Chapter 51 #2
Serenna’s gaze dragged upward, searching for escape where none waited. Beyond the Coliseum’s crown, the sky stretched cloudless and cruel. And suspended in its vastness, Centarya hovered like a scar.
Once, she’d stood at the Spire’s peak with Vesryn, the floating campus spread below them. Once, she’d trained in those fighting rings hanging above the world, believing it all in preparation for a righteous war.
She knew better now. This theater revealed what the elves truly valued—violence curated into spectacle, perfected down to the stars-cursed sunlight.
And at the center of it all…
Serenna’s heart seized, a gasp caged behind her ribs.
Staked in the sand, Fenn lay splayed with arms yanked wide by rending restraints. Silver spears pinned his wings, driven through the membranes, anchoring him to the earth. Black blood seeped from a wound at his temple, streaking down to soak the golden collar at his throat.
His head scarcely lifted at her arrival. Yet across the hundred paces, his gaze found hers, the world narrowing to the span between them. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. His eyes said enough.
Serenna’s knees nearly buckled. She could fall here. Crumple into the sand. Beg Ayla for mercy. Offer herself in his place.
But she knew, deep down, that no plea would ever be enough. The crowd would only be sated with blood. And he’d already suffered for their amusement. Serenna’s throat closed. Rage and grief ignited together, burning hot and wild.
She ran for him.
Before she crossed half the expanse, movement stirred at the arena’s opposite tunnel. Two figures emerged. Then two more. A marching line of ten took shape, cloaked in livery stamped with sigils.
Champions sponsored by noble families.
Serenna skidded to a halt, grit spraying beneath her boots as she took in the elven-blooded advancing across the sand. These weren’t initiates she’d once trained beside. They were adolescents on the cusp of adulthood, the last softness of youth still clinging to their frames.
They fanned into a crescent. Behind them, warriors clad in the capital’s armor filed into the arena, closing into a gleaming ring.
Enforcers to ensure obedience.
The crowd shrieked with delight, the sound swelling until it smothered everything else. High in the sloped wall, a vent hissed, jetting fire in a narrow gout. A girl at the center thrust out her hand. Flame leapt to her palm, coiling up her arm.
At the pit’s edge, a soldier drove a pulse of force into the sand.
A hidden mechanism answered. Water frothed up from a buried basin, snaking through carved channels along the perimeter.
Several of the youths moved at once—hands rising to bend the current, dividing and hardening the streams into whirling blades of ice.
Wind followed, howling down from slits in the stone. One boy caught the gale in both palms and spun it tight, punching a cyclone skyward.
Serenna saw no summoned Essence or drawn weapons, only the power of the earth itself. Before she started closing the rest of the distance to Fenn, every muscle locked.
Her spine wrenched straight again, an unseen finger sliding down every bone. Gaze flying upward, she found Ayla enthroned, ruling the Coliseum. At her throat, she toyed with Serenna’s Starshard, turning it slowly between her fingers.
Skylash’s spark ignited. Power flooded Serenna’s veins in a rush she hadn’t summoned, control loaned back to her. For now. A gift wrapped in barbed threat, its bite already set, her magic poised to answer Ayla’s call.
Breath strangled, Serenna found Fenn again, and the horror split her clean through.
Ayla could reach inside her body and yank the strings, could steal the fingers that once cupped Fenn’s jaw and drive them into violence.
She could twist Serenna’s love into cruelty, her power into punishment—make her slit the throat she’d once kissed and force her to watch.
Serenna swayed where she stood, knees threatening to fold.
A hum converged, ripping her attention back to the arena. A spear of ice streaked across the sand, its glinting tip aimed for Fenn’s heart.
Serenna ran.
Her hand flew out, reaching for the earth. The frozen water sheared wide, spinning off course to slam against a stone wall in a spray of shards.
Bile scorched her throat with the knowledge that Ayla had allowed it—that mercy had been rationed, measured and granted on a whim.
Serenna’s feet pounded the sand as she closed the distance to Fenn, every stride a scream that she couldn’t voice.
She didn’t want to fight. Not for Ayla. Not for this blood sport scripted by tyrants and sanctified with applause.
And not against these half-grown children, already drilled to obedience, shackled to a realm they’d been taught to blindly revere. Just like her.
But the arena granted no room for grief. No margin for hesitation. Ayla had already stripped her of choice, staging the outcome.
As Serenna raced forward, the youths moved as one, their synchronized advance pulling the crowd’s roar higher.
A boy lifted his arms and fire climbed his limbs in molten ribbons.
Another clapped both palms forward and the air shrieked into a cyclone, sand lifting in a gleaming helix.
A girl pirouetted with a dancer’s poise, water trailing behind her in a liquid veil.
Their magic undulated in choreographed beauty, precision forged to dazzle. Serenna’s stomach knotted at the sight of bloodlines honed into weapons. Lives repackaged as investments and paraded for the capital’s delight.
Fire slashed across the pit.
Serenna’s fingers shot out, snatching the flames and driving the inferno skyward in a hiss. Wind followed, whipping across the distance. Serenna reached Fenn just as the first tendril lashed close.
She threw herself over him, palms braced beside his shoulders. His breath hitched with hers as lightning detonated. Sparks burst in every direction, a dome of charged air arcing around them, spitting and gnashing against the flung elements.
It wasn’t so much a shield as an instinctive refusal, her body itself crackling in defiance. Outside the barrier, the children stripped her summoned magic, yanking the lightning into their hands.
Serenna didn’t yield.
The current howled through her, a ceaseless torrent. Every vein trembled on the verge of rupture as the lightning ran wild.
To channel her power in an endless flow would scorch her alive. But to stop now meant death.
And that was no choice at all.
The balconies thundered with a wordless roar, their hunger fed with every blow.
Fire slammed into Serenna’s dome, blistering heat pressing close. Wind shrieked through, sand scouring her eyes, gritting between her teeth. Ice hammered in jagged spears, pounding relentlessly to pierce her storm.
Her sparks collided with them, but the strands were wrenched away as fast as she summoned them, torn from her control.
And yet Serenna spun the bombarding elements, hauling the onslaught into herself until her body became a conduit. Wind tangled with flame. Ice hissed to steam. Lightning fused as the tempest swelled, devouring every hurled strike rather than unleashing it.
The children attacked without mercy, but Serenna refused to see them through the storm’s fury. Refused to let their faces become enemies.
She saw only Fenn—pinned and bleeding, wings staked to the ground. His breaths rasped beneath her, ragged as her own. Each gasp became a count her body kept as she bent the raging elements around them.
Every lash she repelled gouged deeper into her strength. Every act of restraint dragged behind her like a chain, slowing what should’ve been savage retribution. Mercy leeched her power, grinding her down.
But mercy wouldn’t save them. Not Fenn. Not her.
A streak of ice punched through the elemental storm and tore into Serenna’s shoulder, ripping flesh open to the bone. She screamed and collapsed over Fenn, all breath knocked from her lungs.
The sand burned her knees. Wind flayed her skin raw. And yet, it was his touch she felt, barely a twitch of his talons against her arm.
Serenna’s gaze found his, and his eyes held hers, glowing steady even through the blood. For a heartbeat, the world stilled, a fragment of stolen time.
He nodded. The choice was hers. Fight or yield. Rise or fall. He would meet whatever end beside her.
Something inside Serenna ruptured. She didn’t breathe, she broke. A sob snagged in her throat as she bent close and brushed her lips to Fenn’s.
“I love you,” she gasped as she pulled back, a tear burning its way down her cheek.
Fenn’s face contorted, fangs bared as pain and fury flared in his eyes. “Stars slay me,” he rasped, the words fracturing hoarse. “I love you too, she-elf.”
Then, with a snarl, he thrashed against the shadows and spears holding him fast, fire erupting from his wing talons. “Let me burn for you,” he growled. “Better ash at your side than breath without you.”
Wild and desperate, he poured his fire into her lightning. Even pinned, he gave her everything.
Serenna drank the inferno in. Flames and sparks whirled around her as she folded heat and energy into her storm. Legs trembling, she pushed to her feet and rose over Fenn. Blood dripped from her shoulder, the pain hardening into wrath as lightning wreathed her fists in violet fire.
Her storm crackled, straining against the assault, her chest aching with the effort.
And then she let go.
Serenna reached into the tempest and ripped it apart, threads of lightning snapping loose. The protective dome collapsed around them. She seized the children’s fire, wrenched ice and wind, claimed every element raging wild.
The youths closed in. Serenna’s gaze caught on a girl with a braid pulled too tight, her hands shaking as she wrestled Serenna for control. A boy bared his teeth, but his eyes flicked to Fenn, uncertain.
They were no soldiers. Only children wrapped in livery, their magic paraded as purpose beneath the balconies. Nameless weapons dressed for display.
Serenna’s chest compressed until it felt ready to split. She didn’t want to hurt them. She only wanted to stop. To stop watching those she loved hurt. To stop being forced into survival that demanded she become something unrecognizable.
But choice had been stolen from her long ago.
Above, silks rippled between pale stone columns as cheers roared from the crowd. In that moment, Serenna wanted to burn this stars-cursed world—the jeweled parasites reclining in comfort, the tyrants like Elashor who spilled blood the way others discarded stale wine.
And Ayla, who’d forced her into this pit.
Serenna knew her sister would never let her hurl magic at the nobles, though every fiber in her body screamed to try. So she fixed her gaze on the children before her, every breath searing raw.
No choice remained.
Only one thing left she could destroy.
Them.