The gasps are replaced with booing.
‘Bring out the boy,’ orders the Baron.
There’s a loud scrape and screech of metal as the first portcullis is raised, the steel grate rising slowly to reveal Fox. My heart flips at the sight of him, then sinks as I take in the raw skin round his neck that suggests he’s been shackled like some wild animal. His gaze latches on to me instantly, travelling from my face to my bound wrists to the knife at my throat. He is armed with a simple longsword. I’d wager the blacksmith will never want for business so long as the Baron lords over Wellwall.
He peers down at Fox through his monocle, his mouth twisted in a gleeful smile. ‘Being a generous man, I offered this thief three options. Lose his hand …’
There’s the sound of jeering.
‘Lose his girl …’
Fox clenches his bruised jaw as the Baron points a stubby finger at me.
‘Or –’ the Baron pauses, presumably for effect – ‘to give us a show twice as good as the one he sought to sabotage.’
The crowd cheer, and I think about how innate it is – this insatiable appetite for violence. How bloodshed becomes a spectacle. Punishment by way of entertainment.
‘Tonight, he will fight my reigning champion, as yet undefeated. Ladies and gentlemen, behold the Bear!’
I watch with bated breath as the second portcullis is raised.
Yet it’s not an animal that lumbers out into the pit, but a man – the most enormous man I have ever seen, so mountainous I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he were descended from giants. His beard is thick, his head shaven and scarred and oddly disproportionate to his vast frame, which is bedecked in fighting leathers, the material severed at the shoulders to reveal biceps the width of my body.
‘That’sthe Bear?’ I say weakly.
Garrick chuckles. ‘Fitting, don’t you think? Given that he’s killed so many of them. Loverboy doesn’t stand a chance.’
Fox’s face remains impassive, but I watch him grip his sword a little tighter as the Bear advances, brandishing a wicked-looking mace in one hand and waving to the crowd with the other. To my horror, I see that he’s wearing a pair of spiked brass knuckles.
‘Every tooth is from a different kill,’ Garrick crows. ‘He rips them from the jaws of the beasts as a momento.’
Sure enough, as I look closer, I realize that they’re not spikes protruding from each knuckle – they’re teeth.Bearteeth.
Nausea writhes in my stomach.
The Baron calls for silence once more. ‘The rules are simple,’ he says. ‘The fight is hand-to-hand combat, and it’s to the death.’
My heart is a fist, punching me repeatedly in the chest.
‘If the boy wins, he and the girl go free. And if he loses … Well, he’ll be dead.’
The crowd roar. It’s like being back at the third trial, when I snuck out of my tent to watch Fox fight Amaryllis. Except this time the spectators are rooting against him, and he’s not competing against a fellow Terrathian Heir but an eight-foot-tall bear-killer with a mace. Garrick is right. Fox doesn’t stand a chance – not if he’s going to fight like a Fidra. I think about what he whispered before the Baron’s guards dragged him away.
Whatever happens, promise me you won’t reveal yourself.
But how can he expect me to keep that promise after seeing his opponent? Is concealing our identities really more important than saving his life?
I have to do something. I have to act now, before Fox is beaten to a bloody pulp.
The coldness is already there, frost and fury crystallizing at my core. Slowly I allow it to spread as my eyes scan the crowd. I could freeze them where they stand. I could skewer the Baron with icicles, engulf the Bear inside a monstrous wave, drown Garrick in his own liquor-steeped blood. I could get us out of here.
But then, just as he did before, Fox stares straight at me and shakes his head.
A split second later the Baron claps his hands. ‘Fight!’
Fox turns to face his opponent and bows – customary before a duel. The Bear grins at him. They begin to circle one another, Fox testing his sword by swinging it through the air in a series of twirling arcs.
Please, I think helplessly.Please don’t die. I can’t watch you die.
