Page 55 of Faerie Trials

“Hey!” Arlyss barked.

“What?” Mike and I said at the same time.

“She’s not saying anything worse than what you’ve said in the past,” Mike replied, looking over at me with a warm smile.

Arlyss turned on his heel and walked away toward Coral and Lane, his waiting and no doubt more appreciative audience.

All right. No skin off my nose.

“He thinks he’s going to finish first.” Mike moved toward me, light on his feet, until our gazes locked. “Let’s give him a run for his money and make him eat his words.”

“You really have that much confidence in the spell we found?”

Mike’s mask of haughty control cracked a little. But only I saw it. “I’m confident we did everything we could to prepare. I just wish we were doing it together.”

I reached out to take his hand, squeezing once. “We’re going to be fine. Trust me.”

Except I didn’t trust myself. Not when everything he said sounded tinny and my focus began to scatter in a thousand directions.

No! I refused to give in to the brain fog. Not today, not this time.

“Remember, kids,” Cyrus was saying with a wide smile. “Most of this Trial will be deeply personal and not visible to the judges. The goal today is to make it through faster than the rest of your competitors. It does not matter how.”

He put enough gravity into the “how” to sink the Titanic.

“Don’t be scared,” Mike whispered to me.

“I’m not.” I walked a few steps ahead of him to prove it. Good thing he couldn’t see how my stomach jumped and the rest of me shook. I locked my knees to keep myself upright.

He chuckled behind me. “Oh, I don’t know, I think I see a few nerves showing.”

“You’re one to talk. There might be a muskee lurking around the corner prepared to gobble you up.”

The joke did not faze him. “Whatever you say, Tavi.”

It didn’t take long for Cyrus to finish his speech. A shower of sparks accompanied his final statement. And then we were off. I knew that above us were orbs floating, relaying information about the contestants for the viewers watching at home. I’d thought the Summer Games were a big deal? They were nothing compared to the Elite Trials.

People were apparently eager to watch us die.

I crushed that thought and tried to throw it as far away as possible.

Beginning to feel the stress even more keenly, I broke into a run, knowing I didn’t have much time to find the right spot to grow the seed. Thinking back to my time with Juno—the time I could remember, at least—I realized we’d focused most of our efforts on air and fire. We should have been practicing earth magic. Juno reckoned that because I was already taking advanced classes on earth magic at Elite Academy, I should focus on other things.

Fat load of good it did me now.

The ghostly echoes of everything I’d tried to cram in my head followed me through the forest, a place I should have been entirely comfortable. I definitely shouldn’t feel like I was walking on eggshells.

The forest teemed with life around me and a soft breeze seemed to push me forward. There were deer, and foxes, and squirrels racing from one tree to another. They had no idea their world was about to be turned into a battleground for hundreds of elite Fae students. A battleground where the fastest student won.

I’d be lucky if I made it out of here having completed the test at all, much less in the fastest time.

I sank into the quiet until I found a good spot to stop. I looked up. The clearing stretched in either direction with a clear angle to the sun overhead. Yes, this was good.

I walked over the soft ground, newly thawed after the last few warm days, and eventually decided on a particular place to plant the seed of the tree I was to grow for the Trial. Then I began in earnest to gather all my inherent magic energy. Time to get this show on the road.

Drawing into myself was hard work. Calling my magic took more effort than it should have, and the moment I took hold of it, the moment I felt it growing, my concentration splintered. Repeatedly.

I growled, stomping my feet in an effort to ground myself. “This isn’t going to work if you can’t focus!” I yelled at myself, unable to resist slapping the side of my head as if that would help.

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