I stared at the ground, feeling a ball of sweat collect on my chin. I waited for it to drop, to splatter to the ground, to mix with all the rest of my bodily fluids. It seemed like almost everykind I could make was at my feet. Blood, sweat, tears, urine, vomit. Fuck. All I had to do now was shit myself.
And then the Emperor shouted, “Lyriana Batavia.”
My head lifted at once, my heart pounding. “Wh-what?” I asked. But my voice was so hoarse from screaming, my throat so raw, I could barely hear myself. “Lyr,” I said. “Lyr.” I didn’t know if I was talking to her, or asking for her, or simply saying her name because it was all I could manage at the moment.
But then the whip came again, biting into my skin, digging into my flesh, searching through me. My head fell, and a scream tore from me as the whip pulled away, taking more of me with it, along with any conscious thoughts.
The ground swayed beneath me, my vision blurring. There was movement on the dais.Bodies shifting, auras panicking. The Emperor was gone. The Bastardmaker, too. I noticed then, in my peripheral vision, a flurry of soturion boots running away. The crowd was screaming now, but not at me.
“Protect His Majesty!” someone cried out.
“Guard His Highness!” came another shout.
I thought my father had said Lyr’s name again, I thought he was speaking to her, but I was so far gone … I was no longer processing thoughts. No longer able to discern reality from pain.
“End it. Kunda, now,” he commanded.
No! No!
But he did it anyway. He took what little remained of my magic, my power.
Blue light flowed from the end of the whip into a box. All of my magic, all of my power, all of me, stolen, trapped and contained. By my father. And a scream tore my throat. A sound I’d never made before.
“I thought I was dead then,” I said.
Auriel frowned. “You almost were.”
“Why didn’t I die?” I asked.
“Because she came,” Auriel said, showing me a brief vision of Lyr fighting through the arena, her hair a fiery red, her hazel eyes like golden flames as she stabbed every soturion in her way.
“She kept you tethered to her,” he said. “She doesn’t even know. She saved your life. No one survives the stripping. But her soul called out to yours, and it was a far stronger pull than the cries your soul made to mine, to yourself, to your original form. In the end, it was sealed in blood, in kashonim. But without that connection—that alone wouldn’t have been enough.”
I blinked, back on the dais, and suddenly, miraculously, my pain began to lessen. I looked up and found Lyr crouching before me. Beautiful. Strong. Amazing. A true Goddess in human flesh.
“Are you …” I couldn’t finish. I’d started coughing up blood. “You’re really here?” I finally managed.
“I’m really here, Rhyan,” she said. “I’ve got you. It’s all right. It’s over now. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to protect you.”
But all I could think was no. No. Leave me. I’m done. I’m dying. Get away from my father, away from the men who want to hurt you. But she stayed. And lifted me up into her arms.
And then the akadim came.
I wrapped my arms around my chest, shaking my head.“This part is worse,” I said.
Auriel didn’t speak. He only nodded.
I was laying on the ground, hidden in the stadium seats, barely able to move while Lyr fought the beasts. The beasts who could attack in the daytime. They’d evolved. Aemon’s work. Moriel’s evil.
Lyr had left to defend me, to fight them off. To stop the threat. But there were too many.
I lost track of time and space. The next thing I knew, I was being dragged over the rough stone of the benches, and …
I’d wondered if this was what Garrett had felt. Or Haleika. Countless victims over thousands of years. Was this what it was like? This desperate crazed need to try and hold onto your life, your heart and mind, the inner fight that commenced when you felt your soul being stolen from you? The painful desperate clinging to all you were, all you knew, because it was you, it was yours. And now it was beingtaken. Everything was being taken.
I thought of Lyr. Over and over. Until the end. Until I didn’t think of anything at all.
I awoke in the woods after dark. Akadim. A monster. Starving. Every bodily desire on edge. I was thirsty, and hungry, and horny, and itching for a fight.
