I kicked back, pushing myself deeper before lifting my head out of the water. Twenty feet from the shoreline now, the water steaming hot around me, I tread the surface.

I couldn’t resist. “Here, kitty, kitty.”

The tiger roared again, flames licking across the distance, dying before they touched me. The big cats were always tied to a fire elemental, or a Salamander as we called them. And seeing how I had killed a few of them in the fight to save my family only weeks ago, I was betting they still weren’t happy with me.

But that was just a guess.

The big cat swatted at the sand, sending sparkling hot tiny embers into the water. Maybe not so much a guess, after all.

Putting the fire tiger’s flame out to get to the shore was possible, but I would have to call on the earth and use the power newly opened to me.

“Couldn’t I have at least gotten a day or two to get used to using my abilities?” I licked my lips, tasting the minerals and salt from the water. I lifted one hand and focused on the ground under the tiger’s pacing feet. Wet and heavy, the sand would douse the fire perfectly.

If I could make it happen and push past my own hang-ups.

The power of the earth hummed just out of reach. “Come on,” I whispered. “Just grab it.”

Fear, icy cold and jarring despite the heat of the hot spring, shot through my body and stabbed at my thoughts. The pain was almost as bad as before, mind numbing in its strength. Cassava had done her work well. I lowered my hand and scissor kicked my legs, swimming backward. “You win this time, cat.”

I reached the far side of the hot spring and pulled myself up on the slick, warm rocks. Shame burned in my gut. On the far shoreline the tiger paced and snarled, its body swirling as the fire flicked off its coat.

Someone had sent the cat to hurt me, to get back at me for what had happened in the Pit, of that much I was sure. I closed my eyes, the memories swirling up and around. I could almost smell smoke and sulfur that had been underneath everything we touched, could feel my spear shiver as I slammed it into the Enders we’d faced. Killing another Ender was a death sentence, one I’d barely escaped. But it looked like I wasn’t out of the fire just yet.

I opened my eyes to see the tiger gone and moved back into the water.

Voices floated down the stairs. “She’s still in her testing, we don’t know how long it will take. You know that!” My tester who’d sent me into the hot springs to meet the mother goddess, Douglas if I remembered his name right, did not sound happy. At least he was trying to defend me to whomever he was with.

“I don’t care if she’s still naked and shaking from the touch of the mother goddess, she is going to trial for her crimes. She thinks she is above the law. As an Ender, she is more subject to it than any other. Her training makes her deadly. She is a weapon not to be used for anything other than protection. Her head will roll before this is over.” That voice was familiar, but hard to place with the way it bounced across the water. Female, and husky, I tried to place it but failed. There was no woman I knew in our family with that raspy of a voice.

Sliding along the rocks, I pushed under an overhanging shelf so I could watch without being seen. The mist rising off the hot spring continued to flow upward, helping to hide me. But it meant I couldn’t see as well as I’d hoped, either.

Two figures came to a stop on the beach. They argued in low tones and finally it seemed that Douglas had enough. His back was to me and he was blocking my view of his companion. Douglas put a hand on the other figure’s chest and shoved. Silently, I cheered.

“Tester, you are going to get yourself killed.”

“Then you are no better than what you are accusing our princess of.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. No one in our family had ever called me a princess, even though it was true. A spot warmed in my heart and I clutched my arms around myself as if to hold it there. If nothing else, I would hold this moment to me.

Douglas had his hands in the air, and his back to me physically blocking the other person. “Get out of here. She isn’t out yet. You can see that.”

“She has completed the testing. I know she has set foot on the sand.” A booby trap. The cat was set to attack me and alert its master as soon as my feet touched the ground.

“You don’t know that,” Douglas shouted, his voice bouncing off the walls in the cavern.

Finally, I got a good look at his companion. Bright red hair visible, even across the water and through the mist. And I knew without seeing her orange eyes.

Magma had come looking for me.

Green shit sticks, this really was not a good turn of events. I leaned out so I could get a better look. Magma strode across the sand, her black leather Ender body suit clinging to her. She stopped with her feet at the edge of the water. “I will wait for her here. I don’t want her slipping past us again.”

Douglas looked like he was going to have a fit. “Get out, Ender Magma. I will bring her to you when her testing is done.”

“No.”

They continued to argue and I knew there was no way to get past them. At least, not across the shoreline. A shiver ran through my body as a cool breeze from deeper in the caverns blew across the water. Freezing wasn’t going to help me any. Slowly, I slid back into the hot spring, careful not to make a sound, the heat flushing my skin and body.

My hair spun out around me, floating on the surface like golden seaweed. Using the rocky edge of the pool, I pulled myself back into the shadows of the overhanging rock. How the hell was I going to get out of this?