Then blackness took her.

23

   Rielle

“A sword forged true in hammer and flame

Flies sure and swift

A heart forged in battle and strife

Cuts deeper than any blade”

—The Metal Rite

As first uttered by Saint Grimvald the Mighty, patron saint of Borsvall and metalmasters

The opening of the cage flung Rielle down a smooth chute and onto a tiny platform so small she almost tumbled over the edge.

The crowd above let out shouts of dismay.

She swayed, regaining her balance. A blast of heat shot up from below her. Looking down, she saw a churning mass of metal—pulleys hissing, swords flying and fans whirring, large steel plates crashing into one another, staircases folding in on themselves and transforming in the blink of an eye into long ramps slick with oil.

She could not leave this horrible creation without the three children. All her effort in these trials would be for nothing; the people would turn on her.

But it was more than that.

She glanced up through the black bars of the cage to the seething crowds above.

You want them to love you, Corien observed, sounding surprised.

Rielle threw her arms over her head and crossed her forearms, echoing the sigil of the Forge. Cheers erupted from the crowd in response.

Yes, she thought. I want them to love me.

Then she turned and ran—not for the opposite corner of the maze, where she thought she glimpsed a door that would lead her to escape. Instead she ran for the child nearest her, his brown face pressed to the bars of his cage.

She jumped over a narrow chasm beside the platform and then started down a set of stairs. Below her feet, each step flattened, vanishing as she ran. She was almost fast enough.

Almost.

Toward the bottom of the stairs, the steps disappeared entirely. She slid down the last stretch, falling forward fast to land, knees first, on a deck of metal grating that careened from side to side. The landing sent spikes of pain up her legs. She clutched the grating, gritting her teeth as her stomach roiled violently.

“Please!” cried the child, not too far off. “This way! Please, my lady!”

She closed her eyes, struggling for breath. She could almost hear Tal’s patient voice in her ear: The empirium is always there. Every moment, every breath, every inch of life you touch. It waits for you.

Corien remarked softly, Your teacher is not wrong.

Rielle set her jaw.

But the empirium does not simply wait for you, Rielle, he continued. It hungers for you. No one else will ever understand it as you can. It longs for you the way a lover yearns for his mate.

Rielle snapped open her eyes. The world around her began to shimmer. Her fingers curled. I hunger for it as well.

Darling, I know it. Don’t resist. Reach out and take it.

She shuddered, heat flooding her limbs.

“Stop,” she whispered, reaching out for the churning gears with the edges of her mind.

The deck beneath her jerked, slowing. She slammed her palms against the grating, tasted its metal tang on her tongue, felt its vibrations up her arms. A gold-tinged wave of energy shot out from her hands, ricocheting through the maze.

“Stop.” It was a command.

The deck screeched roughly to a halt. With a choked scream, Rielle lost her grip, fell, then caught herself on the deck’s edge at the last second with grasping fingers.

“Here!” the child yelled, below and behind her to the right.

Rielle glanced back over her shoulder, feet dangling. The threads of concentration she’d managed snapped. Silver glinted at the corner of her eye—metalmaster magic?

She followed its trail to a winding set of stairs that flew apart into whirling metal plates. They spun right for her, cutting through the air like spinning knives. Desperation gave her strength; she swung her body once to get momentum, then flung herself through the air to the platform where the child’s cage stood.

The metal plates just missed her, slamming into the deck from which she’d hung only seconds before.

Shaking, eyes stinging from sweat and oil, Rielle fumbled with the lock to the child’s cage. The near-miss with the flying plates had thrown her; she could hardly see, hardly think.

The child screamed at her, sobbing, “Hurry! Please, hurry!”

“I’m trying!” she snapped and then saw the reason for his terror: His cage was shrinking.

In seconds, he would be crushed.

If she got out of here alive, she would tear the Archon’s flesh from his bones and relish his every dying scream.

She thrust her palm against the lock with a furious cry. Raw power sizzled up her arm and out of her body, knocking the child off his feet and shattering the lock. The metal scraps of it went flying.

She wrested open the door. “Come on!”

The child flung himself at her and wrapped his arms around her neck.

Overhead, the crowd burst into wild cheers. Beneath the din, Rielle heard a metallic creak and looked up. A small door in the cage’s roof was opening. Two metalmasters crouched there, holding their arms out for the boy.

Two more. Rielle shoved him out to safety, not waiting to hear the door shut. The nearest child was wailing for her clear at the other end of the maze.

Between them was a series of shifting corridors made of crashing metal blocks the size of Rielle’s body, spears that thrust out at random, stairs that twisted and transformed without pause, paths that twirled on their axes like roasting spits over a fire—too many moving parts to keep track of. Watching them, she felt utterly dwarfed; the thought of saying her prayers, steadying her breathing, felt ludicrous, inadequate.

She’d be crushed. She lacked the control to slip through such a cruelly designed maze. If only she had more time to think. She squinted through the wild glinting chaos, her hands shaking.

Don’t risk it, came Corien’s voice—tense now and unamused. You are powerful, but you’re not immortal.

I could be, Rielle responded. And that shocked her, made her straighten and blink in surprise. She hadn’t meant to say such a thing; the very idea was preposterous. And yet the words had surged up through her body, automatic and instinctive.

Yes, Corien answered pensively. You could be, I think.

Rielle shook herself, silencing him. That was a conversation for later.

She wasn’t, after all, immortal today.

The platform beneath her shifted. She took a deep breath, dashed forward just as the platform jerked and gave way. She looked back, frantic.