Fuck it.If I’m going to be that monster’s meal, I’m not going down empty-handed.
“Breathe, Suraya,” I remind myself.
But my rallying cry holds no weight as my breath gusts from me in panicked heaves. If I don’t calm down, I’ll pass out and that will be the end. I force myself to inhale for four counts and breathe out for four. I do it again and then again, until my lungs stop squeezing and my jaw unlocks.
Peering around the rock, I immediately see a woman from Antares cutting down one of the other competitors with an enormous ax before nodding to the redhead. An alliance, then, just as I had thought. I feel sick as I do a quick count of our numbers. There are about thirty of us left, give or take. Some contestants have taken cover at other outcroppings.
Where in the pits of Droon is Clem? Is she here? Is she evenalive?
I see Parvi standing frozen in the open, face pale, and when the Antares warrior prowls toward her, I make one of the stupidest decisions of my life. Running from my hiding spot, I sideswipe the attacker and kick her legs out from under her. She hits the ground hard, and I yank Parvi back to the rocks with me just as the azdaha turns its baleful glare on the fallen woman. The squelch of flesh and crack of bones bring the bile up once more, nothing I ever hope to hear again in this lifetime. I swallow the bitter phlegm and take huge gulps of air and try to remind myself that the woman had murdered another in cold blood with her ax.
“Did you see Fatima?” I ask, turning to Parvi, whose clammy hand is still in mine.
Tears are streaming down her face. “She’s dead. She tried to get to the weapons. Why did you do that? Save me?” she blubbers. “When I’ve been so beastly to you.”
“None of us deserves to die,” I reply, my heart sinking at the thought of Fatima, once so fearless, now a corpse to be mourned by her poor parents. “Stay quiet. We can wait this out and be one of the twenty when the gong sounds. And then we can get the fuck out of here!”
But of course, my words damn us. Or my rival has it out for me after I took out her accomplice. Much too late I look around to see her and her cronies converging on our sheltered position, their movement drawing the attention of the monster, too. The roaring of the crowds fades as my senses sharpen. Eight on two is a lot, but I ready my dagger anyway. Parvi’s tears are falling faster, and her body starts to shiver.
Make that eight on one, because she’s a sandsdamned mess.
“Parvi,” I say urgently. “When I say run, you go in that direction.” I point to the far side of the arena. I’m guessing that the azdaha’s leg chains won’t extend that far, but I could be wrong. She gives a jerky nod, and I take a deep breath, ready my dagger, and wait. One heartbeat... two heartbeats... and then, as three of the women converge on us, I scream, “Run, now!”
Parvi dashes off in the direction I’d indicated, and no one follows. I’m the target. They swarm me like a group of hyenas. A woman with a foxlike face palms a knife, but before she can throw it at me, an arrow impales her hand in midair, and she clutches it to her chest, screaming as her blood spurts onto the sand. A cloud of inky hair catches my attention, and I glance to the right, finding the profile of a familiar sharp face.
Clem!
She’s holding a bow, a quiver of arrows on her back, a second arrow nocked. She might not claim Antares, but she sure looks like a miniature warrior goddess right now. Another of my foes drops with a shriek as an arrow skewers her calf. Two of the women charge in Clem’s direction, leaving four behind. Much too near, the azdaha screams.
“Hello, rat,” my nemesis sings, and swings a long sword in a wide arc. Not jadu forged, thank the flaming maker, but that doesn’t mean it can’t kill me.
Clutching my dagger, I feel my palms start to tingle.
Not now, damn it!
But the danger is closing in on me, and my panic is causing whatever it is inside of me to coalesce. Everything feels like it’s on fire, immolating from the inside out. My skin tightens and pulls as sweat beads on my forehead and drips into my eyes. My foe’s gaze falls to my dagger, and I glance down to see it’s begun to shimmer with its telltale iridescence, the decorative runes I’d carved glinting brighter under the sun.
What the fuck?
“Where did you steal that?” she sneers, eyes widening. “Not that it will save you, little gutter rat.”
“I am not your enemy,” I gasp.
She laughs coldly. “Oh, but you are. You can die on my blade or in the jaws of that beast. I’ll let you choose.”
The azdaha roars as if in agreement, the odor of raw flesh souring the air. The woman swings just as the monster charges our rocky outcropping, much faster than I’d expected. I dodge and duck, my much smaller blade clashing with hers—and then sinking through it, as easily as butter. Panting, we both stare at her shorn blade. Her face darkens with rage. I sense movement behind me, but before I can turn, two of her friends rush me from behind, and suddenly, I’m shoved into the path of the oncoming beast. I brace for the bite of teeth with my dagger held tightly aloft as my last line of defense.
The azdaha stops an arm’s length short of swallowing me, its jaws parted and its fetid, metallic blood-scented breath hot against my face. Time seems to slow, echoing the sluggish, supine thud of my heart. A much-too-intelligent gaze bores into me, and in that charged instant, something strange happens. I feel pain that isn’t mine. I seevisions of an enormous mountain range and verdant plains stretching to an endless blue ocean that match no landscape I know in Oryndhr. Whatisthis? Nearly buckling to my knees, I sense every second of this creature’s capture and torture, and it’s all I can do not to scream and scream and scream.
I clutch my temples, and in the space of an infinite heartbeat, there’s nothing. No pain, no torture... only the flow of...somethinglike silvery rivers of power connecting us. Time stops and tears form in my eyes. A sob claws up my chest, and I find myself drawn forward, wanting to take a step toward the creature, to press my fingertips to its bloody snout in sorrowful apology.
But then the gong sounds, and everything halts.
Chained jadu-infused whips whine through the air, and the creature flinches when the runes on its collar ignite. Time resumes, and I rear back, but I know that even without the gong signaling the end of the contest, the beast would not have devoured me. It had been almost like it had recognized me in some intuitive way. A tether of a bond born of some ancient power still humming between us.
Of raw magic. Which isimpossible.
Eyes stinging, I stumble a few more steps and fall to my knees as the azdaha releases me from its stare and retreats to where several runemasters stand beside a huge portal. The monster disappears, and the thundering noise of the crowd rushes my ears and overwhelms me, as if someone had just amplified the sound a thousand times over. Prince Roshan is nowhere to be seen, but I feel the suffocating, oily glance of the crown prince pass over me. I hope he didn’t see whatever the fuck that was with my dagger... or the moment with the azdaha.
