Serenna’s knees nearly buckled. She could fall here. Crumple into the sand. Beg Ayla for mercy. Offer herself in his place.
But she knew, deep down, that no plea would ever be enough. The crowd would only be sated with blood. And he’d already suffered for their amusement. Serenna’s throat closed. Rage and grief ignited together, burning hot and wild.
She ran for him.
Before she crossed half the expanse, movement stirred at the arena’s opposite tunnel. Two figures emerged. Then two more. A marching line of ten took shape, cloaked in livery stamped with sigils.
Champions sponsored by noble families.
Serenna skidded to a halt, grit spraying beneath her boots as she took in the elven-blooded advancing across the sand. These weren’t initiates she’d once trained beside. They were adolescents on the cusp of adulthood, the last softness of youth still clinging to their frames.
They fanned into a crescent. Behind them, warriors clad in the capital’s armor filed into the arena, closing into a gleaming ring.
Enforcers to ensure obedience.
The crowd shrieked with delight, the sound swelling until it smothered everything else. High in the sloped wall, a vent hissed, jetting fire in a narrow gout. A girl at the center thrust out her hand. Flame leapt to her palm, coiling up her arm.
At the pit’s edge, a soldier drove a pulse of force into the sand. A hidden mechanism answered. Water frothed up from a buried basin, snaking through carved channels along the perimeter. Several of the youths moved at once—hands rising to bend the current, dividing and hardening the streams into whirling blades of ice.
Wind followed, howling down from slits in the stone. One boy caught the gale in both palms and spun it tight, punching a cyclone skyward.
Serenna saw no summoned Essence or drawn weapons, only the power of the earth itself. Before she started closing the rest of the distance to Fenn, every muscle locked.
Her spine wrenched straight again, an unseen finger sliding down every bone. Gaze flying upward, she found Ayla enthroned, ruling the Coliseum. At her throat, she toyed with Serenna’s Starshard, turning it slowly between her fingers.
Skylash’s spark ignited. Power flooded Serenna’s veins in a rush she hadn’t summoned, control loaned back to her. For now. A gift wrapped in barbed threat, its bite already set, her magic poised to answer Ayla’s call.
Breath strangled, Serenna found Fenn again, and the horror split her clean through. Ayla could reach inside her body and yank the strings, could steal the fingers that once cupped Fenn’s jaw and drive them into violence. She could twist Serenna’s love into cruelty, her power into punishment—make her slit the throat she’d once kissed and force her to watch.
Serenna swayed where she stood, knees threatening to fold.
A hum converged, ripping her attention back to the arena. A spear of ice streaked across the sand, its glinting tip aimed for Fenn’s heart.
Serenna ran.
Her hand flew out, reaching for the earth. The frozen water sheared wide, spinning off course to slam against a stone wall in a spray of shards.
Bile scorched her throat with the knowledge that Ayla hadallowedit—that mercy had been rationed, measured and granted on a whim.
Serenna’s feet pounded the sand as she closed the distance to Fenn, every stride a scream that she couldn’t voice. She didn’t want to fight. Not for Ayla. Not for this blood sport scripted by tyrants and sanctified with applause. And not against these half-grown children, already drilled to obedience, shackled to a realm they’d been taught to blindly revere. Just like her.
But the arena granted no room for grief. No margin for hesitation. Ayla had already stripped her of choice, staging the outcome.
As Serenna raced forward, the youths moved as one, their synchronized advance pulling the crowd’s roar higher. A boy lifted his arms and fire climbed his limbs in molten ribbons. Another clapped both palms forward and the air shrieked into a cyclone, sand lifting in a gleaming helix. A girl pirouetted with a dancer’s poise, water trailing behind her in a liquid veil.
Their magic undulated in choreographed beauty, precision forged to dazzle. Serenna’s stomach knotted at the sight of bloodlines honed into weapons. Lives repackaged as investments and paraded for the capital’s delight.
Fire slashed across the pit.
Serenna’s fingers shot out, snatching the flames and driving the inferno skyward in a hiss. Wind followed, whipping across the distance. Serenna reached Fenn just as the first tendril lashed close.
She threw herself over him, palms braced beside his shoulders. His breath hitched with hers as lightning detonated. Sparks burst in every direction, a dome of charged air arcing around them, spitting and gnashing against the flung elements.
It wasn’t so much a shield as an instinctive refusal, her body itself crackling in defiance. Outside the barrier, the children stripped her summoned magic, yanking the lightning into their hands.
Serenna didn’t yield.
The current howled through her, a ceaseless torrent. Every vein trembled on the verge of rupture as the lightning ran wild.
