“They killed my brother, beat me, locked me away, and have threatened everything I’ve ever loved.” Eira glared up at him. “I certainly know what they can do. Do you?”
There was a flash of shock. Of pain. Then…anger. His whole body rippled with tension. The air became electrified, as though he could summon a spinning wheel of power with the brief moment of concealed rage alone.
“They have my brother.”
“Theykilled mine,” she reiterated and to her feet as well and, somehow, felt even taller than him. Olivin gaped slightly in shock. There weren’t words because none could be said that would mend her pain. That would expunge that horrible truth written in the story of her life. Yet, Eira sighed and deflated some. “We will save Yonlin,” Eira emphasized. She’d say it a thousand times if he needed to hear it. “I’m not going to make you endure that loss. I know how deeply it can break you. I will do everything I can to spare you from it, Olivin, I swear it. So, trust me. Besides, if I did everything a shadow would do then I wouldn’t be as useful to you, right?”
His expression shifted, relaxing. There was something almost sympathetic to it. His hand extended, as if to reach out to her. The motion was abandoned before it could materialize as anything—falling limply back to his side. “I should tell you,” he whispered.
“Tell me what?”
Olivin glanced away.
Eira took a step closer. “Olivin, if you know something that could help me—us—I need to know. I don’t have a Court of Shadows, or Specters, or a noble title to help keep me safe. I’m making this up as I go and I could use all the help I can get. We’re on the same team.”
“It’s that…” He sighed, dragging his eyes back to her. Whatever truth he was about to impart was interrupted by the shifting of the clay on the back of her palm.
Eira jumped with surprise and clamped her other hand over her mouth to keep herself from shouting out at the strange sensation. It felt like a spider crawling across her flesh. The clay stilled into a line. Not immediate trouble, but she had to get back.
“We have to go,” she whispered.
“Take my hand.” He extended his palm. “I can illusion us both if you do, and then we’re not bumping into each other.” The second her fingers closed around his he murmured, “Durroe watt radia.”
A circular glyph appeared around his bicep and Eira could feel his magic surrounding her. Olivin’s power was far different from Cullen’s. It had a weight to it that threatened to physically pull her toward him. He tugged lightly and Eira followed him into the hall.
The cheers and screams of the coliseum were deafening as they emerged in the main road from Champion Village that led through the portcullis. A burst of flame distracted her.Fire?What was someone using fire for? She hesitated and Olivin stopped, too. As if sensing her draw, he walked with her toward the portcullis, close enough that the blinding sun gave way to what was happening in the arena.
Harkor had gone on the offensive. Cullen and Lavette seemed to be holding him at bay. But Lavette was having a hard time managing both the ball and Harkor’s charges. Every time she wanted to go on the offensive, she had to adjust her bracelets from the magic she was using to keep the ball in the air. The time it took for her to do that gave Harkor openings.
“Why isn’t anyone stopping it?” she whispered.
“The rules said they just had to keep their ball in the air. It said nothing about attacking each other.”
“I thought they wanted us to get along. Why are they encouraging fighting?”
“The crowd doesn’t seem to mind.” He looked grimly across the arena. “We’vealwaysbeen fighting like this. Skirmishes underneath the veneer of truce. This treaty is only over a common enemy. It has nothing to do with the nations actually liking each other.”
She thought of Vi, and all the princess’s hard work. But then Eira remembered the woman who dismissed her concerns about Ulvarth, just like the rest. Vi was as human as the rest of them. As fallible.
“The royals might not want us to fight,” he continued. “But they’re not going to stop it until it crosses their line of ‘too brutal.’ It just makes too good entertainment, otherwise.”
Harkor caught his ball and heaved it into the air again, it only touching his palm for a blink. This freed him up to lunge once more for Lavette. Cullen intervened, throwing his own ball into the air and taking a direct blow from the charging draconi.
Eira let out a yelp. She didn’t realize how tightly she was squeezing Olivin’s hand until he squeezed it back. She tried to unfurl her fingers, glancing askance. He held fast, drawing her eyes back to him.
“You two have a complicated relationship, don’t you?”
“Had,” Eira stressed. She didn’t see the point of pretending like she and Cullen weren’t ever courting to Olivin. Chances were, as a shadow, he already had some idea. Even if the court didn’t have that in Lorn’s folders as intelligence on her…Olivin had been one of her dance partners at the ball. He was the one Cullen had cut in on. He was smart enough; he’d seen all he’d needed to see.
“Because of her.” Olivin nodded toward Lavette.
“Mostly him. Also his father.” Eira shook her head. “And, yes, fine, also her. It’s complicated, but also not. Inaction is its own choice, in a way, and Cullen made his. But the two of us can work together and, for now, that’s what’s important.”
Olivin was silent for a moment. Then he turned back her way, black strands of hair falling over his eyes as he looked up at her through his lashes. “We’ll call it even.”
“What?” Eira didn’t follow.
“You learned about one of my team’s techniques that you could exploit as a weakness, and now I learned a weakness of yours. So, we’ll call it even.”
