No mazes. No Ghosts. Nothing else is here… except two prisoners with their faces covered by cloth. Behind them stand two soldiers, each dressed as executioners. The arena itself is a cacophony of shouts, angry and bewildered and excited. No one knows exactly what is about to happen.
My heart starts to hammer.Red and Jeran, I think immediately. They’ve been captured, and I will be forced to watch them executed in this arena.
Or it will be Adena and Aramin. It will be someone I love.
Or it will be my mother.
That’s my next thought, and the idea makes my stomach clench. No, let me not be forced to execute my own mother.
But then I notice the prisoners’ clothes. They are Karensan, and not rags, but fine silks that have been shredded and dirtied. One is a woman with white skin, her hands bound firmly behind her back. The other is a man with brown hair, well-built like a soldier.
Like a general.
I frown, and for a moment I’m confused. My eyes finally go up to the balcony where Constantine always is, seated with his brother and his Chief Architect, and—lately—with me.
But the balcony is completely empty.
Constantine knows about our plans. He isn’t here.
It doesn’t mean he isn’t witnessing this scene from somewhere, though, because an instant after my realization, I hear his voice in my head. He is ice cold, his anger a blade he slides against my mind, anguish bleeding in its wake.
You thought I didn’t know, he says.
The executioners reach up and pull the cloths off the prisoners’ faces.
I don’t see Aramin or Adena or Red standing before me. I see Caitoman Tyrus and Raina de Balman.
They are bound and gagged, their faces bruised from what must have been a night in the prison. Raina is trembling all over, but the deep emptiness in her eyes tells me exactly what has happened to her family. Her son, her husband. They have already been killed by the Premier for her scheming.
Her plot to replace Constantine with Caitoman. None of that matters now.
And in this moment, I know that Mayor Elland must have tipped Constantine off about their plot.
The din in the arena quiets abruptly as the audience realizes who they are looking at. The General of the Karensa Federation. The Chief Architect. Two people that the city has seen standing beside the Premier all their lives. What are they doing here, bound and gagged?
Raina stares at me with tears in her eyes. Strangely, there is no sense of pleading in her gaze. Instead, I see something that resemblesa farewell, as if she has always known she would end this way. She has spent her entire life creating monsters for the Federation. But in the end, they have still destroyed all that she holds dear.
I could risk everything right now. Lunge forward, protect them, and serve this rebellion. I could do it. I’m close enough. In this moment, I can choose between the Premier and a different future.
But I don’t move. I can’t. I’m tired of being everyone’s pawn, moved from place to place, goal to goal, kept in the dark. I’m tired of having so much power and no way to wield it. I’m tired of false promises, of my mother used against me.
So I only look at the face of the woman who had helped the Federation destroy so much. I only stare at the face of the man who must have smiled as he tormented my mother.
Everything happens in the span of a second.
The executioners shoot each of them from behind.
Their heads rock forward. They pitch to the ground.
Dead.
And it is all over.
A collective gasp ripples through the audience. Followed by startled screams. An undulation of indignant shouts from those who had expected more of a spectacle.
But most of all, there is the roar that comes with unrest.
With rebellion.
