Chapter 7

They left me alone for the days that followed the first trial, leaving no one besides the phantom face of Sera's father to lurk in the darkness. Occasionally, the alchemedis would come by to assess my wrist and knees. The cartilage had healed miraculously well thanks to the stuff she poured down my throat. Her treatments were a reminder of how quickly the past could be erased, forgotten, and yet the scars—the memories—remained long after the wounds were healed.

I ate my meal in the dark. Something with the texture of bread and tart-less fruit. The meat here was tasteless and tough, but it filled my stomach with something. When the stone trembled for the second time in a single day, I was thankful to have forced it down my throat.

"It's time for your second trial," my guard said.

"Hello to you too, Mike."

"Just get up."

His voice sounded more urgent today, like he was nervous about something. When it took me a second to react to his command, he gripped the metal beater hanging off his waist to encourage a faster reaction—and I recalled well how he used it to offer a bit of extra motivation. Not that I needed much anymore. Where was the point of fighting? They'd get what they want out of me, eventually.

This place had taken a bite out of my spirit, a sure sign it was breaking me down. I missed the girl they took from her train, wished I could return to my old skin that had far fewer scars.

No one was coming for me.

I stood on rejuvenated legs, silently grateful the alchemdis's tonics had worked so well. The pain of the first day had kept me awake all night, and sleeping was the most productive thing to do around here. Better to be lost in a dream than picking away at my thoughts like a thread, unraveling my threadbare sanity more and more with every resurfacing memory.

And when I couldn't sleep, my thoughts returned home.

Of Giles and the way he used to drag me around town to every bar that served his favorite brandy. Simple memories of his laugh and his infectious smile. He was the only one who had been interested in my happiness concerning Nico. He'd have celebrated my moments of vulnerability when I finally fell for my husband, as he always celebrated the simplest achievements of those around him.

I shared a unique relationship with each of my brothers. Giles had been special, but I still hoped the rest of them shared a better fate. There hadn't been a chance to find out before I was taken.

I tried not to think of Nico when he unbiddenly ambushed my thoughts. I couldn't. There was enough pain in this place.

But everything made me think of him.

The grey of the sky was the same storm in his eyes. The feel of the breeze slipping beneath my tunic only lacked the charge of his remnant. The scent of smoke from the watchman a familiar blend.

I shook my head free of each reminder and focused on something else: the next trial. Another chance to learn more about myself and use it against the ones who took me from him.

We didn't return to the broken platform where the last trial had taken place. This time, my guard took me around the tower, to the border of the island, where black cliffs dropped into a restless sea. The only thing similar about this trial were the faces waiting for us. The same watchmen, the same alchemists, and Delilah.

I was already trembling in the violent wind slapping the side of the island and tossing my hair in every direction, which had long lost its curl from extended time lying on my cot and lack of access to washing it properly. Now, it hung dead down my back, lifeless and limp in the forbidding breeze.

"How is she?" Delilah asked Mike.

"The alchemedis approved."

"Good enough then." She looked me over. A cowl shielded her face from the elements. We met on a beaten path riddled with sharp stones that led back to the prison. Like the rest of the group, she wore tall boots covered in the mud that caked between my bare toes. The sun hid behind dark, wrathful clouds. Behind her figure, beyond the cliffs and white caps spraying the rocks, a storm thundered over the sea.

The alchemedis approached with her glinted gloves and slathered the salve above my wrist. Gradually, my remnant roused from a deep place, filling my spine until I stood a little straighter. My breath shuddered as I tamed it back, more prepared this time for the reunion.

"Your next trial will not be as simple as the first," she said to me then. "We realized your abilities as a weapon. This time, we will assess your skills as a shield."

"A shield?" I asked.

Her tone went flat. "There are three prisoners trapped beneath the cliff. Your task is to save them."

Something told me it wasn't as simple as the few directions she'd given me. "And if I don't? If I do not wish to be studied by you or your henchmen?"

She shrugged beneath the weight of her coat. "Then I suppose you'll let them die. Either way, they aren't getting back up here on their own accord."

Of course. Each trial would force my hand then. If I acted, I was an accomplice to what they learned about me. If I did nothing, I was worse—negligent to the lives of those who did not ask to be a part of this, no matter how insufferable our lives as Hightower's prisoners had become.

"Where are they?" I glanced at the mottled sky.

She pointed to the edge of the cliff.

Following her finger, I crossed the grassy stretch of flat land until it dropped abruptly into the sea. Below, a staircase jutted out the side of the cliff, descending to a piece of black shore being ravaged by the waves. The front of the storm churned the dark waters, filling the tide. Whoever was down there would be swept away before long.

"There are people down there?" I shouted over the wind at Delilah. When she nodded, my frustration morphed into anger. A sharper emotion, one with an edge to cut. "You're all fucking deranged. If you want to study me, then do your worst, but leave them out of it!"

"We tried," she said. "You didn't want to use your remnant, so I thought it best to give you the proper motivation to figure out your power in a controlled and safe environment."

A maniacal laugh flew from a joyless home in my chest. Safe. That word again. She acted like she was doing me a favor, putting lives at risk just to give me a reason to use my power. Like she was helping me.

No. It felt more like she was training me.

She sighed dramatically. "The only way to understand your remnant is to use it, Camilla. You must practice letting it out if you wish to control it."

"I don't know how!" Shame fueled the anger in my tone, and I looked off into the gathering storm, avoiding her intelligent gaze. "I don't think it even can be controlled."

She pulled out her book from the inner fold of her coat, opening it to a section she'd marked off. "Chaos had a disorganized approach to her power. While most descendants pull from a place in their body where the remnant is stored, yours is not so tangible. The source of a remnant's power correlates from the part of the Creator their saint was formed from. Blood remnants are in the blood. Bane in the bone. Mirth in the mind. But Chaos? Chaos was formed from the Creator's soul. And since the home of the soul is the heart, I would expect you to find your power there."

My pulse bounded in my veins. My heart was made of nothing but blood and vengeful desires, neither would help me control my violent magic. "Learned all that from the book you're so attached to?"

She grinned. "I've dedicated my life to learning how to define remnants in the language of the Arcane. I want to define yours, but to do so, I need to know what makes you burn."

A rash of chills spread across my arms, and I tucked them close to my middle. She'd spoken of the Arcane a few times, a method of magic formed from science. Even being the source of her studies, the subject was still vague to me. "You can't control Chaos, Delilah. I would know."

She ignored my challenge, and instead looked at the sea.

"I think you'd better hurry, Camilla," she said in that dry voice I'd associated with pure evil. "The tide is rising."

My bare feetslipped across the jagged steps of a narrow staircase, each jutting out at odd angles, like they had been crudely carved in a rush. One slip could send me over the edge into frothy waters. The lack of uniformity forced me to focus on my steps instead of the incoming squall, where dark clouds gathered in threat. The first drops of icy rain pebbled across my skin, gradually wetting the grey, shapeless tunic that hung to my knees.

Before the mouth of a cave, the stairs stopped near a manual lift. Ropes and pulleys lined the wall of the cliff to lift the buckets cast aside near the entrance.

The mechanics reminded me of... a mine. But what were they collecting?

I stared into the cavern, hesitating for a moment. Returning to the dark so soon set my teeth on edge. Worse, it would be willingly, and I'd spent so much time in the darkness that I never wanted to linger there again, but a groan within that darkness shoved me forward. A familiar, agonized sound.

The cave was carved deep into the island, hiding from any source of light. Blinded, I used my hands to guide me along, skimming my fingers across the coarse wall of the tunnel. The air was heavy, humid, and reeked of sulfur—the same smell that wafted from Delilah's robes when she ran her experiments.

Before long, what little light existed behind me faded as the tunnel gradually descended into the island, curving slightly as if to return to the sea. I neared the first prisoner, their moans clarified into a single, raspy word.

"Help."

There was no strength in their plea, barely louder than a breath.

"Where are you?" I called out. My voice echoed, returning to me in what sounded like a cavern. The wall beneath my touch angled, opening into a room of pitch darkness.

"Here! I think... I think I'm inside a cage."

As I stepped toward the origin of the voice, aware of how the sound reverberated around the space, my toes dipped into cold water. Nothing deep, a few inches at most. My steps sloshed in the shallow pool, ignoring the way it froze the blood in my toes.

"Keep talking. What can you feel around you?" I asked, still toeing my way towards the sound of the soft voice.

"Just bars around me, but the floor and ceiling are solid, and everything is made of stone, like the cells."

"Is there water?"

"There is now."

Right. The tide was rising, filling the chamber with the intrusive sea. I blindly held out my hands to feel for the cage, finding another wall instead.

"Lower," the voice said.

I sunk to my knees, and just as the woman described, felt the stone give way to tightly placed columns. My fingers skimmed over a hand clutched around a bar, trembling. I wrapped my own around them, savoring the first human connection in weeks, the comfort of skin to skin. A touch that didn't burn or bruise.

"What happened?" I asked her.

"I'm not sure. They brought me down here, and I thought I was just going to do my usual hours in the mine, but they didn't give me my usual supplies. One of the guards told me to sit, and they built this thing around me. They left after without an explanation."

Cold bastards. It hardly surprised me. The creep of the water line over my ankles stung deep, piercing the marrow in my bones and drawing a gasp.

She laughed then. "You know, I used to love the sea. Any form of water, really. Now they've stuffed me with so much glint, it doesn't feel the same. Can you imagine? A water bender, death by drowning."

"You're a bender?" I asked.

"Yes."

My heart twisted, wondered if Delilah had chosen her remnant specifically to make it more personal. "It's going to be alright. I'm going to get you out."

But even to myself, the words sounded unsure.

The bars stopped at my hips, forcing her to crouch in the cramped space. I shifted around the stone to study the shape of the containment, but there was no access to the inside beyond the thin spaces between the bars. A solid structure, smooth and formed like a pillar far beyond my reach towards the roof of the cave. There was no pushing it off with the weight of the cliff side balanced above it.

Water nipped at the back of my knees. Each lap of tide rose higher up my calf, racing my pulse with worry. If I didn't figure out how to break open the bars and set her free, she'd drown in there. The panicked race of her breath in the still cavern indicated she understood the same.

But this cell didn't differ from the one above ground. The same porous rock that stood unmovable, unyielding to the inmates on the island. Yet the watchmen had the power to manipulate every inch.

"Why are they doing this?" she whispered. "What have I done?"

Delilah wanted me to use my remnant to see the range of its properties. First, as a weapon. Now, a shield. She wanted me to destroy Sera's father in a match to the death. This time, she put the lives of three prisoners in my hands to save, and not just their lives but possibly their freedom if I could pull it off.

A weapon to destroy. A shield to... protect?

A swell of the sea rushed through the cave, pushing the waterline up to my knees.

The trapped prisoner lost all composure and thrashed in her small cage, throwing her weight against the solid structure of stone bars and rising tide.

The salve Delilah had given me cracked a hole in my remnant, freeing from the glint's detainment. After releasing it twice now, once on the train and once on the platform, I was accustomed to its presence, how it filled my spine with molten steel and spread through my veins to lethalize my very touch.

I had killed—no, unraveled—two men now with my remnant. Peeled the fabric of humanity apart until it was nothing but a haze on the wind. If Chaos magic could reverse life itself, if I could return flesh and bone into the ash of the earth, then perhaps I could also apply the same fundamental to anything else in creation. Even the unyielding stone.

"Get to the other side of the cell, but don't touch the bars," I ordered. If I was to unleash the Chaos in my veins, I wanted to keep her far as possible from the flames so she wouldn't accidentally brush the fire from Oblivion.

When her ragged breath shifted to the other side of the containment, I braced my hands on the bars and focused on that liquid fire in my blood, let it pour from my fingertips and spread across the bars. I had no idea if it was working, the shadows hid my remnant from the prisoner and from myself, and I didn't know if I was thankful for their concealment or hindered by it.

But it forced me to focus on how much I let out, forced me to feel instead of watch, an approach I hadn't thought about before.

When the solid structure beneath my hands eroded away so quickly, I hadn't expected the loss of its support. My grip tightened on itself, gravel and coarse dust filled my palms as the remains of the bars fell into the rising tide lapping my thighs.

When there was nothing left to destroy, I focused inward. Let the pound of my heart soothe some as I took deep, calming breaths, drawing it back into my core where the flames originated. The darkness heightened my other senses, increasing the awareness of where my power retreated to rest.

Without thinking, I reached into the cage and found the prisoner crouched in the water, hugging her knees into her chest.

"I broke it! Come on." I peeled her arm from her body to pull her out. This newfound temperance—not something I'd quite call control—over my remnant, the knowledge that I had called it this time instead of being triggered to use it, seemed to put my power on a leash. A way to tame it.

No sooner had I pulled the trembling woman out than a hiss slipped from above. We both stilled to quiet our splashing, studying the noise. A deeper groan creaked from the ceiling just as a faint tremble rippled through the water. My legs were so benumbed from the coldness of the sea, I almost didn't sense it. But the prominent crack of stone above us was clear enough.

I must have burned through something fundamental, and now the cavern was moments away from collapsing.

"Get back to the tunnel." I tried to backtrack the way I'd entered, but a reverberant crack came from the same direction, followed by a rush of wind and the splash of falling rock, drenching us in salty swells.

"We're trapped," the woman beside me whispered, clutching my arm.

"No," I said, defiant against the truth. I frantically trudged through the hip-deep water, feeling the perimeter with my hands and edging it into memory. Even if there wasn't another tunnel, there had to be a way out. The tide found a way inside, after all. If I could break through the stone once, I could do it again. I just needed to find the side of the sea.

"Here!" I called out. "The water is coming from a break in the wall!"

A small gush streamed against my ankles, so faint I wouldn't have felt it if I hadn't been searching for such a sensation. My palms flattened against the side of the cavern, certain the open sea was just on the other side of this wall. Even as I focused on the waning retreat of my remnant, urging it back into fruition, the slam of a hard wave beat a powerful rhythm through the stone.

"Brace yourself." I took several hungry gulps of air myself. My power filled my veins, and my flesh rippled like bullets beneath my skin to my quickening pulse as if priming itself before release. I squeezed my eyes shut and lowered a fence guarding it back—a barrier I'd realized had come not from my will alone, but from my fear.

The wall, as it had before, crumbled to dust. Unmade by the remnant in my touch.

The wrath of the sea flooded the cavern, submerging us in its cold fury. I kicked and flailed, trying to claw my way toward the glare of light piercing the way toward the sky. The incoming surge shoved me further back, and I was tossed like the froth in the waves into the back wall. A hand found my wrist and pulled, dragging me with the motion of the sea.

In. Out. The trend of the tide tossed us. The prisoner swam beside me, guided my movements to work with the waves instead of against them. My chest screamed when we finally broke the surface and gasped for breath. Salt stung my eyes, blurred the focus on a patch of high ground. But my quivering limbs swam toward the smidge of land, thanking the lost saints as my fingers buried into sand.

A beach.

"Come on." The bender nudged my shoulder. "Let's get out of the water before we freeze to death."

I didn't realize how weak I was until her strong arm hooked around mine and pulled me to the highest point of the beach nestled in the curve of the cliffside.

"You did it!" A wild smile spread across her face. Seeing her for the first time, I discovered her to be young. Too young to be here, of all places. Her blonde hair, practically silver, stuck to her pale cheeks. "You saved us. How?" Her wide eyes wandered over me, trying to figure out how I had the power to burst through solid stone.

"It's complicated." Words were difficult. My lips heavy from the numbness, the draining of my remnant left my bones filled with lead. No matter how many breaths I took, the ache in my lungs would not be satisfied.

"Was anyone else in there?" I found enough strength to ask.

Her smile fell, shaking her head in denial. Worry kicked my heartbeat back into a frenzied pace. Had I missed someone? Delilah said there were three of them. I looked around, scanned the wide inlet filled with spires of jagged rock—and found another victim of the alchemist's trial.

Another woman was tied to a post in the middle of the sea. Her arms bound behind her, the waves drenching her form in a repetitious, unrelenting beatdown. Dark, wet hair curtained her face, but her head hung low, as if surrendering to the waves.

"There." I pointed. I stood on shaky legs and started down toward the edge of the beach.

"What are you doing?" the woman asked behind me.

"I've got to reach her!"

"She's at least thirty feet out there, you'll drown!"

As if predicting my fate, the moment I reentered the sea, a wave knocked me back, forbidding my passage. The swells were larger now and fiercer in turn. The impending storm was nearly upon us. So close—and yet impossibly far. If I had a boat or—better yet—the power over the sea, I might have been some help to the stranded prisoner. But I had nothing but my anxious heart and the sand between my clenched fists.

Sand.

The last time I had seen sand so fine was at Sabina's ball, when a descendant crafted it into a perfect glass rose. When he took grains of the earth, purposeless in their bare form, and created something beautiful to be admired.

If Chaos could unmake, could it do the opposite? Were there even rules bound to the disorder of my magic? Fire was used to destroy, but it could create under the right circumstances, and sand was a perfect raw material. I closed my eyes, blocking out the dying prisoner, the storm ravaging the sky. The sand filling my fists molded into something sharp, answering every question my anxious heart whispered.

You can do anything you want.

I'd kept every word Nico ever spoke to me and stored it in the deepest place of my memory, in that place where the heart kept the soul. Nico had seen my potential all along. Perhaps it was time I proved it to him—and to myself.

Every inch of my skin fevered as I let the shards of glass slip from my hands and into the sea. I dug my bloody and black fingers back into the grainy earth, pictured in my mind what I needed to get to the woman tied to the pyre.

A bridge. Whereas the deconstruction of the island's foundation and the human body had been the product of the fire I became more familiar with, it felt uncontrollable. Difficult to contain. The obsidian stone I'd let crumble into the sea would probably agree. But this—this felt different. This was fire in a different form, and I felt the reach and the heat of it as it rushed into the sand beneath the waves, as I demanded it to rise from its settlement on the seafloor and mold within the forge of my flames.

My heart slammed against my chest as I thrust the fire onward, past the wake of the water and straight into the sea. When I opened my eyes once more, there was still an open ocean and angry swells, but there was something else.

"Holy hells," the girl behind me whispered.

A bridge of black glass. Dry lightning flashed behind billowing clouds, reflecting a glaring reflection over the glazed surface. The sea calmed slightly as the wind ceased, as if the storm had taken a breath to marvel at my creation.

It wasn't perfect. There were parts of the bridge that spiked out at perilous angles, the walkway was far from flat. But it was a connection, from me to the stranded prisoner, and I carefully treaded across the smooth surface with frozen feet, taking care not to slip when a wave licked over the edge and slickened the path.

When I finally made it to the second prisoner, I pushed the veil of her wet hair out of her face. Dark eyes peered back at me. She trembled against the pyre she was bound against, her lips a frightening blue. Every inch of her was damp and freezing, but I made quick work of her bindings, catching her with my body as she sagged off the soaked wooden stake.

"I've got you," I said, hearing a new rasp to my voice.

The first prisoner waited on the beach, watching from a safe distance. Only once I pulled the second to her feet and convinced her to push through the pain lacing her body stiff did we make it down the bridge, safe and solid.

"Thank you." Her voice shook as she spoke. Both women huddled together in the sand, trying to find a fraction of warmth left in their flesh.

Meanwhile, I scanned the dark water for another prisoner. There was one left, and I had a feeling Delilah had saved the most challenging for last, once the stores of my remnant were dangerously low and I was lightheaded and sick to my stomach.

A whistle drew my attention upward, where a pair of watchmen stood on the edge of the cliff. Between them, a body hung limp, the hands and feet tied.

"Saints." I gasped. "They're going to throw her over." There was nothing but rocks and foam frothing between the teeth of the tide. No bridge would save this remnant. Nothing could save her from the impact of a fall that steep onto the sharpened shapes of the sea stacks.

To my dread, they threw her, forcing my hand once more, forcing me to commit to the first idea that came to mind. There would be no crash if there were no rocks. I thrust out a hand and begged for Oblivion to spread across the inlet, let it devour anything in the sea that would harm the falling prisoner.

It was a last, desperate decision. Lacking a regulation over the fire, the explosive nature of it consumed all the energy I had left. The last thing I saw were hungry black flames eating away at the spires of stone.

That, and the third prisoner who dissolved into thin air as she was devoured.