Chapter 005

Mirelle's POV

"Fine," I muttered to no one, rolling my shoulders like that would somehow help. "If I can't out-magic them, I'll just out-stubborn them."

It wasn't much of a battle cry. It was the only one I had.

The forest swallowed every last student within seconds of the horn.

Conifer trees blotted out most of the light, what little made it through scattering gold across a floor

thick with damp earth and old leaves, and the air smelled like rain that hadn't fallen yet. Everywhere I looked, someone was already ahead of me. Determination finding it's way out of every student.

Claws extended mid-stride without anyone breaking pace.

A cluster of witches shed their human shapes entirely and reformed as hawks, wings cutting

through the canopy like they'd never been anything else.

Two vampires didn't run so much as simply arrive somewhere else, the space between one tree and the next erased like it had never existed at all.

I looked down at my own hands. Just hands. No claws, no feathers, no shortcuts.

"Guess I'll be using the primordial human method," I said, mostly to make myself laugh.

The primordial human method wasn't just ancient, or clever, or even a method.

It was just effort.

It was all I'd ever had, and it had gotten me exactly this far.

I continued running anyway.

***

Far above the tree line, inside a Sentinel tower carved into the mountain itself, several professors

watched the trial unfold across enchanted panels, each one framing a different slice of the course.

The air up there smelled like old stone and candle smoke, and nobody bothered to whisper.

"Adrian Lancaster's already through the first ravine," one professor said, sounding almost proud of it, like the boy's success reflected well on the entire staff.

"As expected," another murmured, not looking up from his own screen. "That family doesn't know how to lose. Never has."

"Hardin's closing the gap," a third added, and a ripple of approving nods moved down the row like they'd all been waiting for exactly that update.

Headmistress Selene said nothing at all.

Her eyes moved slowly across every panel in turn, unhurried, the way someone reads a room rather than a report, until they landed on one small figure who had, inexplicably, stopped moving entirely.

A younger professor frowned at the same screen, leaning in like proximity might explain what he was seeing.

"Isn't that the Corwin girl? The wolfless one?" A pause, longer than it needed to be. "She's already giving up."

"No," Selene said, the faintest curve touching her mouth. "She's strategizing."

"Strategizing about what? There's nothing to

strategize. You run, you climb, you win. It isn't complicated."

Selene didn't answer him. She simply kept watching, arms folded, like she already knew something the rest of the tower hadn't caught up to yet — and wasn't in any hurry to explain it to a room that clearly wouldn't believe her anyway.

***

I came to a stop in front of a stone wall that hadn't existed on any map I'd been shown —

twenty-five feet of sheer rock, unclimbable by any measure that made sense to me.

Around it, students were already scaling straight up, claws finding purchase in the stone like it had been carved with handholds only they could see.

A few didn't even bother climbing at all — just shifted mid-leap and scrambled up on four legs, growling their way past the ones still fumbling for a grip.

Convenient. Cheating, if you asked me, though nobody had.

I studied the wall instead of throwing myself at it, the way I'd learned to study Chloe's temper before deciding whether to speak.

Old scratches from other students' claws, faint but there, cut diagonal lines up one section of the

rock — not deep enough to climb like they had, but maybe deep enough to climb like I could, if I was patient and stubborn enough to try.

"Look, it's the wolfless one," someone called down from a third of the way up, delighted, like I was the funniest thing that had happened all trial.

"Careful, sweetheart — you might forget how gravity works too."

"Give it up, Corwin. Even the professors are taking bets on whether you graduate at all."

I smiled instead of answering. Let them enjoy it

while it lasted.

Enjoyment tended to run out fast around people like me.

I started climbing the old-fashioned way — fingers wedged into gouges left by better-equipped hands, boots scraping for

anything solid, arms burning before I'd made it a third of the distance.

Beside me, a girl who'd been climbing effortlessly a moment earlier lost her grip entirely and slid four feet down the rock face with a startled shout, cursing loud enough that half the wall turned to look.

She didn't stop to catch her breath.

Neither did I. Stopping felt like admitting they were right about me.

***

"She's not competing with the wall," one professor observed, arms crossed, clearly unimpressed by what he was watching.

"She's just slow. Even the witches beat her up that thing, and half of them didn't even bother shifting."

"She studied it first," Selene said, calm and immovable.

"Watched where the others had already made a path before wasting a single ounce of effort trying to make her own.

That isn't slow. That's efficient."

"A clever mind conquers all," she added, quieter now, mostly to herself, eyes never once leaving the panel — like she'd decided this particular student was worth the attention the rest of the tower kept refusing to give her.

***

Thirty minutes later, my palms were raw and split at the knuckles, my arms felt like they belonged to someone else entirely, but I'd cleared the wall and kept moving through a stretch of forest thinning out into open ground.

Ahead of me, Bianca fought her way over a fallen tree with none of her usual polish, cursing under her breath until a boy

behind her shoved her the rest of the way over without being asked.

She didn't thank him. Didn't even glance back to see who it was.

Chloe was already gone, small and fast in the distance, not once turning to check whether her best friend needed help crossing anything at all.

Further out, someone lost their footing on a narrow ridge, and I gasped before I could stop myself, my own fingers — not claws, just fingers — scraping uselessly against nothing as I fought the

sudden, stupid urge to sprint toward him instead of forward.

He caught himself half a second before disaster.

I forced my legs to keep moving.

Somewhere ahead, past a ridge of jagged rock, I caught a flash of Adrian clearing an obstacle

without so much as breaking stride, like the entire trial had been designed for someone slower than him and he was simply too polite to point it out.

Aldric wasn't nearly as smooth about it, but he wasn't slowing down either — pure stubborn determination doing the work that grace hadn't handed him for free.

And Hardin — I couldn't explain how someone said so little and still made it obvious how badly he wanted to win, but every line of his back as he ran screamed it anyway.

I wiped sweat and grit out of my eyes and kept climbing toward whatever came next, because stopping had never once been an option that belonged to me.

Valez High, I thought, was going to be a great deal more complicated than I'd let myself believe on the drive up to those gates.

I just didn't know yet how complicated it was about to get.