? Should we check out both?”

“I can’t sense anything pulling us either way,” I said, feeling the weight of their expectations as I glanced at Phyllis.

“I think we should just pick one path and stick together, no point in dwelling on which way we go, though,” said the older woman, shrugging. “Your call, Harlow.”

I exhaled sharply, nodding as I strode into the left corridor.

I had always been more of a loner, only looking out for Opie and myself and the occasional runaway, but now that the other members of the house had given me their fealty, I was determined not to fail them.

“Gary and Marina, you two watch our backs. Use the rune Doyenne Parunah taught us to sense magic. There’ll be traps all over and we don’t want to get sandwiched. ”

Fable and I took up the front, relying on the same sensing spell that we’d been taught in class a few weeks earlier. It sent a ripple of magic ahead through the ground, moving a few dozen feet ahead before returning with a report of any irregularities or magic, almost like a magical radar system.

There was a pitfall just ahead, and we avoided it easily, triggering it then covering it with a magical barrier and stepping right over it.

We were less than half an hour into our otherwise uneventful trek when we reached a bend in the corridor, and a soft light became visible ahead. I probed cautiously toward it with my radar spell, but nothing seemed amiss.

The sandstone walls were still smooth, and there were no offshoots, meaning we’d had no choice but to take this path. But that wasn’t what caught my eye. For the first time there was a deviation in the stone – small, but it was there.

The numbers two, twelve, and thirty-six were carved into the wall above the doorway. I wrote them quickly onto the back of my left hand with magic.

“What’s the point of starting us off in a labyrinth if we’re just gonna end up outside a few minutes in?” Ross asked from behind.

“Perhaps we got lucky with our choice of path at the start,” Phyllis said.

I nodded, even though I doubted we’d made it through already. The light was just a short way away now, around another bend in the corridor, and there didn’t seem to be anything amiss. “Wait here a second,” I said, poking my head around the corner.

An enormous, stalagmite-studded cavern came into view, with a chandelier hanging from the ceiling that would’ve looked significantly more at home in a palace than a cave but was the obvious source of light. So much for making it out quickly.

I waved the others on, stepping forward cautiously as I probed the room with magic.

We made our way into the room, and the locked door on the other side came into view. Magic of all the elements danced inside it, vaguely similar to the one at the entrance to the school, albeit much less impressive.

I was still surveying the room when a thunderous crack rang out from behind, and I whirled to see Gary, Ellie, and Marina diving forward as a granite slab slammed downward, sealing off the path we’d used to enter the room.

I cursed under my breath and leapt into action.

“We need to check that door out,” I said.

“It’ll be locked somehow, and we have to figure out how to open it. ”

Phyllis nodded, leading Gary, Marina, and Ellie, toward it. “You three with me.”

“The rest of us should spread out and search the room,” I said.

“There’s some test for us here, though I’m not sure what it is yet.

Look out for traps and let someone else know before you touch anything that seems off.

” I wiped a droplet of sweat off my forehead, a wave of irritation rushing through me. This leadership stuff was stressful.

I glanced up at the chandelier, which was spinning slowly in place, and found myself chewing at my lip as I mulled the situation over. Whatever the key to leaving the room was, it was definitely going to play a role.

It was too out of place not to be a part of this puzzle.

I strode over to a small pool of water on one side of the cavern, staring at the way the reflection of the light danced across its surface.

Stalagmites lined the edge of the cave, shading parts of the wall in darkness.

They had little holes and crannies in them like Swiss cheese.

I leapt over the pool and examined one more closely, but nothing seemed off about them.

“We think the door opens with some kind of spell,” Phyllis called from the far side of the room. “We haven’t found the right one yet but we’re going to keep trying.”

“Sounds good,” I called back, continuing my search.

“Over here,” Fable called, and I strode over.

She jabbed her finger toward the ground, “Watch this.” She wove a tiny rune, one to create a small light, through the floor, and a spot in front of her lit up with a bluish light, revealing the number ten inscribed on the ground below.

“When I touched it with a rune it lit up, but it isn’t visible otherwise. ”

I nodded quickly, shouting out a quick explanation of what she’d discovered to the others.

“We’ll search the room with magic light pulses, there should be more of these.

” I glanced at my hand and the numbers etched there – numbers that the Coliseum had already given us.

“I think we’re looking for the numbers two, twelve, and thirty-six. ”

The minutes stretched on, and my annoyance grew with each passing one.

I’d circled the room a dozen times, as had the others, and we’d found numbers one through thirty-five, but still not thirty-six.

I wiped my forehead clean of sweat for the dozenth time, then cast a probing rune for what felt like the thousandth.

The magic felt somehow sluggish, and I groaned, seeing nothing. Were we muted again?

“Let’s grab a snack and do a little brainstorming,” Gary called, making his way to the packs.

My stomach growled, and I found myself agreeing.

“Something’s off about this room,” Phyllis said as she approached. “It feels like it’s draining us of our energy or something.”

I cursed softly, nodding. That made perfect sense, what with the magic feeling so slow and difficult – not unlike what we dealt with at Neverthorn to be fair – and it meant we didn’t have much more time at this rate of drainage.

Ellie slumped against a wall, and Caterina hurried to catch her. “Harlow!”

“I see!” I yelled. The problem was I didn’t see the solution on how to get out of here. And we were running out of time.