She knew she’d be the most hated among the spectators. When she looked up at the silent crowd, her face crumpled like she could see her own grave being dug.
Beside me, Katarina’s chin lifted. Defiant.Let them fear us, her posture said.Let them.
I kept my eyes forward and mapped every drop of water beneath my feet. I would never touch my fire magic, I’d neverreveal myself, but I’d suck the moisture out of the ground if it meant my survival. So, Katarina and I were the same, it seemed.
We reached the red section just as Tiberius raised his hand from above us. “Let the Mortalis begin.”
Images appeared in the air around the outside of our sphere, dozens of them, hundreds, all showing Vitoria’s face. They hung suspended like ghosts, multiplying until everywhere I looked, she stared back. I locked onto her face. On the mischief in her eyes. On the smile lines that formed in her cheeks.
The crowd chanted once more, drawing me away. Many were for Lucette Varrow. Some for the Ripper. None for the witches.
The Oracle stood from the chair on her platform. She moved as if each step was a dance. Each shift, a beat to a song only she could hear. The massive raven on her shoulder spread one wing, then settled, as if even it recognized the moment’s weight. “The ancient ways have failed us. Race against race, blood against blood. This method breeds only deeper hatred.”
Interesting way to open a ritual designed ultimately to hunt someone, but okay. Tiberius’s fingers tightened on the platform rail beside her. Just once. Just enough to know this wasn’t the proposed script.
Interesting.
“The Phoenix cannot be sought through division. She must be hunted with unity.” The fury-born extended one hand toward us. “Uncomfortable unity.”
The sphere shattered. The shards melted into liquid and reformed into a clear orb that hovered just above the ground in front of us.
“Each champion will sacrifice a drop of blood for the sphere. Let it taste your essence and bind you to our common cause.”
I absolutely did not want my fucking essence tested—or tasted or even seen. But I couldn’t look to Calder, couldn’t searchfor Silas. I couldn’t show an ounce of concern or draw any more attention to myself than the other witches.
Felix Steele was already moving, eager to go first. Why was it always the hunters who wanted to prove they were brave?
An enormous shadow covered the arena again as the purple dragon blotted out the sun with his giant body, before dropping an obsidian blade to the ground. It landed tip down in the soft earth between Felix and the orb. The eager hunter took it, opening his palm without ceremony, before touching the sphere. It convulsed once as Felix turned away.
I stopped watching the parade of bleedings. Counted exits instead. Three tunnels, all guarded. The open roof, but the dragon circled, watchful and lethal. The floor, but that would take more power than I could afford to show. There was no escape.
By the time my turn came, nine champions had already bled. The orb spun faster with each addition, growing hungry.
Holding the dragon scales embedded in the blade’s handle, I didn’t hesitate. The knife was sharp enough that pain was hardly a concern. My blood hit the glass, and it screamed, not a sound but a feeling that lived in marrow and memory. Something I hoped only I could feel.
Tessa went after me, the fire witch’s hand shaking so hard she cut too deep. Her blood sizzled in the air for half a second before she controlled it. Then Katarina, whose blood flowed too easily.
With the final drop, the sphere exploded into ribbons of light. They sorted us with violent efficiency. One ribbon wrapped around my wrist, then shot across to Wickett. Where it touched, my skin went numb. Another ribbon claimed us both, then yanked Wither toward us, a sprite so scared his wings were barely visible as they flapped, now bound to a hunter and a witch.
The other teams formed in similar chaos. Katarina with Felix and Lucette. Pip, the little blue haired sprite was with Tessa and Marcus. And the final team was Thimble, Darius and Vera. The names mattered. Every one of them. But if I let myself think that way, I was already lost. Because most of them wouldn’t leave this arena.
Our ribbons looked different. While the others were silver, ours shifted between gold and black, uncertain what it wanted to be until it too, shifted to silver.
I stared at the silver ribbon connecting my wrist to Wickett’s, then up into gray eyes that held no mercy. No recognition of the complete joke this had to be. Just cold assessment, like he was already deciding which piece of me to carve out first.
The crowd’s roar faded to background noise. The other teams, the arena, Tiberius’s satisfied smile. None of it mattered now.
Because I was tethered to death, and he was looking at me like he’d just been handed his favorite present.
Chapter 12
Syneca
Never leave a spoon in your tea overnight; the demons will stir your dreams until dawn.
“You volunteered.” Wickett’s voice cut through the arena’s chaos like his blade through bone: clean, precise, and utterly without warmth. “Why?”
This was my first test. Not the trials to come, not whatever horrors Tiberius had planned. This. Right here. With the Ripper standing close enough that I could count the kill marks etched into his skin.
