A grim nod. “Taking by force what is supposed to be givenfreely. The Knight Commander, the masters—they lied to the entire Fellowship. They make us swear fealty to the light, tell us we owe our second life to the dragons who have blessed us, the dragons werevere, when the dark truth of it is, those dragons are captured, beaten,torturedto give up their sacred heart-flame. Our alchemized hearts are not earned; they are stolen.” He looked disgusted with himself, like he wanted to tear his own heart out. “We are made of the worst sort of violence.”
“Don’t despair, lad,” one of the prisoners said with false cheer. “All your misery will end soon enough.”
“Can you not shift into your draconic form to overpower the guards?” Aspen asked.
Tol motioned to the metal band around his throat. “Prevents me from shifting.”
An unpleasant feeling came over Emory at how much it resembled the damper cuffs used back home to nullify Eclipse magic. Her own magic still throbbed beneath her skin, the darkness clamoring at the edges of her mind. She dug her nails into her palms, savoring the small hurt, praying for the darkness to stay away.
“There has to be another way out of here,” Romie despaired.
“No one gets out of the Chasm alive, girl,” the same prisoner said gruffly. He pointed to a scar running down his pale cheekand neck. “If we survive the eldritch, we’re thrown right back into our cells to await the next fight. All we can do is pray we make it another day. Except your friend here. They’ll make an example out of him, to be sure.”
“Why?” Romie asked. “Because you found out the truth of how draconics are made?”
“Yes.” Tol’s face darkened. “I tried to free the dragon, unable to stand by what the masters were doing to it. And now they see me as a threat to the sanctity of the Fellowship.”
Just then one of the walls started to pull up in a great metallic clamor. The sunlight that spilled into the cell felt too bright after such darkness. Outside, someone was turning a lever on the outer wall, lifting the grate to unveil the arena. The prisoners dragged themselves up to their feet, the more seasoned of them holding themselves at the ready, almost as if they looked forward to the fight.
Tol winced as he stood, favoring his right leg as though his left were injured. He wobbled slightly, and Aspen was instantly at his side, lending a solid hand.
“Your leg—will you be all right to fight?” Aspen whispered.
They exchanged a weighted, knowing glance.
“I’ll be fine,” Tol answered at last, composing his features into that of a fearless warrior. “The damp just exacerbates it, is all.”
He took a few steps forward, each one steadier than the last, and came to stand next to his fellow prisoners. It was only then that Emory noticed the skin at his ankle, which peeked out from under his pant leg, was not skin at all, but gold. A prosthetic.
As the grate finally came to a metallic stop, Emory saw that a similar door had opened on the opposite side of the fighting pit. The inside of that cell was dark, and she could only imagine what manner of horrible beast would emerge from it.
Fear wired through her as draconic knights in gilded armorcame into their cell and roughly pushed the prisoners out into the fighting pit—including Emory, Romie, Aspen, and Tol.
Romie fought against the guard who was pushing her. “You can’t do this to us. We didn’t do anything!”
Her pleas went ignored. There was a moment of confusion in the crowd as they made sense of these three girls in plain clothing standing amid the prisoners. But then the crowd exploded in shouts and cheers and eager applause.
They were ready for a spectacle, no matter what.
Emory tried in vain to find the rest of her friends in the crowd. At her side, Romie was swearing under her breath, while Aspen hovered near Tol, as if he were the sun toward which she gravitated, ready to catch him should he fall.
The ground beneath their feet shook. A low, terrifying grumbling came from the other side of the pit. Something moved in the darkness within that open cell, making the ground shake again and the crowd go wild with anticipation. Two yellow eyes gleamed in the dark.
And then the creature stepped into the arena.
If Emory had thought thecorvus serpenteswas monstrous, it was nothing compared to this one.
It looked like a giant bear, with thick gray fur that spiked to wicked points along its spine. Its feet alone were each roughly the size of a small horse. And on its head were crimson antlers that curved in all directions, each tip ending in a bladelike point.
“Anursus magnus,” Tol breathed, eyes wide.
The creature let out an earth-splitting roar as if in recognition of its name. The grates on both sides of the arena shut with a thudding metallic sound, trapping them in the arena.
“We’re completely screwed, aren’t we?” Romie muttered.
One of the prisoners charged against theursus magnus, fists raised in defiance, a scream bellowing out of him. The bear pawedat him with a resounding growl, sending him flying toward the other end of the arena, his body slashed and spilling too much blood.
Theursus magnusworked itself into a frenzy then, charging at them. Tol screamed at them to run, and they barely missed getting mauled by the creature. Yipping sounds suddenly met their ears as several smaller creatures emerged behind the bear. They were foxlike in nature, their reddish fur tipped in black flames, embers following in their footsteps. Their eyes glowed dark like coals as they stalked the prisoners.
