I don’t give myself any time to second-guess my decision. While holding Zara’s gaze so she can’t see what I’m about to do, I squeeze the bead to activate it.

‘You really think you know everything about me and my family?’ I say, allowing a smirk to rise on my lips. ‘You know nothing about me. Nothing about life in the slums. Nothing about the powers I’ve learned living there.’

‘Powers in the slums?’ she scoffs. ‘Bullshit.’

‘Rose, what are you doing?’ Jonas mutters, still at my side.

‘Proving that I’m not a runt.’

Zara takes another step closer to me, and her goons move to follow. Can the flame bead take out that many people? I don’t know. I don’t have a clue what it’s capable of, but I know I need to make sure it strikes something that can catch light. Right now, Zara’s standing next to a stack of books. They’re leather-bound with gilded paper, and the top one has fallen open, meaning it’s the perfect kindling. The only problem is… they’re books. After years of missing my library and wishing I had enough money to be able to trade tonics for books instead of food, I hesitate to burn something so precious. But if she just steps a little further forward, she’ll be in line with a wicker basket filled with kindling to start the fires in the rooms. It doesn’t get better than that. I just need to provoke her into moving.

‘Three against one,’ I say, raising an eyebrow. ‘You too afraid to take me on your own?’

‘Says the woman with the seven-foot-tall bodyguard,’ she snorts.

I crinkle my nose as I cast a glance back at Jonas. ‘I’d guess about six-three. It’s okay,’ I taunt, ‘not everyone can count. So, come on, are you actually going to do anything?’ I mock. ‘Or was I right in the first place? You can’t actually do any damage yourself?’

‘I’ll show you just how much damage I can cause,’ she snarls and steps forward. Bingo.

I act immediately and throw the activated bead into the basket. The flames are instant and mammoth, the fire blue and with a heat so fierce that the flames don’t just catch, they consume.

‘Argh!’

Zara screams and the acrid smell of burning is thick in the air. It’s not just her tunic that has caught. It’s her skin and that perfect, long, auburn braid of hers.

‘Help! Water! Where the hell is water?’ one of her companions shouts. Whatever powers her goons have, they don’t seem to be able to help.

I doubt there are any water wielders here. That magic is as rare as they come. There certainly won’t be anyone able to douse it with ice. I don’t need to have seen the marks on the others’ faces to know that none of them will have that gift, not when control of that magic is bound so tightly to the Issen that Korvane’s ancestors executed anyone who dared to show an affinity with ice.

I don’t want to look at Zara, to see the pain I’m causing. Despite the fact that I had no alternative, I feel faintly sick.

‘Duck!’ a woman’s voice orders as the smell of charred hair fills my nostrils. An instant later, an icy gust of air blows through the hallway, so cold and harsh it extinguishes the flames completely.

The floorboards are scorched, the ceiling is black with smoke stains, and the heat has even stripped the paint from the walls. Yet despite all the destruction around me, it’s Zara that my gaze fixes on.

Blisters bulge from her skin all the way from the top of her crown to her waist. How the hell she’s still standing, I don’t know. Then again, I’m not sure how I’m still on my feet either. The realisation of what I’ve done weakens my knees. As if he knows, Jonas steps beside me and holds my elbow. I can’t show weakness. Not now. Or it’s all for naught. I lock my knees and stand a little straighter.

‘You should have let her burn,’ someone mutters.

I’m sure that’s what other people are thinking too, but looking at her in this state, I’m glad someone blew the flames out. If the trials involve killing, then I’ll do what I have to to survive, but I don’t want to take a life like this – trying to prove I’m tough enough.

‘We need to get you to the healers,’ one of Zara’s goons entreats as they try to take her arm, but she shrugs them away.

‘I can walk,’ she hisses, stifling a gasp as she shuffles forward.

Well, any hope I had of a collaborative tournament is well and truly dead. I don’t think Prince Kyor is going to be the only one gunning for me now.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 11

‘If any of you let her bunk with you, I will kill you too.’ They’re the last words I hear Zara speak as she limps away. The fact that she’s not passed out from the pain has to say something about her. And clearly, I’m not the only one who thinks that, because I’m met with the same response in every room I try: no. The first one says there’re no beds for me and practically pushes me out the door so I can’t see all the empty bunks I already clocked behind them – but the second tells it like it is.

‘The Duartes are practically royalty in Rowell. We can’t risk making an enemy like that.’

‘Come on,’ Jonas says before I try the next one.

‘Where are we going?’

‘I guess I’m going to have to give up my solitude after all,’ he replies, leading me to the very end of the corridor where a thin spiral staircase sits. With rusted metal and screws that jut out from dubious angles, I can barely believe it hasn’t collapsed already.

Jonas leads us up the rickety staircase, and though the metal creaks under my feet, it holds, and that’s all that matters.

The burn on my leg stings like a bitch and every step is agony. That is one nasty talent Zara Duarte has, and considering she’s going to be up against people who have been fighting battles for years, it’s also a bloody good one to have.

Trying not to show any pain, I follow Jonas onto a small stone landing with a single door. He nudges it open, and once he’s inside the room, he picks a bag up off the narrow wooden bed and drops mine down instead.

‘What about you?’ I ask wearily. ‘Do you have somewhere else to go?’

‘I’ll be fine. Plenty of rooms I can bunk in. More importantly, what in the Mother’s name was that?’ His eyes are wide as he stares at me. ‘You never had fire magic. And what magic you had was stripped. I was there. I saw.’

The last part of his comment takes me by surprise. Of course, I knew there was an audience to our punishment, but I never realised Jonas was part of it.

‘I have skills, not magic,’ I respond, being deliberately elusive. I don’t need anyone, including Jonas, knowing that my one and only ‘skill,’ as I chose to call it, has now been used up. ‘All that matters is that they got me out of a tricky predicament.’

‘Well, now everyone knows what skills you’ve got, and that little stunt has likely put you in an even worse position.’

His patronising assessment puts my back up. ‘Worse than letting her kill me?’ I ask pointedly.

‘No, that’s not what I meant.’ He lets out a low sigh. I might not know Jonas well anymore, but I can read the worry in his eyes. ‘She won’t forget that. I wish you’d let me handle it instead.’

‘And confirm to her and everyone else that I really am a runt? No, not a chance.’

‘You know, I forgot how stubborn you can be.’ His eyes drift to my hand and he steps forward. ‘Shit. Is that all right?’

‘Stings a bit,’ I concede drily.

He takes my hand gently in his, and a tingle spreads down the back of my knuckles where he touches me. From the way he draws lazy circles on my skin, I’m wondering if he’s reconsidering looking for another room.

‘Is that how she killed the others?’ I ask, feeling a sudden need to fill the silence. ‘By opening their old wounds?’

‘Not sure. She didn’t act alone.’

‘The others from Rowell?’ I ask, resigned.

‘Yeah. And not just the ones who were with her just now. There are a few more of them, including her twin brother, Shim.’