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“ T here is no time to celebrate, certainly not here.” Phyllis cut through the cheering with those simple words.

Much as I wished she was wrong, I knew we had two major problems. One, we weren’t out of the Coliseum yet, and two ... I wrapped an arm around my middle, my fingers reaching to the side where the lightning from Draconell had struck. Warm, wet ... nope, that was not good.

“I need to lay down, I think.”

“Harlow!” Fable yelled. “You’re bleeding!”

I grimaced, “I’m not going to die, I just need to lie down and get this fixed up. Some stitches, I think.”

She slid her arm around my waist, and I leaned on her as Phyllis took the lead. “This way. Everyone, get in line, follow me.”

Marina helped Ross to his feet, Ellie, Caterina and Gary stayed close to Phyllis, and we were moving. No one was in the mood to argue after that battle.

I paused where Julius had been spirited away for his mandatory hour holdover, and scooped up a cylindrical tube with my foot, popping it into the air.

As I snatched it out of the air, a buzz of something rippled from the item to me.

What was this? A clue? A tool? I wasn’t going to leave it behind, maybe it would help us. I tucked it into my pocket.

“Put Typhon in the middle,” I said, forcing myself to speak through the growing pain in my side. Seeing as he wasn’t allowed to fight, he hadn’t had much to do during the fight. He was, however, our way to winning. “He’s the prize, we can’t lose him.”

Gary and Marina maneuvered him to the middle of our group. He opened his mouth to speak, and Gary slapped a rune over his mouth, gagging him.

“Hurry,” Phyllis called. “The arena is shifting, and we need to take advantage of it.”

I didn’t remember at first, then it clicked. After every battle, the arena walls shifted, changing the setting and prepping us to get lost again. The walls began to slide sideways, breaking apart and then some slid into the floor, opening up a narrow cut in the wall.

“Quickly!” Phyllis stood at the top of the cut and counted us as we went down the tight staircase ahead of her. Fable went right in front of me, and I put a hand on her shoulder, using her for balance as we hurried down the steps.

“Faster!” Caterina yelled from the back of the group. “It’s closing behind us!”

A yelp from her and then we were all running, full speed down the stairs which ended with Gary tripping and taking us all out. We slid down like we were bobsledding the last twenty feet of stairs.

At the bottom, we all sat up, groaning. But the walls had ceased moving, so we were in the clear.

Phyllis did another head count. “Good, we didn’t lose any of you.”

I pressed my fingers to my side. Yeah, I was still injured. But for the moment, my adrenaline was keeping the worst of the pain at bay.

Phyllis leaned against the wall. “I’ve been here a long time.

This is not my first foray into the Coliseum.

After every major battle there is a rest period of six hours.

Six hours where you have a chance to heal your wounded and strategize your next steps.

Most people don’t realize that there are foxholes like this all through the Coliseum.

They don’t tell you about these things in the beginning.

You’re meant to figure it out on your own.

It’s all a challenge.” She circled around a fire pit and with a few quick runes had a flame going in no time.

“You can recognize them by this symbol.” A tree with wide spreading branches was etched into the wall. It glowed lightly, green, soothing.

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Fable said.

Phyllis sighed and slumped to the ground. “I meant to once we got in here. No one can speak about this outside of the Solstice Games. It’s a minor rune gag to keep students from knowing just what they will face.”

Typhon grunted as Gary sat him down by the fire.

“Take his gag off, Gary,” I said as I lowered myself to the floor, doing my best not to wince, breathing carefully.

Now that we’d slowed down, the pain was hitting me, and it was no small thing. Damn it, this was not going in my favor.

Ellie made her way over to me. Her amber eyes narrowed as she looked at my side. “We need to see how deep it is, but I need you to take your hands off, chica.”

I grimaced. “It’s going to bleed.”

“Something tells me it’s not going to stop just because your hand is there.” She tugged my fingers away and gasped. “That is a lot of blood.”

A rune flashed from her fingers, one I’d never seen before, but I understood it, even if I wasn’t sure I could ever duplicate it.

“That’s like an x-ray vision rune,” I muttered, my tongue feeling thick as the room started to go fuzzy.

“It is, and lucky for you my mama taught it to me, before she died. She was the best at it,” she said.

I gritted my teeth. With my hand off the wound, it was bleeding more freely. Regardless of what Ellie thought, my fingers and compression had been holding it together. “Ellie ...”

“You know,” she was moving quickly now, runes flashing faster and faster, “my mother once said that in order to truly heal, you have to be willing to lose a little part of yourself. I think she was right, and that’s why I’ve been so scared to find my Quirk.

But what if, in the losing of yourself . .. you gain something more?”

Her voice was a line to consciousness, and as soon as she stopped talking ...

I could feel the darkness closing in on me as I slumped backward, suddenly cold.

“Free me, right now. I can at least staunch the blood,” Typhon snapped, but his voice seemed so far away.

“Harlow? Harlow!” Fable shouted.

Her voice was the last thing I heard, and then I was somewhere else, floating, floating. The face of my mother flashed before me. A moment later, she came into full view. She beckoned me toward her, smiling. Her hair was like mine, a bright white blonde, and her eyes were a bright blue.

“Come on in, the water’s fine.”

The beach. We were at Old Orchard Beach, just like when I was a kid. The seagulls were squawking, the waves were crashing, and I could feel the salty spray on my lips. I wondered if this was what death looked like. Was I dead?

“I miss you so much, Ma,” I whispered, my heart full as I reached for her.

She took my hand and squeezed my fingers. Warm, comforting, she wasn’t skeletal as she’d been before she died. But more like the vibrant, kind woman she’d been when I was young.

I tried to grab her with both my hands, but she stepped back, the water up to the back of her knees.

“I miss you too, my sweet girl. More than you know. But you’ve still got work to do ... it isn’t your time yet.”

“I’m scared, Mom.” I took a step into the water, following her. “I don’t want to face him.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks as she took another step back, the water to her thighs now. “I know. But you must trust your heart, Harlow. You have a good heart. The heart of a lion beats inside your chest and I know you will do the right thing, no matter how hard it is.”

“Mom!” I reached for her as a wave rolled forward, stealing her from my view. “MOM!”

The summer sky flickered, and the sounds of the sea faded, giving way to shouts.

“Holy sheet, it worked. Ellie did it! She has a pulse!”

“Keep going, Ellie! See if you can staunch the bleeding and heal the wound.”

“No!” I instantly recognized Typhon’s voice. “Concede the battle and let’s get her spirited back to the infirmary where they can do a proper surgery,” he demanded, his voice hoarse. “Ellie hasn’t been trained.”

I sucked in a shuddering breath and forced my eyes open to find Ellie hunched over me, her hand splayed over my heart.

“As you said before, these aren’t just games.

There’s more at play than we know,” I said, somehow knowing it was true.

As much as I missed my mother, she was right.

I wasn’t done here yet, not in the Solstice Games, and not with Nocta.

My hand went to the velvet pouch that held the worry stones.

“Do it, Ellie. I trust you. We aren’t losing because of me.”

She gave a tight nod as her hands flashed runes that I only partially saw.

Her fingers were as fast as any of ours – only instead of inflicting damage, they mended it.

Magic flickered along my skin, light-green colored sparks that were so beautiful, my eyes welled up with tears.

They broke free and slid down my cheeks as the pain came in waves.

I watched in stunned silence as my flesh knit back together, the wound closing until there was nothing more than a simple white scar.

Ellie sat back on her heels and swallowed hard. “I guess I found my Quirk.”

It made perfect sense, now that I thought about it. She hated fighting and was always the first to try to help. But given the rarity of a true healer, it was nothing short of a miracle.

“Amazing,” I said, reaching for her wrist and giving it a squeeze. “Thank you, Ellie. Is this ... is this why you don’t like fighting?”

Her lips split into probably the widest smile I’d seen out of her since .

.. well maybe since the start of school.

“Yeah, I think maybe. Is ... is there anyone else in need of help?” Her cheeks went pink, as if she was maybe expecting to be made fun of.

But the others who had injuries lined up.

Gary was first, and then Ross and Marina.

Caterina had only a few bruises, but Ellie insisted it would help.

And she wasn’t wrong.

“That was impressive,” Typhon admitted as we all sat around the fire a short time later, healed and doing better than probably most other teams. “Stupid, but impressive. Thing is ... you should have been spirited away. Same with Ross. You two should have been pulled out. You would have lost some points, but you would have been sent back in once your injuries were tended to.”

I snorted. “Unless someone is trying to kill us. You know, like that “non-lethal” fireball your boys used.”