Chapter 13
There are levels of subterfuge between the three kingdoms. On the surface, we mind our own business. The Zo’s and Zem’s don’t ask why we have gem-melded cars beneath our castle, and we don’t ask why the Zem queen isn’t sleeping with her husband, or why the Zo king is hiding a son. Beneath that are other levels of secrets not worth prodding at. Secrets like how the Zem’s are filthy rich from inter-realm trading. The deepest level, however, is the silent, deadly warfare between our three kingdoms. It’s why I just killed a sixteen-year-old Zem informant disguised as a weapons janitor inside our barracks this morning. And why I’m going out tonight, disguised as King Rajim’s favorite mistress.
The Megadome could eat the coliseum for lunch and so could its spectators. The ceiling rivals the height of the fog outside, supported by four giant pillars representing the original four kings. Above that is the ballroom with its famous glass ceiling reserved for King’s Duel afterparties.
The crowd encircles me in walls of yelling red faces, like tiny glinting blare gems in the distance. This is the last duel of the regular season and the low-ranked Zem dueler across the ring has to fight me to qualify for the King’s Duel bracket.
“It’s time,” Liha says, funneling her power into my hands.
I allow her power to run through me, ignoring the sting in my eyes from the increasing nightmares making it hard to sleep lately.
Sleep, misery, same thing. Last night’s nightmares were particularly bad, swarming with black, oily creatures with no faces and poisoned diaries I can’t seem to leave alone.
Then there’s my other problem—the dark spirit who’s lingered around me the last week.
He’s even here now.
But if Liha is content to ignore him—which she is—then so am I.
Pink smoke flashes around me and my black leathers snap on. This pair has red stitching and a sheer material down my sides, showing off some skin. The crowd eats it up with roars of approval.
“You look like a death god,” Liha purrs.
The bell in the Megadome is more like a siren. It blares overhead and my opponent from Zem lifts her ridiculously bejeweled sword.
Inter-realm trading. Who would’ve thought?
I yank my mind away from the diary about to call Liha’s power, but my opponent is faster. Her blue smoke yanks my daggers out of my sheathes and pins them hilt-deep—one above another—into the duel post behind me.
Fuck.
“Good luck, Little Princess.” She smiles before charging, sword raised, and her eyes glinting a glassy, deadly blue.
She swings. I dodge.
She cuts down. I spin to the side.
She thrusts. I jump back, taking a slice to my arm. She’s fast, but luckily not Sorren-fast.
Six more desperate evasions, and a deep gash on my thigh later, my breathing is ragged.
Sorren was right. It’s a different rhythm here.
“Don’t forget to use me,” Liha says as I block the sword swinging for my abdomen.
The rules. Right. I call her power to my palms. Instead of pulling my daggers out, I dissolve them into nonexistence.
“Keep them in their own dimension, so she can’t disarm you again.”
“You want me to hold the power?” I ask. Hold it taut as a bow string for how long?
Liha knows what I’m really worried about. “If you don’t keep your daggers away from her, she’ll disarm you over and over again.”
My opponent closes in, her eyes flickering like a blue, living flame as she slices her blade toward my ribs again.
I summon one of my far-off daggers to my hand and thrust it up in the tender part of her under arm, where her red bejeweled leathers are not reinforced. A yell of pain escapes her lips, and when her eyes refocus on me, they are like two blue stones in her sockets.
Her lips curl to a sneer. “Kill her.” It’s her voice, but not.
My blood turns cold. “Liha—”
“Possessed,” she hisses.
Her movements are suddenly different, belonging to her spirit. Her head tilts right before she connects her boot to my chest. As I’m thrown backward, a wave of invisible force crashes down on me like an avalanche. My back and head hit the mat so hard my ears ring and the Megadome darkens.
For the first time, I’m witnessing the power of a possessed caster.
“Nizzara!” Liha’s voice is panicked, but also distorted as if I’m trapped beneath layers of invisible snow, crushing my ribs and pressing in on my head. “Possessed casters are not bound to moving magic! Their power is—”
My opponent bends over me smiling, while I’m pinned beneath her unyielding, invisible force. The audience is a riotous monster, screaming above the invisible substance I’m trapped under.
“You have to kill her. It’s the only way.”
Even I’ve heard the stories. Once a caster is too far possessed only beheading can end the abomination.
“I will not!”
“Nizzara—”
“I’ll cut her vessel off.”
“That doesn’t work if they are too far gone. I know you don’t want to kill, but she will kill you if you don’t.”
My opponent grabs my arm and buries her sword through my shoulder.
A scream erupts from me, her blade slicing and twisting through sinew that’s still healing. Boiling rage rises in my neck and ears as it always does. This time, though, Liha’s power is still coursing through me.
It’s like mixing two highly reactive substances and expecting them not to explode.
My opponent withdraws her blade, making a wet, metallic sound then stops, smiles, and thrusts it back into the same spot, her power still pinning me to the mat. Blinding pain darkens the world around me. The strange, golden spirit flickers from a distance, its light, so bright, speckled with dark spots, bleeds across the stands.
“She’s trying to hide that she’s possessed!” Liha yells in my head. “That’s why she’s dragging this out.”
I grit my teeth and release Liha’s power, trying to curb the flow as it attempts to take over.
I can still see the bloody mat, the arena, my opponent, but I’m blinded by the intoxicating feel of this kind of power.
Pink smoke erupts high and wide, yanking her sword from my shoulder and hurtling it through her own, so hard and fast her feet blow off the ground.
When her crippling power releases from me, I rise, to see her impaled by her own sword, half of the hilt buried into her shoulder.
“I knew you’ve been holding back,” Liha says, immensely satisfied.
Self-loathing hits me in waves.
I succumb to the rage and power so easily.
Liha’s power knots and pulls tight inside, still holding my daggers in separate dimensions. I recall my daggers, sheathing all but one, allowing the last one to materialize in my hand. The intoxicating flow of power lessens, but the pain searing through my shoulder and torso does not.
My rage doesn’t either.
I glide toward my opponent”s half-conscious body and bend down to her level. I need to see her eyes. They flicker back and forth from stone-like orbs back to eyes. Back to stones.
She grabs my neck in a vice grip, nails digging through my skin. Blood pulses in my ears like lava about to burst. Gold-and-black tendrils erupt through the floor begging to be tapped into. It tickles my fingers like—
I bury my knee into her gut and stab my black dagger up and under her arm, ripping and twisting. She crumples to the mat with a scream, her eyes going soft again.
Thousands of riotous fans scream, but the sound of metal slicing through blood and muscle is somehow louder.
I withdraw my blade, wrench her fingers backward, and slice her middle digit off.
A screeching sound rips through the air, her spirit slithering toward me as soon as her finger is fully severed.
“You will pay for that. In this life or another. You will paaaayyy.” It shrinks and withers before spiraling out of the Megadome.
My opponent’s sword protrudes from her shoulder at an angle.
I almost killed her.
For the tiniest moment, I’d aimed for her chest, planning to thrust that sword through her beating heart. I swear I’d heard her pulse thudding—pointing me to it.