“See?” Aliza said with a grin. “My advice: Take the small victory, but don’t dwell on it. Move on as quickly as possible. Train hard. Starting now. Are you ready?”

Strength and vitality still coursing through her veins, Perfidy considered the young girl’s words. She didn’t know why she was here or why she’d been given her Ability, but something about it all felt strangely right. And she was no stranger to hard work, so if that’s all that was required, she’d work harder than any of them. “Let’s do this,” she said.

Julio released an exuberant shout, Jereb offered an encouraging smile, and Aliza just nodded and said, “You’ll need to climb something and jump off.”

“Not too high a something,” Jereb cautioned.

But Perfidy wasn’t really listening to any of them because all she wanted was to maintain that feeling of invincibility. Void, she wanted to capture it, bottle it, and keep it close to her for the rest of her life. She was already off and running, each stride long and strong beneath her, the wind in her hair as she reached a tree and leapt up to grab its lowest branch, swinging herself upwards until she was able to clamber onto it, where it swayed beneath her weight, and then she jumped.

It was perhaps a six-foot drop to the ground. But when she hit, it might as well have been a hundred feet, the impact jolting through her, the bed of leaves and dirt doing little to cushion the force of the collision. “Urgh?” she said, bits of nature clinging to her lips and the sweat on her skin.

She could hear shouts, could see feet running toward her, but the ringing in her ears and the moisture in her eyes prevented her from making sense of any of it. But then a strong hand hauled her upwards—Julio—and planted her back on her feet. To her surprise, as she blinked the tears away, her strength held. In fact, the pain, which had been a heavy, throbbing thing, had already receded until it was dull and muted, barely worth mentioning. It was like she’d never fallen in the first place.

She couldn’t help herself—she released a whoop and took off running again.

“Not again,” she heard Jereb mutter. “I don’t think I can watch.”

But this time Perfidy wouldn’t fail, this she knew in her heart, in her bones, in the very depths of her soul. Because that strength and warmth burning inside her couldn’t be stopped, couldn’t be quelled, couldn’t be held back, not by the words of any man or woman or even the strongest, tallest wall ever erected.