He stepped into Ander’s guard with two quick slashes, one at Ander’s ribs, the second at his thigh. Ander blocked the first. He almost blocked the second. Fear’s blade landed. Blood welled instantly.
Ander roared and forced Fieran back with a desperate series of heavy blows. Each one carried enough strength to shatter bone, but Fieran absorbed them with subtle shifts of weight, his boots finding stable purchase even as the marble swayed beneath them.
He anticipated every tilt of the platform, adjusting before it happened.
Ander reacted half a heartbeat later than Fear each time. Against another, ordinary opponent, Ander’s strength would have seemed invincible.
Ander swung hard. Fieran caught the blade on his bracer and drove his knee into Ander’s stomach. Fieran pivoted behind him and slammed the hilt of his sword into Ander’s shoulder. The impact sent Ander stumbling forward toward the water’s edge, and Fieran leapt into the air. For a second, I didn’t understand why.
Then the platform tilted, seesawing with only Ander’s weight and momentum as Fear flew, and I understood.
Panic squeezed my chest. It didn’t matter how good Ander was, how strong and skilled and quick. Fieran’s gifts of reading us all and of manipulation breathed power into his sword.
Ander didn’t fall. He leapt, his body a streak of dark leathers and gold cloak as he cleared the gap between platforms. The moment his boots struck, the marble disc lurched violently beneath us. Cold water surged over the edges.
Ander absorbed the movement with a flex of his knees, rising to his full height in one fluid motion. Blood streaked across his cheek, chest heaving, eyes blazing with the kind of determination that came from bone-deep purpose.
Or bone-deep desperation.
What was Ander’s cost if he didn’t win me at the queen’s command?
His gaze hit mine.
Something in me broke open. Something in him softened for a fraction of a heartbeat. He was losing, and he knew it. But he murmured, “It’ll be all right, Cara.”
It was a lie, and if I hadn’t known how high the stakes were, his gentle words told me.
The queen would make Ander pay almost as dearly as my brother.
My fingers tightened around the cord at my throat. I yanked it free without hesitation. “Ander.”
He reached for me immediately. His hand enclosed mine—warm, calloused. The ring slid from my palm into his.
Then he was gone, launching himself off the edge of my platform, marble tilting wildly behind him as he soared back into the fray.
Their blades met midair with a crack like lightning splitting stone.
Fieran pivoted to meet him, boots hitting the drifting platform with predatory grace. The arena’s water churned around them, reflecting shards of firelight across their bodies. Ander’s swing came in hard, furious.
As Fieran parried, he looked almost bored.
Ander pressed the attack. It was a driving sequence of blows, andFieran danced back, playing along. This time, Ander was the one to leap to upset the balance of the platform. Fieran rose to meet him, and Ander kicked him in midair.
Fieran flew back but recovered; the strike had driven him down, and he landed again on the platform. The marble shifted beneath his feet. It was the one time he wasn’t fully in control.
The marble beneath Fieran shifted as Ander drove himself downward, slamming into the marble.
The platform shifted beneath both their feet. But this time, luck was on Ander’s side.
Fear launched a blow; Ander parried it. The two moved so quickly their blades were flashes of gleaming gold. Fieran slid back, losing his balance just slightly to the shifting platform.
Ander’s blade sliced across Fieran’s side.
Blood spattered in a dark arc, hitting marble, then sliding down in thin red ribbons to the water below. The crowd erupted, shouting, shrieking, stamping their feet on ruined stone high above us.
Fieran staggered.
His hand flew to his wound.
