of the meadow. Her hand was wet with dew. She shook her head: she could not accept that all this was make- believe.
“If you walk ten miles in any direction, you will find you can go no farther—as if this world is but a terrarium under a giant bell jar. Since we do not have time to walk ten miles . . .”
He led her a hundred yards to the north and pointed toward the eastern horizon. “That is Sleeping Beauty’s castle—you will battle dragons there someday. Do you see the second sun?”
The castle obscured most of the second sun, but an edge of it was visible, a pale circle in the sky, the same size and elevation as the sun, but two degrees farther south—no doubt put there to remind bumpkins like her that the Crucible was not real, after all.
“Think about it. Dreams are not real; but when you are inside a dream, it is real to you. The Crucible operates the same way. Except unlike dreams, it follows the physical and magical principles of the real world. Whatever works out there, works in here, and vice versa.”
She touched her face. Her skin felt no different than it did in the real world. “Where is my person then?”
“Our bodies are in my room, probably looking as if we are taking a nap, our heads down on the desk.”
This was extraordinary magic. “How did you get this book?”
“It is a family heirloom.”
He turned toward the castle, pointed his own wand at it, then tossed her a wand. “At the ready.”
“What did you just do?”
“Nothing.”
“You pointed your wand at the castle.”
“Oh, that. I cast a spell to break a window.”
“Why?”
“Habit. I used to have trouble getting into the castle because of the dragons. So I broke windows from outside to annoy them.”
“But that castle is three miles away. How can you break a window from this far?”
“Distance spell-casting. Use a far-seeing spell if you do not believe me.”
She did. With the far-seeing spell, the castle was almost close enough to touch—and all its windows perfectly intact. She was about to call him on his bluff when a window blew apart in a shower of glass shards. A low roar rumbled, followed by a huge plume of fire that came from somewhere near the castle gate.
She scowled. “Are you training to be an assassin? Who uses such spells?”
“My mother had a vision in which she saw me practicing them. So I learned them.”
“You should have your psyche examined. Most sixteen-year-old boys don’t follow Mama’s directions so slavishly.”
“Most mothers are not seers,” he answered simply. “Now, are you ready?”
“To do what?” She did not like the look on his face.
“You like flowers?
Thousands of white blossoms leaped into the air, impossibly pretty in the liquid light.
“Your training starts.
A squall of flowers hit her with the force of thrown pebbles.
“Divert them,” said the prince.
She waved the wand in her hand and imagined parting the tide of flowers. All she got for her trouble was a greater battering. Annoyed, she sent out a plume of fire. Immediately, something much bigger smacked her on the upper arm.
“What the—”
“Just cow dung. Now concentrate. I should not have to remind you this exercise is for air only.”
And what did he know about elemental magic? Elemental mages didn’t exercise. They either had an affinity for a particular element or they didn’t. She’d known from the earliest moment of awareness that she could manipulate fire, water, and earth. And she did so, if not effortlessly—earth always required some exertion—then at least easily enough.
She ducked as a particularly large cluster of flowers careened toward her. “You are going to poke my eyes out.”
“Do not let me.”
She sent a huge spray of water his way, only to have it all thrown back at her, followed by a cowpat that hit her solidly in the rib cage.
She hurled her wand at him.
He stepped aside. “You have a good arm. Maybe Wintervale will get his wish after all.”
She wiped her wet face with her hand. “What do you care?”
“I do not.”
Her wand flew back at her. Flowers continued to batter her. And they hurt where they hit. She did her best to push them all back at him and pockmark his smug face. But nothing happened.
His lips moved. Blades of grass, a forest of them, rose straight up. His lips moved again. The blades of grass turned in midair, to point their sharp ends at her.
Blood drained from her face. The flowers had only hurt. The blades of grass, with their sharply serrated edges, would shred her.
They sped toward her. Instinctively she threw up a wall of fire to burn them to cinders. He put out her fire. She called for fresh fire. He made a prison for it.
She commanded the ground about her to rise up into an earthen wall. He shattered the wall before it had reached a foot in height.
“This is not about thwarting me,” he said.
“Then don’t try to hurt me.”
“If you do not feel strongly about it, you will not be able to unblock whatever it is that makes you unable to command air.”
“Maybe I don’t want to unblock it. Not for you, you rat.”
The vivisection-by-dull-knife pain of the blood oath came back with a vengeance. She swayed with the intensity of it. But she would not humiliate herself before him by collapsing to the ground. She would not. She would remain standing and defiant.
The grass scratched her face as she fell.
She burned with the force of her anger.
Her hand, of its own will, rose. Her wand pointed to the sky; her mind issued the command.
Before Titus quite understood what she intended, he had already jabbed his wand above his head.
He had tested this shield against fire, but never lightning.
The sound of the lightning striking his shield was like that of grinding glass. The force of it was bone- snapping. He could barely keep his arm raised, barely scrape together enough strength to sustain the shield, which gave away inch by inch beneath the brilliant onslaught that made dots dance in his vision.
He grunted with the strain of keeping his wand aloft. The muscles of his shoulders and arms screamed in pain. He wanted to shut his eyes against the unbearable light.
How could lightning that came out of nowhere go on and on? How much more could his shield take? He felt it in his humerus, the obliteration of the shield, the cracking and splintering, air returning to being just air, and no protection at all.
The shield split altogether. His heart rammed up his throat. But the lightning, too, had spent itself. The air sputtered with remnant electricity.
He had survived a lightning strike.
“You will need to do better,” he said—and hoped that his voice did not sound as limp as the rest of him felt. “When I went to Black Bastion, Helgira’s lightning killed me outright.”
She slowly came to her feet. “Helgira’s been dead thousands of years, if she ever lived.”
