No sooner have I finished that thought than the gate directly across from ours slides open. The entire arena goes silent, waiting to see what will emerge from the tunnel. The same rotund male from the last time I was in the arena, steps onto the sand, hand waving to the crowd. Laughter and jeers rain down from above. The male stops in the center of the floor, clasps his hands together in front of him and waits for the crowd to quiet. After a few minutes and a lot of shushing, the announcer addresses the audience. His voice is clear and powerful, the sound booming through the arena. Whatever he’s saying gets the crowd riled up. Some spectators boo, others hoot and cheer. I may not be able to understand what he’s saying, but when the crowd breaks into thunderous applause, I know exactly what it means.
Time’s up.
“Est tempros,” shouts another guard from the head of the line. He bangs the side of his fist against the archway wall, then slides open the lock on the gate. We’re ushered through and across the arena as quickly as the chain between our feet will allow. And I wait, heart in my throat as, one-by-one, the other prisoners areuncuffed from the pole and dragged to the wall circling the arena floor, their feet leaving long trenches in the sand when they refuse to walk. Along the upper part of the wall, shackles, set about a meter apart, dangle from chains bolted into the stone. There, the guards pin the prisoners in place while they latch the metal around their wrists. My stomach drops and any spark of hope I’d been hanging onto dies as I recognize the cruel trick. They’ve hung the literal key to our freedom around our necks, but bound our wrists above our heads, so we can’t reach them.
“Aemon,” a voice shouts, and I don’t need to see her face to know who it is. I follow the sound into the stands, scanning for that speck of black hair in a sea of white. And then I see her. She’s barely visible up there in the slave master’s box, but it’s her, I know it, and it’s the fear of Katya watching while I’m ripped apart that steels my spine. An idea strikes. Far-fetched and relying way too much on luck, but it’s something.
So, when the guards come for me, I don’t fight them. I walk along and stand with my back to the wall while they secure the manacles around my wrists. I make sure to keep my palms as open as possible—this would be so much easier if they hadn’t doused me with wolfsbane, but if this body is the only one I have to work with, then it’ll have to do.
More prisoners are brought in through another tunnel and cuffed to the wall, until the entire thing is lined with bodies—some of which are human, but surprisingly, most of them are blood fae.
“That’s you? You’re Aemon, right?” asks the fae female, who was standing behind me in line and is now shackled against the wall to my right.
Brows pinched, I answer, “Yes. Who are you?”
“I’m Mave.” She tips her head up to where Katya is seated. “She was so worried about you. I’m sorry she has to see this.” She lets her head fall back against the stone. “Mother, I just hope it’s quick,” she says, voice cracking. She lets out a sob. There’s nothing I can say to her that wouldn’t be a lie, so I don’t say anything. Instead, I turn my attention back to the present situation. There are six tunnels leading into the arena—evenly spaced, like the spokes of a wheel—each with three to four prisoners spanning the area between them. The creature… What did he call it? Glogameth? It could come out of any one of those tunnels.
I scan the floor. There are swords and daggers, even an ax strewn about. The nearest that I can see is a long sword only a few steps away. That’s going to have to do.
Then, that blasted gong sounds, and all the gates open at once.
43
This is why Raiden freed me. He wanted me to watch Aemon die.
Bastard.
Aemon’s head spins around, searching the stands for me. When he pauses, gaze directed my way, I’m sure he’s seen me. Then, my head whips back and my feet stumble along, moving backwards, as Raiden pulls me into the utility room by the hair. I’m barely through the door when he slams me into the wall. Pain shoots across my chest and down my left arm as my shoulder strikes the stone, taking the bulk of the impact before my skull hits soon after. Head aching and disoriented, I’m completely unprepared when—a split second later—Raiden’s fist connects with my cheek. I careen to the floor, taking a couple of mops and a pail with me. Agony explodes across my face and clouds my vision.
Another strike, this one to the midsection, has me folding in on myself. Then another to the hip, then the shin and forearms wherethey’re covering my face, and all I can do is curl up into a ball and pray for it to stop.
“See what you make me do,” Leodin chides as the cane cracks across my bare back. I bite my cheek to stop myself screaming. It’ll only make him strike harder. “Your mother should have left you to the boggart instead of saddling me with a worthless, powerless—”
“Katya.” A voice pulls me from my fugue. Hands grip my shoulders. Someone is shaking me. “Katya,” they say again. “Please, wake up.”
I blink my eyes open. Leina is crouched over me, tears running rivulets down her terror-stricken face.
My head feels like it's been cracked wide open, my cheek crushed. The coppery taste of my own blood coats my tongue, but the gods only know where it’s coming from. I reach for my pounding head, but the movement sends a shooting pain down my arm and into my ribs. I try to sink back down to the floor, but even that sets off a flurry of pain all over my body. “Leodin? Where did he…” I begin but trail off as my gaze falls on the body sprawled across the floor. Not Leodin. “Raiden.”
“He wouldn’t stop hitting you,” Leina says, the words coming too fast, her pitch too high. “He was going to kill you. I didn’t know what to do.”
I push up onto my elbows. Raiden is lying sprawled on the floor next to me, blood dripping from his scalp.
“Shh-shh-shh.” I grab her hand and gently pry the broomstick from her fingers. Then I drop it on the floor with a thwack.
“What are we going to do?” Leina asks.
I take a deep breath, trying to clear my head. My ribs ache something awful, but they don’t feel broken, thank the gods. “We’regoing to get out of here, Leina. I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”
She nods vehemently.
I drag myself across the floor on my belly to where Raiden is unconscious. “Aemon?” I ask.
Leina stops wringing her hands just long enough to peek over her shoulder at the door. “I don’t know. I heard you screaming, and I came ov—” She gasps, hand going to her mouth. “I left the commissioner back there. What if he—”
“He’ll be fine,” I say as I pull myself on top of Raiden’s body in search of his ashari. I find it dangling from the nail of his index finger. “I need you to hold Raiden.”
“What?”
