Then the gravitational fields shift, pulling them toward the core one moment and threatening to fling them into the void the next. Zevran drops into a crouch, sword planted point-down for balance as his platform dips nearly vertical. Heat rises in visible waves around him, distorting his outline like he’s dissolving at the edges.
The crowd’s roar intensifies. Someone beside me, one of the Mercury aides, grips the railing hard enough that his knuckles go white.
Lady Isolde moves first. She leaps as her platform swings close to Lady Tavia’s, daggers flashing blue in the starlight. I watch as Lady Tavia blocks with her staff, the impact sending electrical sparks across the gap between them. They circle each other on the narrow surface, boots scraping for purchase as the stone beneath them begins to warp from the heat. Both women are breathing hard now, their movements becoming slightly less precise, slightly slower. Lady Isolde’s face is flushed dangerously red, and Lady Tavia’s hands shake as she adjusts her grip on her staff.
A platform fragment falls – not small, a piece the size of a door – and plummets into the core below. It flares bright enough to leave spots in my vision before dissolving into nothing.
The leaders fight like they’ve trained for this their entire lives. Perhaps they have. Each strike is calculated, each movement compensating for the shifting gravity and the draining heat. Commander Kaelix uses their flail’s reach to keep Lady Nerida at bay, but their movements are becoming erratic, desperate. Sweat pours off them in sheets, and they’re blinking constantly against the sting of it. Lady Nerida’s arms tremble with the weight of her trident, the spears on it crackling with electricity. Lady Isolde and Lady Tavia continue to circle each other, both moving like they’re wading through sand, exhaustion written in every strained muscle.
And Zevran … he watches, letting the others expend their energy, biding his time. But even he can’t escape the heat. His chest heaves with the effort of breathing superheated air, and he keeps shifting his weight, preventing the soles of his boots from melting to the stone. When his platform swings close to Lord Castor’s, he doesn’t make a move. I can see Lord Castor open his mouth to yell something, the massive man’s face an alarming shade of purple, his movements sluggish despite his obvious strength.
That’s when I notice it.
Lord Castor’s platform isn’t tilting like the others. While all of them struggle against the gravitational chaos, Lord Castor’s platform remains steady. Level.
I lean forward, squinting against the heat shimmer.
There … beneath his platform’s edge, barely visible against the Furnace’s glow. A ring of blue light, humming with a frequency I can feel in my teeth. An anchored thruster ring. Jupiter-made. The kind of stabilizer that costs more than most Houses make in a year.
My stomach drops.
“He’s cheating,” I say, but my voice is lost in the noise. I turn to Commander Nael and grip his arm to grab his attention. “Commander, look – Lord Castor has an illegal stabilizer. Beneath his platform.”
He follows my gaze, eyes narrowing. Then his face goes pale. “Stars preserve us.”
High above, in the Cardinals’ box, I see Cardinal Benedict surge to his feet, robes snapping. His voice cuts through the arena, distorted by the comms: “Security, stand by – Jupiter’s platform is showing unauthorized tech?—”
But in that moment, all I can concentrate on is watching as Lord Castor reaches around himself to a hidden pocket.
The object he pulls out is small, maybe the size of his fist, but it catches the light wrong. Even from here I can feel the temperature spike, the air suddenly even more thick and hard to breathe. He’s holding a core shard – a fragment of a failed star-engine. The kind outlawed on most planets after one vaporized an entire training fleet on Mars.
“NO!” The shout tears from my throat, but it’s already too late.
Lord Castor hurls the shard.
It doesn’t arc like a normal throw. It cuts through the air in a straight line, leaving a trail of white-hot afterburn. The temperature inthe arena jumps ten degrees in a heartbeat. People in the lower stands scramble back from the railings.
The shard’s trajectory intersects with Mars’s platform.
With Zevran.
Time fractures.
I see him turn, see the moment he registers the threat. The impact explodes across his platform in a wash of light that turns the world white.
When my vision clears, Zevran is on his knees. His left arm hangs at the wrong angle. Blood streams from a gash across his ribs, smoking where the heat cauterized even as it cut.
The crowd’s roar turns to screams.
Zevran tries to stand. His leg buckles. He goes down hard, sword clattering away from his grip, and for one terrible moment I think he’s going to slide right off the platform’s edge.
My hands are on the railing, but I don’t remember moving. Below us, the observation deck barrier flickers – the core shard’s blast seeming to have scrambled half the arena’s safety fields. For one impossible heartbeat, the invisible wall becomes nothing but humming air.
“Miss Cyra, don’t—” Commander Nael grabs for my arm, but I’m already swinging my leg over.
The drop is several feet. I hit a stationary platform and my ankle gives with a white-hot spike of pain. I ignore it. The heat is immediate and overwhelming … it sears my lungs with every breath, makes my eyes stream, turns my skin tight and painful.
I run.
