Page 66 of Kingmakers, Year Two

I give her half a grin, hands stuffed in my pockets. “Sorry, Miss Robin. I’m sure you remember the recklessness of youth. I don’t think you’re too far out of it yourself.”

She smiles slightly in return, but it only lasts a moment before she says, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Miles. This isn’t a game for her.”

“It isn’t for me, either. I promise you that.”

She examines me with those dark eyes that contrast so sharply with her vivid red hair. The glasses have slipped down her nose again. She doesn’t need them to give me an x-ray stare.

“I believe you,” she says at last. “Be careful all the same.”

“I will.” I nod.

I do intend to be careful.

But I can’t promise to be safe.

12

CAT

The first challenge of theQuartum Bellumtakes place at the end of November. It’s a slaughter—possibly the most physically wretched day of my life.

We all knew what was coming, because for weeks beforehand we watched the grounds crew building the obstacle course outside the castle: a Rube Goldberg machine of ropes, pulleys, pillars, walls, trenches, nets, and moving parts. We’re meant to be the balls rolling though. But this machine is designed to spit us out, not guide us along the path.

The requirements are simple: a race from start to finish. Every single member of each team has to make it through before their time is counted.

Still stung from the upset the year before, it’s clear the upperclassmen plan to play dirty. From the moment Professor Howellfires his pistol in the air and we all bolt off from the starting line, the Juniors and Seniors have no problem knocking the younger students off walls and kicking us into the mud. I hoped their antipathy would be directed at Leo’s Sophomore class, but they seem just as determined to make sure that the Freshmen stay where we belong: in last place.

It doesn’t help that it rained the whole week before. The churned-up earth is a sea of mud. Within minutes, sludge coats every one of us from head to foot, until I can hardly tell friend from foe.

August Prieto was voted Freshman Captain. He’s a Brazilian Heir from a narco family. He’s popular in our year because he’s handsome and athletic. I think the Freshmen hoped he’d be our version of Leo Gallo. It quickly becomes clear that August does not possess the requisite leadership skills. He takes the fastest and strongest Freshman through the course with impressive speed, but abandons the rest of us to struggle along on our own, an impossible feat when several of the obstacles can’t be completed without help.

By contrast, Leo stays at the back of his group ensuring that no stragglers are left behind. When he sees a bottleneck, he coordinates his strongest teammates to help the weaker ones, so that someone like Matteo Ragusa is bodily lifted and flung over the wall by Silas Gray.

I do my best to keep up. As layer after layer of mud coats my body, I can barely lift my arms and legs. I’m falling behind, and I can see that plenty of students have finished the course while I’m only halfway through.

It’s humiliating. I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m the very last one to finish. I could lose the challenge for the entire Freshmen team.

As I try to crawl across a long, flat stretch of mud with barbed wire strung overhead I get a nasty shock—literally. The wire is charged. Every time it touches my bare skin, a jolt of electricity rips through my body, making my teeth slam together.

This is worse for the bulkier students who can’t avoid touching the wires. I’m at least small enough to slip under most of them without making contact. One beefy Freshman is practically in tears as he’s jolted again and again and again.

I think that’s the worst part until I come to the juggernaut, a maze of swinging pendulums and rolling logs and tilting platforms designed to knock us off into the sea of sludge below. Every time we’re punted into the mud, we have to start the section over again. I’m knocked in three, four, five times, until I can barely muster the strength to crawl out of the mire.

Only a dozen students remain behind me. Wiping the mud from my eyes, I swear to myself I’ll make it through. I try to stop focusing on one bit of the juggernaut at a time, and instead see the overall pattern of movement. There’s a rhythm to it, a regular motion.

Hands raw, my entire body throbbing like one giant bruise, I run and duck and jump and slide, until I make it to the other side. I could cry with relief.

The last wall is twenty feet high. No ropes, no footholds. No way to get over without help.

Anna and Zoe help the last of the Sophomores over.

“Cat!” Anna shouts. “This way!”

She’s on top of the wall, reaching down one pale, mud-streaked arm to me.

I run and jump as high as I can, but my fingers fall short far below hers.

“Hold on!” she says.

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