The Culling Trials (Shadowspell Academy #2)(9)

Ethan looked past me and waved his wand with a sharp stabbing motion. A circular bubble shot out of the tip, wrapped around the stone bridge and vibrated.

“What—”

The bridge erupted, stones flinging every which way, the noise cutting through the air and making my ears ring.

“That will slow them down.” Ethan snorted.

Pete snarled and lunged out of Wally’s arms, going straight for Ethan.

“No, Pete. Leave him.” Much as I wanted to see the honey badger take a piece out of Ethan, I knew in my gut we still needed him.

Why, I wasn’t sure, but I was a pro at listening to my instincts, and I wasn’t about to stop now just because Ethan was a giant douche canoe who deserved to have his head bashed in.

Ethan waved a hand for us to follow him, and I fell in behind him even though I was struggling with what all had just happened. Gregory dropped back beside me, Pete and Wally stayed to the middle, and Orin was off to the side.

Gregory was the first to speak. “We can’t trust him, Wild. He would have let you die in there. If Pete hadn’t shoved him in, he would never have created those stairs.”

“I know,” I said. But if Ethan hadn’t fallen—or been pushed—in, I wouldn’t have been caught in an inescapable situation, and whatever…thing I’d done wouldn’t have happened, either. I was pretty sure I needed to figure out that piece of the puzzle. Maybe they’d given me the wrong designation?

“Then why follow him?”

“Can a person be in more than one house?” I asked.

Gregory looked up at me. “What?” I’d given him conversational whiplash.

“Can you be in more than one house?” I repeated slower. “Like, say your mom was magical like Ethan and your dad was a shifter like Pete. Could you be in more than one house?”

Wally dropped back to walk with us. “Yes and no.”

Gregory started. “What?”

She shrugged. “There are very rare cases where an individual carries the genetics of multiple gifts. One gift will always be dominant, but you could have secondary traits. Say you favor shifting but can still manage a wand to some degree. Less than one in a hundred have this magical quirk. And usually it is trained out of them in the academy. The trait that is considered of higher quality is cultivated, and the lesser talent is ignored and ultimately unused and considered dormant.”

“I didn’t know that,” Gregory said softly, touching the tips of his ears.

Wally turned her head to look at me, long black eyelashes fluttering a little. “Why do you ask, Wild?”

Her explanation, funnily enough, didn’t make me feel any better. Did that mean I wasn’t a Shade? Weird that I could be bothered by the thought of not being trained as an assassin so quickly after learning it was a possibility. I was cracked.

I frowned and rubbed at my head, worry prickling at me. “It’s just that—” Hell, I didn’t even know how to explain to them what had happened back there because I didn’t understand it myself.

And I didn’t get a chance to say more than that.

“Look sharp!” Ethan snapped. “We’re at the second challenge.”

“Not it,” I responded just as sharply. “You first, Wonder Bread. I’m tired of being the one to test the waters.”

Something bumped against my leg and I looked down. Pete looked up at me, still a honey badger.

I sighed. “Sorry, we forgot to bring extra pants.”

He shrugged and chattered his teeth, and I could almost hear him say, Pants-shmants, this way I can pretend I don’t understand all of you.

“That’s cheating, Freckles,” I said softly.

His head whipped around and he stared at me, slack jawed. I stared back, my own jaw dropping wide.

“What is happening?” I whispered. I was not hearing a honey badger talk, was I? I was not like Pete. I was no shifter.

“What’s happening is we have to get our asses up that tower,” Ethan said. The dubious quality to his voice snapped my focus back to the moment.

I tilted my head, looking up at a massive tower that appeared out of nowhere, reaching a good hundred feet into the sky, flat on top. Large blocks, nearly my height, made up a few rows along the base, but above that, the wall seemed to even out, nothing but divots and small ledges to the top. There weren’t even windows or doors—it was basically a massive climbing rock.

“Where the hell did that come from?” I asked, daunted.

“Looks easy, but there are bound to be nasty surprises,” Ethan said softly.

I huffed out a laugh. “Climbing that looks easy?”

“Goblin, you go first, seeing as this is your house,” Ethan barked.

“This tower will be protected by gargoyles,” Gregory said, analyzing it. “They’re as dumb as the rocks they’re made from, but they are vicious. They’ll try to pick us off as we climb. See them there, at the top?”

I squinted, as though that would help my vision. It didn’t, of course, but I still saw what he’d spotted. Three oversized stone gargoyles perched at the top. One of them had wings, two were without. All resembled mishmashes of creatures—lions, dragons, crocodiles—the bits and pieces jammed together to make horrible stone beasts.

One of them moved—the dragon-headed one with the set of wings peered down the back side of the tower. Another chill of warning made my breathing shallow, and my body flooded with adrenaline, prepped for anything. Sort of.