The need to end this round and get us all out of the arena alive overrides the pain as my body absorbs the magic, learns it, and then begins to heal. Fire ignites in my left hand. The Magoi’s eyes widen in disbelief.That’s right. A magic thief.Not something you see every day. Or ever.
I throw, and he ducks.Damn it! I missed.
I throw again, and again, wasting the magic I’ve gained because he’s fast and I’m lumbering toward Kato with an increasingly useless right side. My foot drags through the boggy sand. My arm hangs limp at my side. I don’t even feel the hole in my hand anymore. Finally, when I’m standing protectively over Kato, I throw the last fireball I have in me and then squat to swipe a knife from Kato’s belt.
Rising, I dart another look at Griffin. Blood runs in rivers down his lacerated arms. Razor-sharp wings crash into the sand, his arms, his sides. Griffin tries to bring his legs up to push the bird back with his feet, but the creature curves its tail feathers under and loosens a triumvirate of blades into his upper thighs. Griffin throws his head back and howls.
My emotions flatten into deadly calm. This endsnow.
I take aim at the fire thrower as he turns on Flynn, who just planted his ax in his previous opponent’s chest. Leaving his preferred weapon behind rather than take the time to dislodge it, Flynn rushes the Magoi, speeding up as he tosses his short sword from his left hand to his right.
A fireball flies from the Magoi’s hand. Flynn dives, rolls, and rises without ever slowing down. He charges like a Centaur, his big shoulders bunched, his auburn head lowered, his strong feet kicking up sand.
Backpedaling, the Magoi gathers another blaze in his palm. Flynn bears down on him with death in his eyes.
I draw my left arm back, cursing the lead weight of my right side. My balance feels off, and my sense of where my body is and how it should be moving has been annihilated. Cold sweat dots my brow. I send out a hurried prayer to Poseidon as I stiffen my wrist, my blade reflecting the lightning streaking across the sky.
A knife lands in the Magoi’s chest, but it’s not mine. I didn’t let fly. He stumbles, and his fireball implodes before he can launch it at Flynn.
Jocasta throws a second knife. Her aim is bad. Her feet aren’t right because she’s favoring her injured leg, and she lets go too soon. The knife still sinks into the Magoi’s chest next to her other one.
Kobaloi. Tricky little creatures. Suddenly, I really do believe the sinew wrapping the hilts of our knives retained some of the Kobaloi’s innate magic. I missed when I was aiming at Titos and then hit the flaming Magoi when I thought I wouldn’t. Another Kobaloi knife just corrected Jocasta’s faulty throw. They were shockingly expensive, but not such a worthless purchase after all.
The fire thrower drops to his knees, dragging in a breath that will never fill his lungs or satisfy his craving for life. I limp past him as he hits the wet sand face-first. No hope of air there.
The rain tapers off, then stops altogether. The crowd is going wild. Carver swings his sword one final time, the tight arc severing his opponent’s head. Before the man even hits the ground, Carver is running toward Griffin at a speed no human should be capable of.
Griffin has help, so I turn to our final adversary apart from the bird. Eliminating her may be the only way to stop the creature. The knife in my hand has only one target now, and she’s behind a thick, burning wall so high I can’t see her to take aim.
Hardening my resolve, I move toward the flames and then limp straight through them, taking a breath of fire. Silence descends on the arena, making the roar of the blaze in my ears and my inevitable scream that much louder. My clothes are too waterlogged to go up in flames, but they heat and sizzle and steam, burning me anyway. My skin reddens, blackens, blisters. My hair crackles and glows. My eyes feel like glue. The rest of me is an inferno.
Bathed in agony, I draw magic deep inside. It burns through me until it becomes mine. My body shifts—readjusting, healing, overcoming—and when I emerge from the flames, I’m upright, I’m breathing, and I can see.
With the influx of new power comes knowledge. This is Phoibos’s Fire. Rare. Uniquely Fisan as far as I know. Named after the Magoi who helped an ancestor of mine annex a chunk of Tarva during a Power Bid. They pushed the Tarvan border back enough to steal three great cities. Sykouri resisted. My ancestor let his army plunder the metropolis and then ordered it burned to the ground with most of its population trapped inside. Phoibos’s Fire is one of the hottest, fastest burning fires known to man and Gods alike, outdone only by Dragon’s Breath and matched only by the flaming exhales of certain deadly Drakons.
My boots crunch over sand heated into glass. Old fears make my heart pound. I just announced to the world that I can steal magic. That I can walk through an Elemental Mage’s fire and live. I am an anomaly. I am stupefying. Terrifying.
The crowd is still hushed. Too much attention. Too many eyes. Too much expectation. My life now—mine and Griffin’s.
“You have one chance,” I tell the Fisan Magoi. “Call off the bird.” My voice rolls from me with a low, thundering pitch. It carries, louder than it should be with power I don’t understand. Movement in the arena haunts my peripheral vision, thousands of people cringing at once. Their fear doesn’t make me happy, but it somehow feels right. It’smyright.
The female Magoi stares at me with a mixture of horror and fascination. She draws a sword. It’s about the same length as mine, which I leave on my back. She takes a careful step away from me, wary of her own fire. Her straight brown hair wafts on currents of heat.
“Who are you?” she asks.
A seductive, dark part of me wants to push into her mind. To order her. Punish her. Make her bleed like Griffin is bleeding. I haven’t been able to wrench the bird from her. Maybe I’ll just wrench her.
My thoughts are steeped in bitterness. Wouldn’t that make Mother happy? The Agon Games ripping my conscience to shreds.
“I am mercy, but I am also death. Call off the bird.”
She doesn’t move, but her flames suddenly slam into my back, engulfing me.
I feel no pain, just more magic, and my lips twist in a feral smile. Power is a whirl of color and heat. Fire rides my skin. I inhale it deep into my lungs. This magic is mine now. It can’t hurt me, and yet I could turn it back on her and melt her down to bone.
The look on her face tells me she knows it. Her flames crawl higher, burn hotter. I step out of the blaze before my clothing disintegrates. I won’t let Griffin suffer a moment longer.
Floating on a magic charge helps me forget the lead weight of my body. My fingers tighten around Kato’s knife. The metal is hot, but the grip is wrapped, allowing me to hold on to it. Even with my left hand, my aim is good. Perfect even. Right in the eye—soft, easy to penetrate. Ending. The woman falls backward, carried over by the knife’s momentum. An instant later, her flames snuff out, leaving me suddenly cold.
