Page 5

Sebran gave her a mocking salute and followed, wandless. Gaian hesitated for a moment, pale skin looking particularly white, then tailed Sebran toward the entrance.

Auria sighed, shoulders sinking. “So now our choices are either to split up the group and get a low score for teamwork, or go along with this reckless insanity.”

Saff clenched her jaw. “Nissa was the one who sacrificed any notion of working together. Let’s do our own thing. Prove that we care about doing this properly.”

Auria nodded in agreement, while Tiernan looked anxiously from Nissa to the temple and then up to the viewing gallery where his father sat.

“Sorry,” he eventually said, rubbing the back of his head. “I don’t see a better way.”

And then he stalked off after Nissa, Sebran, and Gaian.

“You’re better than this, Tiernan,” Auria muttered. Some of the shine had slipped from her demeanor.

Nissa yanked open the doors to the temple, and an echoey voice yelled from inside: “ Sen effigias .”

She ducked the curse, and it struck Tiernan square in the forehead.

Every inch of him turned to gray stone, and a skirmish broke out between Nissa, Gaian, Sebran, and whoever was on the other side of those doors.

“Well, I’m glad that went horribly for him,” Saff snorted.

But in truth, she was pissed off he’d squandered the switched envelope.

“While they’re distracted, let’s do a lap of the perimeter.

There must be something we haven’t thought of.

A back entrance, an open window, a tree we can scale to get a better vantage point. ”

Auria nodded, casting one more disdainful glance in the direction of the others. Sebran lay prone on the floor behind the statue of Tiernan, the vials from his tincture belt scattered and smashed on the flagstones around him. Nissa and Gaian were nowhere to be seen.

As they walked, Saff reminded herself to drag her leg behind her like a useless slab of meat.

It was uncomfortable—her left hip was overcompensating, and a dull ache already throbbed in the socket—but as Professor Vertillon always reminded them, this was how it might be in the real world.

She might have to fight for her life with a horrible injury.

She knew better than anyone that these things were rarely fair.

The Academy had gone to great lengths to make the scene feel real.

Around the perimeter of the temple, vendor carts sold pleasure-evoking refreshments: apricot pastry crescents and almond nougats, frothy caramel coffee and spiked hot chocolate.

A pair of horses grazed at a hay bale, and a group of elderly mages sat at a fold-out picnic table playing polderdash, a card game in which the suits of Saints and priests were prone to changing colors and loyalties midway through proceedings.

A young, handsome lute player with fiery red hair twanged the Bone Queen’s Lament, eyes closed in feigned sorrow, fingers blurring over the strings.

The mournful music was sweet and sad, pure and clean as bellsong, and as the lament built, Saffron’s well of pleasure felt a smidge fuller than before.

Yet for all the scene’s painstaking details, neither Saffron nor Auria spotted any alternative ways into the temple.

“Shame portari is no longer an option,” Saff muttered, but under her breath, so that rule-loving Auria wouldn’t hear.

Portari, the teleportation spell, had been outlawed several decades ago—stripped out of every wand in the land—and Saff was usually glad of the prohibitions. It meant fewer criminals evaded capture. But right now she had to wonder why the Silvercloaks hadn’t been given special dispensations.

Slowly, however, another plan was forming in Saff’s head.

“The roof,” she said, looking up at the magnificent structure. The bulbous purple glass shimmered like a dragon’s hoard. “It’s mostly opaque, but we might be able to carve a couple of holes in it. We’ll be able to see the central worship chamber. Maybe even cast some enchantments through it.”

“ Yes, ” agreed Auria, so vehemently that the horse nearest to her startled. “I brewed three levitation tinctures—knew they’d come in handy.”

A low yell echoed inside the temple, followed by the distinctive ping of a spell ricocheting off a stone wall. Auria pulled out two pearly white potions neatly labeled ascevolo . She handed one to Saff, unstoppered her own, and gulped it down in one.

A few moments later, Auria’s feet floated several inches off the ground.

Saff knew the elixir would not work on her, but she had to maintain the lie. She swallowed the gritty potion confidently, as though fully expecting it to have the desired effect.

But of course, nothing happened.

Auria, now six feet above the ground and gripping onto a tree branch, frowned down at her. “Did you take it?”

“Yes.” Saff feigned confusion. “But I don’t think it’s working.”

“That makes no sense. I brewed them from the same batch.”

“Strange.”

“Maybe I didn’t mix it well enough? There could be too much elm ash in yours.”

Saff studied the nearest tree. A long, spindly branch jutted low on its trunk.

“ Sen efractan, ” she muttered, and it snapped clean off. Magic might not work on her, but she was still able to enchant other people, other objects.

Next, she gathered a bushel of straw from the horses’ stash—with grunts of effort, to maintain the impression her left leg was not cooperating—and bundled it together, holding it to the end of the branch.

“A broomstick!” Auria called gleefully. She had a genuine, almost childlike adoration for magic.

Saff unlooped a thin rope from her belt and secured it around the bundle of hay.

Finally, she opened the third levitation elixir and spread it over the length of the branch.

Gravity immediately loosened its grip, and Saff mounted as it floated upward, making sure one leg drooped more clumsily than the other.

For the smallest of moments, her stomach swooping as the broomstick rose from the cobbled ground, Saffron shared Auria’s delight in the simple art of a well-executed spell.

As they drew level with the purple dome, Auria and Saff grabbed onto the corniced rim of the curved stone wall and hoisted themselves onto it with a grunt. The broomstick continued skyward before clattering against the high ceiling of the Grand Atrium.

Saffron perched on the ledge, breathing hard. The dome was mostly opaque, but there was a vague swarming and shouting of shadowed shapes in the worship chamber below—which meant at least one cadet had made it that far.

“ Sen aforam, ” muttered Saff, pressing the tip of her wand right up to the thick, tempered glass.

A burst of horn-shaped magic shot from her wand, piercing a small round hole in the dome. Auria mirrored Saff’s spell, and they both looked through.

The scene fifty feet below was carnage. Nissa was a statue in the doorway, while Gaian had been struck a little farther inside.

Both stone faces wore stunned expressions, like they couldn’t believe they’d been hit.

Sebran, the trained soldier, was the last cadet standing.

Using Gaian as cover, he fired haphazard effigias spells into the chamber, striking Bloodmoons and hostages alike.

A quick tally showed that five hostages had been “killed,” as well as four Bloodmoons—though there could be more in the spiral corridor.

The three surviving Bloodmoons, using hostages as shields, strode across the room to where Sebran crouched.

Sebran drew his blisblade and sliced urgently into his palm, shivering with the surge of pain-pleasure, but it was too little, too late. He was badly outnumbered.

“What a bloodbath,” Auria groaned in dismay.

Forgetting her voice was magically amplified.

It boomed through the wand-hole and echoed around the chamber below. All three Bloodmoons glanced up at the purple dome. One fired an effigias, striking the pane Auria perched on. The glass smashed inward, and she turned into a solid statue.

And then she fell through the dome.

Fast, hard, and made wholly of stone.

As she hit the mosaic tiles below, she shattered into a hundred pieces.