122

122

RAVEN

The Second Trial slaps me in the face, a giant chessboard that goes on forever and ever, all shining white marble and black obsidian that makes my eyes hurt just to take it in. And yet that’s not even the worst part. The most difficult is watching our people as literal game pieces on a board, splayed out in poses but very much alive. I can see Dad’s silver hair, Lysandra’s frowning face, Eira looking royally peeved, even though she is held magically paralyzed.
The Trial of Sacrifice,” Nethys thunders, and I think my teeth vibrate. You’re going to be playing against each other. Every piece that you take dies in real life. The winner goes to the final test, by themselves."

"Absolutely not." Kael's voice is sharp as a knife and I can sense his anger through our connection. “We are not going to play your sick game.”

Pyrion, surrounded by flames that lick his shoulders, shrugs. "Then they all die anyway. Your decision: kill half of them, or watch all of them burn.”

My stomach falls as I look at the board. Kael gets white, I get black, and we are supposed to face each other and — and what? Kill everyone we know and love so these crotchety old shits can be amused?

“There must be a way out,” I say, and even as I say those words, I look around the board for some possible loophole.
The Trial of Sacrifice is about what you give up, Lunara says, and for a moment I almost get the sense that she’s sorry. "You cannot save everyone. You have to decide who lives and who dies, and live with that decision forever.”

Your mate's despair collides into mine like a wave." He’s thinking the board out like he does with that tactical Alpha brain of his, but I can feel the panic edging into him, too, because he knows what I know—there’s no way to win this thing without losing people we adore.

I’m not going to do it,” he says, arms crossed. “I’m not gonna throw our people to the wolves to satisfy a crowd of fossils who’ve forgotten how to have someone’s back.
“Your refusal not save them,” Nethys sneers. “It will just make sure they’re all dead instead of just some. Is that actually what you want?"

Kael,” I whisper, beginning to piece an idea together. “What if that is precisely the point?”

He looks at me and I can feel his bafflement in our bond. "What do you mean?"

“The game is not what the trial is about,” I say, the pieces fitting together and excitement mounting. “It’s about how much we are willing to give. They want for us to sacrifice our people to save ourselves.”

“But what if we throw ourselves under a bus instead?” Kael concludes, his eyes glinting in recognition.

"You can't use yourselves as pawns in a game in which you are the players," Pyrion splutters, but there's a note of doubt in his voice this time.

"Can't we?" I smile and step right onto the board.

It’s the old magic rushing to take hold of me, trap me in position, transform me into another piece in the game. But instead of pushing back, I went with it. I join the board with my mind, my will, my choice.

Kael does as I do, walking over to his side of the board while allowing the spell to change him as well. Now we’re both pieces in the game — the kings, who are the most important pieces, and whose capture ends the game.

"Clever," Lunara concedes, "but futile. You're still playing. One of you still has to defeat the other."

"Says who?" I say, and I feel Kael’s idea blend into me through our bond, until I can no longer tell where he ends and I begin.
Rather than walking away from each other, we both begin walking toward the center of the board. Our freezing friends, family, with our aunt Helen watching too, their eyes open and alert: we move toward each other, slowly, waiting a step, tilting toward each other.

"This is not how you play the game," Pyrion says, his fire rising.

“Maybe it’s time for new rules, then,” I say, without taking my foot off the gas.
"Someone has to be victorious," Nethys assert. “No trial comes but by sacrifice—one must go for another to come.”

“You're right,” Kael says as he steps forward onto the tile next to mine. "One of us has to fall."

We both lunge for each other: Our hands touch at the precise middle of the board. The second our fingers touch, I know exactly what he’s thinking, and it isn’t because he tells me, not like I’m psychic or anything, but because, somewhere along the line, our mate bond has turned us into something other than two individual people.

“We both go down,” I say, and we fall together to our knees in the middle square.

The primordial magic surges and misfires about us, still reeling from our journey. We’re not fighting each other — we’re both capitulating, presenting ourselves as a shared sacrifice for the greater good of all the other pieces on the board.

"No way," Lunara says, hardly breathing. "The magic doesn't understand the choice."

“There’s never been a choice like this,” I now understand. These other candidates all had to go through the trials and tribulations alone. They needed to decide between their own desires and the necessities of others, between themselves and others. But we're not alone."

“We’re not two people anymore,” Kael adds, his voice getting stronger even as he falls to his knees in surrender. “One is a unit, a company not of separate existences. When we give up ourselves we’re not decreasing but increasing, becoming something larger.

The chessboard below us trembles, the ancient magic warring with itself to hold together a decision it could never have been designed to make from the beginning. Our frozen fragments—our broken hearted—stir as the casting is undone.

This trial is working," Pyrion marvels. “It’s as if your sacrifice is so perfect, so eager, that the magic cannot even manage to assert itself to find completion.

“Real sacrifice is not taking something precious away,” I get it now suddenly. "It's about transformation."

The hairline cracks extend over the entirety of the chessboard, and there is light shining through them—not that the light is cold and dead, but warm and living. It’s not that we are dissipating our combined power through this sacrifice — we are instead refining, purifying, metamorphosing it to be used not for us, but for others.

“The Second Trial is concluded,” Nethys says, though he manages to sound astonished instead of imperious this time. “But you’ve changed the character of the testing. The Third Trial..."

“The Third Trial has to change, to suit what you have become.” Lunara concludes.

The shattered chessboard gives way and dissolves around us, and now we are in the amphitheater. But the old gods aren’t sitting in judgment above us anymore — they’re down here on our level, looking at us less as their inferiors and more as just like, roommates.

“The Trial of Power is a kind of test of whether the candidates can lay hold of power and wield it without succumbing to it,” Pyrion says. Your power is not distinct from your compassion. You have become something we never expected—absolute power moderated by absolute love.”

"So we passed?" “Are you okay?” Kael says, hauling me to my feet.

“You have surpassed,” Nethys corrects. "The contests were to be trials of mortals who had sought power. But you are not purely mortal anymore, and you want to take nothing. You have lost everything and found everything that really counts.”

"What does that mean for us?" I doubt but I can feel the truth of it resting hard in my bones. I am Raven I am still me, only I’m not, I’m something more and something that fits perfectly with whatever Kael has turned into.

“Each time you leave Hyrule, you are not leaving it as conquerors,” Lunara remarks, and I could swear she was almost smiling. “ Your strength will be enough to face any enemy, but you will never want if for selfish means, for you are no longer human.”

"And our people?" Kael asks urgently. "Our packs, our families?"

“Are all safe,” Pyrion reassures him. "Safer than safe—they are safe because they belong to you. You are not breaking the balance; you are taking it to a higher level.”

The impromptu amphitheater is fading around us as we venture back out into the real world. But just before the ancients vanish entirely, Nethys speaks one last time:

"The trials of the future, remember and see the moment. The true power is not to obliterate, but to change. You've surpassed those limitations — now you just have to have faith in what you've become.

The globe spins and all of a sudden, we're back in Eclipse Hollow, the same clearing where we were married during the blood moon. But now it’s dawn, and the packed packs cheer as we stagger back into being.

Eira gets to us first and throws her arms around us both so tightly we'd likely topple over if we weren't supernaturally strong by now. “I knew you were going to come home,” she says fiercely, green eyes glistening with tears. “I never would have second guessed you.

“Liar,” Kael says affectionately, though he, too, is holding her very closely.

Dad comes up more formally, but I can see the relief written all over his face. "The world was… the world was different while you were away," he concedes. "As though something fundamental had changed. Are you...?"

“We’re still us,” I say, reaching for his hand. "Just... more ourselves than ever.”

With the rising cast of the sun over Eclipse Hollow the sky turns gold and pink, as I feel the weight of those words settle in my bones. We are still Kael and Raven, still mated and partners and leaders. But we are also something entirely new — guardians of a balance that reaches beyond our own lives and even our own packs.

The trials are behind us, and the future spreads out before us, gleaming with promise. Whatever the future may hold, we know that our love has been tested by forces greater than mortal comprehension and emerged victorious — strong enough to alter even the very fabric of reality.

The Moon With the sun up and the Moon still in the sky everything would change at that point.