My lungs were still on fire.
The adrenaline from the compressing-wall trap had faded, and now, my body was just... sore. The places where the marble had pinned me, my shoulders, my back, my chest, they were all a deep, throbbing bruise. I was kneeling on the black sand with the other survivors, and I didn't know if I could find the strength to stand up.
There were maybe twenty-five of us left. Out of the fifty who'd started.
The last rook, a girl from a low-merchant family, was half-carried, half-dragged from the exit tunnel. She was weeping, her arm hanging at an angle that looked wrong.
A man who had failed the dart wall was just... gone.
"Removed."
I tasted ash and grit. I had passed. I had survived. That was all that mattered.
I looked at the huddled, broken mass of my fellow rooks. We were a collection of bloody, exhausted, crying children.
And then, I looked at him.
Caelen val-Valerius.
He stood apart from us, as if he was afraid he might catch "peasant" from the air we were breathing. His uniform was spotless. His hair was perfect. His breathing was even. He looked like he'd just come from a boring lecture, not a death trap.
He had walked over his pristine, glowing bridge while I was vaulting over a pit of spikes. He had used a beautiful, spinning magic shield while I was getting my ribs kicked in.
The hatred I felt for him was so pure, so hot, it was the only thing that burned away the cold in my bones. He wasn't just better than us. He was a different species. And he knew it.
"Pathetic."
Professor Varrick's voice snapped through the arena. He was walking along the line of survivors, his scarred face a mask of pure, unadulterated disappointment.
"You are pathetic," he repeated, his voice a low growl. "You were slow. You were clumsy. You were weak. You relied on yourselves. You know what a single, lone wolf is? Dead."
He stopped at the center of the arena, a cruel, thin-lipped smile twisting his scars. It was a terrifying sight. He was enjoying this.
"You passed the Gauntlet. You proved you can survive. Congratulations. Now, you will learn to hunt."
A low, grating rumble echoed through the Crucible. On the far side of the arena, a section of the stone wall I had never seen before began to grind open, revealing a new, dark tunnel.
But this tunnel was different.
A gust of wind blew out of it, and it didn't smell like stone or dust. It smelled wet. It smelled of damp earth, of rotting leaves, and of something metallic and sharp underneath.
"Trial Two," Varrick announced, his voice booming, "is The Paired Hunt. We will see how you function when your life is tied to someone else's. We will see if you can be a pack... or if you're just two, single rats, waiting to be eaten."
He gestured to the new tunnel. "That... is the Haunted Forest."
I squinted. All I could see was darkness, but I could hear a faint sound from within. A skittering. A clicking.
Oh, gods.
"In The Dregs," Varrick said, and his scarred eye landed, of course it did, right on me. "You learn a rat's skills. Survival. Speed. Selfishness."
I set my jaw, refusing to look away.
"But here," he continued, his gaze sweeping over us all, "you will learn a wolf's skills. Teamwork. Strategy. And the brutal, simple logic of the cull."
My blood went cold. He didn't just mean survive.
"You will be paired," he said. "The pairings have been... selected."
His smile widened. This was it. This was the part he'd been waiting for.
A murmur of panic went through the rooks. I looked for Rhys. He was huddled near the back, his face chalk-white. He looked like he was going to be sick. He was my only chance at a partner who wouldn't try to kill me. He was a coward, but he was a harmless coward.
"Rhys val-Lenos!" Varrick barked.
Rhys actually yelped, a tiny, terrified sound.
"You are paired with... Korg."
My stomach dropped on Rhys's behalf. Korg was a mountain of a rook from the mining districts, a brute of a man who'd passed the Gauntlet by simply walking through a spiked-wall trap, his arms bleeding, but his face set in a mask of pure rage.
Rhys looked at Korg, and I could see his knees knocking together. He was paired with a bear. And he was the bait.
Varrick continued, his voice a monotone of doom, rattling off names. He broke up friends. He paired the big with the small, the fast with the slow. Every single pairing seemed designed for maximum chaos.
He was making a show. For them.
I glanced up at the observation balcony. The elites were leaning forward, their faces bright with interest. This was the real entertainment.
"Seraphina val-Aris!" Varrick shouted.
My head snapped back. I hadn't even seen her come down. She was standing near the entrance, not with us rooks, but separate. Of course. She hadn't run the Gauntlet.
"You are paired with... Daxos."
Seraphina gave a delicate, bored nod. Daxos, another high-elite who hadn't run the Gauntlet, stepped up beside her. They both looked like they were about to attend a ball, not a hunt.
Varrick was almost at the end of his list. My heart was a hammer against my bruised ribs. Don't be me. Don't be me. Who's left?
Me. Caelen. And maybe two other rooks I didn't know.
Please, I prayed to any god that might be listening in this godless place, pair me with one of the others. I don't care who. Just...
"Caelen val-Valerius..."
Varrick's voice dropped, becoming almost conversational. The arena went dead silent.
I held my breath. I could see Seraphina on the sidelines, her posture alert. She was expecting her real partner to be paired with some weakling she could control.
Varrick's eyes found mine, a hundred feet across the sand. His scarred smile was a gaping wound.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
"...and Anya Rostova."
The name just hung in the air.
For a second, nothing happened. The world was just a high-pitched ringing in my ears. It had to be a mistake. A cruel joke.
Then, from the observation balcony high above, a sound drifted down. A single, light, feminine titter.
Then another.
And another.
The elites were laughing. It was a quiet, polite, amused sound.
They got the joke. He'd done it. He'd shackled the prodigy to the parasite. The ultimate, perfect heir, and the chaotic, filthy gutter-rat. He'd chained his prize-winning hound to a rabid animal, just to see which one would kill the other first.
I felt... sick.
The blood drained from my face, and the ground tilted. It wasn't just fear. It was... that feeling. The idea of being trapped in a dark, wet forest with him... with that horrible, invasive, push-pull magnetic wrongness... it was a violation. It was worse than the compressing walls. It was a personal, magical hell.
My eyes shot to the balcony. Seraphina.
She was not laughing.
She was staring down at me, her beautiful face a mask of pure, white-hot fury. Her knuckles were white on the stone railing. She wasn't angry at Varrick. She wasn't angry at Caelen. Her hatred, a glacier of high-elite-ice, was aimed directly at me.
She thought... oh, gods. She thought this was my fault. Or that I... wanted this.
I'd made an enemy I couldn't fight, and Varrick had just given her a reason to kill me.
I couldn't look at her. I tore my gaze away, and, against my will, I looked for him.
Caelen.
He was still standing in the same spot. He hadn't moved a muscle. He was a perfect statue of black-clad ice.
But his face...
He had turned his head, and his eyes were locked on me.
It wasn't annoyance. It wasn't frustration.
It was murder.
It was the single-most-pure, un-leashed, killing intent I had ever seen in my life. He looked at me with an absolute, cold certainty. He looked at me like I was a disease. A piece of filth on his boot that he was not just going to wipe off, but incinerate.
Varrick clapped his hands, the sound a gunshot in the silent arena.
"The pairs are set!" he roared, his voice full of dark, terrible glee. "The hunt begins... now."