I don’t want to watch anymore, so I glance down at my feet and blink. The floor’s not just gold any longer. Thin red lines vibrate beneath the surface, branching like twigs. Or veins. My pulse throbs in my throat. Everything feels heavy. The blood magic is thick in the air.

I don’t even see Xander and Aristelle finish. I just sense them around me.

“I don’t like it,” I whisper.

Someone grabs my hand. I look up into Reina’s eyes. “It’s only once a year.”

I’m not sure that helps.

Another lone magician steps up. He turns as pale as Roman as the bush sucks him dry. He wobbles, and still the vine holds him. He sags, eyes rolling into his head, and then he slumps to the ground. Still the blood flows, but now instead of running down his fingers, it travels down his shoulder, streaming over his chest and chin before dripping to the ravenous floor.

Nobody stops it.

I meet Willow’s wide eyes.

When the thorns finally give him up, Lucius waves a hand, and the man is carried away.

“He’s going to be okay,” I say.

But nobody agrees or disagrees.

As the bloodletting goes on, the roses open, and blood trickles from their petals like scarlet rain. The people giving blood last end up with red streaks down their faces and clothes, and there’s so much blood that I avert my stare upward instead. It’s worse. The blood climbs the columns as well, turning the carved leaves red. The lips on the statues turn the garish color of rubies.

I don’t like it, but nobody’s dying—at least I don’t think so. Maybe this is just another thing to get used to.

Blood magic’s not all bad.

Lucius is speaking again, and I have to force myself to listen.

He’s smiling, and cold violence lurks around the edges of it. “The competition continues now,” he says.

Everything goes dark, even though I’m almost certain my eyes are still open. I close them against a rush of air so strong I can’t breathe. When I open them again, I blink up at blue sky framed by towering hedges.

CHAPTER 21

Twisting green branches loom on every side of me. I twist, feet crunching on the familiar gray stones laced with rubies. But I’m not in the courtyard. Every direction looks exactly the same—I’m in the center of an X with hedges lining each path. A maze. I take a single step and get snagged by a scraggly branch from the climbing roses that weave into the shrubs.

Still dressed in my ridiculous black gown, I must look like a gothic princess, escaped from the haunted castle.

If this is our first test, we must have to find our way out.

I close my eyes to see if I can feel the magic of the mansion.