Chapter 37
Damien
The herald bellowed, “Lord Lukhan, Mr. Corvellan, cease charging your banner!”
If only we could.
Something was wrong with our banner. Horribly, terribly, disastrously wrong.
And if we couldn’t figure out how to fix it, we were going to be severely injured, if not actually dead.
“Luk!” I ordered desperately. “You need to let go!”
The air around us shimmered like a heat mirage as power leaked from the overloaded banner.
“I can’t!” Lukhan sounded panicked.
His knuckles had gone white around the crimson banner’s polished pole. His jaw was locked tight, the muscles in his forearms standing out like cables beneath his skin.
Then the hairline crack in the pole split wide open. Raw power poured from the fracture, wild and chaotic and blindingly bright.
I tried to open my fingers and release my hold on his shoulders. But my hands refused to obey me. Nor could I close the conduit feeding my power to the malignant length of magic cloth flapping wildly above our heads.
I couldn’t do anything but stand there with my hands locked around Lukhan’s shoulders, feeding the now-malignant banner.
The wards protecting the arena flared a violent, trembling blue, then dimmed to the dull, sick glow of a dying ember. Gasps rippled through the stands like wind through dry grass.
I felt the catastrophe building in the same way I felt Father’s temper gathering before it broke, with a slow, terrible pressure behind my eyes, hot weight beneath my ribs, and a choking lump in the hollow of my throat.
Mage-Instructor Mundise leaned over the low wall separating the stands from the arena.
“Stop feeding it!” they shouted, their normally controlled voice cracking. “And halt the match. Now! Your banner’s—”
Uncle Varro caught Mundise’s arm and pulled them back. “We can’t halt the match now, Mundise.” He sounded angry. “With this much unstable magic already stored in the banner, we risk a full backlash! Let the match play out.”
He shot me a look, as if asking me to fix the problem. I shook my head, and he scowled before turning away.
Our banner streamed above us, its crimson silk eclipsed by the blinding white light pulsing from the spell-threads in erratic bursts. It had stopped flapping and was now stretched taut as a billowing sail.
More worryingly, it emitted a high-pitched hum that made my head and teeth ache. The spell-threads were too bright, searing white instead of gold.
It felt bloated. As if each greedy gulp of power it drew from us might make it explode.
On the other side of the arena, the cobalt silk of our opponents’ banner waved gently in the breeze. Its spell-threads glowed a warm gold, their light pulsing in a slow, measured rhythm like a heartbeat.
As I frantically tried to invoke a spell to unlock our banner’s stored magic before it was too late, the arena’s wards flared again, brighter this time. A hairline crack appeared in the dome of protective magic itself, a seam of darker nothing opening between layers of failing spells.
“Damien.” Lukhan turned his head to look at me.
Sweat plastered his black hair to his temples, and his emerald eyes were wide, pupils contracted to pinpoints against the banner’s glare.
“We need to make it release the stored magic. Or we’ll lose the match.
We can win if we can only make this cursed thing obey us! ”
He licked his lips and looked at Miss Fishwife and Ferraro, who were foolishly restraining themselves from pressing their advantage.
Why are they holding back? We were defenseless right now. They could destroy us—and our banner—with one well-timed attack spell.
Unless…
“I don’t think their banner is releasing its magic, either,” I whispered. “And if we try to force ours to discharge, the backlash could kill us.”
My throat felt tight, and my heart was pounding with terror, but my voice sounded calm. It was the voice Father used when he needed his soldiers to believe in him.
Lukhan froze. Through the palms of my hands, I felt as his hot, all-consuming need to win against Miss Fishwife vanished, as if he had only now realized the danger we were in.
Miss Fishwife shouted, “Your banner won’t survive much longer. If you keep feeding it, it’s going to tear the arena wards apart.” She had taken a step forward, one hand still on her banner’s pole, the other raised toward us.
Her plain, olive-skinned features looked oddly bleached by our banner’s blazing white light. Her face was tilted upwards, her hazel eyes fixed on our banner with the focused intensity of a healer assessing a wound. “It might bring down the entire amphitheater.”
A chill ran through me as she unconsciously echoed my earlier warning. She had seen the same thing I had and understood the danger we were in right now.
“We have to convince it to stop drinking from you,” she continued. “We have to heal whatever wound is making it behave the way it is. But first, we have to convince it to trust us.”
“‘Convince it to trust us?’” Lukhan repeated, his tone dripping with familiar contempt now. “Listen to yourself, Miss Fishwife. You’re delusional.”
I didn’t think she was. The high, thin whine coming from the threads above us raised the hair on my arms and the back of my neck.
We’re running out of time.
“What can you do that we can’t?” I challenged her.
Talisa didn’t hesitate. “Heal it. But you have to hand it over to me.”
Lukhan drew an outraged breath. “You want us to surrender our banner to you? In the semi-finals of the Aurelian Trials? With half the entire Imperial Council watching? You’re insane.”
“Maybe.” Her voice didn’t waver. “But I’m also right.”
Ferraro called, “And we’re not the ones holding a banner that’s about to explode.”
The wards dimmed again. The crack in our banner pole widened, stretching another foot in either direction with a sound like breaking bones.
I turned to Lukhan. His profile was sharp against the banner’s searing light, his jaw set, his emerald eyes fixed on Talisa with a defiant stare.
But beneath the defiance, in the tight line of his mouth and the faint, persistent tremor running through his body, I saw it: he was afraid.
“Luk,” I said firmly. “She’s right.”
His head snapped toward me. “What?” Incredulity mingled with outrage on his face.
“She’s right.” I looked up at the banner.
The threads were pulsing too fast now to count, a stuttering, frantic rhythm that made the air around the pole shimmer with heat distortion.
“If we can’t stop it from absorbing more of our magic, it’ll…
I don’t know. Explode. Hurt us. Maybe hurt other people. It’s already shattering the wards.”
He closed his eyes. His head bowed slowly. I waited, acutely aware that we had little time left.
“Fine,” he said finally. “Fine. But you tell her. I… can’t.”
Relief and hope surged through me. I squeezed his shoulders in gratitude and raised my voice. “We consent. Take our banner and stabilize it. If you can.”
The words had barely left my mouth when the pole jerked in Lukhan’s hands like a live thing, wrenching against his grip with enough force to tear skin. I heard wood splinter. Felt something hit my chest with the force of a cavalry horse’s kick.
Then the world went white, and invisible flames burned my skin with pain so intense I couldn’t even scream.
The last thing I felt was the impact of the arena sand against my cheek and the realization that Lukhan was lying on the ground beside me.
∞∞∞
Talisa
Magic surged, and our opponents fell to the arena floor like cut timber.
I gasped as I saw Lukhan crumple first, his body folding at the knees and hips before he hit the sand face-first, his shoulder-length hair fanning out around his head in a glossy dark halo.
Damien followed a heartbeat later, collapsing onto his side.
Lukhan had finally released his grip on the banner pole, but it remained upright, defying gravity, its spell-threads blurred into a single, searing band of white.
The herald’s voice boomed out. “The Crimson team has yielded their banner. They have until the end of the countdown to recover it before they lose the match. Ten.”
“Elio! Guard our banner. Don’t let go.”
“Talisa, what are you—”
“Nine,” announced the herald.
I ran. The soft sand dragged at my shoes, but I didn’t slow down.
Mama’s voice echoed in my head, as clear as if she stood beside me: Check for breathing first. Then a pulse. Then bleeding.
“Eight.”
I dropped to my knees beside Lukhan. His pale face was greenish white, his lips tinged blue at the corners. I pressed two fingers to the hollow of his throat and was relieved to feel a pulse. It was thready and fast, but there. His chest rose in a shallow, rattling breath.
“Seven.”
I moved to Damien, whose long body was sprawled next to his friend’s. His pulse was stronger, a steady hammer beneath my fingertips. A thin trickle of blood ran from his nose, bright red against his tanned skin. I checked his pupils. Equal. Responsive to the shadow of my hand.
Both of them were alive, thank the Divine Mother!
“Six.”
Above me, the rogue banner’s hum had risen to a shriek. The ward-lines above the arena flickered and dimmed, and the crack in the protective spell widened another foot with a sound like tearing canvas.
I scrambled to my feet and studied it.
It hung above its splintered pole, suspended by nothing but its own frantic, terrified magic. The threads were contracting and expanding in violent, irregular spasms, each one brighter than the last.
The air around the banner shimmered with heat distortion, warping the view of the stands beyond.
“It’s all right,” I said, speaking to the banner and acutely aware that everyone watching probably thought I’d lost my mind. “You can stop now. You don’t have to hold it anymore. Let it go.”
I reached for the cracked pole with both hands, but didn’t touch the damaged wood. Not yet.
Then I shut out the world and cast the soothing spell Mama had used for shock and panic attacks.
Green-tinged Wood magic bloomed around my fingertips, warm and living and slow. I let my spell flow up the pole in a gentle, coaxing wave.