Page 74 of Faerie Trials

She swept along the path like the queen herself. I took a moment of pleasure seeing her jump when the harpy bolted down through the trees and blocked the path with a screech.

Then I realized we were facing down a freakin’harpy.

This one made the ones I’d seen in the stands during the commencement ceremony look like parakeets.

Large brown wings expanded to the point where the feathers touched the trees on either side of the path. Wicked sharp talons curved from eagle feet and dug into the earth leaving trenches behind them. In her eyes I saw nothing but fury.

“Tavi!”

I definitely didn’t expect the first word out of Coral’s mouth to be my name. And we didn’t have enough time to fashion a weapon from the Magnasterium. I dropped my backpack and drew a vial from its depths.

TheEius Repellere, a one-use concoction to repel anyone or anything from you without harm and can be used on upwards of twenty enemies at a time. Back at the Fae Academy for Halflings, the last step of our final exams to get into year two involved making the concoction using our wits to fill in missing pieces of the recipe.

I’d won.

It was just one harpy, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I tossed the vial at her and watched it explode in a cloud of sparkling green. The harpy jettisoned up and out of sight before she had a chance to attack, pulled away by the force of the spell.

Safe. Still, my heart refused to slow.

Coral turned around slowly to stare at me. Not with appreciation, no. With disgust. “I was saying your name to get you to step back and let me handle it.”

I suppressed a shudder. “You’re welcome!” I huffed with as much sarcasm as I could muster.

“I told you to stay out of my way. Seems you really do have a problem following the simplest of orders.”

If her words were claws, they’d be pressed right to my throat. I swallowed everything terrible I wanted to say and let her walk away, keeping my distance once again as I shouldered my backpack.Don’t engage, I told myself. Let her say whatever she wanted to about me. I knew what just happened.

I’d saved her life when she didn’t expect it, and it unbalanced the normal dynamic between us. She didn’t like that. Neither did I.

There were no more harpies on our walk back to the green meadow behind the palace. There were, however, spells hidden in the forest surrounding us. We traveled together and made it through whatever we faced.

There was a spell that switched our faces and we had to try and get them back to normal. There was a spell causing us to lose our hair. There was a spell turning the earth into slime and we had to reverse the process to move out of it.

There were monsters and there was fire. Coral and I met them all, and with the sun going down at our backs I turned to face her, watching her bare her teeth. Seeing the predatory light flaring in her eyes as she chuckled and unwound the tangled layers of spells keeping us in place.

The effect was chilling.

By the time midnight rolled around we’d been working together for twelve straight hours—tired, worn out, and still hating each other—with no food outside of the snacks I’d thought to bring in my backpack.

I conjured a fire for us when we both felt chilled. Then stared at Coral from across the flames.

“We should try to get some sleep. This is really a test of endurance, I think.” I rubbed my hands together near the flames.

She scoffed. “I don’t feel safe falling asleep with you.”

“After everything we’ve been through today,” I muttered.

“It’s not enough to make me trust you.”

“My line.”

I understood how she felt, though. Working through the obstacles of the tournament had me bone-tired and at the end of what I could tolerate magically and personally.

Which was the whole point, my exhausted mind argued. The point of the Trials was to test our endurance and, in this case, our bravery.

And although it pained me to admit it, I knew things would have gone much less smoothly if Coral were not here with me. Damn her.

But I watched the way her eyes fluttered. “Rest,” I said. “I’ll take the first shift and wake you up in a few hours.”

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