Page 10 of Marked By the Enemy
But the bond stayed alert.
I rubbed my hands over my hair. “You said the bond fuses. Or it breaks.”
“Sometimes. When it fuses, there isn’t any escape. When it breaks, you turn to ash.”
I wanted to ask him about his parents, but held the question deep in my soul. I had tried to kill him twice, and I didn’t deserve his answers about something so deep. “So there’s no winning.”
“There’s surviving.”
We didn’t speak for a long time. I got up and looked through my window at the empty courtyard and the empty sky, now devoid of clouds. After some time, I turned. He hadn’t left. I watched him. He watched the fire.
“You’ll be summoned tomorrow,” he finally said. “The trials begin.”
“What trials are you speaking of?”
“To prove that you are strong.”
“And if I am?”
“If you are, you could be a threat.” He strolled toward the door and paused with his hand on the frame. “Do you dream of me yet?”
My skin tingled, and for a split second, my breathing suspended. I didn’t answer. When the door shut, the bond quieted. But the bond wasn’t gone, it never was gone.
They woke me with soft bells. The repeating chimes that came from nowhere and everywhere. The sound threaded into the bond until I sat up, breath caught halfway in my throat.
A maid entered before I could speak. This one, too, was a recent addition; she provided me with a plain tunic and gloves. “You are summoned.”
I heaved a sigh and dressed in silence, wondering what they wanted me to do. Reinforcement had been added to the knuckles of the black leather gloves. When I pulled them on, something inside me steadied, like a weight settling into place.
She led me through a corridor I hadn’t seen before. This one dipped below the usual halls. We passed the chapel stairs and entered a windowless passage. Only thick-limbed torches mounted along the stone, their flames burning blue. Silence reigned here.
The room at the end, wide and low-ceilinged, carved into a perfect circle with walls the color of smoke-stained marble. Years of footsteps had worn the stone underfoot smooth. The perimeter featured no windows, seats, or tapestries to soften the walls. Only a single ring of light above, suspended from nothing, casting an even glow without any shadows to hide in.
But I wasn’t alone.
Darian stood beside a raised dais of black basalt. Next to him, a man in a grey cloak held a glass rod twinkling with light. Behind them, half-shrouded in the wall’s curve, stood the six council members. Cloaks matching the wall’s color covered their colorful robes.
I bit the inside of my lips and lowered my head to study them. Were they wearing Invisibility cloaks?
Each of the Elemental Seats was a step lower than the platform, watching everything. No one told me to kneel.
Darian’s face appeared slack when he looked at me and spoke. “This is the Trial of Control. You will demonstrate restraint of physical magic under stress.”
“Whose stress?” I asked.
The man with the wand, or glass rod, or whatever it was, answered without looking at me. “Your stress, Consort.”
The door behind me clicked shut. The floor sank a fraction under my boots. Warmth bloomed across the stone. There was a low vibration threading through my molars. My mind raced through possibilities of what was about to happen. I rocked on my feet and squinted.
“Ready,” the tester said.
“Begin,” Darian said.
I stayed still.
The walls reverberated with a low rumbling, as if an earthquake was brewing in the depths of the earth. The sound intensified, shaking loose bits of debris and sending them tumbling to the ground. Dust swirled in the air, adding a gritty undertone to the trembling. It was a warning, a warning that something powerful and dangerous was approaching.
My legs tensed, ready to run, but my feet remained rooted on the spot, determined to let it pass. And it did. As quickly as it started, it stopped.
