Chapter 37
thirty-seven
There was an opening just below the seating tiers before the thick stone that outlined the arena began, possibly over fifty feet tall. There, I could just make out the woman who was speaking—at first, I thought into a microphone, but then I realized she was just speaking into the palm of her hand.
She was encouraging people to make their bets because the match was about to begin any second, but they’d run into some technical difficulties.
Lyall was talking to the queen standing on his other side, and the other fae who had comments to make about every other “player” in the arena, and I kept turning to look at the other side of the box, waiting for Rune to show up.
He didn’t, though.
Instead, I saw him in that opening, walking just past the commentator, who stopped whatever the hell she was saying when he passed, and turned and said something to him, something nobody could hear.
My heart stood perfectly still. It was very easy to tell that it was Rune because he was the only one here with dark hair and black clothes, so he was pretty noticeable even from a distance.
My fingernails tried to dig into the stone as I watched him talking to that woman, and then she turned back to the arena, and Rune went farther ahead, disappearing from my view.
“What’s going on down there, Lyall?” I asked—impossible to help myself.
He said, “Nothing Rune can’t handle. Just some trouble with the Hollow.”
I looked at him, trying to see if he meant what he said, if he believed that as much as he believed that he was going to enjoy the coming slaughter, and it seemed like he did. There was no hint of worry on him that I noticed, and that did calm me down, though not much.
So, I focused ahead, tried to see Rune through that opening as my instincts rioted inside me.
People were still cheering when the ground groaned like a real animal, worse than the giant had. It took everyone by surprise, not just me. My muscles locked down, and my eyes were on the muddy ground of the arena, expecting it to split open any second, when…
“What is he doing?!”
Lyall said that.
Lyall pointed toward the right, at the opening where the commentator was, where I’d last seen Rune.
Where Rune was now pushing something I couldn’t even see, possibly some kind of magic, and his hands were completely covered in shadows as he stood atop the stone railing near a pillar.
For a second, it seemed to me the entire place held their breath.
In the next, a deafening boom cracked through the air like thunder splitting the sky, and the entire arena began to shift.
My eyes were on Rune. His darkness spread from his hands, and momentarily covered his entire body. It disappeared quickly, though, so we all saw it when he slipped off the top of the smooth stone, not on the other side, into that opening under the seats, no—but toward the arena.
He slipped and rolled on the smooth stone once, and then he was falling right into the arena where the giant and the other players were.
If there was any possibility at all for me to grow wings and fly to him in that moment, I would have. Instead, heat crawled up my insides together with the cold like ice shards that were suddenly piercing my organs, my gut, with so much strength I almost doubled over.
But I refused to move at all, even blink until I saw Rune get himself together as he was still falling, then somehow landed on his feet right inside the massive stone to the giant’s side.
My God, they were there, twenty feet apart, and the crowd was cheering and the ground was groaning, shaking with twice as much strength as I watched but could do nothing at all to stop this madness.
Massive roots— actual roots broke through the ground around the edge of the Hollow, pushing Rune toward the middle.
They slithered upward like snakes, curling in thick, interwoven arcs, and stretched all the way to the top of the smooth stone, wrapping themselves around the pillars that held the seats over the opening from where Rune had fallen.
Light dimmed as shadows bled across the sky, drawn in by whatever magic this place brimmed with.
“No,” I thought I said, and my hand was somehow around Lyall’s arm, and with the other I pointed at Rune. “Lyall, stop the game. Get him out of there— now .”
Even my voice had transformed, but right now I didn’t care about how I sounded. I cared about getting Rune out of there. Right now, he was looking up at those roots that were still climbing the stone, trying to get closer, but the ground kept rising and pushing him back.
“What the hell, bastard—what the hell!” Lyall was saying through gritted teeth, his eyes on Rune, too.
“Just get him out! Get him?—”
“I can’t !”
My knees shook. Rune turned toward us, and I could have sworn he was looking right at me, even though he was too far away for me to see his face clearly.
“What do you mean, you can’t ?!”
“The Hollow has locked itself in—nobody gets in or out now. Nobody .”
He sounded panicked. He sounded terrified, and for a man like him to be afraid? That’s when I knew things were really serious right now.
And it was only just getting started.
The floor of the Hollow trembled next. It cracked open like someone had just slammed invisible hammers all over it, everywhere at once.
“Lyall,” I breathed because Rune was down there with a fucking giant.
Rune was inside that arena that was still splitting open while the giant cheered, and the crowd cheered, and everyone fucking cheered like this was a good thing.
“I can’t…I can’t do anything to stop it, Nilah. I can’t—it’s the Hollow,” Lyall said.
“And you’re the prince! ”
He looked at me, eyes wide and dark, lips parted, terrified for real. “Nobody can intervene once the Hollow activates. It won’t allow it.”
My knees shook. If I hadn’t been resting my weight on that stone railing, I’d have collapsed on the floor long ago.
Lyall’s words spun in my mind like a fucking tornado, and my eyes were on Rune, who was no longer looking at us, and no longer trying to get close to the walls covered in roots.
He was moving farther away from the giant instead, toward the other six players on our side of the arena, his back turned to us, his steps steady even though the ground continued to shake.
“It’s okay,” Lyall whispered then. “It’s fine. He’ll win. It’s Rune—he’ll survive this.”
He’ll survive this.
The storm inside me paused.
“He survived so much worse. He’ll survive this, too. He’ll win the game.”
My eyes closed. Memories rushed through me—specifically one of Rune when he was sitting across from me at a half rotten table somewhere in the Neutral Lands, telling me about the different creatures who lived in Verenthia. Telling me about dragons and giants.
They’re just big, that’s all. They don’t possess any kind of active magic. Fae can kill them easily.
Those had been his exact words if my memory was anything to go by. He said it himself that fae can kill giants easily, and he was fae, wasn’t he?
A fae who didn’t have access to his full magic, true, but a fae nonetheless.
My heartbeat slowed down. Air moved into my lungs with more ease .
Pitch black obsidian shards began to explode out of the cracks in the ground in the arena, some small, some as big as the giant’s foot—and I was surprised. I didn’t even have to hold back a scream.
Rune is going to survive. There simply wasn’t another option.
The Hollow—whatever the hell that even meant—pulsated with magic, basically sealing Rune and everyone else down there in a tomb.
The crowd was already cheering again, twice as excited now that they’d witnessed Rune’s fall. Nobody tried to help him or called for the queen to stop the game—nobody. They just cheered.
Then Rune looked up at the box—at me again. Not at Lyall or the crowd, but at me. I felt his eyes on mine even if I couldn’t see them, and I hoped he felt mine, too. I hoped he knew how much I believed that he was going to somehow beat that giant, and win .
He wasn’t going to just survive this—Rune was going to fucking win.
For a moment, everything else faded away. The screams, the stomping of the giant, the hollow beat of the drums that suddenly began to thunder through the air.
Rune was standing there alone beneath a darkening sky, locked in with a creature more than three times his size—and all I could do was watch.
Lyall brought me the glass of water I’d left on the armrest of the chair and promised me that I’d feel better if I drank. I did, just to get him off my back, but the water made no difference.
I stood there with him by the stone railing, holding onto it whenever I thought my legs would give up on me as I watched the fight with my heart in my throat—because, yes, it had already begun, and it was more brutal than I could have ever imagined if I lived another hundred years.
The Hollow pulsed with noise. The audience leaned forward in their seats, their golden eyes fixed on the arena below, where the players fought for their viewing fucking pleasure.
Meanwhile Rune stood at the far edge of the field covered in obsidian shards.
He moved from one side to the other but didn’t engage in the fight, not yet.
That’s why I was still breathing semi-normally, I thought.
Even though he was far away I could tell that his every muscle was coiled tight, his senses sharp.
He hadn’t reached into his shadow pockets to draw out those swords of his yet—because he would.
He had to. There were no other weapons he could use down there, only the ones each player had carried in themselves.
He’s a sword maker. He has a lot of swords, I reminded myself, words Rune had said to me himself once.
The other six players had already charged the giant, their battle cries swallowed by the roaring crowd.