I wasn’t usually one for stage fright, but with the expectant weight of all their eyes on me, the sense of being scrutinized by a host of sinister strangers instead of people I’d grown up with, my heart pounded in sickening lurches, my knees going watery and weak.

“Ready, scoot?” my father murmured into my ear. He’d come to stand behind me, the heavily embroidered purple velvet of the Arbiter’s mantle slung over his arm. The Grimoire sat waiting on the stone table in front of me, splayed open to the page of incantations, two fat pillar candles flickering on either side. The spellbook’s pages stirred in the breeze, and I could feel the eager swell of its magic lapping against me like a rising tide.

Which meant it was almost time.

“Ready,” I whispered back, licking my lips. Trepidation surged in my throat as he unfolded the mantle and shook it out, my stomach twisting with irrational qualms. What if it didn’t work? What if the mantle felt the way my magic had guttered since I’d been gone, and rejected me as Arbiter? What if—

Then the fabric settled lightly over my shoulders—and its spell ignited, burning out every last trace of nerves.

A sudden wind kicked up around me, swirling around my feet. It built upon itself, gaining in intensity until the Grimoire’s pages fluttered wildly in the gale like thrashing wings. A swell of magic thundered through me until I felt as though I were expanding, growing like the giant beanstalk in the tale, rushing up and up into the sky. Soon I loomed above the peaked roofs, turreted towers, and widow’s walks of the Avramovs’ manse, its wolf-and-serpent weather vanes whirling in the gusts of wind. I was somehow so tall that I could see Lady’s Lake glimmering atop Hallows Hill to the west, could even spot the glowing storefronts and the milling streams of tourists coursing down Yarrow Street toward the east.

Whooooa, I marveled giddily to myself, high on the magical equivalent of heroin. The mantle’s magic was immeasurably stronger than any spell I’d managed on my own before, and it felt nothing short of fucking spectacular.

Did not expect the Galadriel-puts-on-the-Ring effect, but must admit it is absurdly cool.

Amid the dizzying euphoria, I found that words had appeared on the page of incantations, emblazoned in a glowing script. And even though I felt miles high—and maybe even looked it in some way, judging by the stunned expressions in the crowd—the Grimoire was still exactly where it had been before, right within reach of my fingertips.

“Elder Igraine, matriarch of House Blackmoore,” I boomed, in a knelling cadence that sounded like some behemoth orchestra playing my voice, “Victor of the sixth Gauntlet of the Grove. Your time now comes to cede the wreath.”

A figure peeled away from the shadowy mass of people that seemed impossibly far below me. But I could see Gareth’s grandmother perfectly well as she approached, the silver wreath perched on a chignon of ice-blond hair. She really did look no older than when I’d left Thistle Grove, and even then she’d seemed uncannily youthful, just as Talia had said; her skin porcelain pale and smooth, a stern cast to her patrician face.