“You’ve got this, honey.” She takes my hand and squeezes, then darts a quick look to my dad to encourage him to step back and give me room. “Now, get up. Get up, Grace.”

And she smiles at me. A smile so filled with love, so filled with confidence and hope and warmth, that I feel it explode inside me, envelop me in its strength and power. So much power, sizzling just below the surface. Waiting for me to touch it. To take it.

To use it.

And that’s when I know. When I recognize what this is.

This power lighting up every cell in my body isn’t just mine.

It’s Hudson’s.

And it is ungodly.

120

Fee, Fi, Fo, F*ck

I don’t know how Hudson knew I would need that memory at this point, right now, more than I’ve ever needed anything in my life. Not just his power but my mother’s confidence in me, too. Maybe because he understood just how battered and broken and weary I would be coming into the end of this Trial. Or maybe because, after all this time trapped in my head, he just understands me.

I feel the ground rumble beneath my cheek, and I know Jaxon is doing everything he can to break down the barrier and get inside to save me. I hear Macy shouting spells, each one hitting the barrier like ringing the gong of a bell. And I know if Flint were here, he’d use every ounce of strength he had to burn the magic of the protective spell away.

But I don’t need them to save me, not this time. Thanks to Hudson, I’ve got this. Even if no one on this field knows it yet. Because Hudson is the only one who gave me the strength to pick myself back up again.

Even if it meant giving up the very essence of who he was. For me. A girl who spent the last two weeks hating him. Who was at one point willing to take from him that which he willingly gave.

I take a deep breath, let the power flow through me. And realize that he didn’t just give me some of his power. He gave it all to me.

And can I just say—holy hell! I knew Hudson was powerful, but I’m used to powerful. I was mated to Jaxon, after all, and in the world I come from, it doesn’t get much more powerful than that…or so I thought.

But the kind of power Hudson has? The kind of power that’s coursing through my body right now? It’s like nothing I ever could have imagined. Like nothing anyone I know could possibly imagine…even Jaxon.

I’m barely skating along the edges of it, and it feels like more than I can ever possibly hope to wield or contain. What would it feel like to have all that inside you? To know you could do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted?

For a second—just a second—all the bits and pieces of what Hudson has told me over the last couple of weeks during our myriad conversations come together in my head.

Jaxon definitely got it wrong. Because if Hudson had really wanted to commit genocide, hell, if he really wanted to kill everyone, he wouldn’t have wasted his time with only using his gift of persuasion. I see it now, what he’s really capable of. With a mere thought, his enemies would have been turned to dust. Not just one. Or ten. Or even a thousand. All of them.

And now I can’t help wondering if the only reason Jaxon defeated Hudson is because Hudson let him win. Because I know, without a doubt, all I need to do is think of something and it will, quite simply, cease to be.

But I don’t have time to ponder this as Cole snickers and crouches down next to me, the goalpost still clutched in his hands like a child’s security blanket—more proof of just how weak he is.

As if I need more proof. I can’t believe this guy is alpha. He’s pathetic—I just never knew how pathetic until right now.

“I can’t wait until I’m done with you.” He sneers. “You don’t belong here. You’ve never belonged here. Foster’s just too chickenshit to admit that. But I’m not. I’m going to do everyone a favor and take care of you once and for all.”

Then he leans down to whisper in my ear. “And then I’m going to take care of Jaxon and Hudson. This is the time—can you feel it? Neither of them is looking quite like their old selves, are they? I have to admit, I was surprised to see Hudson was back. But hey, gives me a chance to kill him myself for the mess he made of my plans last year.”

He nods to the others to get out of the way. And then he lifts the goalpost, preparing to deliver the blow that will guarantee an end to the game and likely an end to me.

In the background, Nuri’s whistle is blowing loud and sharp, but Cole isn’t paying any attention to it. And neither is anyone else. Which is fine with me. Because now that Hudson’s power has spread all the way through me, now that I can feel it in every single part of me, I know exactly what to do. Because no way is Cole going to touch a hair on Jaxon’s or Hudson’s heads.

Not after everything they’ve done for me.

Not after everything they’ve been to me.

“They could destroy you with nothing but a thought,” I hiss at him. “But by the time I’m done, they won’t have to.”

And so I dissolve the vines holding me to the ground with nothing more than the whisper of an idea in my head. I plant one hand on the ground and stagger to my feet, the agonizingly painful ball still clutched in my hand and Hudson’s power flowing through my veins. It mixes with my gargoyle, grows even more powerful…then touches on something else deep inside me. Something I can feel but don’t yet have a name for.

It all mixes together as I finally stand tall, ignoring the bruises and the small, broken pieces of me that litter the ground around us.

Cole’s smug smile falters as he looks at me, but I don’t know why. Probably because he’s not used to anyone standing up to him, least of all the little human girl he’s been messing with since the day she got here.

The little human girl who has turned out to be so much more than any of us ever expected.

Something akin to fear flashes across his face. But then the witches rush to his aid, wands raised as the three of them hit me with spell after spell.

But I’m in my gargoyle form—imbued with a vampire’s power—and every spell they throw at me just rolls right off. Delphina hits me with an icy blast so powerful that it should chip a few more parts of me away—or at least rock me back on my heels. But it does neither, and as I take a step forward, I realize that the foot I’m looking down at doesn’t belong to me. Or at least not normal-size me.

Because with every single spell they send my way, I’m growing larger.

With every chunk of ice Delphina spits at me, I’m becoming taller and stronger, my stone becoming more and more impenetrable.

This is Hudson’s power? I wonder as I take a second step forward.

This is what he can do?

But something inside me—my gargoyle or Hudson’s power or some weird amalgamation of both—whispers no. Whispers that what’s happening right now is something else entirely. Something no one has ever seen before—but it doesn’t give me a clue about what it is.

Delphina hits me with one more blast of ice, right before Violet and Cam and Simone stand together, faces frightened and wands raised. I don’t know what they have planned, and I don’t care. All I want is to get to the goal and end this game once and for all.

But together they cast a spell that has long red ribbons flying through the air at me, wrapping themselves around me, binding my free arm to my side and the arm cradling the ball to my chest.

I don’t know how they could possibly imagine for one second that these flimsy bindings would hold me, magical or not. I rip them away with barely a thought and keep walking, as the ribbons disintegrate into a million pieces of confetti that flutter and float around me.

And that’s when it happens, when Cole and Quinn launch themselves at me. They are back in their werewolf forms, growling and snarling and clawing as they try to grab on to any part of me that might actually hurt. Any part of me that they imagine might bring me down.

But I don’t have time for them. I don’t have time for any of this pettiness anymore, and I wave a hand to shoo them away. They fall to the ground, whimpering and nearly formless, and I realize that simple wave of my hand has broken nearly every bone in their bodies to slivers.

They’re crying when they change back to human form to help mend their bones, but I don’t pay any more attention to them. As long as they don’t bother me, I won’t bother them.

I turn to the others, prepared to cut off another attack if necessary, but they’re not coming near me. They’re just watching me in horrified astonishment…which works for me.

But Delphina makes one last pass at me, diving out of the sky as fast as she can, talons aimed straight for my heart. With nothing more than a thought, with a wave of my hand, she disappears.

And the crowd roars even louder. Not because I’ve killed her, although I easily could have. But because she’s re-formed in the infirmary tent on the sidelines. So strange to imagine I could have dealt a mortal blow with a mere thought.

I’m only a few steps away from the goal now, and with each step I take, I shrink a little more, until I’m back down to my normal size.

I pause before I cross, though, and hold the ball up to the audience, in the same way Nuri did. I challenge each and every one of them to hold it as long as I have—which by now must be at least ten minutes, including the time it was trapped, incendiary and vibrating, under my broken body.

Then I shift back to my human form, so that as I step across the bloodred goal line, it’s Grace—just Grace—who is walking the ball across it.

Grace, just Grace, who has somehow managed to beat Cole, beat the Circle, beat the king, and beat the odds.

It’s a good feeling.

As I cross the goal, the arena erupts in cheers and stomping, and I can’t help taunting the king. I offer him the comet. I didn’t think the noise could become more deafening, but it does. Somehow it does. Nuri dips her head in respect, and I wink at her. Then drop the comet onto the ground.

But that last blast of Hudson’s power has decimated me, and the moment the words ring out across the stadium that I’m the winner, I stop. I just stop.