Every Kingsley student was fixed on me, carving through anyone in their path. Poseidon had clearly placed a bounty on my head.
A spear came from the right. I knocked it aside and drove my blade through the wielder’s shoulder before I kicked him down. Another charged with an ax. I ducked the swing and opened his thigh. He collapsed.
They kept coming, wave after wave, like the tide their god commanded.
And a third year, the champion of the House of Kingsley, came to meet me. He was a head taller than my mortal body, his broadsword soaring toward my neck. I brought up my longsword. Metal shrieked as I locked my blade with his.
He grinned. “You’re dead, little girl.”
“You’re even more stupid than Poseidon,” I sneered, slamming my knee into his groin and ripping his throat out as he folded.
I flung the sucker’s torn piece of throat at a Kingsley girl behind him. The girl gave my bloody hand a look and turned to run.
Around us, students fell from both House of Kingsley and House of Ravencrux. Even a few from House of Stardust perished, caught in the crossfire.
Blood soaked into the sand, turning it dark and sticky. The air thickened with the copper scent of death and screams of agony.
And from the spectator seats, the gods bellowed.
Not in horror but in bloodlust. In delight. They cheered as if this were a gladiator match put on for their amusement.
Those fuckers. My enemies.
Rage from countless lifetimes seared my chest, hot and bitter.
I wanted to tear them all down. For what they’d done to my mate and me. For sacrificing these students in their sick games.
They would pay. Every single one of them.
But right now, it wasn’t about vengeance. It was about survival.
Our formation held. We’d merged into a larger unit, hundreds strong. Still outnumbered, but fighting with discipline while members of the Kingsley House devolved into chaos.
“Withdraw, and I won’t kill you,” I told the students from the opponent houses. “Stand in my way, and you’ll all die.”
I didn’t seek out those who faltered. If they fell back, I let them go. But anyone who came for blood, anyone who reveled in the violence, I became their nightmare, moving with lethal grace carved through lifetimes, finding throats, hearts, arteries.
The crowd took notice. Whispers ran through the spectators.
“Look how she moves!”
“That’s not mortal skill.”
The students had no idea that the Goddess of Death was among them. I had unleashed only a fraction of my power.
I wouldn’t show my full strength. Not yet. I had to play this carefully—read the situation, watch how the cards were dealt, before revealing my hand.
Just as Ravencrux House gained an advantage, a war horn blew.
The sound was nothing like the salpinx. It was deeper, piercing, the vibrations shuddering through the ground beneath us.
The north gate, the one nearest our group, crashed open.
A pair of centaurs charged through, one male, one female, their human torsos armored, their powerful horse bodies driving forward with bows and arrows.
Behind them poured dozens of monstrous beings, creatures that had no place in the mortal realm: chimeras with lion heads, serpents with long fangs, harpies with razor talons, and basilisks whose gaze could turn flesh to stone.
They were animal sentinels of the gods and immortal warriors who had honed their killing craft for millennia.
