Chapter 45 #2
“He tried to take you from me. Now he’ll have to pay that cost.” Fieran touched his shoulder, and his blade shimmered into existence. He inclined his head to me—a deeper bow than he had offered the queen—and then he launched himself off the platform.
My knees bent, steadying myself as if I were the one readying for a fight, as my platform rocked.
Ander landed opposite him, the marble rocking dangerously under the impact. Water sloshed up the sides, threatening to swallow the platform whole.
He said nothing. Fieran said nothing.
There was no ceremony between them, no nod, no respect. Just unspoken history curling around them like smoke, as if this fight had been inevitable.
I looked down at how both their sigils gleamed at my feet.
I touched my fingers to the leather cord that still hung around my throat, feeling the weight of the ring between my breasts that still felt like a promise. Fieran had given me his luck.
Underneath us, the ruined arena groaned with marble shifting, sinking, adjusting its height. Alive at the queen’s command, trapped into obedience like the rest of us.
The queen lifted her hand.
“Begin.”
Ander struck first, moving before the queen had finished the word. His blade came down in a savage arc meant to cleave. Fieran twisted aside, letting the blow whistle past his ribs before he snapped forward with a sharp elbow that cracked against Ander’s wrist.
Ander slammed back in with raw force, boots skidding across the slick marble as he drove Fieran toward the edge.
Sparks hissed as their swords collided. Ander hammering, Fieran redirecting, each impact ringing out.
Smoke drifted around us from the fire, and steam curled up from the surface of the water.
Another strike. Ander lunged, teeth bared, blade aimed at Fieran’s chest.
Fieran’s expression didn’t change.
He dipped under the swing, caught Ander’s arm with brutal precision, and used his momentum to flip him over his shoulder. Ander’s back slammed onto the marble with a sickening crack. The floating platform rocked violently, water splashing up over the edges and soaking them both.
Ander rolled with the impact, coming up on one knee with a snarl, already swinging again.
Fieran met the strike midair, his blade turning Ander’s aside with a clean, exact motion that looked almost effortless. His eyes narrowed. Calculating. Reading Ander like a familiar text.
He stepped into Ander’s guard with two quick slashes, one at Ander’s ribs, the second at his thigh. Ander blocked the first. He almost blocked the second. Fear’s blade landed. Blood welled instantly.
Ander roared and forced Fieran back with a desperate series of heavy blows. Each one carried enough strength to shatter bone, but Fieran absorbed them with subtle shifts of weight, his boots finding stable purchase even as the marble swayed beneath them.
He anticipated every tilt of the platform, adjusting before it happened.
Ander reacted half a heartbeat later than Fear each time. Against another, ordinary opponent, Ander’s strength would have seemed invincible.
Ander swung hard. Fieran caught the blade on his bracer and drove his knee into Ander’s stomach.
Fieran pivoted behind him and slammed the hilt of his sword into Ander’s shoulder.
The impact sent Ander stumbling forward toward the water’s edge, and Fieran leapt into the air. For a second, I didn’t understand why.
Then the platform tilted, seesawing with only Ander’s weight and momentum as Fear flew, and I understood.
Panic squeezed my chest. It didn’t matter how good Ander was, how strong and skilled and quick. Fieran’s gifts of reading us all and of manipulation breathed power into his sword.
Ander didn’t fall. He leapt, his body a streak of dark leathers and gold cloak as he cleared the gap between platforms. The moment his boots struck, the marble disc lurched violently beneath us. Cold water surged over the edges.
Ander absorbed the movement with a flex of his knees, rising to his full height in one fluid motion. Blood streaked across his cheek, chest heaving, eyes blazing with the kind of determination that came from bone-deep purpose.
Or bone-deep desperation.
What was Ander’s cost if he didn’t win me at the queen’s command?
His gaze hit mine.
Something in me broke open. Something in him softened for a fraction of a heartbeat. He was losing, and he knew it. But he murmured, “It’ll be all right, Cara.”
It was a lie, and if I hadn’t known how high the stakes were, his gentle words told me.
The queen would make Ander pay almost as dearly as my brother.
My fingers tightened around the cord at my throat. I yanked it free without hesitation. “Ander.”
He reached for me immediately. His hand enclosed mine—warm, calloused. The ring slid from my palm into his.
Then he was gone, launching himself off the edge of my platform, marble tilting wildly behind him as he soared back into the fray.
Their blades met midair with a crack like lightning splitting stone.
Fieran pivoted to meet him, boots hitting the drifting platform with predatory grace. The arena’s water churned around them, reflecting shards of firelight across their bodies. Ander’s swing came in hard, furious.
As Fieran parried, he looked almost bored.
Ander pressed the attack. It was a driving sequence of blows, and Fieran danced back, playing along. This time, Ander was the one to leap to upset the balance of the platform. Fieran rose to meet him, and Ander kicked him in midair.
Fieran flew back but recovered; the strike had driven him down, and he landed again on the platform. The marble shifted beneath his feet. It was the one time he wasn’t fully in control.
The marble beneath Fieran shifted as Ander drove himself downward, slamming into the marble.
The platform shifted beneath both their feet. But this time, luck was on Ander’s side.
Fear launched a blow; Ander parried it. The two moved so quickly their blades were flashes of gleaming gold. Fieran slid back, losing his balance just slightly to the shifting platform.
Ander’s blade sliced across Fieran’s side.
Blood spattered in a dark arc, hitting marble, then sliding down in thin red ribbons to the water below. The crowd erupted, shouting, shrieking, stamping their feet on ruined stone high above us.
Fieran staggered.
His hand flew to his wound.
Then his gaze lifted to mine.
For a glimmering second, the world narrowed to Fieran and to me.
Then Ander slashed again, and Fieran raised his blade, defending himself. He was up and moving with otherworldly grace, quick and lethal even wounded.
Ander launched himself at Fieran, and the two of them locked blades, their faces inches apart above the gleaming swords. They strained against each other, jaws clenched and muscles straining.
Ander tried to break their clash. Fieran moved to deflect his attack, and the platform shifted just slightly. Their blades slipped against each other’s, and Fieran took the opportunity to punch Ander in the face. Ander rocked back, twisting his sword, and both swords spun from their hands.
The swords skittered across the marble. Both of them lunged in one, but they were too late; the swords vanished into the black water. The two of them paused at the edge of the now-tilting platform, staring at each other.
Empty-handed, but full of hate.
Then they collided with each other. Ander slammed into Fieran, tackling him backwards.
Fieran caught Ander’s arms and rolled with him, throwing Ander over his body as if to make the man follow his sword.
But Ander managed to land on the edge of the platform, and as it tilted wildly toward him, he launched himself to land on Fieran.
Ander brought his fist down on Fieran’s face, and Fieran blocked it with his forearm, rewarding him with a brutal uppercut that snapped Ander’s head to the side.
Ander staggered, his mouth bloodied, and then he went low to the ground, striking out to take Fieran’s feet from underneath him. The staggering had always been a ruse.
And for once, Fieran’s arrogance had betrayed him.
He managed to stay on his feet, but Ander was up again and landed a savage punch to Fieran’s ribs.
Fieran responded by closing up with him, driving his knee mercilessly into Ander’s gut.
The two of them closed up, intimate as an embrace, but this embrace was all driven knees and fists and brutality.
It had seemed as if Fieran would win, even with luck itself as his enemy.
But now, Ander pummeled Fieran mercilessly, each blow landing with a sickening thud that snapped Fieran’s head back. More blood streaked the marble.
My fingers dug into my arms before I realized I was holding myself as if I were about to fly apart.
Ander forced Fieran down onto one knee, then hammered a brutal kick into his ribs. Fieran choked on a sound I’d never heard from him, his body curling with instinctive pain. I’d never seen his head bowed before anyone before.
I paced, driven by guilt and shame and fear for both of them. I didn’t want either of them hurt.
Ander drove another vicious kick into Fieran’s side, this one lifting him off the ground before slamming him back onto the marble. The impact rippled through the water, through me.
Fieran was still on the marble. Ander paced toward him, leaving bloody bootprints.
This was punishment. Ordered by the queen and carried out brutally by Ander with fury that made me feel afraid to have sided with him. Punishment for sins between the two of them that I would never understand. Panic clawed its way up my throat.
“Ander.” The desperation in my voice startled me, but it didn’t seem to surprise Ander.
“Last blood, Cara.” His voice was rough. “It has to be this way.”
Fieran tried to rise. He pressed his hand to the marble, muscles straining as he almost made it to his feet, but his palm slid in his own blood. He fell to his knees.
The arena was silent, holding its breath with me. Waiting for the invincible Fear to find a way to rise once more, to turn this battle the way he always did.
Ander struck again.
Fieran slammed into the rocking platform. His body was slack as Ander stood over him, breathing hard. Terror slid through me like a blade.
Fieran didn’t rise.
Suddenly, the ring of fire died. The flames collapsed in on themselves, suffocated by an unseen hand.
The last of the smoke drifted away, leaving Ander and Fieran, both bloodied, even the victor swaying on his feet with his hand clutching his ribs as if he were holding them together.
Slowly, reluctantly, Ander looked away from Fieran’s still, bloodied figure to the queen.
“She’s mine, by right of combat.” Ander’s voice was raw. He had not looked at me since he threw his sigil at my feet, and he didn’t look at me now.
The queen inclined her head. “The mortal has been claimed by Clan Amber.”
Ander strode toward me, leaving Fieran’s broken body behind.
And I ran to Fieran.