I end up climbing a slope. The deep cracking sounds are further and further apart now, but each time they come, they’re loud enough to set my teeth on edge and send adrenaline spiking. I pause to catch my breath against a tree trunk and get my bearings. I’ve walked half a mile or so, some of it uphill. The Lodge’s balcony lights are barely visible through the dense trees, and beyond that is the misty haze of light marking the tops of campus buildings, the nearby hospital, and the rest of downtown. I direct my flashlight up the hill again and gasp.

Starting about twenty feet away are half a dozen broken tree trunks. Jagged, pale yellow spikes and splinters the size of my forearm stretch up from raw stumps about the height of my knee. They look like fresh wounds. Beside them are long fallen trunks, laid out like Lincoln Logs on the forest floor.

Right on cue, I hear another tree being torn apart. I follow the sound.

This close I can catch all the details of Sel’s efforts: the initial popping sound of a wide trunk protesting against his muscles; the ripping sound of bark tearing away; a slow, deep whine and a final crack when the trunk is severed from its base.

Just as I reach the ridge, I see him about fifty feet away, hefting a long pine trunk between his hands. He inhales deep and heaves it over the side. There’s a second where all I can hear are his panting breaths amidst silence, and then a mighty boom shakes the ground as the tree splits into pieces on the earth below. In the waning moonlight, I can make out a dozen trees just like it, spread out across the grass like broken chopsticks as tall as a house.

I realize where I am—this is the ridge above the arena from the first trial. This is where the Legendborn watched us fight Sel’s boars and where Nick was taken out from under Sel’s nose by a hellsnake.

“What are you doing here?”

My head jerks around at Sel’s voice. In the second I’d taken to peer down into the arena, he’d turned to face me. His gaze feels like sparks, but they’re scattered. Unfocused.

The last time we spoke, he’d made a joke about his lineage. Taught me how to follow through on a lunge.

Now it feels like he wants to burn me to ash.

I stumble on a response but stop when I see his expression. Sarah was right, he’s aether-drunk, and it’s worse than before. Even though he’s on his feet, he’s swaying gently, his normally stern eyes blurry and red-rimmed. He glances down at my injured arm, briefly.

“Well?”

“Why are you so angry?”

His laugh is a hollow, dry bark. “Learn that shit from your therapist?”