"What will you do?" Naelin said.
"I will be queen, for as long as I can."
Naelin hated to use the air spirits for travel, but she saw little choice. Reaching out, she beckoned to one. Fly with us. She didn't make it a command. As Daleina had taught her, she tempted instead-she picked a restless spirit, one that didn't like being held at the border, and reeled it in like a fish on a line. It came eagerly. Climbing onto the window ledge, she held her hand out to Ven. "You'll like this part," she told him.
He raised his eyebrows. "We jump?"
"Yes," she said, and leaped from the window, yanking him with her. For one terrifying, exhilarating minute, she plummeted, and then the air spirit was there. She thudded onto its back. Ven landed diagonal with her and quickly righted himself. He helped her sit upright and wrapped his arms around her stomach.
"See, I think you secretly crave adventure," Ven said, "but you think you shouldn't." She could hear the forced lightness in his voice-inside, she knew he was twisted with worry. They were leaving their queen.
She forced lightness into her voice too. "Oh? You know me so well now?"
"Yes." His voice was warm in her ear. "Right now, you are trying to decide whether it would be worth the risk of my falling if you were to elbow me for being obnoxious."
Naelin couldn't help herself: she laughed. "You're just trying to distract me from being afraid." She twisted to look at him. Seated on the air spirit behind her, he was very close, less than an inch away. "Thank you," she said, and then she kissed him.
He cupped her face in his hands as he kissed her back, deeply, sweetly. The wind raced around them, and she felt the air spirit skim the tops of the trees. The first rays of sunrise spread across the leaves, lighting them in green and gold.
Pulling back, she directed the spirit, Lower. Don't be seen.
The spirit dropped. They raced through the trees. She saw them in a blur: a smear of green, a flash of brown. As they flew faster and faster, the colors ran together as if the forest were melting around her. A twig hit her ankle, and it stung as it broke the skin.
Behind her, she felt the foreign spirits cross into her range. They felt like oil poured into water. They slid through her awareness like a shiver through her body.
"Are you ready?" Ven asked.
Her answer surprised even her. "Yes."
Ahead was the grove.
Champion Piriandra heard the Semoian spirits before she saw them. They sounded like a storm, the kind that snapped sturdy oaks in half, the kind that ripped houses out of their branches, the kind that flattened plants that had withstood a hundred rains. She attached a clip to the wire path and pushed off, sailing between the trees. "Be ready!" she shouted to the soldiers below. To the candidates, she called, "Hold them still! Our spirits are your arrows; you are the taut bow! On my mark!"
Ahead the wire ended. Still flying through the air, Piriandra reached up and unclipped. She fell, and then landed on a platform below in a crouch. Drawing her sword, she faced the coming storm. "Keep your line! Hold steady!"
Through the trees, she glimpsed the largest earth spirit she'd ever seen: a hulking mass of mud and rocks. On its back rode a woman with black hair and a crown of crystal spikes.
Queen Merecot of Semo.
She was positioned behind the foreign spirits and invading soldiers, out of reach of any arrows. Riding back and forth behind her troops, she was shouting-
"Be ready!" Piriandra shouted to the other champions.
And then the foreign spirits attacked.
Earth spirits tore through the soil. She saw beasts with razorbacks and spikes and claws, and others that looked like mounds of rocks with boulders for arms. Air spirits whipped through the sky, blotting out the faint light of the dawn. In a mass, their translucent bodies blended into gray streaks. The wind hit the front lines like a punch, and the ground exploded at their feet.
Dropping, Piriandra clung to the platform as it swayed beneath her. "Come on," she muttered. "Pass us by." If Queen Daleina was wrong, if the bulk of the spirits did not stream toward the city, if instead they stayed and fought, if they were more interested in slaughter than conquest . . . Queen Daleina was young, weak, sick, and inexperienced, and Heir Naelin was just an untested, barely trained woodswoman. We're all going to die out here, Piriandra thought. They'd be ripped apart before they even got a chance to fight. The candidates were too few to fight back-But I am not weak. I will fight.