Panic, cold and sharp, cuts through my shock. My survival instincts, honed in the gutters of slums, scream to life. My kneecomes up, hard, slamming into the soft flesh of her side. She grunts, her grip faltering for a fraction of a second, but it’s enough. I twist, bucking my hips, and break her hold, gasping in a ragged, burning breath.
We roll, a frantic scramble of limbs and torn fabric. I come up on top, straddling her, my own hands flying to her throat without conscious thought. It’s pure reflex. A mirror of her attack, but fueled by a terror that has no room for regret. Her eyes widen, shock replacing desperation. She claws at my wrists, her nails tearing my skin, but I don't let go. I can’t.
In the periphery, a blur of motion. I hear Sorven roar, a sound of agony cut short by a wet, final gurgle. A thud, heavy and sickening, shakes the ground. One down. But I can’t look. My world has shrunk to the frantic, panicked face beneath me.
Elara’s struggles weaken. Her hands, once tearing at my arms, now bat weakly at my face. Her lips form my name, a soundless plea:Veyra.
Something inside me cracks: the part that once listened to her stories whispered in the bathroom, stories she might have even believed, and saw the same fear in her eyes that lived in mine. The part that knows she’s just as trapped, just as desperate. The part that, for a fleeting moment, let me believe she was a friend in a world that doesn’t allow for such things.
But the older instinct—the animal one—doesn’t ease. It clamps down harder. My thumbs dig into the hollows of her throat, cutting off not only breath but life. Fragile cartilage bends, then breaks, a faint, awful pop that feels too mortal, too final.
Her body goes limp. Her eyes, fixed on mine, lose their focus, turning to milky, unseeing glass. Her hands fall to her sides, palms up, in a gesture of surrender she wouldn’t make in life, her red hair splayed out beneath her.
I’m still holding on. My fingers are locked, my arms rigid, even though the fight is over. The silence is absolute. Louder than the screams that came before it.
A flash of silver. Maeve cries out, a sharp, startled sound. Then nothing.
I look down at my hands, still wrapped around Elara’s throat. My hands. They’re shaking, but their grip is like iron. Slowly, as if moving through water, I let go. I stare at them, at the blood under my nails, at the raw scrape marks from her final struggles.
I killed her.
The thought seeps in, a slow, cold poison, chilling me from the inside out. All my life, I’ve fought, I’ve stolen, I’ve clawed my way through every day. But I’ve never… I’ve never taken a life. Not like this. Not with my own hands, feeling the last breath leave a body.
A wave of nausea churns in my stomach. I scramble back, away from her—her body, hercorpse—my breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. My gaze is fixed on her still face, the haunted expression now frozen there forever.
Move.
The word snaps through me, Zeriel’s voice.
I can’t.My eyes sting.I killed her.
He’s already wiping his blade clean on a patch of moss, his movements terribly efficient, precise. Maeve and Sorven lie in crumpled heaps a few feet away, their alliances and ambitions ending in pools of darkening blood. He doesn’t spare them a second glance. His gaze is already fixed on the path ahead, his jaw locked.
They were a distraction. And now he’s gaining on us.
The coldness of the thought is a slap. I look from Elara’s body to him, standing there like a monolith of purpose, untouched by the carnage at his feet. He doesn’t care. He can’t. He’s already moving past it—past them, past her, past me.
I just killed someone,I push back, fractured, desperate for him, for anyone, to understand.Do you even?—
And if you hadn’t, she would have killed you.His response is immediate, the bond surging with the heat stillpouring off him from the fight. Scorching, fierce, not aimed at me but searing me all the same.
I struggle to climb to my feet. My hands feel alien, as if they belong to someone else. Someone colder. Someone more broken. I can’t stop staring at them.
The blaze in the tether fades, sinking into something quieter, heavier. I look up and meet his eyes—dark, steady, too knowing. And for a moment, it’s like the world stills between us. He sees me. Not just the tremor, the hollow, the aftermath, but the part of me cracking open beneath what I’ve done.
When his voice comes, it carries something I’ve never heard from him before. Not softness exactly—more like the scrape of recognition, the rough edge of someone who’s stood in this same ruin. His gaze doesn’t waver, like he recognizes this place, this breaking. And maybe he doesn’t want to see me stay there.
This is the tournament, Veyra.His voice moves under my thoughts, low and certain.There’s no room for ghosts. Leave her, or you’ll become one.
Chapter 47
His words are ice in the furnace of my panic. He offers me a choice rather than comfort. Predator or prey. Hunter or haunted. I look at Elara’s still form, her red hair a splash of fire against the damp moss, and a cold wave washes through me, extinguishing the horror, leaving only a terrible, hollow ache.
Then his hand finds mine—steady, sure, his palm warm as it closes around my trembling fingers. He pulls me up without a word, then starts moving. The bond between us feels like a taut line, pulling me along it whether my feet move or not.
I stumble after him, my gaze snagged one last time on the pale oval of Elara’s face before the forest swallows her from view.
We run. A grim, punishing rhythm. The trees blur into streaks of sapphire and emerald. The air, thick with the scent of strange blossoms and decay, scrapes my lungs raw. He doesn’t speak, not with his mouth or his mind, but his purpose is a physical force, tugging me forward, through the twilight woods, away from the bodies we left to the insects and the rot.
