“Beauty’s a curse when one lives among men. You might have thanked me for it.”

She runs a fingernail across my cheek, and I shudder.

“Well...” she lets me go and walks back to the kitchen door with a smile, a twist of her mouth that is all bitterness and no mirth. The spirals of her strange tattoo catch the moonlight. “There’s time yet for that.”

XXX: Elias

For three days after the Moon Festival, Helene avoids me. She ignores knocks on her door, leaves the mess hall when I appear, and begs off when I approach her head on. When we’re paired together in training, she attacks me as if I’m Marcus. When I speak to her, she goes suddenly deaf.

I let it go at first, but by the third day, I’m sick of it. On my way to combat training, I’m concocting a plan to confront her—something involving a chair and rope and maybe a gag so she has no choice but to listen to me—when Cain appears beside me as suddenly as a ghost. My scim is half-drawn before I realize who it is.

“Skies, Cain. Don’t do that.”

“Greetings, Aspirant Veturius. Wonderful weather.” The Augur looks up at the hot blue sky admiringly.

“Yeah, if you’re not training with double scims under the baking sun,” I mutter. It’s not even noon, and I’m so covered in sweat that I’ve given up and taken off my shirt. If Helene was speaking to me, she’d frown and say it’s not regulation. I’m too hot to care.

“You are healed from the Second Trial?” Cain asks.

“No thanks to you.” The words are out before I can stop them, but I don’t feel particularly regretful. Multiple attempts on my life have taken a toll on my manners.

“The Trials are not meant to be easy, Elias. That is why they are called the Trials.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” I speed up, hoping Cain will piss off. He doesn’t.

“I bring you a message,” he says. “The next Trial will take place in seven days.”

At least we get some warning this time. “What’s it going to be?” I ask.

“Public flogging? A night locked in a trunk with a hundred vipers?”

“Combat against a formidable foe,” Cain says. “Nothing you can’t handle.”

“What foe? What’s the catch?” No way the Augur will tell me what I’m up against without leaving something essential out. It’s going to be a sea of wraiths we’re fighting. Or jinn. Or some other beastie they’ve woken from the darkness.

“We haven’t woken anything from the darkness that wasn’t already awake,” Cain says.

I bite back a response. If he picks my mind again, I swear, I’ll shove this blade through him, Augur or not.

“It wouldn’t do any good, Elias.” He smiles, almost sadly, then nods to the field, where Hel is training. “I ask that you pass the message along to Aspirant Aquilla.”

“As Aquilla isn’t speaking with me, that might be a bit difficult.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

He drifts off, leaving me more ill-tempered than before.

When Hel and I argue, we usually patch things up in a few hours—a day at most. Three days is a record for us. Worse, I’ve never seen her lose her temper the way she did three nights ago. Even in battle, she is always cool, controlled.

But she’s been different the past few weeks. I’ve known it, though like a fool, I’ve tried not to see it. But I can’t ignore her behavior anymore. It has to do with that spark between us, that attraction. Either we crush it or we do something about it. And I’m thinking that while the latter might be more enjoyable, it will create complications neither of us needs.

When did Helene change? She has always been in control of every emotion, every desire. She’s never shown interest in any of her comrades, and, other than Leander, none of us is stupid enough to try to start anything with her.

So what happened between us that changed things? I think back to the first time I noticed her acting strange: the morning she found me in the catacombs. I’d tried to distract her by leering. I’d done it without thinking, hoping to keep her from finding my pack. I figured she’d just think it was me being male.

Is that what did it? That one look? Has she been acting so strangely because she thinks I want her, and so she feels like she has to want me back?

If that’s the case, then I need to clear things up with her straightaway.

I’ll tell her that it was a fluke. That I didn’t mean anything by it.

Will she accept my apology? Only if you grovel enough.

Fine. It will be worth it. If I want my freedom, I have to win the next Trial. In the first two, Hel and I depended on each other for survival. The third will probably be the same. I need her on my side.

I find Hel on the combat field sparring with Tristas while a Combat Centurion looks on. The boys and I tease Tristas for constantly mooning over his fiancé, but he’s one of the finest swordsmen at Blackcliff, clever and cat-swift. He waits for Helene to slip up, taking note of the aggression in her strokes. But her defense is as impenetrable as the walls of Kauf. Minutes after I arrive at the field, she’s thrown off Tristas’s attack and jabbed his heart.

“Greetings, oh holy Aspirant,” Tristas calls out when he sees me. At Helene’s stiffening shoulders, he glances between us and makes a quick departure. Along with Faris and Dex, Tristas has tried repeatedly to figure out what went wrong between Helene and me on the night of the party—which neither of us attended. But Hel’s been as silent as I have, and they’ve given up, instead grunting to one another other pointedly when she and I beat each other down on the battlefield.