Kerrigan shook out her arms. There had to be a solution to this problem. Alura couldn’t get away with giving them an impossible feat. She didn’t want to fail all of them. She just wanted to test them. Which meant there was a way to get across this. She just had to find it.

She ran back through everything that Alura had ingrained in them the last month. She was a vicious and unforgiving teacher, but she got it done. They were better because she’d been a hard-ass. And she always said that there were no impossible problems. Anything could be achieved together. The program had been designed to test them together. Not apart.

Kerrigan turned away from the pit as her friends tried to reason this out. Her eyes slid to the rope they’d used to get here. Then, she jumped back out onto it.

“What are you doing?” Audria asked.

“Trust me,” Kerrigan said. Her arms ached, and she was still mostly covered in mud, but she managed to reach the top of the platform that knotted the rope. She swung upward, wrapping her legs around the platform and working the rope knot loose.

“You’re a genius!” Audria cried.

They couldn’t cross the divide without rope, and they weren’t provided rope. But she could make do with what she had. She finally got it loose from the mooring and then swung it over to her friends. Still dangling upside from the rigging, she wriggled across the platform. For a second, her visions shifted. Suddenly, she realized that she was right side up. Her stomach hit the beam holding the platform up, and instead of inching, she crawled toward her teammates. She was so disoriented, wondering why her friends were hanging from the ceiling. She had to close her eyes and right herself again. Zina’s teachings had worked a little too well.

Fordham held his arms out, and she dropped into them. He eased her down, sliding her body down his as he did so. “Be careful.”

“Careful is my middle name,” she said with a wink.

“Well, what do we do with it?” Roake asked.

Noda held her hand out. “I was raised sailing. I can tie knots that you’ve never even heard of.”

“There’s a hook,” Audria pointed out. “If we can throw it, we can secure it across the distance.”

Roake grinned. “I can throw. I played Dragon Eggs back in Elsiande.”

“Were you any good?” Noda asked.

“Could have gone professionally in the South,” he boasted.

“What’s Dragon Eggs?” Fordham asked.

Roake stared at him with a slack jaw. “You’ve never heard of it?”

Fordham shook his head. “My pop culture is lacking from all those years behind a magical barrier.”

Roake winced. “Right, man. Sorry. It’s a sport where you have an egg-shaped ball and try to get it into a net. There’s a national league and everything.”