Chapter 27
A s Bronze stepped out of the stronghold and into the drizzle-rain-drizzle combo that had made everything just wet enough to be miserable, he had the oddest thought about the arena. He had no idea why the concept hadn’t come to him sooner, but now that it had, it made so much sense.
The place looked like the inside of a public toilet.
The circular pen had been thoroughly doused with far too much saturation for the ground to handle, which created a landscape of lovely brown smears. Small muddy ponds had cropped up throughout the practice ring, producing cylindrical shapes that seemed to bob among the matted-down earth beside it.
So, yeah, definitely a toilet. Only good news was that Bronze was about to step into the thing for the last time.
Except maybe he wasn’t?
The warm rain mingled with the morning mist, which had no intention of getting gone any time soon. The lingering clouds hovered low above the arena and grassy meadow surrounding it, seeping through the outskirts of the forest like a mortal plague of gray shadows.
It was in front of that copse of trees that the crowd gathered—and everyone was silent. Like, pin-drop silent.
Bronze checked to make sure his bandages were nice and taut and strode to the forest’s edge, wishing like hell he’d been able to see Clara at least once before the attendant had come to fetch him this morning. He’d not seen her since yesterday when a healer came to his patient room and informed him she’d been urgently called away. After she’d shared her apology with him and he’d shared half of his fucking soul with her.
The words they’d spoken had been buzzing around his mind ever since, until he finally allowed them to land.
When they did, they chose to nestle in tight and good to that spot behind his sternum that had been not only walled off but condemned to a duty that had become impossible to fulfill. He realized that now.
This feels right to me.
It does. It really does.
Shit, he needed to see Clara. To hold her again, tell her what the gooey center of him had known since she’d first whipped the thing up.
He loved her. Holy hell, did he love her. And he would tell her free and clear of any oath, of any relic, of any obligation to his family or his mages or a dead brother who, if he were still alive, wouldn’t keep holding Bronze to a panicked and dying compulsion.
And perhaps the biggest noodle scrambler of them all: Bronze would do it all over again. He’d give up every power, every flight, every bit of his angel fire, if it meant he’d wind up back here, fighting for this female.
Bronze reached the center of the crowd where Raff stood and slowed to a halt in front of the king, who was alone except for his advisor, Pascal, to his right and Broderick, his guard, to his left. Where was Clara?
“Today is the final trial of the Betrothal Games. Lord Raff!” The king extended his arm toward the lycan, but the crowd stayed silent. “And Bronze the demigod.” Another arm gesture. More silence.
A trickle of warning pricked at the base of his spine. What the hell is going on?
Bronze scanned the gathered lycans, searching for the hood of Clara’s favorite cloak or, at the very least, her white hair standing out among the throng. Nothing. Just a lot of somber faces beneath soaking-wet clothes and ominous umbrellas. Fucking hell, they looked like they were at a burial, not a tournament.
That unease from earlier ramped straight up to full-blown panic as he eyed Raff, who stood shoulders straight and arms clasped behind his back, donning his usual stony expression.
The king cleared his throat, pulling Bronze’s attention back to the pompous prick. “As both remaining champions have each garnered a victory, the winner of this, the third and final trial, shall be declared the winner of the entirety of the Betrothal Games. By right of writ, the male shall receive my daughter Clara’s hand in mating, a pledge of alliance and allegiance with this kingdom, and he shall be placed in the direct line of succession to the throne.”
Why the fuck was he saying all this shit? They knew the stakes. Did the male think because he was surrounded by so many oxygen-replenishing trees that he had the right to use up more than his fair share of it?
It was all a fucking performance. A grand covert declaration of hostility that could only be made by one who had more expertise in stagecraft than sovereignty.
Bronze was so over it
Then Pascal stepped forward and unveiled the burgundy banner revealing the third credo of the monarchy. The swirling opalescent script blurred together amid the fog and rain, but it was legible nonetheless: “With the moon’s senses, we protect and safeguard.”
“Broderick, if you please,” the king said.
Halpin’s lycan stepped forward and gestured to another guard, and both males walked behind Bronze and Raff. There was a rustle of fabric, and then a heavy swathe of dark linen was draped over Bronze’s eyes and fastened snugly behind his head.
Shit. It was a senses challenge. And he was competing against a lycan.
“For this trial, both competitors shall be blindfolded, and as our credo expects, now that you have been robbed of your sight, you must use your other senses to locate an object hidden in the woods behind me.” Another pause, then Broderick was tugging at the back of his head again. Was he fastening something?
“Lest you think of removing your blindfold once you are beyond the initial perimeter of the forest, I have instructed that a small length of special thread be secured at the juncture of the fabric. Should you try to lift the blindfolds over your heads or remove them in any way, the thread will snap, and you forfeit the game. Each competitor must hunt for the object blindfolded, retrieve it blindfolded, and return from the woods blindfolded. Only then can he be declared the victor.”
Of all the on-the-fly scenario calculations Bronze was doing, far too many of them resulted in a snowball’s chance in hell of him out-hunting a biological predator like Raff. Not without his celestial senses and sure as shit not when it came to scent or hearing. Eyesight maybe, if he was quick enough, but scent?
A small square of fabric was placed in his hand. Soft leather coated one side, while the other was thickly napped with smooth wool. On instinct, he brought the thing to his nose, and every muscle in his body swelled beneath the pelting rain.
He knew this fabric. Knew its earthy scent and the bristly feel of it when it was soaking wet from the river. Knew how the cloth was a deep evergreen while the leather lining beneath it was the same tawny brown as the eyes of the female who’d worn it.
It was from Clara’s mantle. The one she’d been draped in when he discovered her in the river.
His heart squeezed out hurried peals of panic. But just as he was preparing to run, to leap over the king himself and bolt into those woods to find her, something else gave him pause.
Something rich and earthy rose up from the fabric, more pungent than sweat but without the normal metallic indicators of bodily fluids.
Then he sniffed again, and as a stark realization closed around his neck, he nearly destroyed the fabric within his fist.
Normal metallic indicators for mortals. Not for lycans.
It was blood. Clara’s blood.