And the real games were about to begin.
9
Eira blinked repeatedly, trying to force her eyes to adjust to the gloom of the tunnel. The arena was blinding by comparison. Her ears rang from the sudden silence as compared to the explosions, cheers, and cries that had filled the arena.
A hand closed around her upper arm and Eira jumped back, ripping her arm from the offending grasp and raising a hand, ready to strike…the confused-looking attendant who had been at her side.
“You’re all right,” he said softly. “No one will attack you anymore; you’re out of the arena.”
If only that were true. “Sorry, still a bit on edge from the game,” Eira murmured.
“Understandable. This way, if you please.” He led her down one of the side corridors she’d seen earlier. Eira remained on alert, assessing every possible door for an ambush. The first three stayed shut tight. Whatever lay behind them remained a mystery, for now.
The hall curved and revealed an archway that led to a clinical room. Another competitor in checkered clothing from the Republic of Qwint was heading back out, bandages wrappedup his freckled arm. Thank goodness it wasn’t Lavette. Eira was prepared for facing off against a murderous megalomaniac. Running into Cullen’s betrothed? Not in the slightest.
The room was divided into three sections by layers of hanging panels made from heavy canvas. The far-left section was curtained off. She could barely make out the silhouette of someone walking around behind the screen. Perhaps the competitor from Meru she’d seen. Did that mean Ulvarth was with him?
“Wait here and the cleric will be with you shortly.” The attendant motioned toward the far-left curtained section.
“Thank you,” Eira mumbled, trying to keep her voice down. She didn’t want Ulvarth to know that she was there. Though, knowing him, he already did. He couldn’t have doubted that she would be coming for him. Not after the message he’d left for her and after he’d gone through the trouble of making himself so obvious.
The attendant left, closing the curtain behind him, and Eira was aware of how alone she was. She should have tried harder to get one of her friends to come with her…but how could she have done that without rousing suspicion? What else was she supposed to do? Let Ulvarth go?
She couldn’t see the person moving around in the far-left section with the middle room partitioned between her and them. Eira trembled with anticipation. She wanted to rip the curtains off their rungs and lunge for him. She wanted to end this, here and now, with a well-placed jab between Ulvarth’s ribs. Magic cooled her palm. She could envision the dagger she would make. It looked just like the dagger he had sent to her, like the one she had killed his son with. It would be over in an instant and she’d be away before anyone could know what she’d done.
But he hadn’t yet come for her.
Every second that passed dragged on longer than the last. Her mind began to run wild, playing tricks on her. She imagined Ulvarth masquerading as a healer, administering poison with a smile to every wounded competitor. She could see him hunched over the elfin, drawing blood from the poor champion for nefarious rituals for his supplicants to perform. Down and down Eira’s thoughts spiraled, further into a pit of her own making, an abyss of evil and wickedness.
She couldn’t take it any longer. Working to keep her breaths level and even, Eira pulled back the three sheets of heavy canvas that partitioned her from the middle section. There was still no one in it. Now she could see the silhouettes again. Magic ready, Eira crept forward, close enough now to make out snippets of the conversation.
“…are you sure?” A man’s voice, but much younger than Ulvarth. The competitor from Meru, perhaps? Likely.
“…lucky it wasn’t…draconi…righteous wrath…” The second voice was a woman’s, even softer than the first. So soft she couldn’t be certain of most of the words.
Eira eased away. It wasn’t Ulvarth after all. He wasn’t here. She inhaled deeply, catching the faint scent of something herbal, slightly floral. Some kind of medicinal aroma, likely.
It really was just a healer tending to the competitor’s injuries. Which meant that Ulvarth was still out there. The curtains shifted as the healer left their ward. Eira retreated before she could be caught out of place.
She paced the small partition she’d been left in. Could she have been wrong about the man she saw? What if it wasn’t Ulvarth? No, she knew who she’d seen. The man haunted her nightmares now. There was no mistaking him.
Footsteps quickly approached. A silhouette sharpened on the other side of the opaque curtains. Eira kept her magic ready. Just because the other competitor had been tended to by anactual healer didn’t mean Ulvarth wouldn’t come for her. The shape was distinctively more masculine than the one she’d seen tending to the other competitor. The dagger was ready in her mind, in her magic.
The curtain was pulled back.
Eira’s heart and breathing both simultaneously halted. A shiver pulsed through her in shock.
“Uncle Fritz?”
10
Eira stared, trying to reconcile what was before her eyes. Her uncle couldn’t be here. He wasn’t actually, was he?
He was. “It’s good to see you, too.”
The last time she’d seen her uncle was in his office, just before she’d left for Meru. He’d asked her one final time to stay, even though he had to know she wouldn’t. He said he had sent a letter to her parents. That they would want to see her now that she was free.
Her parents never came.
