Dante staggers. His knees give. Blood pours from a fresh gash across his brow, dark and gleaming in the firelight. He sways, breath ragged, hands twitching, like he’s barely holding on. He almost falters as he gets to his feet, still hunched over.
Torbin circles behind Dante, arm raised, ready to bring his elbow down in a finishing blow.
No.
I push forward, heart slamming into my ribs, ready to throw my magic out despite the seer’s glare. “Dante!”
In the final instant, Dante pivots. Faster than he should be able to, fueled not by strength, but fury.
He catches Torbin’s arm mid-swing and yanks hard, using themomentum to haul him across his hip. For a heartbeat, they’re locked—Torbin midair, Dante twisting beneath him—and then Dante slams him into the earth with a force that shakes the entire arena. The air is filled with the echoes of a deafening crack.
Beneath Torbin’s head is a jagged rock, piercing him. A grunt rips from his chest. His body seizes once and then goes frighteningly still.
Dante collapses beside him, gasping, one hand pressed to his ribs where blood pulses through his tunic. He doesn’t rise. Doesn’t move save for the rise and fall of his chest.
Dust hangs in the air. Smoke curls from the torchlight. My body is frozen as the silence stretches.
“Dante, please. Get up.”
Dante’s still breathing. I can see it—just barely. It’s the only thing I’m holding on to.
In my peripheral vision, the seer moves. She leaves the tsar’s side, her red cloak pooling behind her as she descends the stone steps into the arena, the silk whispering like smoke across the dirt.
“What is she doing?” I whisper, but no one answers.
The air around her seems to pulse as she approaches the two challengers lying flat on the arena floor. She kneels—graceful, deliberate—between the two broken bodies.
Dante stirs beside Torbin, barely lifting his head, the movement labored, strained. His bloodied face turns toward her, and something in him tightens. Like he’s steeling himself for whatever she’s about to do.
She lifts her hands, and my insides are screaming again. What is she doing? Is she checking if Torbin is dead? Is she about to declare Dante the winner?
Slowly, with a precision that feels like a ritual, she pushes back her hood. A cascade of dark curls falls loose around her face. Then, with steady fingers, she slides the silver mask from her eyes.
The air grows still.
Even from here, I can see her face. The high cheekbones, the set of her jaw. Her storm-grey eyes.
Dante goes rigid, his breath hitching. “M-Mother?”
I reel backward, blinking hard, trying to piece together what I heard.
He saidMother.
But there’s no time for questions. No time to react.
Her expression doesn’t change. There is no smile, no acknowledgment. She simply lowers her hands again. One to Dante’s chest. The other to Torbin’s.
Dante winces, his head falling back to the ground.
What the fuck is she doing?
I summon the buzzing in my bones, ready to throw her back off him, but the instant her palms touch the two men, the world shifts.
Everyone stumbles back. My head swims.
Power surges outward from her body—an unseen force that sweeps through the pit like a wave of heat before a wildfire. The torch flames whip sideways, gutters of wind spiraling around her. The dust kicks up in a swirling cyclone, lifting in blinding sheets.
The magic is not like the magic I know. Mine is like instinct, raw but alive, wild but pulsing with purpose.
