Beside her, Hariq shifted. He was always there to catch the panicked squeak of her voice. "Hm?"

She tucked her hands between her legs so he wouldn't feel them shake. "Nothing." Dread plunged in, deep and dizzying. This couldn't be right. She stared harder at the distant beast as if that would force reality to twist, but it remained as it was, compelling her to watch the reflective flit of those round, onyx eyes and wish with all her heart that they weren't so familiar.

A tall figure trailing gold and scarlet ribbons approached the cage, clearly having taken an interest in the guards' struggles with the agitated beast. Raya's thundering heart caught in her throat; it was no surprise for Head Mage Zephyrine to be present at such an event, but still the sight of the powerful mage made her bones crawl, spilling a startlingly effective hush over her anxious, racing thoughts. A blot of rich red, a solitary colour amongst even the prismatic crowds of the arena, she came to a stop between the rod-stiff men and, after a sharp pause that drew several nearby eyes, waved a hand.

Raya was too far to make out the intricacies of the display of magic. All she made out was a brief yellowish hue before a cloud of sparks erupted, speckling the gaps between the bars before engulfing Meag. Forked, blinding shocks wriggled like scars across her body, illuminating scissored sections of her fur in bright flashes, which didn't shake no matter how much she squirmed and stomped her feet. Her whine cut across the arena and yanked in a growing pool of quiet. She hunched in on herself, teeth hidden, her mane spiky with electricity and limbs alive with trembles, suddenly not as huge and fearsome as her outlash had made her seem.

Doused in calm, Zephyrine stepped back. Gold sparked off the circlet laid over her crown of braids and wove strings into her swaying red skirt, casting a glow around her as if she were a droplet of the boiling sun above. A smattering of applause broke out in the section near her and slowly spread across the stands until all attention was on her. Beside Raya, Yasmin let out a soft gasp of awe, leaning forward to clap with excited earnestness. Even her mother further down the row put in a little polite applause, but Raya couldn't move. She twisted her ring over and over until the skin beneath was raw enough to be scrubbed away.

When she'd heard of the tragic deaths, it hadn't even crossed her mind that Corvin might be involved. The commanding mages had described the beastfolk attacker as maddened and violent as its beast companion. It didn't fit. Corvin was kind, unassuming and soft in nature, and he'd shown her that Meag could be too. But if the beast they'd captured was Meag...

She scrunched her shoulders, fighting a shudder. Perhaps it wasn't. Perhaps she was wrong. She was no expert on beasts. She'd seen plenty that looked identical. Sharing so many of Meag's features was not definite confirmation that her and this beast were the same.

Yet, even with the comfort of that logic to cling to, she couldn't bring herself to look at the trembling beast for more than a moment before pity pricked at her heart. Swallowing the hurt, she tore her gaze aside.

The girl in the pit was watching the cage, too, her face much too distant to read. She'd been a whirlwind of anxious movement before, but now she was still, as if stricken by thought.

"Friends!" Like a predator herself, Zephyrine pounced on the brief silence, her voice ricocheting with an unnatural boom that commanded all attention. She spread her arms, long satin sleeves fanned out in the impression of wings thick with blood. "Fellow mages, and beloved citizens of this great city. I have invited you all here today to bear witness to what I believe will be an event history will remember. The trial of young Amina Shi-Sabri!"

More raucous applause, peppered by cheers, erupted in the stands. This time, Raya forced her hands together in a few halfhearted claps, breathing in a deep breath that was drowned out by the noise. Her twisting stomach refused to settle. Her legs itched to flee, but no excuse came to her tongue that might grant her escape. She was bound here, squashed in by the family that flanked her on both sides.

Whatever the truth about the beast was, she would have to see this through.

The apprentice girl—Amina—soaked in the applause, her chin lifted and cluttered gold headpiece flashing boldly in the sun. She spun a drifting circle, taking in every inch of the arena that praised her. Her dark curls spilled freely over her back in elegant spirals. She truly did look like a disciple of Zephyrine's, a clear successor, her honey skin warm with power and pride.

"My talented apprentice," Zephyrine added once the crowds began to quiet. The curl of a smile leaked into her voice. She sighed, short and wistful, the dainty sound pluming a mist across the arena. "If our many-faced god should smile upon her, the next few moments will be her first step of growth into the great mage Amina is sure to become. I will waste no more of your time." Briskly, she spun on her heel and glided towards the nearest stand, flicking a gesture to the guards.

Whispers threaded the tentative quiet, but most waited with baited breath, leaning forward in their seats, as Zephyrine took her perch upon the tier second from the stand's base. Only then did the guards move. One tensed, body swivelled to stand as a shield between her and the cage while his blade took cautious aim, while the other crept closer to the bars. In one fluid movement, he took hold of the cage's latch and pulled it off. He backed away slowly towards his companion at first, but as the beast began to move, they both broke into a sprint, leaping for the staircase. The moment they were out of the pit, a shimmer scissored the place they'd passed through: a barrier, murky and pearlescent with the touch of dust.

Whether it was truly Meag or not, the beast's dark eyes were cloudy with rage. It let loose a blood-curdling scream and charged.

Though she was far up high and sealed behind the barrier's safety, Raya sucked in a sharp, anxious breath. Her own trial of two or so years ago flashed through her mind, details still seared into the memory with painful clarity; its first few seconds would forever echo, awash with the drowning blur of a seizing, lonely fear, the kind that rushed in every emotion wrestled at once. Observing Amina in the pit below felt like an out-of-body replay of that sensation. Tension snapped at the young girl's figure, stilling her nerves and swallowing the glow of her confidence. The pressure of the rest of her life loomed over her, and she had to watch all that could tear it down race at her bearing snarling yellow teeth.

The similarity cut rapidly short, however. While Raya had turned and fled from the scaled beast she'd been forced to fight, desperate to maximise the distance between herself and her foe while she fumbled with the scraps of a rehearsed plan, Amina showed no sign of running. Raya's heart raced as the sliver of space between beast and mage shrank smaller and smaller. The beast's shadow dwarfed Amina. The darkness of it turned her white cloak grey as dust and leached the ethereal light that haloed her, but still she stood her ground, a mere child yet stiff with resolve.

Her bravery—if such a word applied at all—tipped towards foolishness. Did she not bear the fresh wounds of her own encounter with a beastfolk? She was taunting fate. Raya curled into herself, twisting a dangling lock of her hair around her finger, ready to shield her eyes at the first sign of blood.

At the last possible moment, Amina dived. Her skirts tangled with her legs and cloak as she rolled to the side, missing the beast's trampling feet by a whisker. Her fingers dragged through the scattered sand with chaotic haste.

Whorls of dim gold formed a thick haze behind the beast as it skidded to a stumbling halt, its growls rolling through the arena. It whirled on the apprentice. When she pushed up on one hand, the other lifted with faint, indistinct glitter dribbling from her fist, jaws snapped at her throat. She dodged but wasn't quite fast enough. Its teeth clamped around a dense chunk of her curls. The creature tossed its head, and Amina was yanked upwards, flung up into the air before landing in a painful heap on the beast's other side, half-obscured. Torn from her head, her circlet flew in a much higher arc before thudding against the barrier and disappearing somewhere into the sand below.

The crowd winced as one, a low murmur wending through the stands. It was followed by a gasp. Despite the nausea clutching Raya's stomach, curiosity had an iron grip, urging her to inch forward and crane her neck to catch a glimpse of what was happening. Somehow, Amina was already on her feet again. She shook the sand from her hair as she scrambled back a few paces, albeit not as far nor as swiftly as would be wise, but that wasn't where she drew attention. Her arm was raised above her head, fist beating the air as if she were spurring her audience on. A glint of colour continued to circle her fingers, though this time it gathered, bending, sparking brighter as the dust gave in to her will. Her expression was smudged by distance, but it carried the unmistakable hint of a smile.

The beast swung its snout towards her, snarling, though the sound was sliding into a far more pitiful whine. It didn't move to charge again. The spell crackled, slithering loops around Amina. Buttery yellow steadily morphed into furious amber, alive with blinding scribbles of gold. Raya gripped her knees. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, her throat burning with a horribly sick trepidation, but she could not tear her eyes away.

"No!"

The silence cracked, and chaos unfolded. The interjecting shout rode the tide of a scream, and several more spilled out in frothy waves around the arena as all eyes turned towards the sound. A crater had formed in the stand to the right. A fearful throng ringed its edges, people tightly packed as they scrambled back from the figure who occupied the empty centre. The orange of a bright flame pooled beneath his crouched silhouette; there was a mage pinned beneath his knee, arms twisted behind her back and expression slack.

It took only a glance to soak in the boy's outline and what it meant. Raya's vision paled, the sounds and sensations around her shuttering away until she was frozen, falling, powerless to prevent the scene ahead of her from speeding into one of horror.

Shouts rang and ricocheted, people tripping over one another and jostling in their hurry to flee. The boy paid them no heed. Leaping nimbly off the unconscious mage, he barged past the thinning crowd and straight through the transparent space the barrier had occupied mere moments ago. He ran for the beast—for Meag—and pressed his back to her flank, panting, outspread arms sinking into her thick fur. His scarlet clothing stained her like blood in water. Sunlight bounced off his shining antlers and pale skin, casting ghastly shadows over his face. Raya could not see his eyes with any clarity, but she could picture the red flickering through them with ease, sharp with protective anger.

"Raya." Hariq's soft warning hardly tickled her ears, but it did bring the rest of the world fluttering back into view, slippery like a dry breeze snapping at her skin. At some point, she'd snapped to her feet. She was the only one standing on her row, but she couldn't sit, nor could she begin to hide the depths of the cold, gnawing terror scraping her hollow.

"Stop." Corvin's voice, thick and rough with the drag of his accent, skittered through the shallow silence. Pointed ears flat either side of his head, he glared at Amina. "Let her go."

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