Think, Rielle. If you shatter this trap, you’ll fall—and to where?
Eyes shut, struggling to force her mind clear, she found the path she needed. She saw the maze arrange itself, orderly, so that the writhing nest of tunnels trapping her would unfurl and grow still. She saw a path leading out of her tunnel and down to a set of sturdy stairs that would lead her to the second caged child.
The image unfurled in her mind’s eye like a map, golden-edged and glimmering, and when she opened her eyes once more, a sea of miniscule brilliant grains winked beneath the shifting veil of the physical world.
Then the world remade itself as she instructed.
Power shot out from her fingers to slither down the mesh of her cage. She felt its progress as a slithering heat under her skin, felt the rough metal beneath the reaching tendrils of her power as if her own hands were touching it. Her eyes drifted shut with pleasure. The knots in her body loosened, then vanished. A shuddering liquid heat cascaded down her limbs, pooled in her belly, shivered down her thighs.
The maze around her shifted, groaning as if in protest. The metalmasters above were fighting for control.
She smiled, sated. Nice try.
Just as Rielle had envisioned, the tunnel that trapped her unfolded, docile. Its opening came to rest on a wide platform leading to a set of stairs. She crawled out, stood for a moment to catch her breath. She felt shot full of energy, as if awakening from the best sleep of her life.
She turned her gaze up to the crowd, to the two mountain peaks above that, to the sun beyond.
She bowed low, with an indolent flourish of her hands.
The crowd exploded into cheers, so loud that even from the depth of the pit, Rielle’s ears rang from the noise.
Grinning, she bounded up the stairs to the second child’s cage. This one was a girl, pale and thin-limbed, her eyes large and dark in her hollow-cheeked face. Peeking out from under a mop of tangled brown hair, she sobbed uncontrollably.
Rielle touched her hand to the cage’s lock, felt the euphoric power from a few moments before seep into the metal like a drug.
With a quiet sizzle, the lock collapsed, melted, and dripped silver to the stairs.
Rielle gazed down at the girl, her eyes heavy-lidded.
“It’s all right,” she said, breathless. “I’m here to save you.”
The girl gaped up at her. “Are you the Sun Queen, my lady?”
Rielle held out a hand to her. “I will be soon.”
The girl jumped up from her hiding spot and barreled into Rielle’s open arms.
But then, with a great, heaving groan, the entire cage rocked beneath them. Rielle swayed, tightened her grip on the child.
A ripple of horrified shouts sounded from the crowd above.
“My lady,” whispered the child. She raised a shaking hand to point into the maze below them. “It’s falling down.”
She was right. Rielle stared, her terror climbing fast as the cage began to move—from the far, bottom corner and the near, top corner. Swiftly it collapsed, folding in on itself. The horrible grinding racket sounded like all the axes in the world clashing against one another.
And the third child still stood trapped far below.
Above, the creak of a door. Rielle shoved the girl toward it without thinking. “Climb!”
The child clung to her. “You’ll die! Come with me, please!”
Rielle caught the child’s face in one hand. “Do you really think that I, the Sun Queen, will let such a puny cage be the end of me?”
With a tremulous smile, the girl shook her head.
Rielle returned her smile and pushed her up a long, skinny ladder to the waiting metalmasters. Once they had the child in hand, the floor beneath Rielle gave way.
The fall choked away her scream. She dropped fifty feet and slammed onto one of several rotating poles. They spun out from a center mechanism like spokes of a carriage wheel. She clung to the pole that had broken her fall. She could hardly breathe; her stomach felt bruised from the impact.
But suddenly, even through her exhaustion, Rielle had an idea.
She closed her eyes. I can do this.
Corien answered firmly: You can.
She let go of the pole, dropping onto a metal plate that had been whizzing through the air only seconds before. At the slam of Rielle’s boots, the plate stopped, frozen in midair.
She threw up her hands, felt the simmering hot energy flowing between her and those spinning poles, and made them fly.
They spun out in all directions, so fast any one of them could have cut a man clean in half. Rielle twisted her wrists sharply in the air. The poles slammed to a stop, wedging themselves into the four corners of the cage.
The cage shuddered, its collapse halted. Every piece of metal trembled in place, creaking awfully.
That wouldn’t hold for long.
Rielle raced through the air, summoning metal plates from the walls as she ran. They flew to her from the floor, the staircases, the labyrinthine paths crisscrossing the cube. She flung each plate before her, stepped lightly on it, pushed off, and moved on.
Corien let out an admiring laugh. Marvelous, Rielle. Stunning.
Pride bloomed in Rielle’s chest. With each step on her floating metal path, she felt power gather at her feet. When she landed next to the third child’s cage, it blew apart at her touch, leaving the child standing, shivering, in its ruins.
“Come here.” Rielle shook her hand impatiently. Every inch of her skin tingled. Distantly, she felt the screaming ache of her muscles. “It’s almost over.”
“How did you do that?” the child asked, gaping. “You were flying.”
A series of colossal, metallic crashes exploded around them. Rielle looked up to see the poles wedged in their corners giving way.
But the cage did not continue its collapse.
Instead, it lifted itself into the air, the metal groaning. Rielle grabbed the child, watched the cage’s shifting base for an opening, then jumped through it to the ground. She and the child fell hard; the child screamed, clutching his foot. Above them hovered the cage, slowly spinning.
Then it rearranged itself, the metal maze breaking apart, re-forming, sharpening…
A storm of blades, ten thousand strong, turned as one and raced toward the lonely spot in the dirt where Rielle and the child crouched.
Rielle stared, panic drumming its way up her throat. Time slowed and quickened, both at once. She could faintly hear Corien shouting at her to do something, to defend herself, to move.
But thousands of swords? That was too many. Manipulating a few pieces of the maze was one thing. But this—they darkened the sky. They whistled and roared. They would cut her to pieces—and the child too.
The child grasped her wrist. “May the Queen’s light guide us home,” he whispered to her, the smile on his face not one of resignation, but of belief.
The Sun Queen’s prayer. The Sun Queen’s light.
Her light.
Her power.
Yes, Corien whispered. Yes, Rielle.
Rielle pulled the child close, then turned to the swords, closed her eyes, and flung up her arms.
No.
She refused this fate.
No.
She had trials to complete, friends waiting for her, the mystery of a foreign princess’s murder to solve.
No.
She had words of love still to speak.
And a voice in her head.
And a hunger, a craving, to answer the awakening call of her blood.
No.
Not yet.
She waited in silence, her body trembling. Power stretched out from her fingers, from the sharp turns of her shoulders, from the ends of her hair.
Had it been enough?
She drew a few shallow breaths in the ringing silence, then dared to open her eyes.
A blade hovered before her face. Two more, pointing at each of her eyes. Hundreds. Thousands, all held in place by her silent command. They filled the pit, quivering, denied their kill. The air hummed metallic.
Rielle let out an incredulous, tearful breath.
Then she let her arms fall.