Ashe’s lungs couldn’t take it any longer. Each breath was ragged and forced; it felt as if fire burned from within. He stopped mid-step as a voice rang out over the intercom.

  “Test failed. Three point two miles completed within thirty minutes and twenty-six seconds.”

  Ashe didn’t care. He slumped to the floor and rolled onto his back. His chest rose and fell in quick, uncontrolled patterns. The smell of rubber from the treadmill beside him still filled his nose.

  “Next!”

  Whoever was behind the intercom was beginning to piss him off. He sighed. If he had known it would be like this, he would never have said anything.

  Before he knew it, he was in a swimming pool, paddling for his life. Waves crashed into him between stretches of calm. He was supposed to swim as far as he could, but he didn’t really swim. He had only swum twice since swim class in primary school, and both times had been in a pool he could stand in. Without pool lanes, his mind couldn’t map the pool.

  When his head broke the surface, he swallowed chlorine. He threw an arm up and scrabbled for the wall as he gagged. His eyes burned, his legs were tired, and he definitely didn’t want to continue.

  His hand was yanked up onto the side of the pool. “Test failed. Four laps completed.” His knuckles went white as he clutched the edge of the pool and dry heaved. The fact that he had survived was enough for him. Let them call it a failure.

  The soft mat of the fighting room felt like home. No more running. No more swimming. A fencing blade was placed in his hand; it was lighter than his walking stick—the one that doubled as a sword. He flailed it around, and it made a swooshing sound as it cut through the air.

  Ashe stiffened as the intercom spoke. “First to three points. Fencing match, standard rules.”

  Ashe knew the basics: he had to hit the other person with the tip of his sword while dodging or parrying his opponent’s. Someone emerged at his side, trying to force a padded jacket and helmet onto him. Ashe squirmed beneath the hands.

  “No, don’t.”

  For a second the staffer froze. “Fine,” came across the intercom. The hands let go, and Ashe was left standing there in his hoodie. He couldn’t have the pain dulled; he needed it to trigger his extra sense. His opponent moved before he could formulate a plan. His steps had a lightness that only came from real training.

  The sound of footsteps on the mat crunched, closer and closer.

  Pain bloomed below his shoulder on the right side of his chest. Instead of retreating, Ashe stepped into the attack, but with the awkward length and weight of the sword, he didn’t manage to turn it in time, instead ramming into his opponent with his shoulder.

  “Foul!”

  Foul? So that was off the table, no using his body. He would just use the fencing sword from now on. He stepped back five paces.

  “Begin!”

  The sound of approaching feet began once more. This time the dull pain of his ability was coming from his stomach. Instead of stepping in, he moved slightly back and parried to the side. He could hear the momentum of his opponent continue as if he hadn’t been prepared. As the other boy stumbled, Ashe drove the sword toward the moving sound.

  “Point, subject!”

  The voice seemed farther away, less confident than in the earlier tests. Ashe had to fight the smile creeping up.

  At that point his opponent stood no chance. The sword felt more comfortable, and he now knew that the point of the blade was how he scored and his shoulder was a no-go. The next two points came in quick succession. Ashe could barely feel any sweat on his brow, and his breathing was even.

  “Test passed!” The voice broke the words up as if choking out the results.

  A whistle cut through the room.

  “Well done,” Danny said.

  Ashe went cold. Danny had been watching.

  When he returned to the dorms and the smell of dust filled his nose once again, he managed to stifle the sneeze this time. He found the bed he had claimed and cleared it to be as clean as possible.

  He dropped into it and sat there. The warm carton of pizza in his hand—when he flipped it open, the smell of pepperoni filled the air, and a semblance of normalcy settled over him. Despite the ache in his lungs and the chlorine clinging to him like a second skin, the pizza was a welcome distraction. It sent his mind back to a simpler time—before the portals—a time of pizza parties and birthdays. Fairy bread and bowling.

  By the time he pulled his mind from the spiral, the slice of pizza in his hand was no longer burning hot, just lightly warm. He chewed it down and didn’t mind. The fact that this was now a luxury terrified him. Everything had changed in such a short time. Before long the pizza was gone, the comforting memories with it.

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  He grabbed his duffel bag and walked down the long room toward the bathroom and showers. Inside, the layer of damp still clung to the walls from this morning. He brushed his teeth and took another shower before returning to his bed and tucking in for the night. He had expected the pain of today’s failed tests to weigh him down, to keep him awake. Instead, it seemed to egg him on, the nothingness of sleep claiming him before he could even question it.

  Ashe was relieved the next day when he found out there would be no physical activities. Instead, he sat in a small plastic chair with a wooden desk attached to it, just like the ones they’d had in school back in Houston. He barely fit in it now, but that was okay.

  A stack of papers and a pen were placed beneath his hand. He frowned and tilted his head upwards.

  “You do know I can’t see.”

  The voice that came back was Danny’s, soft and light despite the words. “No shit. I’ll be reading it for you. We haven’t exactly had any other blind candidates, so we don’t have any technology for it.”

  Ashe had expected fancy tech to be everywhere, but he guessed this would do.

  “Alright, kid—you’ve got four hours to complete as much of the packet as possible. The test will include everything from basic jumping knowledge to expert-level questions.”

  Ashe relaxed, the knot in his stomach unfurling just a little. That was one subject he was pretty darn confident in. It would have been worse if it had been math or physics.

  He swallowed as Danny took the paper and pen from his hands and began to read. The first questions were so easy that Ashe had almost turned off his mind by the time questions began to appear that weren’t basic knowledge.

  “How many points does a C-rank portal give? A: Ten. B: Fifty thousand. C: One-hundred thousand Or D: One-million”

  Ashe pushed his brows together as confusion rushed over him. The warmth of panic began to rise up his back. No one had ever cleared a C-rank. No points had ever been awarded.

  “None of these answers are correct.”

  A soft laugh. “Correct. It’s unknown.”

  He heard the pen scratching across the paper. Were there even questions on the page, or was Danny just making it up as they went?

  So he wasn’t only being tested by the questions on the paper, but by his conviction in his own knowledge. This was going to be trickier than he’d thought. He hadn’t understood how this would contribute to his status as a herald, how they could gain anything from it. They weren’t grading answers. They were grading intuition—honesty—whether he’d force the world to fit the choices.

  The rest of the test followed the same rhythm. Each moment, each question felt like it dragged, and yet before Ashe knew it the intercom system yelled, “Test complete!”

  The words rang in his head as he still tried to find a reason for portal concentration in urban areas that actually made sense. He shook it off when he realised Danny had already started walking away.

  “Did I pass?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll find out tomorrow. Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t.” The words came out almost smug.

  Ashe sat on the musty bed with a bowl of lukewarm porridge cooling in his hands, still trying to decide whether he’d passed. The truth was he had no idea. Some questions had been so easy they felt like traps, and others so brutal he’d been guessing in the dark.

  By the time he lay down, exhaustion had flooded his mind even though his body hadn’t been pushed like yesterday. Sleep took him fast.

  He woke with a jolt.

  His necklace was buzzing in a pattern he didn’t recognize, pulsing against his sternum like a warning. What the hell did it mean? He sat there, frozen, until the door swung open and clean air cut through the stale room.

  Leanor watched his mother from across the table. Her smile showed warmth, pleasure, but her piercing blue eyes looked back unyielding. She wanted something, but so did he.

  She picked at her food, never moving her gaze from his. When she finally broke the silence, she said, “So, my boy, why did you invite me here?” As usual, she wanted him to act first, to step into the compromising position before her. It was classic her; he had learned most of his moves from her.

  He had no choice. He had set this in motion with Civitas, and now he had to follow through. He held out his hand, and the black square crystallised in it as easily as breathing. The crest of Civitas carved into its side, a mark of ownership. For a second her eyes widened before she hid it behind a calm mask. Then her smile widened into an unnatural grin that filled too much of her face. She let out a deep, belly chuckle, louder than he had ever heard. Her golden hair bobbed around her face, and her magic began to crystallise around her, the mask of innocence falling aside.

  “Well done, my boy. I knew you were up to something.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Interesting.”

  Leanor ignored it and pointed. “So you know what this is. But as you might not have heard, I’ve been making deals with my siblings. With what winnings I’ve gained over the years, I’ve traded most of it for temporary position and access. A few planets here and a few there. If I win this challenge, I will have over fifty-one percent of all planets.”

  At that moment even her cutlery stopped moving. He let the words rest in the air. His mother didn’t move, but he saw the twitch of her eye. She hadn’t seen that coming; she had been thinking too small.

  “I need your help. While I can keep an eye on the challenge with this device, Father would sense it long before I got anything I can use. I need you to spy.”

  He expected shock, some pushback, but instead she leaned back and met his gaze. “Only if you help me kill your father when this is over.”

  The words stilled the very air around them. Dark clouds of magic formed above her. That hadn’t been part of his plan. He had only wanted to displace his father from the throne, allow for his retirement. But this would also do. There was no love lost between them, after all. And he couldn’t do this alone.

  In that moment, all that mattered was Leanor and his mother. The universe held its breath as it waited for a response. He smiled back, the warmth not reaching his eyes. Then he nodded, a final confirmation.