Fin’s body locked. Every muscle. Every joint. His head turned slowly toward Gavriel Sterling, who was standing twelve feet away with an expression that suggested his soul had left his body, taken a look around, and decided against returning.

Fin pulled out of Serena, tucked himself back in, and yanked her training suit back up over her shoulders in three efficient motions. He zipped her up with the clinical speed of a man transitioning from lover to apex predator in under two seconds.

Then he stepped in front of Serena, putting his body between her and Gav, and his eyes locked onto the Gamma with a focus that could have stripped paint from stone.

"You looked at her."

His voice was low. Quiet. The kind of quiet that made Dex’s shouting seem friendly by comparison.

Gav’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. "The wall spat me out here. I didn’t choose this. I didn’t ask for this. The temple put me in this room against my will."

Fin took one step forward. "I said you looked at her."

"Where was I supposed to look? She was directly in front of me."

"You had time to turn around, Gavriel. You had time to close your eyes. You chose to keep them open. That’s a decision you made about my mate."

Gav swallowed. He had been in rooms with angry Alphas before. He had never been in a room with Finnick Shadowclaw’s particular brand of fury, which was cold and precise and promised nothing loud, just consequences.

"For the record, I am traumatized. Different trauma. Still valid."

Behind Fin, Serena’s face was so red it was radiating heat. Her hands were covering her entire face and she was considering living inside them permanently.

Fin held Gav’s stare for five full seconds. The silence did more damage than words.

"You saw what’s mine." His voice carried no embarrassment. Only territory. "That won’t happen again. Ever," Fin said. It was a command delivered with the authority of a king, and the weight behind it said the subject was closed permanently.

"Already forgotten," Gav said. "My mind is empty. I am a blank slate. Reborn."

Fin turned, put his hand on the small of Serena’s back, and guided her toward the corridor ahead. His touch was possessive and unhurried. He didn’t look back.

Serena still hadn’t removed her hands from her face. "I would like the temple to swallow me again," she said through her fingers. "Permanently."

"You’re fine," Fin said, his hand sliding from her back to her hip and staying there. His voice was softer now, meant only for her.

"I am the opposite of fine."

"Baby, you look beautiful when you’re embarrassed."

"I am going to kill you."

"You can try. After we’re out of the temple."

Gav stood alone in the chamber for a moment. He stared at the wall that had deposited him here. Then at the ceiling. Then at the floor.

He closed his eyes. Breathed. Opened them.

"Cool," he said to nobody. "Love this for me."

He followed them, maintaining a distance of exactly fifteen feet, which he planned to maintain for the rest of the day and possibly the rest of his life. Every time Fin glanced back, Gav studied the walls with the intense focus of a man who had discovered architecture for the first time.

Just as Fin finally stopped checking to see if he was still there, the wall beside Gav rippled. He didn’t even have time to sigh before the stone folded around him and launched him sideways.

The maze, apparently, had opinions about who went where, and it wasn’t taking requests.

He landed hard on a platform in a vast chamber, rolling twice before coming to a stop. The first thing he saw was Dexmon Drakenfell, Crown Prince of Drakenfell, Dragon King Incarnate, on all fours, panting like a man who had just sprinted up a mountain and lost.

"You alright?" Gav asked.

Dex’s head hung between his arms. His hair was in his face. He was breathing through his mouth.

"Oh, you know." He lifted one hand and waved vaguely at the chamber behind him. "Hung upside down for two solid minutes. Couldn’t move my feet. Stared into an infinite void while my brain tried to convince me I was dying." He sat back on his heels. "The room wanted me to take a step into nothing. I argued with it for ninety seconds before I realized the room was going to win."

"Did you step?"

"I stepped." He wiped his face with both hands. "The world flipped back to normal and the wall spat me in here. I think I left my dignity on the ceiling."

"Your dignity left a long time ago."

"Appreciated." Dex stood, legs slightly unsteady, and looked around the new chamber. "What did they throw you into?"

Gav’s face went carefully blank. "I’d rather eat glass than talk about it."

Dex studied him for a moment. The look on Gav’s face said the temple had asked him something personal, and the answer had cost him something he wasn’t ready to examine. Dex filed it. Didn’t push.

"Fair enough." He clapped Gav on the shoulder. "Let’s go find our mages before they adopt this temple and refuse to leave."

They found the mages in a corridor intersection, and the scene was exactly what Dex had feared.

Hyran, Aeron, and Maelor were standing in a loose circle, all three talking at the same time, none of them listening. Journals were open. Hands were gesturing.

"The differential construct in the third chamber used a Morbian base-seven notation," Maelor was saying, tapping his journal with aggressive precision. "Base seven. Nobody uses base seven. It’s been extinct since the Second Accord."

"I know," Hyran said. "I solved it in forty seconds."

"I solved it in thirty."

"That’s a lie."

"Prove it."

"The sphinx in my chamber posed four riddles instead of three," Aeron added, beaming. "Four. The traditional format is three. This temple is running an expanded version of the pre-Accord testing framework, which means the original architects anticipated candidates of higher cognitive caliber than standard mythology accounts for."

"Or the sphinx was bored," Gav offered.

Three mages turned to look at him with identical expressions of offended incredulity.

"The sphinx," Maelor said slowly, "is an ancient construct of pre-Accord magical engineering operating on a complexity tier that most mages will never encounter in their lifetime."

"And it was bored," Gav said.

Maelor’s mouth opened. Closed. He looked at Hyran for support.

"He might be right," Hyran said, and the betrayal on Maelor’s face could have filled a portrait gallery.

The wall beside Aeron rippled. He glanced at it, glanced at his journal, and gave a thumbs up to Hyran before the stone pulled him through.

"He’s having the time of his life," Gav said flatly.

"They all are," Dex replied. "This is their vacation."

Maelor was already writing faster, racing against the next ripple. "If I am pulled through before I finish this notation, I want everyone to know that my work here today represents a paradigm shift in pre-Accord scholarship and I will be requiring co-signatures from—"

The wall took him mid-sentence. Then the wall took Hyran too, and the satisfaction was still on his face when the stone closed over it.

Dex and Gav stood alone in the intersection.

"Just us," Gav said.

"Just us."

The wall beside them rippled.

"Together or separate?" Gav asked.

"Does it matter? The temple is going to do whatever it—"

The stone took Dex. Gav watched him vanish. Then the opposite wall took Gav.

✦✦✦

The maze spat them out in pairs and singles over the next several minutes, each ejection accompanied by varying degrees of composure.

Aeron emerged from a wall grinning so hard his face looked structurally unsound. He found Maelor already in the corridor, and the two of them immediately resumed a conversation they had been having across separate chambers, picking up mid-sentence as though the walls between them had been a minor interruption.

"The alchemic ratios in my second chamber were using Ignis as a denominator," Aeron said.

"Mine used Void," Maelor countered. "Void as a denominator, Aeron. The mathematical implications alone would fill a book."

"Three books."

"I was being conservative."

"Since when?"

Hyran emerged next, pristine, composed, and carrying a piece of stone he had apparently broken off a wall as a souvenir. He joined the other two without comment and began examining Aeron’s charcoal sketches with the quiet intensity of a man reviewing classified documents.

"Your second glyph is wrong," he said.

"It is accurate."

"The descender curves left. Yours curves right."

Aeron looked at his sketch. Looked at Hyran. Erased the glyph and redrew it curving left without a word.

The wall beside all three of them rippled simultaneously. Three mages looked up. Three mages smiled.

They were pulled through together, and the last sound from the corridor was Maelor saying, "Finally, a group challenge," with the enthusiasm of a man being invited to his own surprise party.