“You can’t!” he growls, his voice raw. “You'll just die with her.”
Below, the wyrm bears down on Lira’s crumpled body. She drags herself an inch at a time, blood smearing the earth in her wake.
I can’t breathe. Can’t think. The world narrows until there’s nothing but her—still fighting, still clinging to life.Focus. Reach the drake’s mind. Force it to turn. To stop. To hell with keeping it subtle. Let them see. Let them all see.
The wyrm’s shadow swallows her. Its head lowers, jaws parting?—
I reach, clawing for the beast’s mind, its fury hot and jagged against mine. I almost have it?—
And then Nyx is there. Out of nowhere. Throwing herself between Lira and death. In her hand, something glints: a piece of metal she must have torn from somewhere, now shaped into acrude blade. She drives it upward as the wyrm descends, burying it to the hilt in the soft flesh beneath its jaw.
The creature recoils, shrieking, black blood spraying from the wound. Nyx doesn't hesitate. She grabs Lira, hauling her upright, dragging her toward the shelter of the trees.
But before they reach the trees… they’re gone.
One heartbeat they’re there, the next the space is empty, as if the arena itself swallowed them whole. My mind claws for sense.
“Did—” I gasp, blinking hard, certain I've missed something. “Where did they go?”
Zeriel's grip on me slackens slightly, his own confusion evident in the sudden tension of his body. “I don't know,” he says, eyes narrowed as he scans the spot where Nyx and Lira just were.
A murmur ripples through the crowd, starting at the lower tiers and spreading outward like a wave. Heads crane forward, fingers point, voices rise in tense confusion. We’re not the only ones who noticed.
Could it have been Selen?
But even as I have the thought, it doesn’t make sense. They’d both vanished too quickly to have had time to slip on void-scale suits. And Selen was painfully clear that there was nothing she could or would do to help them. She’d looked me dead in the eye, her voice flat with finality. No hope. No loopholes. So then… how?
The confusion rippling through the arena curdles fast. Nobles in the upper tiers lean forward, murmurs sharp as knives. Officials in their boxes are already on their feet, gesturing furiously, voices carrying.
And then the arena master’s voice booms out, cold and absolute:
“Find them. Drag them out. There will be no escape from justice.”
Without warning, the hidden alcoves in the walls erupt with activity. Iron arrows fly in merciless volleys, no longer waiting fordisplays of magic. They rain down on the remaining prisoners, punching through flesh with sickening efficiency.
Green-clad bodies crumple.
Gray uniforms collapse into the mud. A death they were destined to have the moment they stepped into the Ironhold.
“They're speeding up the slaughter,” Zeriel says, and this time I hear the tinge of disgust in his voice.
My eyes dart frantically across the arena floor, searching for any sign of Dren or the rest of Selen's women. Vex, Talyra, Kaelin, Maris—where are they? Did they vanish too? I can't tell. There's too much chaos, too many bodies, too much blood churning the earth to mud. They could be under a wyrm, crushed into the mud, their bodies trampled beyond recognition.
The slaughter continues until only a few survivors remain. A woman ignites herself in desperation, fire streaming from her hands as she sprints toward the trees. For a heartbeat, she looks unstoppable. Then three arrows punch through her chest in perfect unison, snuffing her flames as she crumples mid-stride.
A man claws his way up the arena wall with impossible speed, fingers gripping ancient stone like a climber born to it. Hope flares for half a breath until a wyrm’s tail whips across the sky and smashes him down. The sound of his body hitting earth is final, bone splinter against stone.
And then it's over.
The vents sputter and fall silent. The wyrms are yanked back toward the gate, chains clanking as handlers drag them into the dark.
No one moves. No one breathes. No one survives.
The prelims are over.
“Subjects of Thalyris,” the arena master’s voice rolls across the silence, smooth, unshaken by the carnage. “You have seen the empire’s judgment. Let it etch itself into your memory—the price of defiance, the cost of sedition. This afternoon, the true games begin.”
Chapter 43
