I burst through a spider’s web and hit something bulbous and slimy. I screamed and knocked it from my face, but not before the hairy legs tangled in my hair and scratched my neck. I writhed, batting at the overlarge arachnid. “Get it off!”

Bastiaan finally managed to wrench the spider off me. The bear roared. “Go! Go!”

We sprinted and were hit by a wall of silence as though submerged underwater. Bastiaan stumbled to a halt and I ran into him. “Don’t stop!” I pleaded.

“It’s working again.”

I pushed at his back. “I don’t care! We have to get out of here!” Didn’t he realize if time could stop so unpredictably, it could start back up again like before? “Bastiaan, go!”

We went as fast as my limp would allow, despite the darkness now having thickened like tar. Bastiaan acted as my shield, knocking aside the spiderweb strands and their black-and-red occupants that seemed to have burst from the branches at the first instant of moving time.

I ran like a stiff marionette, certain time would resume any second and the spiders would converge on my body, sucking my blood until I lay limp and pale.

A wall of yellow-and-green specks glowed through the trees. I yanked Bastiaan to a halt. “No, no,” he assured me. “It’s the next Trial.”

My breaths came in heaves. “Are you sure it’s not something that’s going to melt the skin off our bones?”

“Time is stopped. We’re okay.” He tucked my hand into his arm. “I’ve been through it before. Trust me.”

Trust him. Trust him. Trust him. “Okay.”

“Ready?” His panic had all but disappeared. I marveled at the confidence his Talent brought. Was that something I could’ve had if I’d been allowed to be the Wishtress on my own?

“Ready.” We walked through the mist to the fourth Trial together.

Summer.

The heat hit me first, sticking in my lungs like a flour dumpling. This wasn’t like the Fairhoven summer sun. It was heavy and wet and smothering. I tried to suck in a breath, but my lungs seemed weighted.

We walked tentatively, still recovering from the Autumn Trial. The ground went soft beneath my bare feet. I leaped back onto the hard ground along the mist wall. Sand. Burning red sand.

I stuffed my fresh wonder down into the pocket of my mind for later. Sand? Stifling heat? This was the stuff of legends and storybooks. Faraway lands! Not Fairhoven.

Little specks of insects dotted the granules, and I spied a stinger or two.

“Don’t step on the scorpions.” Bastiaan uncovered one of the nasty creatures with the toe of his boot. “They’re stuck in time but their tails can still sting.”

Black wasps. Mammoth spiders. Sand scorpions. The Talented who created these Trials had cruel imaginations.