“No!” Carys screams. “Jareth would have chosen his successor. He never would have made his children fight!”
“Well, it’s a shame he’s not here,” Crone replies.
Carys wails, and it tugs at my heart in a way I wasn’t expecting.
“I’ll take her.” The royal with the long, burnt orange hair, Ollie, rises from his seat and reaches for his mother. She collapses into his arms when the captain releases her.
He hugs his mother and, at first, I think he’s consoling her, but then I remember… his power is regret.
Is he worried about her, or is he absorbing her regrets to make himself stronger? Either way, she buries her head against his chest, sobbing.
In the center of the ring, Bera’s body rises up, her navy-blue hair hanging across her face and neck, concealing the worst of the wound. Her body floats through the now-open cage door, past the dais, and disappears into the atrium.
The conjured wolf is already gone, although the blood from both fights remains.
Ollie hugs Carys more tightly, murmuring against her forehead before releasing her. “No more regrets. I’m prepared for my end.”
He doesn’t wait for Crone to call his name, striding through the open door into the ring.
To my surprise, he kneels in the center, where the wolf will take form. He folds his hands in his lap, his power rippling around him in orange waves that carry a flurry of fallen leaves. A hundred regrets, all released into a storm around him.
He closes his eyes and, when the conjured Reaper appears, Ollie doesn’t even fight back.
My eyes widen with shock as the wolf rips through him, tearing out his throat and ending him quickly.
As Ollie falls to the floor, the burned leaves rise up and float through the cage’s bars, wafting through the crowd, landing on the onlookers.
A subdued hush falls over them, many of them hunching their shoulders, the power of regret pouring across them. Carys wrenches herself out of Tyrus’s hold and strides forward to catch one of the leaves, cradling it in her hand before she spins and slaps it against Arga’s chest.
He’s back in his seat and was watching his brother’s death with a gleam in his eyes, seeming oblivious to his mother’s actions, let alone her distress.
The moment the leaf touches him, he jolts upright. “What the fuck!”
Lurching out of his seat, he rips the leaf from his chest and stares down at her. Her hair falls all the way down her back as she tips her head back.
“I regretyou,” she says, tears streaming down her cheeks.
His fists clench, a threatening stance. “What’s that, Mother?”
“You did it, didn’t you?” she says, searching his face. “You orchestrated your father’s disappearance so you could take power!” Her voice rises to a shriek. “Didn’t you?”
He grabs her arm. “If I did, he wouldn’t have disappeared. He’d be dead.”
Arga’s speech is drowned by Carys’s scream, a cry of pure agony as a wash of power the color of pain builds around her arm where Arga grips her. The blood drains from her face and she fights against his hold, screaming and struggling, but he drags her over to Bera’s empty seat and pushes her into it. “You need to sit down, Mother.”
She gasps, clutching at her arm when he releases her. As she curls up on the seat he pushed her into, her hair falls across her face, but through the strands, she stares down the line of seats at her two remaining children: Koda and Esta.
At the front of the dais, Crone swings away from Carys with a scowl on her bloodless face, smacking her lips as if she tasted something she didn’t like.
“Esta, second daughter of Jareth,” she cries. “Step forward and fight for your life.”
Esta’s expression is unreadable as she rises from her seat, veers toward her mother, and briefly brushes her hand to her mother’s shoulder, a teary moment passing between them. Other than Arga, Esta’s two strongest siblings are dead, and I’m not sure that the gentlest of the royals stands a chance.
Beside me, Koda leans forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped. Head down. He told me I’d watch him die tonight and I’m starting to believe it could be true.
Fuck. Is this Crone’s way of annihilating all of us except Arga in one violent night?
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SIX
