Chapter 54
Shit. That’s what I’m in. Deep shit. I infiltrated the Zem castle disguised as a guard, slipped Kathreen an illegal sleep potion, locked her in her ridiculously decorated room, and went about talking to people, using her insufferable nasal tone. All according to plan. What wasn’t part of the plan was when King Tigous showed up with his sons who have the uncanny ability to sniff me out. Hence the roadblock I hit a month ago. When I sat next to one of the little brats at dinner, I couldn’t shake the feeling he was seeing right through my mind. Oh, and there’s the fact that the sleeping potion was wrongly labeled—the reason my father banned them in the first place—and Kathreen is dead.
The Megadome, when a level-six duel is going down, is something to behold. But the Megadome during the King’s Duel Tournament is utter chaos. Not a single person is in their seat, which is probably for the best, because there’s way more bodies than seats.
The noise is almost painful.
“Are you ready?” Liha asks.
I nod. “Are you?”
She feels different. Less vibrant in my sense, even her voice has lost that octave of excitement and sass.
“I will not fail you,” she says, and that response is enough to make me worry.
“What’s wrong?”
“He’s getting worse, and he’s losing time.” She pauses. “His spirit is draining both of us.”
From the competitors’ tunnel, I look to the royal boxes that hug the duel ring. Father wasn’t in my dressing room. Halix was. But even I am surprised at the piercing sadness I feel when I don’t find him in the audience.
He has never missed a duel. Somehow, it hurts just as much as the whip.
As if Liha catches my train of thought, she says, “He is trying his best to stay alive so he can keep you alive. He had a small window to—”
“I don’t care,” I snap, but it’s all hurt.
She nudges my cheek. “He loves—”
“Don’t.” I don’t have the capacity right now, not when I’m in line to duel.
Both me and the infantry soldier from the preliminaries were given a rank of zero. That means we get the shittiest schedule, having to wait for all the other duels to finish before we get our turn, and then it flips, and we will be the first set of duelers to fight again—with only two days of rest between duels.
Kazem has the highest rank of four. He’s dueling now, then he gets a full week off before re-entering the ring. A week while the lower-ranked duelers kill each other.
The audience screams and cheers as Kazem’s ridiculously showy sword—decked out in red gems—slices his opponent’s head clean off in the first round.
Every duel after his ends in a similar fashion. Only one duel does not end in death, but that’s because a Zo nobleman cut off his opponent’s vessel hand, which is an immediate win, even if it’s considered extremely tasteless. If a dueler uses this tactic more than once or twice, they get booted from the circuits. Regardless, the audience cheers for any bloodshed, esteemed or not.
My nerves feel like live wires buzzing beneath my skin as I wait my turn to enter the single duel ring centered on the floor, at the bottom of the Megadome. I’m dressed in a new pair of leathers with black spikes down my forearms, each spike tipped with gold.
When my time finally comes, I slide between lush black ropes to—ironically—face the same infantry soldier from the preliminaries.
“I will not fail you,” Liha whispers again, but it sounds as if she is reassuring herself more than me.
The Zarr infantry soldier squares his shoulders and grins at me.
That golden black spirit has been hovering nearby from the moment Kazem beheaded his own soldier.
Facing my opponent, I clutch my midnight-black sword. Training with Dae and Sorren these last two weeks have given me some more confidence. Although here, squaring up against the soldier in front of me, that confidence is shriveling.
From up in the rafters a cold, dark presence swirls and I smile.
Dae.
When the siren blares, I snap Liha’s power out of me like lightning, yanking the soldier’s own sword from his hand and burying it into the mat between us. So deep that with a good casting power—or even his bulking arms—it will take him a second or two to get it out.
Just enough to get a start on him.
Liha fades even more as soon as the power leaves us.
“Nice work,” she says.
The infantry soldier resorts to throwing daggers from hidden pockets as I charge him. Now this, I can handle.
I duck, spin, and slide under and around, moving faster than I ever have. When I close in, he’s reaching for his sword. I throw all my body weight and momentum into a roundhouse kick to his jaw, shit-brawl style.
His head bounces off my boot.
On his flight backward, he calls his sword with a spray of red smoke, and the bolt of steel jerks out of the mat and into his hand.
“Keep him on the defense!” Liha yells, but the sound is soft in my mind.
I drive my sword toward his, using my core to power it up. When my steel hits his, the clang reverberates through the lower bowl of the Megadome and I come alive, feeling the rush and flow of violence.
His eyes widen slightly before he strains, pushing his sword up against my own. He sidesteps, letting his sword go slack, and I stumble forward, but a stream of red smoke jets toward my feet—
Stuck.
My boots are fixed to the mat.
I jerk.
My toes wiggle.
My boots don’t.
He chuckles. “Haven’t seen that one before, have you?” He swipes his sword for my neck.
I duck. Liha pools her power into me. A trail of pink unlatches my boot buckles, and she pales even more in my sense.
He thrusts for my chest this time, and I backbend out of my boots. I swing, duck, and thrust, meeting each attack.
He tries to barrel through any open window with blunt manpower, but I hold my own. Hope blooms in my chest.
Until he shoots a pillar of red smoke for my sword hand and yanks it out of my grasp with power I’ve never met in level-five duel rings.
When he uses my own sword to slice a deep gash up the inside of my thigh, I realize this whole time he’s been putting on a show. Taunting me.
He circles my sword back around and slices my abdomen with a deadly gaping tear across my navel.
I lurch forward grabbing my stomach. Blood spills from my gut. Blinding pain hits me the same time the shock does. My insides are slipping out, and my vision flickers.
My knees hit the mat.
“Nizzara!” Liha screams somewhere distant inside my head. Her power is weaker, but it’s building as if she’s pouring everything she has, into me. “Kill him!”
Gold and black eclipse the stands, blinding me from seeing anything else, calling to me.
“I will not!” I growl through the pain, as warm, wet things slide against my hand at my abdomen, and the amount of blood pouring down my leg tells me he’s struck my artery.
The hulking soldier looming over me starts to disappear behind black spots. Blood is gushing out and, if I move my hand from my stomach, things will slide out.
He throws my bloodied sword down in front of my knees to mock me.
“Use me.” Liha’s voice is a whisper. “Take what’s left, my friend. And end him.”
“I will not.”
Something tells me if I use what Liha has pooled into me, it will end her. I tilt my head up to see the soldier’s smug expression.
I clutch my sword, dig its tip into the mat and use it to stand. If I am to die, I will not die on my knees.
My opponent raises his sword to deliver the death blow—aimed right for my neck—when I hear his dark, velvet voice.
Dae is standing behind the soldier, taller, bigger, and infinitely more lethal. “Move that sword again, and you die.”
The soldier spins, looking for the invisible voice. A distraction.
The soldier spins back toward me, and Dae repeats it again, this time frost cracking across the mat.
When I swing my sword for the soldier’s hand, it’s anything but pretty. A scream breaks from my lungs, from the blinding pain, but I hit true and hard.
His right hand drops to the mat.
A spirit screeches out from around the infantry soldier, now visible without their caster shield. When the victory siren shrieks from somewhere it sounds soft and distant as my vision blackens.
My eyes open for a fleeting moment. My cheek is pressed against the mat, the Megadome tipped on its side, growing darker and darker.
Dae is at my ear. “Don’t you dare fucking die.”