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  Alex decided not to admit that she hadn’t considered what the liquid was before swallowing the contents. “I prefer the cunning and courageous assessment. But that’s just my opinion.”

  Ignoring her—yet again—the man said, “You’ll find there is no ambiguity with the guidelines of the second phase.”

  The glass in her hand was suddenly filled to the brim again. “Once more, you are not to spill a single drop,” the man said. “But this time you are to complete the task while standing on only one leg. I advise using your non-injured one, but if you desire an added challenge, then by all means, disregard my suggestion.”

  When Alex just looked at him in befuddlement, he barked, “Arm stretched out, leg up. Now.”

  In the face of his abrupt order, Alex automatically followed his command, throwing her arm out and shifting her weight onto her good leg, the platform swaying precariously beneath her.

  “And in case you’re tempted to try the same trick twice, you should know that’s not water you hold this time,” the cloaked man said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s known in Medora as oxytophamine,” he said in his bland tone. “But in your world, you would liken it to hydrochloric acid.”

  Alex’s hand jerked, the liquid sloshing alarmingly close to the edge. “You’re bluffing.”

  “If you’re willing to risk it, feel free to test your hypothesis and see.”

  Once again, he disappeared, leaving Alex balancing like an idiot on one leg and holding what he claimed was a glass of highly corrosive acid.

  “Think, Alex,” she said to herself. “Think.”

  As the seconds turned into minutes, the glass in her hand transformed from something that started out as being reasonably light in weight, to something that felt like tonnes of pressure pulling down on her arm. And more than that, the platform underneath her was growing less and less steady as she attempted to remain upright on a single, shaky leg.

  I have to be missing something, she thought, her mind flicking from one hypothetical solution to the next, all of which would result in her failing. He wouldn’t have given me this task if there wasn’t a way out.

  Her muscles began to cramp, telling her that if she didn’t hurry up, both she and the acid were going to end up in the lake.

  “Come on,” Alex cried, looking wildly around for anything that might help. But as before, it was just her and the floating rock surrounded by miles of water.

  When her limbs started to spasm, Alex knew she was down to her final seconds, and she quickly debated her options. The first was to keep going as she was and, ultimately, collapse—and in doing so, spill the acid. The second was to lower both her foot and arm and risk being disqualified for not holding her position. And the third was to call the cloaked man’s bluff and hope that it really wasn’t acid in the glass.

  The first two options would certainly lead to instant failure. But the third…

  The third could lead to death.

  The odds weren’t stacked in her favour no matter how she looked at the situation. But if she failed and the man refused to help her with her gift, then it wasn’t just Alex who would reap the consequences—it was the whole of Medora. So despite the odds, it was a risk she would just have to take.

  Worst case, she’d take a sip, burn her mouth—she refused to consider more than that—and drop the glass, before activating her Shadow Ring and running straight to Fletcher. Or, even better, heading straight to the Silverwood for some laendra, heedless of Aven’s patrols and her promise to Kyia. Sure, she would fail the task, but hopefully she would find a way to survive it.

  Best case—and what she was counting on—was that the man had lied to her, and it really was just water.

  Being sure to keep her wounded leg in the air so as to not eliminate herself, Alex drew her arm in before she could lose her courage.

  “Bottoms up,” she murmured, taking the smallest of sips. With her entire body shaking on the rock—and not just from the strain of holding her one-legged position—Alex waited for the burning.

  It never came.

  Tentatively, she took another sip. And another. When still no screams erupted from her mouth, Alex felt relief flood her and tipped back the glass, chugging down the remainder of the liquid. She found it remarkably difficult to drink while keeping balanced on one very strained leg, but she managed to hold her position long enough to drain the glass—and for the cloaked figure to pop back into existence.

  “Slower this time,” he said. “But not unexpected. Trust is clearly your weakness.”

  Presuming she could now lower her leg again, Alex did so, bending carefully at the waist to massage the cramped muscles of her uninjured thigh.

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded. “If I’d trusted you, I’d still be standing like that, since I would have believed you about the acid.”

  “It’s not your lack of trust that’s the problem—it’s that you’re too trusting. It took you too long before you were willing to consider I had lied. Had you distrusted me from the start, you wouldn’t have waited so long before testing the liquid.”

  “But—”

  “Your final task continues with the theme of the first two,” he interrupted before she could argue how ridiculous his point was.

  Once again, at his words, the glass filled with water. But something new appeared this time as well. A second floating rock rose to the surface of the lake within stepping distance.

  “This time you need not keep your arm outstretched while you deliberate what to do, nor must you remain on just one leg,” the man said. “But you also cannot drink the water. When you reach the end, the glass must be as full as when you started.”

  Swiping a tendril of wet hair off her face and behind her ear, Alex asked, “When I reach the end of what?”

  Of course, that was when he disappeared again—and without answering her, surprise, surprise.

  “I do not like that guy,” she muttered to herself, not caring that he could likely hear her.

  At least this time she had a fair idea of what she had to do—that being to take a step of faith onto the next floating platform and hope that it would hold her weight.

  Psyching herself up for the possibility of tumbling into the water, Alex covered the top of the glass with her free hand just to be safe. She then bent slightly—and painfully—at the knees to help with her balance, and reached forward with her good leg until her foot rested on the second platform.

  Putting a little pressure on it, only when she was confident that it wasn’t a trick did she step onto it fully, with the stone wobbling dangerously underfoot but not submerging.

  “Ha!” she cried, holding her glass up in triumph.

  The moment the exclamation left her mouth, the rock she had first been standing on moved. One second it was behind her, and the next it circled around until it was in front of her, within stepping distance once again.

  All of a sudden, Alex had a very bad feeling as she recalled the cloaked man’s words. ‘When you reach the end…’

  With a gulp, she looked between the two floating platforms and then lifted her eyes up to the horizon. Having moved barely a foot, the scenery hadn’t changed; there was still no sign of land.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” she said, understanding the full extent of her task—or perhaps not, since she had no idea how far she would have to travel.

  Raising her voice, she cried, “Hey, Mr. Mystery Man! You can’t be serious about this?”

  Unsurprisingly, there was no response.

  With nothing for it, Alex sighed loudly and wobbled her way across to her original platform. When the second rock circled around in front of her again, she wobbled her way onto it once more, resigned to continue the tedious balancing act until the cloaked figure decided he was done messing with her and was ready to accept her as his student.

  Eight

  Step. Balance. Step. Balance. Step. Balance.

  It was all Alex could do to
keep moving across the lake at a snail’s pace as the hours crawled by. Having skipped lunch to visit her parents and Draekora, Alex was both starving and exhausted. Not to mention, with continued use and a distinct lack of medication, her wounded leg was absolutely killing her.

  Added to everything else, Alex was still damp and miserably cold from her earlier submersion, but she pressed on, balancing from rock to rock to rock as she made her way across the unending lake.

  The bad news was that despite how much time passed and how far she estimated she’d travelled, there was still no land in sight.

  The good news was that she’d had a lot of time to consider what the cloaked figure had said, and once again he’d tried to trip her up with his words. For the third task, he’d never said she couldn’t spill the water—just that she couldn’t drink it, and that the glass had to be full when she reached the end. Upon realising that, Alex had promptly tipped the liquid out and secured the glass inside her jacket, intending to scoop up some lake water when she arrived at her destination. The move had freed both her arms and enabled her to balance easier—and therefore, move at a faster pace.

  When she hit what she presumed to be the five-hour mark, Alex knew something wasn’t right. Given the temperature of the water, it must still be winter wherever she was, so the sun should have long since started setting. And yet, it remained high in the sky as if it were still noon.

  If she hadn’t already tested her theory, Alex would have been convinced that she was inside the Library, because nothing about her situation made sense. Who was the man who kept appearing and disappearing at will? How was he able to refill the glass as if by magic? Where did the lake come from, and where did it end? How were the floating stones circling into new positions? Why did it appear as if time wasn’t moving?

  All of those questions could easily—if unorthodoxly—be answered if Alex was indeed still somewhere inside the Library. But if that were true, then why wasn’t she able to call forth a door to spirit herself to freedom?

  Step. Balance. Step. Balance. Step. Balance.

  On and on and on Alex walked, pausing to rest more frequently as the hours continued to pass. When it reached the stage where she was certain it should have been well into nighttime, she became convinced that she must be inside the Library. She certainly hoped that was the case and time was frozen in the outside world, since she had told her friends she would be back for dinner, and the last thing she needed was for them to carry out their promise to begin searching for her.

  Step. Balance. Step. Balance. Step. Balance.

  Step… Wobble.

  Wobble.

  Woooobbblllleee.

  When Alex lost her footing and nearly plunged back into the icy water, she knew she couldn’t continue any further. Her stomach was cramping from hunger. Her throat was parched with thirst. The muscles in her good leg were burning from the strain of balancing her weight. The stabbing pains in her injured leg, which was again bleeding freely from constant use, were becoming more than she could bear. She was shivering from the cold, but also feverish from the effort of her journey.

  She had, without a doubt, reached the end of what she could manage.

  Alex’s mind and body stilled as she repeated her last conscious thought and then replayed the cloaked man’s instructions.

  ‘When you reach the end, the glass must be as full as when you started.’

  All along, Alex had presumed the floating rocks were leading her somewhere tangible—like land. But what if the instructions weren’t about reaching the end of the lake, but rather, reaching the end of herself?

  Barely able to keep her feet under her any longer, Alex withdrew the glass and, body screaming in protest, kneeled down on the shaking platform to fill it with water.

  She didn’t have to rise again before the scenery around her abruptly transformed, with her now empty-handed and crouching on a plush rug in front of a burning fireplace.

  Whimpering with relief, Alex stretched out her aching limbs until she was collapsed flat along the rug, soaking up the heat and allowing her muscles to relax for the first time in what felt like decades.

  “I am reluctantly impressed.”

  Alex didn’t move from her position, but she did flick her eyes up to the cloaked figure now standing above her.

  Watching him, she couldn’t hold back a moan when he created another glass of water out of thin air and passed it down to her.

  “No more tasks,” he said, and while his tone remained bland, there was a hint of reassurance in it. “This one’s to quench your thirst.”

  At that, Alex forced her body up into a seated position and reached for the offered drink.

  “Ten hours, fifty-four minutes and thirty-two seconds,” the man said as she guzzled down the water. “You’re tenacious, I’ll give you that.” He made a pensive sound and added, “I’m curious how different your result would have been without your Meyarin blood strengthening your balance and endurance.”

  Alex was past the point of surprise when it came to what secrets this mysterious man knew about her.

  “I’m not sure it works like that,” she croaked out between swallows. The glass somehow offered an unlimited supply of water, and only when her thirst had been sated did she set it aside and watch it promptly disappear from sight. “I can tap into the heightened senses, speed and reflexes of the immortal race, but I’m still limited by certain aspects of my human nature. Balance being one of those.”

  He made another sound, perhaps agreement this time.

  “Yet with training, any skill can be developed,” he said.

  “Not the least of which is balance.”

  “Are we speaking figuratively or literally?” she asked, too tired to keep up if he was still playing word games.

  “Both, of course.”

  Alex sighed. “Of course.”

  Noticing her wound dribbling blood onto the rug, Alex unwound the soggy bandage to inspect the damage. It wasn’t as bad as when she’d first been impaled, but the healing effects of the laendra were nowhere near as good as they had been before she’d travelled for nearly eleven hours on it.

  Re-bandaging her leg and wincing at the renewed compression, Alex asked, “Any chance you’ll explain what all that was about?”

  Given the lack of answers she was generally offered by most people in her life, Alex was downright shocked when a plush armchair appeared in front of her and the man sat down, heeding her request.

  “Three tasks I gave you to judge your worthiness,” he said. “The first was to assess your complex reasoning skills by testing the speed by which you solved a problem while under pressure.” He paused. “You passed with acceptable swiftness.”

  Alex snorted, since she’d practically inhaled the water in her first test. There was no way she could have acted any quicker than that, and he damn well knew it. Acceptable swiftness, my ass, she thought.

  “The second task was to test how willing you were to put aside your natural inclinations towards trusting those around you and instead follow your instincts in high-risk situations.” He repositioned his hood as if to keep the light of the flames from revealing his face. “Again, you passed, but only just. There may come a time, Alexandra Jennings, when no matter how close you are with your loved ones, the only person you will be able to trust is yourself.”

  Alex didn’t like what he was implying. “If I can’t trust the people I care about, then we might as well give up now.” She remembered Kyia’s words from earlier that day—relatively speaking—and added, “There’s no way I’ll be able to face what’s ahead without them by my side.”

  “You of all people know that no one is safe from Aven’s reach—no one except for you and, perhaps, those once bound to you,” the man said. “What assurances do you have that your closest friends aren’t already Claimed by him, just like what happened with Jordan Sparker? Tell me this, Alexandra: without first Claiming them yourself, how would you know?”

  Alex turned cold all over ag
ain as his point clutched painfully at her heart. The truth was, she hadn’t realised Jordan was Claimed, because Aven had ordered him to act as normal as possible. Sure, she had felt as if something was off about him, but she’d attributed it to other factors, like his miserable family.

  “For the challenges you’ll face, you will need your friends by your side,” the man said, his monotone softening as if to comfort her—albeit slightly. “But you need to be aware of the possibilities and willing to put aside your faith in them if your instincts are telling you something different. Had you not decided to test the water in the glass and therefore distrust my word about its acidity, you would have soon fallen and, consequently, failed.”

  Alex nodded, unable to form words of agreement yet also understanding what he was telling her. “And the final task?”

  “That was to see how far you were willing to go to reach your goals. How stubborn your will, as it were,” he answered. “It was aimed to test the strength of your character in the face of what appeared to be an impossible, unending quest.”

  “And I passed?”

  “You didn’t give up, not until you reached your very end—and far beyond it, I dare say,” he responded.

  Since that wasn’t quite an answer, Alex repeated, “So… I passed?”

  The flames flickered across his cloak and the silence stretched on until he finally confirmed, “You passed.”

  This was a good thing, Alex tried to remind herself. But in her current physical condition, she found it difficult to call forth any excitement.

  “So that means you’ll take me on as a student?” she clarified. “That you’ll teach me how to strengthen my gift so I can expand the range and share it with others?” She paused, realising that she’d never actually confirmed his ability to do so. “You can do that, right? Teach something like that, I mean.”