Page 91 of A Trial of the Heart

My eyes widened. “Wow.”

“Not the fastest time… That record belongs to none other than the high prince himself, who accomplished that feat at only seventeen,” Gunnar replied, lowering his voice so he didn’t draw attention away from Daxton’s instructions. “And it only took him fifteen minutes. Half the time allotted for him to complete it.”

“I ran it when I was twenty-one,” Castor added, stepping to my other side. “I did have to grab one rope, but lucky for me, I was still fast enough to make it under your set time, Gunnar.”I didn’t miss the taunting look the silver prince gave his general.

Gunnar audibly rolled his eyes but managed to keep his comments to himself. Castor was still a prince, and he knew when and where he could push the boundaries. Here, in front of potential new warriors in their armies, was not one of them.

I took the opportunity to look around at the eager faces of those gathered as Daxton and the others called them forward, waiting for a chance to test themselves in the Ice Gauntlet. I envied them. I wanted to be standing with them to try my hand at the daunting obstacle course.

The Gauntlet held five different platforms of staggered obstacles, leading to the top of a cliff that overlooked the entrance and training fields below.

Daxton met each cadet’s gaze and gave them all a silent nod of luck before turning around and preparing for the course before him.

“Once I reach the top, the rest of you are expected to follow. General Gunnar will send you in waves of three at a time, and you will have thirty minutes to complete the task. Once the thirty minutes are up… or the three of you in the wave fall, give up, or miraculously achieve your goal,” he announced with a slight drop in his tone, “then the next three will enter. Questions?” Silence followed, and Daxton didn’t hesitate as he sprinted into the course.“Start the time.”

A small hourglass appeared in Castor’s hand and he turned it over and placed it on a natural shelf made of boulders from the surrounding mountains.

Daxton glided across quintuple steps using explosive lateral movements before leaping through the air and grasping a long horizontal bar. He clutched the bar in his hands and pressed his feet against the angled wall below, traversing sideways until the end of the wall. He pulled his knees close to his body and jumped 180degrees in the air to the other side. He climbed until he came to a ledge that held stone steps leading up and onto the next obstacle.

“Not bad timing on that first one,” Castor complimented. “It’s not as easy as it looks.”

“The spinning logs are next,” Gunnar added. “Those get about half of ’em.”

Daxton emerged from the hidden stone staircase, at least fifty feet higher than when he had begun the course. From this height, I could see why this obstacle took out so many of them. Dangling ropes hung along the mountain rocks to his left, should he or anyone else slip and fall. Like he said earlier, adding time was better than dying.

Thick iced-over logs were lined up perpendicular to the mountain cliff face, and this obstacle required him to maintain balance while sprinting fifty feet across to reach the other side safely. There was a standing platform about halfway through to use as an aid, but I had little doubt Daxton would utilize it. Taking off at a steady run, Daxton’s feet barely touched the icy logs as he ran across.

“The trick is not to stop moving your feet. If you can manage that, then you’re safe,” Gunnar instructed. “Don’t worry, we’ll practice this.”

I wasn’t worried. This portion of the test seemed simple enough, and this obstacle had the ropes if needed. What worried me more was the inverted ladder and plank walk on the next level.

The narrow walkway was barely visible from this distance, but contenders had to meander across three twenty-five-foot peaked beams to reach the inverted staggered bars that they must climb to reach the next platform of stone steps. Daxton extended his arms to his sides as a gust of wind whipped upward, surroundinghim. To my amazement, he didn’t even flinch. Daxton simply fixed his stare forward and walked across the beam with nothing below him. The drop was well over two hundred feet by now, and it would certainly kill anyone who wobbled and fell over. At the end of the beam, Daxton jumped to grasp the bars and effortlessly climbed the ladder to the stone steps that carried him higher up and to the second-last obstacle.

A metal ring dangled over… nothing but empty cold air above jagged rocks of death below. The task was simple, in theory: take a running leap, grab the large ring, and using his momentum, swing himself over onto the stable platform and scale the next fifty feet to the final obstacle of the Gauntlet. Daxton completed this without hesitation, executing it with astonishing perfection. I might have been in awe of his abilities before, but now, he was officially on an entirely different level.

The final obstacle, which the high prince was able to accomplish without missing a step, was a vertical wall. He needed to run up and jump to propel himself skyward to grab the top ledge before pulling himself to victory.

I glanced over at the sands on the hourglass. The remaining grainsindicated that Daxton finished the entire course in only half the time. He had tied the record he set when he first ran this course over five hundred years ago. And this … This was just a demonstration.

“That was unbelievable,” I stated with my jaw practically scraping the ground.

“Think you can beat him?” Gunnar countered with a teasing tone. “I would pay good coin to see that.”

“I believe not falling to your death would be a more appropriate wager… and focus,” Castor said with afurrowed brow. “I’m still not in favor of you doing this.”

“As you have said numerous times before,” I said with a stern glare. “I want to do this.”

“Glad to see you were able to tear yourself away from whomever you were with last night, Cas. You left the tavern before it started getting interesting,” Gunnar said, but Castor ignored him.

“It’s sad to see that logic has fallen on deaf ears. This is an unnecessary risk for you Sky.”

“Come on, Castor,” I sighed. “Where’s your faith?”

Lines creased between Castor’s brows, but he quickly morphed them back into the neutral expression I had seen him wear countless times in disagreements with Daxton and Gunnar over this very subject. “At least I won’t be around for your turn at the death wheel. Daxton is sending me to the Southern Sea Cliffs to investigate the potential lair we believe holds the beast and the entrance to the second trial.”

“And you need the key,” I said, untucking the golden trinket from the chain around my neck. I had fashioned the key into a necklace and worn it at all times since arriving in Silver Meadows.

“Obviously… and the sooner, the better. I can’t teleport, so I’ll be venturing south on horseback and then on foot. The pegasi are beautiful, but they attract too much attention.”

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