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House Rhaarm"

Below us, little Rohr destroys the floor in a ind, turning statues into pulverized piles of dust while she cracks the ground beneath her feet She’s like an earthquake in tiny hu in her way

So this is a pageant

A violent one, th The hter This is a display of power, to pair the prince with the est of all And this has been going on for hundreds of years

I shudder to think of the strength in Cal’s pinkie finger

He claps politely as the Rhaanized destruction and steps back onto the descending platform House Rhambos cheers for her as she disappears

Next coovernor She’s tall, with a face like her bird namesake The destroyed earth shifts around her as she puts the floor back together "Greenwarden," her farow tall in the blink of an eye, their tops scraping against the lightning shield It sparks where the boughs touch, setting fire to the fresh leaves The next girl, a ny the waterfall fountains, she douses the contained forest fire in a hurricane of ater, leaving only charred trees and scorched earth

This goes on for what feels like hours Each girl rises up to show her worth, and each one finds a more destroyed arena, but they’re trained to deal with anything They range in age and appearance, but they are all dazzling One girl, barely twelve years old, explodes everything she touches like so bo her power As she obliterates the last of the white statues, the lightning shield holds firainst her fire, and the noise shrieks in my ears

The electricity, the Silvers, and the shouts blur in arms, telkies, and what seems like a hundred other kinds of Silver show off beneath the shield Things I never dreairls turn their skin to stone or screaer than I ever feared, with powers I never even knew existed How can these people be real?

I’ve co Silvers display everything we are not

I want toanimos calls down a thousand doves fro shield, bursting in little clouds of blood, feathers, and deadly electricity,up what’s left of the birds until it shines like new I almost retch at the sound of applause when the cold-blooded aniirl, hopefully the last, rises into an arena now reduced to dust

"Evangeline, of House Samos," yells the patriarch of the silver-haired family He speaks alone, and his voice echoes across the Spiral Garden