Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A guard escorts me to the arena before dawn. He doesn’t tell me his name, doesn’t look me in the eyes, and doesn’t loosen his grip when I stumble. His grip on my arm is too tight, his fingers digging into my flesh with bruising force, dragging me, forcing me to run to keep up with his long strides.
He’s rough, but not cruel. He’s pretending I’m not a person—just a task.
That’s fine. I can pretend too.
I pretend I don’t feel the bruises forming beneath his fingers.
I pretend the scythe strapped to my back isn’t a burden delivered by an angry goddess.
When we make it to the arena and he opens an old wooden door that groans on its hinges, I pretend the stale air thick with sweat and old violence doesn’t make my stomach turn.
I pretend that each step forward is my choice, not theirs.
And I make it truth, one lie at a time.
We enter a dimly lit antechamber where I’ll prepare for the fight.
How I’m supposed to do that, exactly, I’m not sure.
I expected to wait alone, but Ryot is already there when the guard drags me in.
His posture is deceptively relaxed, arms crossed over his chest, but his gaze sharpens when he sees me.
His eyes drop to the guard’s hand on my arm.
“Let her go.” His words are low, but they fairly boom in the small room.
The man’s fingers tighten on my arm, as if to prove a point. “I was ordered to bring her here, Ryot. Not even you can counter the archons.”
Ryot moves before I even register it. One second, the guard is at my side, the next, he’s slammed against the wooden frame of the gate. He releases my arm as his hands come up to claw at Ryot’s forearm, now pressing hard against his throat.
“She’s about to fight for her life, Pavir. She doesn’t need to waste strength fighting you, too,” Ryot growls.
The guard gurgles, his hands scrabbling, but he doesn’t beg. Ryot holds him there a beat longer, his jaw clenched, muscles taut like he’s still deciding whether to let go—or snap the man’s neck.
Finally, he releases him with a sharp shove.
Pavir stumbles but catches himself, shoving Ryot back in what’s meant to be a show of defiance. It only makes him look smaller.
“One of these days, Ryot, you’ll pay for that arrogance,” he spits. “You’re not as invincible as everyone thinks.”
Ryot doesn’t flinch. He levels him with a stare cold enough to freeze bone. “Get out.”
Pavir takes his time leaving, but despite his saunter he watches Ryot warily on his way out. The door creaks closed behind him, shutting us into this tunnel-like room. Candles cast shadows on the walls, casting an eerie glow on the stonework.
The wavering flame makes him look almost otherworldly—like something caught between light and darkness. Then he exhales sharply, stepping toward me from the shadows. The tension in his frame dissolves as he rolls his shoulders.
He gestures to a wooden table set up at the back of the room. I follow him warily—this man has a temper. I realize suddenly I don’t know him at all, not really, though the last few days have felt shockingly intimate.
“What’s your family name?” I ask him.
“Altor don’t have families,” he tells me, stoically. But there’s the smallest catch in his voice that tells me he’s lying. Not only to me, but to himself. “We forsake our family name in our unnaming ceremony.”
Unnaming ceremony … I file that away to learn about later, if I survive today.
He picks up a strap of leather sitting next to a bowl of oil. It’s clear he’s already worked with it. The leather is soft, shaped by the oil. He’s been here for a while—oiling leather until it’s this pliable is a long, tedious process.
Ryot reaches for my hand. I should pull away.
Instead, I let him take it.
His grip is firm, his calloused fingers brushing against my wrist as he turns my palm over and wraps the leather around and around, forming tight, precise layers across my knuckles. The motion is quick and smooth—he’s done this a thousand times before.
There’s no softness, but there’s care, and that unsettles me.
He shouldn’t care—and I sure as the Veil shouldn’t care that he does.
My jaw tightens as he starts wrapping the leather around my other hand. I should be thinking about the fight, about Maxim. About how I need to be faster, smarter, stronger. But instead, my mind keeps circling back to him.
I should still hate him for dragging me here, for stripping me away from everything I knew, but that old fury has dulled at the edges, softened by something I don’t want to name.
Maybe this was always meant to happen. Maybe the goddess put us both here, on opposite sides of a line neither of us had a say in crossing.
I break the silence. “Why are you helping me?”
A muscle in his jaw jumps.
“You kidnapped me,” I press, stepping closer. “You brought me here.”
He raises his eyes from my hands and looks at me. “You think I had a choice?”
I don’t know why I push him here, now, but I can’t help myself. “So, you’re just a puppet following orders?”
His eyes flash with temper he keeps carefully leashed.
His voice is low when he speaks, rough at the edges. “If I was only following orders, I wouldn’t be standing here. And you would be dead on the forest floor.”
The smart thing to do is to let it go. But that old defiance, the one that got me dragged here in the first place, won’t let me.
“Then why are you?” I demand, my voice quieter now, but no less sharp. “Why train me yesterday? Why help me now?”
He doesn’t look away this time. “Because I know what it’s like to lose everything.”
The words hit like a blow, not because they’re cruel, but because I can tell they’re true. And suddenly, we’re standing on the edge of something that, once acknowledged, we can’t back away from.
I swallow hard. “And is this your way of making up for it?”
Something lingers in his expression—regret? Longing? I don’t know.
“Maybe," he admits, voice quiet. And then he smiles, and the air whooshes out of me. “Or maybe I don’t want you to hate me quite so much.”
I blink, thrown off balance by the sudden softness in his face, the way that rare, unguarded smile transforms his sharp edges into something else.
“I don’t—" The words catch before they can fully form, and I clamp my mouth shut because I don’t know how to finish that sentence. I don’t what? Hate him? I should. I did. But right now, I don’t know if I can say it and mean it.
His smile fades, but the warmth lingers in his eyes. “That’s a start, rebel girl,” he murmurs.
He steps back, and the tension between us eases. “Now, when you enter the ring?—”
He stops, noticing the scythe strapped to my back for the first time, and a relieved sigh escapes. “You were able to get it recast quickly. I was worried when you didn’t bond to a more suitable weapon yesterday.”
I give a noncommittal nod. “Mmm.” I don’t tell him about the goddess, either.
His brow furrows, and confusion dances across his face. He steps further back, taking in my entire outfit. The chainmail that fits like a glove. The tunic, the leather pants. The black combat boots that lace up to my knees. All of it covered in the goddess’ scrawling script.
“Who recast it?” He traces the silver etchings with a cautious finger and then gestures to my chainmail. “This doesn’t look like Barek’s work.”
I wave it away. “It wasn’t Barek.” A cloud passes over his face. Is he … jealous?
“Fine,” he says it in a way that’s distinctly not fine. “Did your generous benefactor teach you how to use that thing?”
“Well, no, I?—”
His eyes flick to my scythe again, then back to me, his confusion settling into something more measured.
“Give it here,” he says, holding out a hand.
I hesitate. “Why?”
He doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a near thing. “Because right now, that’s a weapon in your hands. I’ll show you how to make it an extension of yourself.”
I pull it from the sheathe at my back with a shink , chills cascading down my spine at the sound.
He swings the scythe in a controlled arc, the curved blade catching the firelight as he moves with an ease I didn’t think possible. He gives a low whistle. “Whoever did it needs to replace Barek,” he says. “The work is incredible.”
He grips it in the middle and adjusts his stance. “You don’t stab with it. You carve.”
“You reap,” I tell him. “I’m a serf, remember? Quite good at that.”
He smiles back at me, chagrined, and then moves again, twisting his body as he swings. The air hisses as the blade slices through it.
“The same general idea applies to the human body. Swing in wide arcs,” he says, before handing it back to me. I take a wide stance, holding the scythe high over my head, as a gong sounds from within the arena. My pulse quickens.
The grin fades from his face. His gaze follows mine toward the gate, where the first hint of dawn is entering the dark room. Another gong sounds. I sheathe my scythe again and take a hesitant step forward.
“Leina,” Ryot calls out. I turn to him. “You’ve been blessed by the gods. I know it. You know it.” He nods his head toward the arena, toward the sounds of the men gathering there. “It’s time that they know it.”
His words unfurl in me like a flame, bright and warm and right.
I smile back at him and then turn toward the arena gate. A third gong strikes, heavy and final, and the air seems to still.
The weight of the scythe settles against my back, no longer a burden, but a promise. Behind me, Ryot doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t need to.
I take my first step onto the freshly raked sand of the arena.
It won’t be clean for long.