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Everything hurts. I haven’t been this thoroughly thrashed since I was a teen rookie in the army.

I try to push myself up, but my quaking arms won’t support my weight. The sand is wet under my face from blood and drool. Agony obliterates all thought except the feral need to escape.

The Knight’s shadow falls over me, blocking out the sun.

I manage to tilt my head back and peer up.

He raises his halberd, positioned for a downward strike that will split me from skull to sternum.

My hand tunnels through the sand to the earth underneath. I reach through bedrock, down to where the earth is molten and furious and old.

I grab that heat that matches my own fury and pull it upward with everything I have left. The ground trembles as the lava rises.

The crowd doesn’t notice, but the Knight’s blade wavers. His helm dips toward where my hand is buried in sand.

I’m going to destroy you even if I have to tear this arena apart or crack the palace foundations. You don’t get to kill me. Not today. I don’t care how many I have to kill to take you down.

I pull harder. The power responds to my steel will, pressure mounting like steam in a sealed container. Another second, and it will explode outward in a wave of destruction that will sink this entire arena into the lava.

But something pushes back.

A soothing presence settles the ground, an ancient sentience whose heart beats through the sand and stone, stripping it of my destructive fury.

The Onyx Knight isn’t just connected to the earth’s resonance. He is the earth. Or something so deeply fused with it that the distinction doesn’t matter anymore. That’s why he felt so wrong to my magic.

I’m not fighting a man. I’m fighting a being so ancient and powerful, he’s become a geological feature.

The realization rattles me to the bones.

The Knight’s blade starts to fall.

I see my reflection in the silver, see my future cut short by one final blow.

I’m sorry, Esme.

I don’t want to die.

I want to build a cottage in a little valley, grow a garden, and tend to chickens and pika. I want to spend nights loving under the stars and days laughing in the sun.

I believe in you. Just don’t die.

She’s right. If I die here, in front of Esme, she’ll always blame herself. That’s not the kind of life I want her to lead.

You’ve got to get off your ass right now!

The rage flooding my veins is white-hot, burning everything in its wake.

Tucking my chin to my chest and pushing with my wings despite the pain ripping through them, I somersault forward.

The crescent moon of the halberd buries itself in the sand, striking the packed ground underneath as I roll inside the arc of his swing. His black clad arms flank me, spikes pointed out. His chest plate reflects my bloody, sandy face back at me. And right above me is his unprotected throat. Chin forward, I watch him swallow, close enough to see his throat bob.

I surge to my feet, all my strength going into a final, upward stab.

My blade catches him under the gorget, punching through the gap between helm and chest plate.

Then I give it a yank.

The Knight’s head separates from his body and bounces off his broad chest with a heavy clang.