CHAPTER 114
Rosalina
As soon as we start descending into the arena, Wrenley stops shooting at us. Was she even trying to hit us before, or was it all just a challenge?
I see the wildness in her gaze, even from up here. It’s different than the fierce look she has as the Nightingale. Dressed in soaking wet, torn acolyte robes, her hair a mess, her face visible without the mask, she appears even more frightening than in her armor. Her mouth twitches between a smile and a frown, and her pupils are needle points.
I pull on the reins when we’re a few feet above the flooded ground. Dayton slips off, splashing in the water, and I follow suit. My feet sink into mud: the once sacred sand of the arena now turned to muck. Clicking my tongue like Delphia taught me to on the airship, I direct our steed to circle above us. There’s nowhere for it to safely land here.
“The gilded flower has come at last to look upon the weed!” Wrenley throws her head back and laughs. “Well, this weed wields the ultimate ethereal power!” She draws back the string of light on the bow. A huge arc of radiance shoots out, smashing into the stands. The seats erupt in white flame.
“You need to put that down,” I say calmly. “It could hurt you.”
She cradles it, staring down adoringly. “That’s what they always wanted me to believe. That I wasn’t strong enough. Caspian. Kairyn. They didn’t believe in me.” Her blue gaze flicks up to mine. “But my blood is just as worthy as yours.”
Dayton’s sidestepped to her right. “We get it, Wrenley. You gotyour fancy bow. Good for you. But you’ve lost. Summer’s Blessing will never belong to you!”
Wrenley’s lip curls, and she gives Dayton a scathing look. “I had to endure months of your senseless rambling. Vex me further, and I’ll shut your mouth for good.”
Dayton responds with his thousand-watt smile. “Ah, come on, Wren. They weren’t all bad times, were they?”
Don’t provoke the unstable woman with a deadly weapon,I snap in my mind.
Instead, he tries to turn that smile on me.Hey, this is fun! Your voice is just as sexy in my mind.
Focus!
Dayton sighs, then draws his dual blades. “Enough’s enough. Drop the bow, Wren.”
“Never!” She smacks the bow down upon the water, sending up a spray.
“Listen to me.” I chance a step forward. “You don’t have to do this. I know how Sira treats people down Below. I know how she treats Caspian. If that’s what you’ve experienced, I’m so sorry. We can work together—”
“You stupid, vain idiot!” she shrieks. Another blast of the bow shoots off into the stands. A rumble sounds: the breaking of wood and stone. “How easy the world has been for you, hasn’t it, Princess? Coddled from birth like a kept dog! You know nothing of suffering!”
My heart thunders at her tight grip on the bow, but I dare another step closer to her. “Actually, my life hasn’t always been easy. I’ve always known I was missing something. Missing part of my family.” Steeling my heart, I close the final gap between us. She shivers at my proximity, every muscle in her body twitching as if she can’t stay still. Her eyes waver like a stormy sea. “I was missing my sister.”
Our eyes connect. I see Papa in her: in her tenacity, her stubbornness, in the horizon of her eyes, and I see our mother too, in the wave of her hair, the resilience of her spirit.
Her shriek splits the air between us. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Cradling the bow again, she sprints away from me before falling to her knees in the water.
“Wrenley!” I step toward her, but Dayton grabs my shoulder and holds me back.
My sister sits up, bow in her lap, and cries, “Summer is lost! Everything I worked for! Do you know what she’ll do to me? I could have done it. I could have had it all.” Her body stills, gaze flickering with inner fire. “Except you ruined it.Again.”
With a roar, she gets to her feet and draws back the bow. Blinding light after blinding light bombards the stands. Explosions of rock smash into the water. Dayton shields my body with his own.
“Are you insane?” he yells at her. “You hit the walls, and this place will be underwater in minutes! You hit a keystone, and we’ll be trapped under rubble!”
Wrenley doesn’t hear him. She shoots bolt after bolt, tears flinging from her eyes. “I have no sister! No brother! I have only myself!”
Water starts to flood faster into the arena, drenching me up to my waist. The breath comes ragged from my throat. I push away from Dayton and surge toward her.
She’s facing away from me now, screeching and crying, fingers raw from shooting the bow. A chunk of the stands collapses inward, crumbling to the water. Still, she doesn’t stop firing.
“Rosalina!” Dayton calls. “The foundation is falling apart. We have to go. Now!”
I can’t go yet. Each step is an effort, but I don’t stop. She doesn’t even notice as I come up behind her. “You have me,” I breathe. Then I wrap my arms around her waist and hug her to my body.
