Chapter 21
E xcited cries and energized murmurs rose up throughout the makeshift dirt-caked arena, teasing the treetops with an anticipation the forest and its inhabitants seemed to have not known for some time. Wooden bench seats, erected in haste, lined up in bleacher-like fashion around a cordoned-off enclosure and groaned beneath the bouncing bodies of exuberant lycans. Those unlucky enough to grab a front-and-center seat were apparently unperturbed by that fact and still roared their enthusiasm from the ever-pressing crowd spreading out from the arena in a burgeoning bulge.
Bronze focused on none of it. It was all white noise eclipsed by the pounding truth bombs that Clara had dropped on him right before he’d entered the ring.
There was no metal anywhere in the lycan lands. And wouldn’t you know, his little viper princess had been spot-on about one thing: she had tried to tell him earlier that certain things didn’t agree with their lycan makeup. He had surmised as much about electricity, which seemed relatively harmless if not annoying, but fucking idiot that he was, he’d missed her use of the plural. Things. He’d never bothered to ask what other things.
It had something to do with their blood, she’d informed him hastily as she hid his weapons in his room and all but dragged him by his bicep toward the practice field. To his astonishment, lycan blood contained no metal, which was why consistent exposure to metal didn’t agree with them. It didn’t harm them, per se, but over time, the contact suppressed their lycan natures and prevented them from shifting into their wolf forms.
It all made fucking sense now as Bronze stood at one side of a dirt circle and peered at the crowd of mismatched lycans. There was no metal anywhere, not even on their clothing. No zippers or metal fasteners of any kind. It was why there was such an assortment of old-world linen tunics and leathers mixed with heavily modern drawstring khakis, vinyl, and whatever the latest polyester trends were. There were male lycans in baseball hats and T-shirts sitting next to long-skirted females in animal-hide cloaks. All at once, other pieces he’d filed away as odd began to surface. The strange black blades of the kitchen knives moving across cutting boards. The stone hearth of a stove combined with the notable absence of a proper aluminum ventilation hood.
The knives hadn’t been made from some well-patinated carbon steel. They were ceramic, just like the wristwatches he saw peeking out beneath the chefs’ coat sleeves. Likewise, the few weapons he had seen on the king’s guards were either carved stone, whips, wood, or bone. He’d just never bothered to wonder why.
And then there was the giant blinking light of a newsflash that Bronze was still kicking himself over not realizing. The king’s stronghold. The thing had the look of an impenetrable stone fortress, and Bronze took for granted that, as they all resided in the Fucking Granite State, the materials they’d used were surely granite as well, a stone rich in aluminum and alkali metals.
Wrong. So incredibly wrong.
Limestone. The whole place was built from limestone and cement mixed with the stuff. And limestone, so fucking unfortunately, was a non-metallic mineral.
In short, he was completely cut off from the earth’s metallic elements, which meant he couldn’t regenerate his celestial powers or call on them to manipulate metal in any way.
Which further meant that he was essentially no more powerful than a mortal.
A mortal who was still battered and bruised and now took up a very prestigious spot in a game where he had to best two warrior lycans without his metallic armor, angel fire, wings, or weapons.
Fuck.
King Halpin stood from a raised seat and held his arms up wide, silencing the crowd instantly. Clara sat by his side and kept volleying her gaze from one competitor to the next in worried assessment.
Bronze hadn’t spilled the beans to her directly, because what kind of champion wanted to broadcast their weaknesses to the one they were about to fight for? But it was in her eyes, the way they swept across the playing field and never stayed too long in one place, as if searching for a way out . . .
Yeah. She knew something was up. He’d learned the hard way just how brutally sharp her perception was.
“We are here today to bear witness to the first of the Betrothal Games. This trial, like the others to come, shall be one that exemplifies the first credo of our monarchy.” Beside the king, Pascal unfurled a burgundy banner decorated with moonstone embellishments. In the center of the tapestry flowed swirling opalescent text proclaiming, “With power, we run.”
Running. Shit. His tired and barely healed calf tightened further in protest.
“I have devised a course that shall test the endurance and speed of each of these chosen competitors: Lord Raff, leader of the western lycans; his second, Sir Byron; and Bronze, the demigod.” His name was underlined with a mouthful of scorn usually reserved for tax collectors and door-to-door pest control salesmen. “The objective is simple: retrieve the prized relic of our monarchy from the anointed table in under sixty seconds.”
Wait . . . the relic was here ?
It was a testament to just how fucked up his situation had become that Bronze had entirely missed the damn thing sitting right in front of him. Sure as shit, though, the very moonstone relic he’d last gotten a good look at in the den’s clinic sat nestled within a perfect plum-colored velvet cushion on a small table directly in front of where the king and Clara sat.
Bronze and the two other competitors stood at the far sides of the arena. Lord Raff and all his two-hundred-and-seventy-five pounds of silent ego anchored the left position, eyeing both the relic and Clara. The male didn’t pump his fists or work the crowd for applause. The rank boredom in his expression was tinged with far too much smugness for Bronze’s liking, and that was saying something. To Bronze’s right was Byron, who had already squatted down into a wrestler’s stance, right leg behind him and arms out front, ready to tackle and torture whatever got in his way. And then there was Bronze, who was operating at an appallingly poor percentage even by mortal standards.
That relic was practically glowing at him, begging him to come snatch it up and take it far away from anyone and anything who didn’t have a one-way trip to the Empyrean on their bucket list. All he had to do was run faster than two lycans—two bulky lycans who, on a good day, would only be slightly slower than Bronze.
Unfortunately, it was a far cry from being a good day.
Bronze surveyed the field. Were they just supposed to run across the dirt and grab the thing? Or was the objective to all arrive at once and wrestle it free? If that was the case, he’d fail before he’d even get his rear foot off the ground.
But why the hell would the king have them just doing relay races? Wasn’t there more to a lycan’s endurance than that? Or was it the speed that mattered, not the distance?
Dammit. He didn’t have time to figure this shit out.
The king turned over an hourglass, and as soon as the pink sand began to funnel through the glass waist, a horn blared.
A blond blur overtook Bronze’s periphery. Byron was jetting across the dirt, elbows bent at ninety degrees, palms flat, thumbs up, arms poised to pump and propel him toward the relic. Raff bolted as well but took a different route, one that carried him away from the soil spray of Byron’s kickbacks.
Bronze should move. He needed to move , but none of this made any sense.
Think, asshole, and do it fast.
Byron was already halfway across the arena, his stride confident and his momentum gaining. Bronze jogged forward, hoping the action would at least shake loose the thing that was bothering him so much about the way the ground looked. Beneath his feet, the packed earth was solid and easy to get traction on, but up ahead, the soil seemed . . . different.
Bronze glanced at the hourglass. One-third of the sand had fallen already, soon to be half. He picked his heels up and pushed against the screaming in his leg from the gift the coyote left behind.
The explosion catapulted a plume of dirt high above him. Debris dimmed the sun’s meager offerings through the partly cloudy sky.
Bronze skidded to a halt, nearly twisting his ankle. “What the fuck?”
Byron had been thrown back ass over tea kettle, his legs spiraling in a cartwheel midair worthy of a Cirque du Soleil acrobat. He landed a few feet behind Bronze with an unceremonious thud, while Bronze and Lord Raff had both taken a knee and covered their heads against the spray of soil and stones. Throat-choked grunts tore out of Bronze as more debris scraped trenches into his skin.
Hushed silence settled over the arena as the shock of their situation began to sink in.
Explosives. In the field. But how was that possible? Every bomb he knew of, and many he and his brothers had fucking made over the years, required metal detonators or, at the very least, metal casings.
Byron’s low groans carried over the settled dust. Bronze risked a glance back and was surprised to see the male still had all his limbs attached. Oh, there was plenty of blood, and the lower half of his right leg was definitely facing the wrong way, but if the dude had stepped on something he shouldn’t have, there wouldn’t be a leg at all. Unless . . .
The sand had cleared the hourglass’ halfway point now. Then Bronze locked gazes with Lord Raff, who not only observed the time as well but was also a good twenty feet from the relic compared to Bronze’s fifty.
Both males pushed to their feet, but neither of them moved. The field was a hot mess of debris and churned earth. If there was something buried under there liable to blow, there was no way to tell based on how the ground had been impacted from the first explosion. But the relic was still there, sitting on its little velvet fainting couch like the world hadn’t just blown up within the three-rail horse fence perimeter they were trapped in.
Bronze lifted one foot, more to test the vibrations in his leg than to see where he could safely put it down again, when a sharp glare nearly blinded him.
Huh?
Up ahead, Lord Raff was toe-stepping it from one foot to the next, making slow but sustained progress toward the relic.
Shit! Bronze was torn between forward momentum and the clarity that had eluded him since he’d first gotten there, the answers dancing just out of reach like a snowflake.
Snowflake . . .
Snow . . .
Freshly packed snow. A reflective surface . . .
The cogs clicked into place with a jarring clank . Bronze squatted down and Very. Fucking. Carefully. blew on the dirt that concealed what had been winking at him. The small circular glass object his puffs revealed caught the last trace of light through the clouds, blinding him with a whole lot of nostalgia he hadn’t tapped into since after the mortals’ World War II.
A glass landmine. A one hundred percent non-metallic explosive that hadn’t seen its heyday since 1945, if he had to guess. Completely undetectable to metallic sensors and sensitive as fuck to any sort of friction.
Byron hadn’t stepped on it full out or he’d be in pieces, but he must have disturbed it in some way. Perhaps some dirt he’d kicked up behind him had landed on it and had been just enough to detonate the thing.
Well, that was one sick way for the king to get around the lycan race’s giant handicap. It also made Bronze realize just how high the stakes were and just how far Clara’s father was willing to go to secure his interests.
Up ahead, Lord Raff had closed in on the table. Another leap or so would see the asshole holding Bronze’s prize. If the lycan was bold enough to risk the jumps.
Bronze scanned the field, trying to hunt out any other signs of where the mines might be buried, when his mind snagged on what he’d mentally noted earlier.
Friction.
The mines needed friction to detonate. The fences surrounding the mines, however, were made of white PVC. Smooth. Friction less.
Only a third of the sand was left in the hourglass.
With his thighs burning, he squatted as deep as his hamstrings and glutes would take him and leaped several feet to his right, where the nearest fence panel was. Thank the mages for his well-callused hands, because those puppies snagged on the top rung. With a painful effort, he twisted himself up to his feet and balanced the tips of his toes on one of the five-inch square posts. Then, like a shot, he was sprinting. His long legs stretched in great smooth strides as he ran, unstoppable, from post to post, gaining momentum with each leap. The PVC was a flush touchpoint for his toes, propelling him and his freakishly long body high and far along the arena’s perimeter until he was within arm’s reach of the relic. With a final vault, he flew through the air and landed precariously on top of the small table.
Between his legs, the relic lay cuddled up in its velvet bassinet, none the wiser.
And Lord Raff was standing right in front of it.
Bronze squatted down and quickly gripped the curved moonstone, which had grown warm from the earlier sun, then batted the lycan’s hand away right before the final grain of sand fell through the bevel.
In true mob fashion, the crowd threw up a roar.
Even though his chest burned from the exertion and his legs were keeping him upright by sheer force of will, Bronze couldn’t resist holding the pose for just one more moment.
He jutted his hips forward and smiled. “You know, if you wanted to grab my dick and compare parts, you could have just asked. I’m always up for a modeling session. Intimidation and inspiration are two sides of the same coin. I won’t be offended if you haven’t figured that out yet.”
It was telling to see exactly what kind of ruffled Lord Raff truly got. He wasn’t the flushed-in-the-face type, nor did he go all swole-bro and punch stuff. The mask of cold calm that settled over his countenance spoke of promised retribution but clearly at a time of his choosing and under his preferred circumstances.
It was a warning Bronze knew well, one he had bestowed upon many demon charmers. Chilling to see it reflected back at him.
“You talk too much,” Lord Raff said evenly. “I will endeavor to fix that.”
“Take a goddamn number, but do it after you fix your boy up. Oh, wait, I forgot. You have no problem sacrificing your own people for the greater good. My bad.”
“Bronze!” Clara’s desperate wail pierced through the crowd and nearly punched a hole in his chest as well. She was running down the short staircase that led from her perch, her white hair and cloak billowing out behind her. Tears ran in chaotic tracks down her dust-smattered cheeks, but the smile that beamed his way was bright enough to patch up every aching part of him, starting with the bruised muscle right in the center of his chest beating faster with every step that took her nearer to him. “Bronze!”
Damn, he loved hearing his name on her lips. After two days of radio silence, he realized what her voice actually did to him and how darkly it dimmed his day when she withheld it.
He slipped the relic’s leather strap over his neck and rose to his feet, intending to leap back onto the fence post so he could climb over and get to her.
Too many things happened at once. Her foot met the bottom step on a roll that stole his breath and that of every person in the stands. Her balance went next, pitching her, and then his heart, over the side of the low fence and into the landmine enclosure.
“ Clara! ” Bronze leaped from the table and dove for her, watching in panicked horror as the fence made contact with her midsection and her top half hinged forward over the rung. Her long legs tangled in the cloak and followed suit, dragging her whole body down until she would soon be flat on her back in the arena, giving the landmine topography more than its fair share of explodable living surface area.
Bronze’s legs were the first parts of him to connect with the slim fence panel she rolled over, and by the mages, he hooked the backs of his knees around that fucker in the tightest triangle hold of his life and threw his arms out behind her back, catching her as she fell flatly into his grasp.
A deafening silence settled over the arena.
“Fuck. Clara. God dammit , Clara.” He scooped her tightly to his chest, burying his head, his nose, everything he needed to fucking breathe, into her sweet, trembling body. “Don’t do that to me again, princess. You hear me? Don’t you do that to me again.”
He didn’t know whether the subtle nod he felt against his chest was her agreement or more of her uncontrollable quivering.
As he balanced his ass on one and a half inches of fence, with Clara in his arms and the relic around his neck, he knew he’d reached a tipping point of his own as well.
Because her sweet woodsy scent—a scent his body imagined was just for him—was tinged with something he’d never expected to smell on her. It was a scent that he’d first observed when he’d been shown inside the arena but had thought nothing of it then.
However, that was long before the last five seconds of her life that almost shaved the last years off his.
He knew what it was now, and that terrified him almost as much as being powerless.
It was the scent of true unbridled fear.