Lea held her breath as Phoebe lined up her penultimate shot. The arrow flew from the bow and sank into the target, one painted ring away from the center.
A good shot, but not perfect. Lea’s heart thumped with eager hope. If she could match or improve on Phoebe’s shot, then based on their current scores and with Phoebe having only one shot left, she’d be nearly certain of victory.
Phoebe made a face as she set down her bow. “Damn wind,” she muttered.
Lea lifted her bow and stepped forward, preparing for her last shot, the one that could change everything.
One slender arrow stood between her and freedom.
She notched her arrow and took careful aim at the target. But the painted rings of the wooden target suddenly lost their crispness, shifting and blurring before her gaze.
Lea closed her eyes. Panic rose within her.Not now. Please, not now. She prayed that when she opened her eyes, the blurriness would be gone. Sometimes these attacks lasted only a few moments, and they’d been getting shorter and shorter with each day since her injury.
Her eyes opened. The blurriness was still there. She lowered her bow, her breath coming fast and short. “A moment,” she called to the official keeping score. “I-I need to tighten my bowstring.”
He scowled at her. “Be quick about it.”
She fumbled aimlessly with the bow, trying to buy time. Boos rang out from the crowd, displeased at the delay, but she ignored them.
“Penthesilea,” the official snapped after a few moments. “Shoot, or you forfeit.”
There was nothing else for it. She gritted her teeth, hefted her bow, and took aim.
The arrow flew toward the target.
She couldn’t even tell where it landed, but from the crowd’s reaction, she knew it wasn’t good.Gods below, did I miss the target entirely?She blinked, squinting desperately.
The arrow trembled in the wooden target, three rings away from the center.
The bow slipped from her fingers, falling to the sand. Well, that was it. There went her freedom.
Phoebe said something to her, but Lea couldn’t hear over the roaring in her ears. All she could feel was horror. She had doomed herself. Just as Kallias had feared.He was fucking right, damn him.
She couldn’t let herself think about what his reaction must be, as he sat just a short distance away and watched her destroy her chance at freedom. She didn’t dare turn around. If she saw him, she would crumble. Right now, all that remained to her was her dignity, and she clung to it with desperation.
Phoebe lined up her final shot. If she did even slightly better than Lea, which wouldn’t be difficult, she’d claim the victory.
The noise from the crowd lowered to an anticipatory hush as everyone waited for this last fateful shot.
The arrow flew from Phoebe’s bow. Lea’s vision cleared in time to see it sink into the target just beside Lea’s arrow.
In the same ring.
“That fucking wind!” Phoebe hissed as the crowd exploded.
Lea stared at the two arrows. There were numbers to be calculated, numbers that flew uncomprehendingly around her mind. She knew only the most rudimentary arithmetic, and she’d been relying on the official’s accounting of the score after each arrowto keep track. But she thought…if she’d been up just enough points before that terrible shot…
Then the official was beside her, grasping her right hand and raising it high, the gesture of victory. The crowd roared, a chant of her name taking shape.
She couldn’t believe it. Surely the numbers were wrong. But if they were, no one seemed to notice. Phoebe clasped Lea’s arms and issued jubilant congratulations, looking entirely unbothered by her defeat. Lea mumbled a polite response, and then the official was leading her away from the targets, toward the steps that led to the emperor’s seating area.
She hesitated; she wasn’t sure if she was ready to face Kallias and all the unknowns of what had happened to him. But the official was hustling her up the stairs, so she was there before she could summon any real resistance.
Her gaze snapped to Kallias as soon as she entered the box.What happened?she tried to communicate with her eyes.
He gave her a loaded, heavy glance she couldn’t decipher. Then, surprisingly, a smile lifted the corners of his lips.You did it, he mouthed.
“Well done, Penthesilea,” the emperor said, coming to meet her. He appeared jovial and relaxed. Drusilla flanked him. “A performance worthy of your namesake.”
