THANK VALOS FOR THE RAIN
He’s fucking limping.”
Urias swept his hair over his head, sweat mopping it backwards.
He stood from his chair in the Wraiths’ observation box in the arena, and paced.
The second Betrayer’s Serpent on his throat—the one binding him to Janos’s success—clawed his skin open.
Even it knew this was a terrible idea. “I told her not to fucking do this.”
“I don’t know what she’s thinking,” Esme whispered, chewing her nails.
She sat on the railing, peering down into the arena where Janos dragged himself to his post as his introduction song boomed.
Bal had already entered, wandering around his corner.
Every few seconds, the general attempted to use his ruined arm before the pain had him spearing his lip with his teeth to keep from crying out.
“Nobles, Wraiths, and favored lessers, I present to you one man Valos-blessed and another Muhnir-damned. Our final trial shall decide our new king!”
The assembled crowd raised a cheer. It was thinner than the one for the Valosia—Esme’s own fault—but not by much.
Mina and Gia sat in the front row, in a corner.
Gia’s classes had been cancelled for the trial, and Mina wasn’t letting Esme brave any more of her schemes alone.
Esme waved to her wife, who nudged her daughter and pointed for her to look up at Esme’s box.
Her little girl grinned before waving a silver banner at her—Bal’s color, of course.
Nobles in their suddenly fashionable neckerchiefs and stifling collars lined the rest of the front row, each with a daughter to sacrifice to whatever man tripped down from the arena in fifteen minutes.
“As this trial is to be for Muhnir, it is only fitting we send him a soul.”
The crowd bayed, as they always would, for blood.
“Today’s trial will be simple: a fight to the death.”
The crowd erupted. Esme’s heart sank.
“I gave him a blade,” Urias said, having snuck up on her. He stood, a wreck of a Wraith, just behind her. “I gave Janos a blade.”
“Which?” It wasn’t a surprise or a betrayal, and Esme wouldn’t act like it was.
“The one you got me for my birthday a decade back.” Urias sniffed, then nudged her aside and dropped next to her like a marble statue. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Esme said. She shook her head as attendants scurried to help each man out of his shirt. Isobel must not have been able to pay attention to anything that wasn’t rippling with muscle. “It’s a good blade.”
“What’d you give him?” Urias asked, his eyes settling on the almost-invisible bump in Bal’s waistband.
“The knife Omniel gave me,” Esme said, and hugged herself, only to find Urias’s hand spreading out on her spine. “It was the only thing small enough.”
“You don’t need to explain it, Bast,” Urias told her.
Esme finally brought herself to meet his gaze.
There was nothing they could do anymore.
Today, one of them would weep. They’d climb down from this box and clutch the corpse of the human man they were too stupid not to become attached to.
They’d scream and cry and curse. And tonight, they’d drag themselves to each other’s rooms and embrace each other with all their might.
No matter whose knife stabbed true, they would at least have each other again.
“I missed you,” Esme said, and squeezed his leg.
“I missed you, too.” Urias’s thumb swiped across her side.
“There shall be no weapons!” Isobel announced.
The crowd screamed at the prospect of seeing a man tear another to bits with his nails.
“There shall be no yields!”
Another round of shouts.
“And today, there shall be no human fighting!”
Esme and Urias flinched to attention. The crowd murmured at Isobel as a grin pulled at her cherry lips. Janos and Bal, shirtless and weeping blood, looked to each other with confusion.
“See, Muhnir is a creature of rage, of terror, of darkness and evil,” Isobel continued. “The men in this arena are but humans. They could never truly give the god what he was due. Wraiths, on the other hand…” Isobel tapped her lip and the crowd’s rioting blurred Esme’s vision.
She need not finish. Esme knew what came next.
“The heirs shall claim Wraiths to fight for them. They will battle until one of them sends the other’s soul to their abominable parent, either for a second or for an eternity.” Isobel shrugged easily, her gaze cutting to Esme.
Esme touched her throat. She was strong enough to do damage, but Balthazar wasn’t looking at her, his eyes roving instead around the weaker Wraiths behind her. She drew his attention and pointed to her chest.
He shook his head.
“I claim him!” Janos shouted, pointing up at Mak’kon, standing behind Isobel.
Mak’kon was old, he was powerful, and he was brutal.
He spoke sweetly in private, but he’d shred anyone Isobel told him to.
Not to mention, Isobel’s spell still coiled on his throat.
If Janos wasn’t king by sundown, Mak’kon would choke for all eternity on her goddess-forsaken deal.
He’d fight like his life depended on it because it did.
If Bal chose anyone but Esme, Janos would win this last trial. And if the competition ended in a tie, Esme didn’t know what the will would do. It had given Isobel such power already. She didn’t doubt that the queen’s word would work as tiebreaker.
She leaned over the railing and funneled her full attention at Bal, but no matter how many times his eyes met hers, they always flicked back to the other Wraiths.
The men were all larger than her, and Daph was wider when they dressed masculine, but Esme and Mak’kon had trained the other Wraiths.
Their height and muscle meant nothing when stacked against her century of warring.
And her century of warring meant nothing when stacked against Bal’s feelings for her.
“I claim—” The name lodged in Bal’s throat. His eyes flashed pure white. “Esme.”
Esme’s back snapped straight. She turned to catch Tagas’s eyes, shining blue in the back of the booth, and realized he’d compelled Balthazar to choose her.
“Do not lose.” Tagas’s words slithered to her on a command, but he didn’t need to compel her to his will. It was the same as her own.
Esme’s eyes flicked to Daphna, Padrian, and Samander, scattered around the box. They trained their bodies to be still, calm, but their eyes were alight. They’d scarified so much for this moment, for the chance to cut Janos’s tyranny off once and for all.
Esme nodded. “I won’t,” she said, then turned back to the arena.
Bal staggered as Tagas left his mind. Isobel hadn’t caught that bit of manipulation, thank Ojalla. She grumbled, allowing Esme to leave the Wraith box.
Esme shed her oversleeves; she’d need her arms free. A shadow ripped the hem clean off her dress and petticoats. If she and Mak’kon fought ten times, she’d certainly win four of them. If they fought ten times with her in this damn dress? Zero.
When she was as bare as she needed, she leapt from her box and pushed through the stands and into the arena, just as attendants ushered Bal out. He grabbed her at just the last second.
“I didn’t do that. I didn’t pick you.” His voice was rough with anger and he tried to pull her away with him, but she stood firm. He brought them nose to nose. Fear and fury swirled through his brown eyes, the emotions always linked, it seemed.
“Yes, you did,” Esme said, then pulled from his grip and turned her back on him. His sentimentality would not cost them the crown.
Up in the royal box, Mak’kon argued with Isobel, but their disagreement ended when she pointed at the arena. He had no other choice but to jump down. Janos and Bal were finally herded off to front-row seats in the corner, just beside Gia and Mina.
Esme and Mak’kon stood side by side in the sand. She didn’t dare look at him. The conversation she’d overheard in Isobel’s room, Mak’kon’s sorry tone, and his yearning eyes replayed in her mind over and over. She couldn’t let him win. She just couldn’t.
But his throat…
And not just him, but Urias, too. If she won today, they would both have lost forever.
“I won’t be easy on you,” Mak’kon seethed. “I can’t be.”
Esme finally faced him, and found not a scrap of the pleading man she’d been bellyaching over. His eyes were cool red, glamour thinned until it was almost translucent. The hot rush of his magic battered her legs as he gathered it.
“And neither will I be on you,” Esme told him. Some part of her ached, still. That would not do. “Of course, I know better than to expect anything from you.” She’d had to work up the hatred, work up the nerve to kill him.
The words made him stiffen.
“As you are such deplorable creatures, I need not tell you this, but…” Isobel slumped against a pillar, pleased as a pig. “Do your worst.”
The Bond sliced through Esme’s softness and her concern for Mak’kon and Urias, carving the command of violence into her bones.
Her hands flexed for a blade, and her heart galloped into a bloodlust that was not her own.
She blinked at the turn of her body against her, but it was not the lust to maim Mak’kon that had her rage peaking.
It wasn’t enough that Mak’kon was fighting for his life, Esme for this country. They had to make it bloody for the people watching.
“Can’t believe you left us for that,” Esme growled, sneering at Mak’kon’s bitch in the box, suddenly angrier at him than she’d ever been.
“Give it up, Es,” Mak’kon spat before lunging for her with his huge fists.
She moved out of his way easily. When he tried to back her into a corner, she ducked and his punch exploded the brick just beside her head. His finger bones snapped, crisp and loud, and Esme snuck up behind him.
“She uses you like a fucking weapon,” she said. “That’s all you are to her: a knife with a dick.” She kicked him into the wall so hard his head left a webbed dent. When he whirled to attack her, she was already out of range.