“Lane!” shouted Solis, surveying the nonsensical scene from above. The young boy was being held by none other than Filian Cornel, around whom were gathered the winged contestants. “What is going on over there?”

  Telsan, just ahead of him, said, “Filian hasn’t noticed us yet. Maybe we can— oh, no.”

  Solis could not believe his eyes. Atop the main southern castle, Filian Cornel kicked at the kid, who toppled over the wall. Anger flared up within him, and he tried to speed up. But his friend was already in a low dive, angling underneath the boy. Heads turned their way, but Filian appeared to be in an altercation with Phoenix. Solis soon dipped below the top of the structure, and the scene was obscured from view, turned to vague shouts.

  “I’ve gotcha, kid!” Telsan said as he swept him up, losing extra altitude from the sudden weight. His wings visibly struggled as he re-centered his body weight and caught himself in a running landing—which soon became an uncontrolled roll. But the kid was alive . . . or so Solis thought.

  “Lane!” Solis caught himself on the stone walk below and stopped just before his crumpled form, taking in the blood soaking one side of his shirt. “Oh, no. He wouldn’t . . .”

  The boy coughed and sat up, wincing and groaning, clutching his side. “What just . . . happened?” he asked.

  “It’s OK—don’t move,” Solis said in a rush, but Telsan was already making to cut the shirt free so he could rip it off, slicing below the wings and down the side. The wound was nasty, but didn’t look life-threatening.

  “Medics!” Telsan squawked at the sky, even as he cut the shirt into strips to wind about Lane’s chest.

  “What about—Phoenix and the others?” Lane asked, flinching at each instance of pressure on his wound.

  “They’re, uh . . .” Solis looked uncertainly upward. “I should check. Tissan was going back, right? It didn’t look good.”

  “I’ll watch him,” Telsan said. “Go.”

  Solis nodded, then cocked his head, hearing shrieking. Then a resounding boom. “Uh . . .” He lifted off and pumped his wings to the maximum, quickly ascending the keep’s exterior. Flames were everywhere. Tissan was hanging back near the southern side, motioning for Solis to be careful, but he wasn’t about to do something crazy like that. He jumped in and made his way toward the center of the madness, where a single girl blazed with fire. Contestants lay around her, groaning and scorched, some batting out flames on their clothes. Shouts and disbelieving murmurs echoed back and forth.

  Phoenix herself crouched over a thrashing Filian, whom she had pinned down by the neck. Her arm, back and hair were ablaze, with flames licking off her skin and into the air wildly. No wings, just glowing tentacles of flame. Overhead, medics swarmed, and Solis thought he saw a Magnate or two in the sky as well.

  “Phoenix! Phoenix, let him go!” He wasn’t the first to tell her something like that, but his voice seemed to cut through her madness. She turned a predatory glare on him, eyes seeming to burn with rage.

  Something in her face softened, and she said, “Solis? He . . . he just pushed that boy and . . .”

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  “He’s safe, stupid! We got him.”

  Phoenix let Filian go suddenly. “Oh.” She stood up, allowing the rich boy to scramble away, clutching his neck and moaning. The skin was blackened all around it, and Solis was surprised that he could even move. Winged medics were already coming for him.

  “Phoenix, what happened here?”

  “I don’t—I-I don’t know, I just, just . . .” Her body shivered, and the inferno in her eyes waned for a moment, before snapping into focus. “I was just so angry, and . . . well, I didn’t mean to hurt him like that. Although he ought to be dead. Where is he?”

  “Telsan has him.”

  Everyone was staring at Phoenix, both the scorched and unscorched, unarmed and armed, winged and elementalist.

  “Um . . . how’d you get past the block?” asked Chester, the other Flameborn.

  “Phoenix Dolce, you have violated the rules of the trial,” came the voice of Donnor the Magnate.

  Solis jerked his gaze upward at the booming, amplified voice. The black-clad Magnate hovered only a few dozen paces above, amidst busy medics. Those black-billed buzzards . . . did they somehow set this up? But what . . . what’s even happened to her?

  Tissan and his countryman Telsan eyed each other, then the latter moved to Phoenix’s side, apparently unheeding of her uncontrolled flames. They had dimmed but not entirely gone out. He muttered something to her, and she extinguished them entirely, clutching the birdman suddenly for support.

  “Go away!” Solis yelled up at the Magnate. “That’s a load of guano! You said no ban on Kinships!”

  Donnor’s impassive gaze swiveled slightly. “Mind your place, contestant. This is deemed a disruption of the contest—though we shall allow it this once, considering the circumstances.” With that, he dove, heading straight for the group. Contestants stepped back, frightened, but he only landed beside Filian’s unmoving form and scooped him up effortlessly. Turning to Phoenix, he said in a low voice, “We are watching you, girl.” Then he took off again, as though bearing the weight of only a child in his arms.

  To Solis, that only sounded like, “We don’t like you and we don’t want you to pass,” which was odd, considering that the target was not him for once. But then, he hadn’t just done . . . whatever she had. He hadn’t exploded and broken the Kinship negation.

  Phoenix took her weight off of Telsan and shook herself, seemingly more in control now. “So we’re . . . resuming now?” she asked. “I’m sorry, guys, I didn’t mean to—”

  Solis slapped her on the back, meaning it as a friendly gesture but causing her to stumble a bit. “No way! I mean, resuming, yes. I think. But you were awesome! Right?” He turned to the bystanders who were actually there for her demonstration. He got murmurs of agreement and grudging head nods. “Whatever happened is done now? Are we a team?”

  The others looked between one another; he eventually received positive responses. He turned back to Phoenix and shared a quick smile. It was good just to have her talking to them again, particularly after this scare. “So you’re able to use your abilities now?”

  She gave a wide-eyed, hesitant nod, as though there were more to the equation than that. Something to do with the Colla incident the other day? “My Kinship’s back,” she said, flaring outward with brilliant wings. Shimmering shapes like feathers seemed to outline one another in the flames, a detail he’d never noticed before, and the colors shifted more wildly than ever. “Though I think somehow it has been . . . augmented.”

  Solis stared at her for a moment, only until he was aware of vaguely uncomfortable eyes on him. Oh. Did he look strange? Maybe infatuated? Solis, you idiot. He cleared his throat and said, “Obviously, we didn’t find that third relic of theirs yet, so . . . are we going to go treasure hunting or what?”

  There rose a small cheer from the southbound contestants.

  “We still don’t have any, right?” Tissan asked.

  “No, but I don’t think they have any of ours either,” answered Villa the Dewborn.

  A female member of Filian’s recent cohort spoke up. “Not the west one. But the east fort was attacked, right?”

  Tissan and Telsan shared a look. “It was,” said the former, “but we fought them off. Now we need to take the fight to Gobross.”

  A snort came from another of Filian’s winged cohort. “Traitor.”

  Brushing aside the comment, Solis looked around dramatically. “Huh . . . if only we had an elementalist.” He struck a thoughtful pose. “Wait, that’s perfect.”