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“Do you really think everything will play out this way?” The cool, soothing voice drifts from the darkness that surrounds Nyc. “Is winning all you care about?”

“What I care about is power.” Zeru straightens, towering over them. Looking down on them. “Maintaining what is mine. What is ours by right. And they cannot stop us.”

For a second, he pauses, as if doubting his own words.

Nyc opens her mouth to speak again but stops herself when Zeru waves a dismissive arm.

“Knox must die. As for Lark…?” He shrugs. “It makes no difference what happens to her after that.”

Agnar adopts a loose stance with his shoulders thrown back, mocking me. “Come on, Sterling. Move faster. You’ve got fire magic to dodge too!”

He claps, and the world collapses. Lava jettisons upward, a red-hot fury that fizzles into steam and cooled stone when I push back with my own magic.

“This fast enough for you?” A laugh bubbles up from my throat as I launch into the sky, riding the steam thermals away from the danger of the training field we set up in the mountains that ring the Impassable Desert.

Agnar snorts. “I’ve seen better.”

“Remember,” Bastian ignores our bickering, “even merging with Agnar, we’re still not as strong as Lark. You need to move faster and expect the unexpected. My sister is a tricky fighter.”

Tricky fighter doesn’t begin to do Lark justice. My queen is fucking magnificent.

Bastian dives from the sky with speed and grace. A flaming boulder appears behind him.

Dismissing my wings, I let myself plummet like a rock. Ten additional fire elementals follow my descent while launching flames at me.

Only, they can’t hit what they can’t see.

Shrouding myself in mist, I stretch the haze to the ground, solidifying it just enough near the bottom to provide a landing spot. Then I create steps that allow me to run across the sky, still hidden from view.

I pop out of the fog behind and a little below Bastian.

He hovers with the flaming boulder near the place where I initially dropped, waiting for a chance to strike.

With a single thought, I encase that smoldering chunk of rock in ice. The whole thing explodes from thermal shock, knocking Bastian out of the air.

One down.

Out of nowhere, Agnar appears behind me, jamming his heels hard on the backs of my knees.

Sneaky bastard found me.

His blows take me down, and I collapse on the floating steps. “If you pay attention, you can tell where the ice starts to form. I just used that to track you.”

Good catch.

But I’m not going to let that dickhead best me just because he’s helpful.

Grabbing my friend’s hand, I jerk and bend at the waist to throw him. At the same time, I soak his wings with water.

He doesn’t notice my next move until it’s too late.

Sand scorches beneath my feet, the ocean a useless ally to the ten men and women attacking me. The heat, indifferent as the tide, licks my heels.

“Show me what you’ve got, Rafe!” I scream to be heard over the shrieks of wind coming off the Southern Sea. We chose this location to make it easier for my opponents and harder on me.

Overhead, a tornado and typhoon whirl and bounce off each other. Rafe, merged with a water elemental, hovers between the two.

Steam, ice, and water lash out at me, though not a drop penetrates the heat barrier I’ve built around me.