We? What the hell is he talking about?

"Raith... you're scaring me."

He smiles, and the unnatural shape of it makes my blood go cold. Raith hardly ever smiles, and when he does... it doesn't look like that.

"Show me how well he has trained you, Nessa." With a whisper of steel, Raith draws his sword from his back and holds it toward me. The metal still vibrates as he levels the blade between my eyes, ringing in my ears.

"How well who has trained me…” I ask slowly, mind putting the pieces together, terrifying piece after terrifying piece.

“Raith Hollow,” it says, pulling the sword back, gripping it with both hands, and moving toward me.

29

It's a siphon.

Raith's warning comes to me almost immediately. If I see a siphon, I need to run. I can't fight it. I shouldn't even try.

I feel Typhon materializing beside me as I turn and run for the door. But a wave of purple energy flares in front of the door, blasting me back with noxious fumes that stink of sulphur and decay. The force of it slams me against the stone floor, knocking the breath from my lungs.

"We're going to have to try to fight. That's the only way out," I tell Typhon through the bond.

"Then we fight."

The slight sense of resolution through the tether worries me. I don't feel confidence. I don't feel excitement. It's more like the feeling one might have before taking a leap of faith. Before rushing toward certain death.

I turn toward the siphon that still looks like Raith, and I draw my rapier. My hand trembles slightly, but I force it steady.

I know it's not him. Not really. It's a siphon and it's taking Raith's form. It's the only explanation.

The real Raith is out there somewhere and likely headed to this very room to meet me for training. And if he wasn’t already on his way, I don’t have to ask to know Typhon will have called for him through Pyrin. But I can't count on him arriving in time.

I reach into the room around me, pulling in any elemental energy I can manage—fire from the torches, air from the currents coming from high above, water from the moisture in the air, and earth from the dirt packed in between the stones. The energy tingles through my fingertips, making the hairs on my arms stand on end.

Typhon lunges for the siphon, but a lion made of swirling purple and green energy explodes into view at the last second, pouncing and knocking Typhon away. It's huge, even larger than Typhon, even though he's the largest elemental I've seen on campus before now.