The Stymphalian Bird takes flight, its terrible wings slicing a whistling knife-song through the wind.
Griffin throws his sword aside and then rises partway. He pushes up on one elbow, but then his arm gives out, and he splashes back into a lake of his own blood.
I sink down next to him. His chest is one of the few places that isn’t shredded, so I lay my head on it, my ear above his heart. The beat doesn’t sound like usual. It’s irregular, pounding. His large hand comes up to grip the back of my head.
I exhale magic and strength, unable to keep from losing both. My bones are anchors, my blood thick, my muscles like stones. I’m down now, and I’m not getting up. My vision dulls. Pain goes distant, which is never a good sign. I try to keep it alive in my mind, as if that will somehow keep the darkness away.
The first gong sounds. Two more, and then the Gameskeepers will come. Selena is close. I don’t know what state Kato is in. Jocasta is injured. Griffin has lost a small person’s worth of blood, and I…
I swallow with difficulty. “Did it bite you?”
“No.” Griffin’s voice rumbles beneath me. I want to be closer. I want to fall inside him and sleep.
“Why?” He sounds wary. And tired. And far away.
“Poison.”
He grips me tighter. He doesn’t know his own strength at times, but I don’t care. His fingertips press into my scalp and tether me to him. To the world.
“You’re stronger than poison. You’re stronger than anything.”
His faith in me is humbling. It’s sometimes delusional, but not today. Today, I will live, because I am Catalia Fisa, and I do not break.
CHAPTER 31
GROANING, ISTRETCH AND THEN FORCE MY EYES OPEN. OURsecond combat was three days ago, and there’s not a single part of me that doesn’t still ache. Poison is the pits. Getting burned and stabbed isn’t much fun, either.
I turn into Griffin’s big, warm body. His cuts are healed, his split muscles knitted back together, his blood replaced by food and rest. His heart beats steadily under my ear.
It took some work to fix Griffin up, and the healing had to go painfully fast so he could stop bleeding. Selena easily closed Jocasta’s stab wounds, which hadn’t hit anything too terrible. Flynn and Carver were more or less fine. It’s Kato who worries me. Even healed—and Selena only just got to him in time and treated him first—like me, he’s still at half strength.
Testing myself for what must be the hundredth time in the last two days, I probe my body for Phoibos’s Fire. I must have burned through my magic reserves with the compulsion, the storm, and then healing from my injuries, because there’s nothing left. It’s just me, and even my invisibility is dormant, walled up until I more fully recover.
Stifling a yawn, I keep my touch light as I smooth my hand over the hard ridges of Griffin’s abdomen. I couldn’t use Phoibos’s Fire in the final round today anyway. The Gameskeepers would eliminate us for initiating offensive magic since I didn’t declare any upfront. Still, it would have been nice to have something like that in reserve. Better to be kicked out of the Games than killed.
I close my eyes again, but thoughts of this afternoon keep me awake. Winning the final round wins us entry into Castle Tarva. It wins us access to the Tarvan royals without spilling any blood outside the arena. It’s a good plan. A crazy, wonderful, terrifying plan. But even if we win the Agon Games, the fight won’t end today in Kitros. The Tarvan royals won’t go down easily, which is something we’ve all sort of ignored thinking about.
I take a deep breath.One battle at a time.
The sound of Griffin’s steady breathing relaxes me enough to fall back toward sleep. Healing comes with extreme fatigue, for both the injured and the healer. Even Selena has hardly risen for two days.
Just when I’m drifting in a comfortable place, Mother’s voice snaps me fully, harshly awake.“The Agon Games? Really, Talia, that’s something we watch, not something we involve ourselves in.”
Adrenaline floods my veins in a painful, heart-pounding rush. I search the room. She’s not here, of course. She’s in my head, and with the blood I’ve lost, my weakened state, and being geographically closer to Castle Fisa, it’s a wonder I didn’t hear from her before.
“I’m in it for the pot of gold.”I shouldn’t engage her in conversation. I should shut her out before she gets into my head in far worse ways than just the obvious.
Mother makes a tsking sound.“You have gold here.”
There’s a pinch and then a tug in my mind. I recognize it now, having done it myself to the spiders and the bird. This isn’t just communication. She’s trying to latch on.“Hoping to buy me, Mother?”
“Can you be bought?”
“If you must know, it’s the prestige I’m after.”Shockingly, that’s part truth. A win gets us an audience with the Tarvan royals. A spectacular win assures we’ll be talked about and even revered. What better way to begin our campaign than to capture the hearts and imaginations of people across the realms?
“My spies in Kitros reported a young Fisan woman of great magic, strength, and courage. Fearless, they say. I would have known it was you even before I tracked your blood.”
I hate the way her words affect me, that leap of pride in my stupid heart when all she’s ever tried to do is destroy me little by little.
