Page 68 of The Incendiary

“She gets a two-minute head start,” declared Elias. “While finding her banner, she has something of her own to retrieve.”

Four men snickered. I glanced right to see the three guards I’d taken down the day I arrived—Otis Stoll and the Sharpe brothers—standing next to a large fourth man. That had to be Alec Gerard. The predatory way they stared made my skin prickle.

Elias leaned close, drawing my attention back to him with his breath on my cheek. “Missing something?” I tilted away from him as unease snaked its way up my spine. He languidly dropped his gaze to my throat. “Neck’s looking a little bare this morning.”

Both of my hands shot up to my neck. A gust of chilled, spring wind blew through the clearing and stole my breath with it as I clutched at bare skin. No metal.

My ring. Gavin’s ring. Our rings. Gone.

I tried to inhale but couldn’t. How?

And then I recalled the previous night, in the main hall. We had sparred, and he was impossibly quick. How had I not noticed? How had I gone all night and all morning without realizing he had stolen the wedding rings from around my neck?

“No,” I breathed. “What did you⁠—”

“Might want to start at our secret place,” he whispered, smirking. “You better run, Fera.”

I couldn’t move when I felt like my safety had been cleaved in two. How dare he? He didn’t know what those rings meant, but even an idiot could deduce that they meant something if they sat around someone’s neck every day.

“Two-minute countdown!” Elias’s abrupt command echoed through the clearing. A small blessing, because the sound snapped me out of my paralyzed trance and shifted me to rage and unexpected, unfamiliar bloodlust as my indignation swelled from a trickle to a deluge.

Power began to simmer beneath my skin.

“Ary?” Shera called mind-to-mind, sensing me. “Ary, are you all right?”

My eyes burned into the back of Elias Winterton’s head. Fire. Wind. Water. Ice. The tree roots below my feet. I had my pick of weapons. I itched to burn him, drown him, make him feel pain. Most of all to aid me in taking back something precious, now stolen. It felt as if the gods’ power couldn’t thrive within me without those rings and that bond. That fire he lit in me.

I could make Elias Winterton pay for what he took.

But what would wielding here and now cost me? My identity? My freedom? Or worse?

“Aryella,” Shera said warily. “What⁠—”

“The Commander took my rings.”

“Your ring?”

“And his.”

I could feel how she was also trying to hold back anger. “While I am in favor of you blowing things up, I don’t recommend doing so with dozens of innocent bystanders.”

“Those rings are nearly all I have left of him.”

Of us.

Shera paused. “And what would he do?”

“He would…” My heart stumbled over the memory of his first words to me. “He would find what he lost.”

“Then help me find them.”

“Fera!” Mavic shook my shoulders. His normally carefree, jovial expression was gone. “You have to move!”

The countdown landed on “fifty-five.” I had less than a minute’s head start.

“Fera, go!” Mavic urged.

I ignored the urge to throw my blade through Elias’s skull before I turned and ran. Riotous laughter from other cadets faded the farther away I got. I let the mocking sting me for a moment before shutting it out. I couldn’t afford to let their amusement bother me. I didn’t have time, and I needed to conserve my energy. They were about to hunt me.