Fireblood (Frostblood Saga #2)(56)

I stared for a second. Disbelief, hope, elation. The hour was up.

“Ruby, come on!” Kai screamed. “Now!”

I gasped and flexed my arms, throwing myself through the gap in the misshapen, half-melted chamber. My feet hit the boards and I grabbed the rope on the unburnt side. I took a second to rip the last scorpion from my head, tearing out some of my hair with it, and threw it to the lava below. The fire on the rope had spread to the boards. The right side of the bridge was in flames.

I didn’t fear the fire. I feared the supports would burn away before I reached the edge.

My foot landed on a charred board and sank through, yanking my arm as I held on to the rope. I hauled myself up and continued on, choosing each step carefully.

“Hurry,” Kai called, his voice low and urgent. “Hurry!”

The bridge suddenly jerked and twisted. The whole right side detached from the cliff, the right-hand rope swinging uselessly. Only the rope on the left remained. I gripped tighter. I was still several yards from safety.

“Come on,” Kai yelled.

I balanced on the narrow left support, pulling myself hand over hand along the rope. When I was a foot or two away from Kai’s outstretched hand, the rope I was holding frayed and snapped. I pushed with my feet, vaulting toward him. As I reached the edge, he took my arm in a ruthless grip and threw himself backward. We landed on the flat cliff top, my feet dangling over the edge. Kai scrambled back farther and pulled me with him.

We stayed there, Kai on his back, panting, me half on top of him in an ungainly heap until Master Dallr offered his hand. He looked me over as he pulled me up. “Are you unharmed?”

I looked down at myself, gasping for breath. I was all in one piece. “Yes.”

Kai stood, brushing bits of dirt and twigs off his clothes. I put my hands on my knees, my whole body trembling.

“Then come. We must return to the school to confer.”

In a minute, I was recovered enough to trudge along the cliff path.

“A simple congratulations wouldn’t kill him, would it?” I muttered.

Kai didn’t speak for a minute. Finally, he said, “They probably need to discuss whether you passed.”

I turned on him. “Whether I passed? I’m alive, aren’t I? I didn’t leave the chamber.”

“It’s not your fault,” he said, his nostrils flaring. “It’s mine. I helped you at the end. I grabbed your hand.”

“If you hadn’t, I’d have fallen. You weren’t allowed?”

He shook his head. “If they think you wouldn’t have made the edge on your own, they will consider it a failure.”

My relief turned to horror. “So I might have failed?”

As the reality of that sank in, I knew I was no longer doing this solely for access to the masters’ knowledge. I was doing this for me. Somewhere along the way, passing the trials had become a goal in its own right, a way to prove my strength and, in some way, my worth. I wanted this regardless of whatever else happened. I tried to push the feelings away, but there they were. Failure would not only devastate me with guilt because it would leave Tempesia at the mercy of the Minax, but the personal disappointment would cut me to my core.

The scorpion stings began to throb. I focused on the pain rather than the fear that I might have missed my chance, and all that meant for me, for Arcus, and for Tempesia.

We trudged down the hill in silence. The masters were far ahead on the lava fields now. When Kai and I neared the hill next to the school, I stumbled to a halt. The world spun and I found myself on my knees.

“Kai?” I said, blinking stars from my eyes.

“Mmm?” He was still walking away.

“Is the sting from a Sudesian scorpion poisonous?”

He halted abruptly. “Yes.”

“Can you die of it?”

He turned. “Only if you’re stung a number of times.”

“How many times? Just for curiosity’s sake.” I closed my eyes against the spinning of the world.

“How many times were you stung?” he shouted, rushing to grab me under the arms as I toppled to the side. “Master Dallr asked if you were unharmed and you said you were fine!”

As he scooped me into his arms, my hand reached up to tug at his collar. The world was melting all around me, the sky blending with the land and swirling together like paints spilled onto parchment. I remembered an old song my mother used to sing when I was ill, and I sang a few bars as the colors behind my eyes blurred together and burst.





The pungent scents of healing herbs were so familiar that for a moment I was home in my village in our little hut, my mother’s soft hand on my forehead. When I opened my eyes, she looked different than I remembered—her features heavier, her hair darker.

No, it was the queen’s face, but blurred, as if seen through a fogged window. Still caught in the memory, I sang a few bars of the song. As I sank into sleep, I heard the next verse sung back to me in a soft alto.

When I woke again, I was alone in my room in Queen Nalani’s castle, sunlight slanting through a gap in the curtains.

I wiped the tears from my cheeks. I’d dreamed of her. Mother had held me in her arms and sang songs in Sudesian to soothe me. I’d all but forgotten those songs. She’d stopped singing them when I was very young, speaking only in Tempesian for as long as I could remember. But some part of my mind had held on to the memory of that music, triggered when I slept here in her homeland.