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The thought makes my stomach churn.

Bianca begins to circle me, and then a whistle sounds.

She lunges.

“Move!” Arwan’s voice says. He’s using magic to carry his words through the air.

It’s as if he’s right behind me, and it’s enough of a jolt to make me twirl to the side.

My training with Ze’ev and Ulara has given me some muscle memory, but Bianca is fast. One of her claws catches my forearm, and I cry out as pain slices down my arm.

My dagger falls to the ground, and I scramble for my only weapon.

Bianca doesn’t give me enough time to grab it. Her jaws clamp down on my wrist before I have a chance to escape.

A cheer goes up from the shifters, as well as from a few of the candidates.

The thought of Violet, Ferra, or Coraline indulging in this gives me enough rage to tap into the gifts I’ve been rejecting.

“Let me help!” Arwan insists. “Use my power!”

The hum of his dark tower sounds in the back of my head. I can almost see the obsidian monstrosity in my mind’s eye looming over me and promising to skewer Bianca’s body on one of its sharp thorns.

All I have to do is open myself to it.

To him.

I’m in two places at once. My body is on the training grounds with my wrist pinned by a wolf.

But another part of me is in Arwan’s world, standing before that tower as I hover my hand over it.

I know what I have to do.

Placing my hand on the jagged surface, I can’t tell if the jolt of pain is from Bianca snapping my wrist or from the tower itself taking a piece of me within it.

Maybe it’s both.

A scream rips out of me, and a dark shock wave burns the ground. Smoke sizzles up around us, blocking the cameras from view. Pain bursts right on my chest where my necklace was resting.

I’m not so sure if it’s still there anymore. Arwan’s power might have destroyed it.

I can’t see anything, but I don’t need to.

I can hear Bianca’s breathing from the ground. She must be stunned.

Feeling through the dirt, I find the dagger and pick it up with my good hand. It’s not my dominant one, but it’ll do.

When I head toward the breathing, I slam the dagger down into the source of the sound.

A wolfish cry pierces the air in response. When the smoke clears, I scramble away from the bloodied scene.

My dagger sticks out of Bianca’s throat. Her glassy eyes stare at the sky, and her chest bobs up and down with labored breaths.

When she goes still, her body shifts into her human form, and then she’s naked and motionless on the ground with the dagger still sticking out of her throat.

“Winner!” the host shouts as hands lift me up.

“You did it!” Sofia exclaims in my ear, but shock washes over me like a cold, numbing wave.