Brom groped with his hands along the grass, seeking something, anything that he might hit her with, dislodge her so he could get up. But his right leg was twisted under him, and he had no leverage to push her off. His knee was torqued so awkwardly that his right foot lay next to his chest.
She knelt on his thigh, and he cried out. Fierce agony shot up his knee.
“Tell me how you knew my name, and you’ll pass the Test,” she said. “You’ll go on to fortune and adventure, just like you wanted.”
His hand scrabbled frantically with his right boot, trying to shove it down, shove it free, to ease the pressure on his knee.
The ball of roots in his gut tightened, and he suddenly remembered the hidden metal spike in the sole of his boot.
Linza lifted Brom’s head by the hair and put his bloody face next to her own. She brought her yellow teeth so close to Brom’s ear that he could smell that decay on her breath, like a mouse had died in her mouth. “Tell me what I want to know, and you live. Don’t, and you die. That is my rule, and there’s no breaking it.”
“Watch me,” he growled through clenched teeth.
Brom swung his left fist at her head. With a laugh, she blocked it...
...and she didn’t see the spike coming up from the other side. He drove it into her chest with the Soul of the World guiding his hand. The steel went in just under the ribcage, straight into her heart.
She screamed and her eyes went wide as her hands clasped his fist. She tried yank it out, but he fought her with all his might. She tried to scramble away, to free herself, to pull herself off the deadly spike, but he clung to her and shoved it deeper still. She twisted, wailing, and he felt her magic falter. The rain of despair slackened.
He imagined doing to her what she’d tried to do to him. He imagined her soul being sucked from her body, flowing into the sharpened steel spike, and creating a vacuum of despair inside her. He imagined that spike drawing the very life from her.
With a creaky wail, Linza gave a last feeble shove with her legs. He let her, driving awkwardly with one foot as he pushed himself after her. They flopped to the ground, this time with her beneath him, and he jammed the spike the rest of the way, his fist pressing against her bony ribs.
She twitched one last time, then let out a long, thin breath. Her cowl fell back, exposing her bald head, which looked like a skull with skin. Her death grimace was horrible. Brom pushed himself off, rolling his aching, battered body away from her.
He levered himself to his feet using a headstone and gingerly tested his right leg. After a few hesitant steps, he found it would bear his weight. Linza stared sightlessly upward, the spike sticking out of her chest.
She didn’t breathe. She didn’t move.
He forced himself to approach her again, and he prodded her with his toe. It jostled her body but she didn’t revive. She was dead. It was over.
To his right, a light appeared, tall and square. It resolved into a portal the exact same size as the mirror, and beyond it was the mirror room where he’d started. He could see the marble walls and the double doors.
He charged through. A loud clang sounded as he crossed the threshold, and the portal vanished behind him.
CHAPTER TEN
Brom
Brom fell flat onto the marble floor and groaned. His face was hammered meat. His head felt soft, his teeth loose. His bones ached. His breath fogged the polished marble, and all he wanted to do was lie down and pass out.
The Four were evil!
And he’d just killed one of them.
It just wasn’t possible. It didn’t even seem real.
He levered himself onto one elbow, looked at the four mirrors. He couldn’t spend any time on his dizzying victory or what it meant that The Four weren’t the benevolent overseers he’d thought they were. The last of his second Soulblock still crackled through his body, but it was almost done. Sinking that deep into the Soul of the World had been costly, and this fight wasn’t over. He had to get his Quad mates out of those mirrors.
With a grunt, he took a deep breath, pushed himself up from the ground, and opened his third Soulblock.
The magic charged into him like a lightning storm. His senses became hyper-alert, and he joined with everything in the room, the solid walls and floors, the portals disguised as mirrors.
A loud clang sounded, and Oriana stumbled out of her own portal. The silver sash she’d tied around her waist had come free and fluttered down behind her, wreathed in green fire. She turned, not seeing Brom, and stared back at the mirror. Then she stopped moving altogether.
“Oriana.” He went to her. She was transfixed, her mouth open in horror as she stared back into the mirror. Her silver-and-gold hair was flung in disarray across her face, as though she’d been in a hurricane, and charcoal burn marks striped her temples from eye to hairline.
He hesitated to touch her. Though she’d come out of the portal just as he had, her Test would have been different—a battle of the mind. If he interrupted her, he might do her more harm than good.
But time was short...
His gut twisted, and his gaze fell on the fluttering silver sash Oriana had dropped. It lay across the threshold of the portal, half inside the testing room and half beyond, which was a nightmarish land of dark cliffs and purple lightning.
This was no quaint and grassy graveyard from Brom’s hometown. It was a wet, black granite cliff overlooking a dark green lake. Purple lightning forked back and forth across low-hanging black clouds. Brom didn’t see a figure in that landscape but he had a feeling someone was there. He peered hard, but while he was connected to the portal itself through the Soul of the World, he couldn’t feel anything beyond it. Several times he thought he saw something move, but it could have been just leaves on the wind.
In Brom’s Test, the portal hadn’t reopened until he’d defeated his adversary. So Oriana had passed. Why, then, was it trying to draw her back?
He stood in front of her, grabbed her by both shoulders and shook her. “Oriana!”
She sucked in a breath but still gazed past him at the mirror as if that was all she could see.
He glanced back at the portal. The silver sash lying across the threshold suddenly flickered with green fire. At the same instant, Oriana twitched and her mouth trembled. Her already-wide eyes widened more, and she stepped into him, trying to move toward the portal.
Brom released her and lunged away. He snatched up the sash and yanked it all the way into the room. There was a flash of green fire, and the portal winked out. The dark land vanished. The mirror returned to its previous state, reflecting everything in the room except Brom and Oriana.
Oriana gasped, and her mouth snapped shut with a click of teeth. She shook her windblown head and blinked, finally seeing him.
“Brom,” she whispered. A wave of expressions crossed her face. Horror. Pain. Worry.
“Are you okay?” Brom asked.
Oriana pulled her typical impassive mask into place. “I am well,” she said, though she didn’t look at all well. She had always been pale-skinned, but she looked as white as snow now, with haunted dark rings under her eyes. There were bright red marks on her wrists and neck. “I believe...I passed.”
Her self-possession reasserted itself. She glanced down at him. “I see that you did too. Are you in pain?”
“Quite a bit, actually—”
The room rocked with an explosion, and both Oriana and Brom cringed. He threw his hands up to protect his tender head and almost stumbled when his ravaged knee flared in pain. Royal hit the far wall like he’d been shot from a catapult. The big man was covered with bloody lash marks. His own fists were also bloody, and small curls of green smoke rose from blackened scorch marks on his body. He lay completely limp on the floor near the wall. Only his prodigious arm muscles twitched, as though they wanted to keep fighting.
Brom ran to his Quad mate, wondering if Royal was dead. He knelt next to the big man and could immediately see that, while injured, he was s
till alive. His great chest rose and fell.
Brom turned to find Oriana studying the blue-framed mirror, but whatever land Royal had been to, it was gone now.
“He’s alive,” Brom said. He was about to say that they needed to hurry—they needed to get as far away from here as possible, as soon as possible. But he hesitated.
Linza had talked about putting “hooks” into him rather than killing him. If Oriana had passed her test... If she’d left her mirror alive, did that mean the hooks of The Four were already in her?
“You were the first,” she said distractedly, like she often did when she was working things out in her head. “You emerged before me.”
“By a few seconds only.”
“After my victory, just as I was passing through the mirror, my...foe tried to haul me back,” she said. “I had won, but it was as though the Test had started over again. I think when you emerged, my Test began again.” She looked over at Royal. “I wonder if his did, too.”
He stood up. “We have to get to Vale. They’re going to kill her. They can’t have all four of us living.”
“Who can’t?”
He staggered past Oriana, toward Vale’s mirror. “The Four.”
“What?”
“It’s a trap. This isn’t a test. It’s meant to kill us, at least one of us.”
“But...I passed,” she murmured.
“Nobody passes.” He ran to Vale’s mirror. She stood in a dark glade of Lyantrees, surrounded by a cone of green fire that came down from somewhere above the purple-silver Lyantree canopy. She looked as though she’d been running toward the portal when the fire hit her.
She’d gone to her knees and it seemed she couldn’t move. There was no adversary, no other creature within that glade except Vale and that flaming cone. She screamed continuously, her back arching, her face turned toward the top of her fiery prison. Red sparks rose from her body, sucked up the length of the cone like smoke up a chimney.
It was her soul. He could feel those little sparks of flame—her beautiful soul—being pulled out of her. The green fire was draining her life, pulling the magic from her Soulblocks, draining them so she couldn’t use them. It would take them all and leave her a dead husk.
Brom took a step toward the mirror.
Oriana grabbed his arm. “Don’t,” she warned.
One word. So simple, yet it fractured the Quad forever.
“We can’t save her,” she said. “I’m out of Soulblocks. And you don’t have the strength.”
“We have to try.”
“If we do, we will only succeed in dying with her,” she said. “Vale wouldn’t throw her chance away if your positions were reversed. You know she wouldn’t.”
“She would,” he said, but he wasn’t sure about that.
“Only three ever pass,” Oriana said.
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t just leave her.”
Tears welled in Oriana’s eyes, but her expression remained stony. “You’ve won, Brom. Take your victory. You’re going to become a Quadron.” Oriana had obviously calculated the odds of success and she’d made her decision. Royal was down, Oriana was drained, and Brom was on his last Soulblock. “She is simply... She is the fourth.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t be a fool,” she said.
He yanked his arm free of her grip.
“I was always the fool,” he said, and he launched himself at the mirror.
“Brom!” Oriana screamed.
The portal clanged.
He landed just outside the cone of green fire in the Hallowed Woods. If there was a chance to save Vale, if it was at all possible, he would find a way. He focused the storm of magic inside himself and sank deep into the Soul of the World.
And he suddenly knew what to do.
He ran at the green fire. It was like hitting a stretched animal skin. It didn’t want to let him in. It hungered for Vale, but he pushed his hand through and touched her arm. The green fire surged within the cone, turning vicious. A hundred green needles stabbed into his arm. He almost yanked it back out but he gritted his teeth and grasped Vale’s wrist.
He jammed his leg through the fiery cone, scrabbling for leverage, and he spun, hauling Vale out of the fire and throwing her to the forest floor.
The cone grabbed hold of him with a dozen invisible hands. The green flames roared higher, and the invisible hands yanked Brom inside.
He shouted. As he continued to spin, he felt like wolves were chewing at him, pulling out the coils of his intestines.
But the Soul of the World showed him the truth: the damage was an illusion. His body was unchanged. All the fire could do was deal pain and steal magic. It couldn’t kill him, not until it drained him dry.
And he wasn’t going to let that happen.
He used his momentum to continue spinning. With a mighty yell, he hit the far side and pushed his way out, tumbling to the ground. The cone tried to follow him, cover him again, but he anticipated the movement and rolled to the left. He came lithely to his feet and spun. The Soul of the World told him when to leap, to spin, to kick, so he did.
The green fire coalesced into a handsome man in a red doublet...
...just as Brom’s foot smashed into his face. The man crashed to the ground, his jaw flying off his face. There was no blood. No gore. It simply...came off, as though the man were made of painted wood.
Brom landed, fists up. “Arsinoe,” he growled. Brom didn’t quite recognize the man, though he felt he should. Again, the name came from the Soul of the World, as though it had been shoved past Brom’s mouth by some other force, as though the Soul of the World was speaking through him.
Arsinoe’s jaw thumped to the leaf-strewn ground and rolled to a stop.
The portal clanged. He spared a quick glance over his shoulder and saw that Vale had escaped. Both she and Oriana stood safely on the other side of the portal. Thank the gods!
He moved to join them. Quad Brilliant would reunite, doubling their Soulblocks, and they could lean on each other to escape this infernal trap.
Brom sprinted past the handsome man—markedly less handsome without his jaw—toward the portal.
Two more clangs rang out as Brom leapt toward freedom—
A monstrously strong, metal-clad hand grabbed Brom’s ankle, yanking him back just as his fingers touched the portal. Time slowed, and he saw Vale shouting denial.
“Help me!” Brom shouted, reaching out for her in that brief frozen second. “We can beat them. Together!” They wouldn’t double their Soulblocks with just the three of them, but their magic would increase.
Vale hesitated.
The monstrously strong hand threw Brom to the ground like a doll.
His concentration shattered as he tumbled. The Soul of the World vanished. He came to his knees and looked up. Ahead of him, the portal glowed, and Vale stood frozen in indecision, eyes wide. Behind her, Oriana’s indigo gaze burned into him. Tears now streaked down her cheeks.
I told you, she mouthed. I warned you.
“Then run!” he shouted.
“Brom!” Vale mouthed, stepping toward the portal.
But it vanished with a clang, and they were gone. Vale... Oriana... He was alone.
With a grunt, Brom stood up and faced his enemies.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Brom
Every nerve in Brom’s body prickled, vigilant. He regained his connection, and the Soul of the World told him to wait, that the first move must be made by the enemy.
Arsinoe retrieved his jaw and put it back in his face, completing the illusion that he was human. He looked furious, like he wanted to leap on Brom and tear the face from his skull. From some deep compulsion Brom couldn’t identify, just looking at Arsinoe made his blood boil.
The squat, ridiculously-muscled man in head-to-toe armor seemed like he wanted to crush Brom too, but both he and Arsinoe waited. A tall Mentis walked forward between the trees, and the other two seemed to be waiting for him. The Mentis had
a grotesquely elongated face, huge ears, and eyes that looked like they were dripping down his face. He held his hand up, and the mere gesture seemed to hold the others at bay.
He looked like he might have once been five feet tall but had been stretched by a machine to a towering seven-foot height. Everything about him was longer and thinner than it should be, from his head to his hands to his dangling ear lobes. His eyes were sea green from lid to lid, without any pupils, any whites. The man’s snowy white robes seemed to give off light in the dim forest, and he tapped his overly long fingertips against his palm in an understated clap.
“Brilliant,” he said, like everything was falling into place exactly as he had envisioned. “Simply brilliant.”
The foreboding in Brom’s stomach twisted. But the Soul told him to stay, so Brom remained still.
“You have a knack for breaking the rules,” the white-robed man said. “You’ve succeeded in making even Arsinoe jealous, and he is a legendary rule-breaker.”
“I’m not jealous,” Arsinoe growled. “I’ve just changed my mind about who I want to keep. I don’t want the little bitch anymore. I want this one.”
The white-robed man tsk’ed reprovingly. “Alas, I have an aversion to wasting talent. He would be an amazing addition to our flock.”
“We have to kill him,” the armored man said.
“My, my... You truly have done the miraculous today, young Brom. You have Arsinoe and Wulfric agreeing with each other,” the white-robed man said. “Do you know who I am?”
“Olivaard,” Brom said. Again, the name fell from his lips without him actually knowing it. He hoped his missing memories would soon return. He felt in his gut that he knew much more about these monsters than he had recalled so far. “You were all part of The Four,” he said hoarsely.
Olivaard raised his eyebrows, amused. “Were?”
“You’re one of The Three now,” Brom growled. “Linza is dead. I killed her.”
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