The silence was a contamination.
We walked. I kept my ten feet. She, for once, kept hers, limping on her wounded leg.
It was not a peaceful silence. It was a screaming, echoing void where the Event had been.
That feeling, that horrifying, glorious surge of absolute, limitless power, had been a drug. It had been the most potent, addictive, and blasphemous thing I had ever experienced.
My Aether, my Animus, which I had spent a lifetime honing into a perfect, controlled well, had suddenly, in her presence, become an ocean. And her chaos, her Anima, had not been a void; it had been a key, unlocking a power I never knew I possessed.
I had liked it.
That was the single, damning, horrifying truth. For one, perfect, all-powerful second, I had liked the chaos. I had wanted the void.
The thrum between us had not stopped. It was still there, a low, magnetic hum under my skin. But it wasn't just an irritant now.
It was a hunger.
It was a promise.
It was the sound of my own perfect, orderly Animus, the magic of my soul, whispering to me, telling me to go back. To touch the chaos again. To taste that power.
She was a poison. She was a living, breathing failure-state for my control.
I could not save Lyras if I were addicted to a gutter-rat. I could not execute my plan, a plan that required absolute mental precision, if my own magic was trying to leap out of my chest to merge with hers.
She had to be removed.
My logic was cold and clean. She was a liability. She was wounded. She was chaotic. She would not survive the tournament. Her continued presence was a danger, not just to my plan, but to herself.
She was a Dreg-rat. This place was eating her alive.
The kindest thing I could do... the most logical thing I could do... was save her from that fate. To fail her out now, before Varrick, or my father, or a real monster, did it for me.
This was not a betrayal. It was a mercy.
We broke through the trees.
The path ended. Before us lay a chasm, a sheer, black drop into a pit so deep, no light touched the bottom. It was a hundred feet across. A single, swaying, rotting rope bridge was the only way to the other side, an arched, stone exit that marked the finish line.
The air smelled of cold, deep, empty stone.
I stopped. She stopped beside me, her breath hitching as she looked at the drop.
I gestured to the bridge. "After you."
She shot me a look of pure venom. "What, no 'ten-foot' rule when you want me to be a trap-finder?"
"I am simply allowing you the courtesy of going first," I said, my voice a perfect, cold monotone.
She sneered, but she took the first step. Her wounded leg made her limp, and the bridge swayed dangerously under her uneven weight. She was a liability. This was proof.
She was agile, I gave her that. She moved with a low, rat-like center of gravity, her hands on the ropes, her weight balanced. She was... she was halfway across.
Suspended over the black, endless nothing.
It was now.
I did not pull a knife. That was her crude world.
I stepped onto the bridge, just one foot, to feel the anchor. Then I raised my hand. A blade of pure, white-hot, perfectly controlled Aether, a scalpel of light, formed at my fingertips.
She must have felt the thrum of my magic, because she stopped. She turned.
Her eyes went wide. She saw the blade. She saw my face. She understood.
"Caelen!" she screamed.
I severed the main anchor rope. It was a clean, surgical, silent cut.
"It's for the best, gutter-rat," I said, my voice quiet.
The rope snapped.
The bridge, and Anya Rostova, fell away into the darkness.
Her scream... her scream... was cut short.
And the Resonance, the agonizing, addictive, thrumming pull between us, snapped.
The silence that followed was absolute. It was clean. It was pure.
I was free.
I was myself again.
I felt... relief.
The problem was solved. The contamination was purged.
I turned my back on the empty chasm and walked, my pace controlled and even, toward the archway that marked the end of the trial.
Anya
He was quiet.
It was the quiet that was scaring me.
Ever since... that. Ever since we had... merged.
The power had been… I couldn't even think about it. It was too big. It had felt... it had felt like I was the ocean, and he was the shore. Like I was the power, and he was the control. For one, dizzying, perfect second... I hadn't been afraid of my magic. I hadn't been losing myself. I had been found.
And I hated him for it. I hated him for showing me what it could be. I hated him for making me need him.
And he was quiet. Stalking ten feet behind me, his silence a wall of ice.
I was in agony. My leg was a throbbing, wet fire, and my head was a fog from the magical high.
Then we saw it. The chasm. The rickety, stupid, Dregs-level bridge.
I looked at him. "After you," he said.
Prick.
I moved onto the bridge. It swayed. The air from the pit was cold, like a grave. I focused. Just get across. Just get away from him.
I was halfway.
I felt it. A prickle in the air. The feeling of his magic. That magic. The clean, cold Aether magic.
I stopped. I turned.
He was standing on the edge, his hand raised. A blade of pure, white light was in his hand.
He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the rope.
Our eyes met.
"Caelen!" I screamed, a raw, panicked, Why.
I saw his lips move. I couldn't hear the words. But I saw the intent.
The rope hissed as his magic cut it.
And I was falling.
The world disappeared. My stomach was in my throat. The bridge, the world, was ripped out from under me.
His face, his cold, relieved face... that was the last thing I saw as I fell into the black.
I fell.
And I fell.
And the darkness was absolute.
But... I'm from The Dregs.
I live in the dark. I am the rat. I am the shadow. The dark is my home.
My panic was a scream... but my instinct was a blade.
I didn't flail. I reached.
My fingers, calloused and strong from a life of climbing rusted-out ironworks, scraped against the sheer rock wall.
A crack.
A seam.
My nails shredded, my fingertips tore, but I snagged it.
The jolt was agonizing. It almost ripped my arm from its socket. My wounded leg slammed into the rock, and I screamed, a muffled, painful, animal sound.
But I was holding.
I was hanging, by the ripped, bleeding fingers of one hand, in a black, endless void.
I was alive.
And my hatred... my hatred was a fire. It was a sun. It was the only thing I could feel besides the pain.
He. Tried. To. Kill. Me.
He didn't fail me out. He didn't save me.
He murdered me.
And he had failed.
"Gutter-rat," I whispered, the word a rasp in the dark. Good.
I was going to show him what a gutter-rat could do.
I found a foothold. The rock was slick. My wounded leg was a dead weight, but I used it as an anchor.
I needed... I needed a grip.
I looked up. The wall was sheer.
I remembered. The control. The scalpel. The feeling of my magic, held by his.
I didn't have him. But I remembered the feeling.
I raised my free hand. I focused. I didn't reach for the bomb. I reached for the needle.
I looked at the rock... and I plucked.
A tiny, silent burst of Anima.
The stone frayed. It unraveled, just a tiny, half-inch divot.
It was enough.
I put my bleeding fingers into the hole I had just un-made. And I climbed.
One hand. One un-make. One foothold.
It was agony. It was slow. It might have been an hour. My blood was a slick, treacherous path down the rock.
But my hatred didn't fade. It cooled. It hardened. It turned from a fire into a spike of pure, black ice.
I heard... voices.
I was near the top.
I found a solid grip. I hauled my aching, bloody body over the edge.
I collapsed, not on a bridge, but on a stone floor. The exit. The archway.
Professor Varrick was there, his scarred face impassive. He was checking a list. He looked up, his eyes widening, just a fraction, but it was there.
And then I saw him.
Caelen.
He was just arriving. He must have taken a different, safe path. He was walking into the archway, his uniform pristine, his face a mask of cold, orderly relief.
He was done. His problem was solved.
And then he saw me.
His face... broke.
The relief shattered. The control cracked. His perfect, handsome features froze.
His eyes went from my face... to my bloody, torn fingers... to my leg, soaked in dark blood... and back to my eyes.
He wasn't looking at a person. He was looking at a ghost. A ghost that had just crawled out of its grave to haunt him.
I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I didn't even move.
I just looked at him.
I let him see me. Covered in grit, and blood, and darkness.
I let him see the rat that he had tried to kill, and who had just climbed out of hell on a ladder of pure, cold hate.
He didn't save me.
He didn't remove me.
He just declared war.