Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
The two nobles flanking my father are pressing their luck.
They’ve mistaken his silence for grief, not fury.
His compliance with the Reaping for contrition.
They flatter him with words like magnificent, congratulating him for shaping me into the perfect ornament.
They think they’ll soften his mood by praising my display yesterday.
They’re fools. He’s deciding how best to unmake them, and if I were a crueler woman, I’d smile at the thought of how little time they have left.
Mallen stands beside me on the royal balcony, his palm resting low on my spine.
The pressure is possessive and a little too firm.
A reminder. He hasn’t forgiven me for yesterday—not for the way I looked at Darian, nor for what I said when we reached my rooms. Larksbind’s prince came between us like a blade, and I refused to look away.
Our last words before sleep had burned between us.
And I cannot take them back.
Below us, the tributes wait.
The sight of them makes my stomach clench like a fist around fire. My hands tremble. Color bleeds from my skin and my knees threaten to fold. Mallen catches my arm, steadying me before I stumble. His grip leaves no room for refusal. No one can know I’m breaking.
Especially not my father.
The royal balcony is a cage of opulence—gilded and cruel.
A stage from which Starsfall’s king can oversee the slaughter below, close enough that we can hear and taste the carnage, yet high enough that his silhouette casts long over the tributes from Larksbind.
Everything here was designed to remind the world who rules. Every inch of it reeks of blood.
The amphitheater curves around the pit like a holy wound carved into the earth, tier upon tier of alabaster stone stained by centuries of blood.
Velvet-cloaked nobles fill the highest rings, sipping wine while they wait for violence to entertain them.
Below them, merchants, soldiers, and children jostle for space, eager to watch strangers die.
A sea of faces turned toward death like it’s divine.
I used to think I hated this because it was cruel.
Now I wonder if I hate it because it’s familiar.
Maybe I’m not disgusted by death—I’m disgusted by how easily I’ve learned to stomach it.
“I know you despise this,” Mallen murmurs, low enough that only I hear. “But it will be quick. That’s mercy, of a kind.”
“It’s not mercy,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Compared to me, it is,” he answers, tone flat as cold steel, and just as sharp.
In the pit, Darian swings his sword through a slow arc, letting the silver catch the sunlight. There is a grace to him that borders on insolent. He’s not afraid. He doesn’t even seem tense. But when he sees Mallen’s hand on me, he goes still. His jaw tightens.
Others move behind him—men with spears, shields, swords—but it hardly matters. Their weapons are sharp but usually ceremonial, their deaths preordained. I remember only two men surviving the Reaping’s first trial, and neither lived long afterward.
My father steps forward, sweeping the sycophants aside with a rustle of silk and steel. He lifts his arms. The crowd erupts. This is what they came for—velvet gowns and crimson gore.
This is Starsfall’s idea of theater.
Even Mallen seems hungry for death.
Once, I believed I wasn’t alone in hating it. Once, Mallen’s disgust matched mine. There had been solace in that shared revulsion. But not this year. This year, he wants blood. This year, he needs it.
My father begins his speech, thanking the gods for this abomination.
I bow my head out of necessity, not reverence, my teeth clenching as I mouth their names.
If this is divine will, then their thrones should be overturned and set to fire.
I would rather burn than worship what they are.
I would rather let Larksbind swallow all Starsfall’s magic than endure this again.
“Azhara,” my father says, and my name becomes a weapon.
I step toward him, still shaking. I cling to Mallen’s arm until the last possible second. My father watches the weakness with thinly veiled contempt.
He walks to me and takes my hands, all fatherly grace and cruel affection. His smile is for the audience. His voice is for me alone.
“He wants a challenge, not a fragile disappointment,” he murmurs, his voice silk-wrapped venom. He kisses my cheek. “You managed to be bold last night. Don’t shame me now.”
I lift my chin. I do not flinch. Then I turn and step to the edge of the platform, fingers dipping into the silver bowl. The petals are soft as breath, crimson and gold. I cast them over the tributes, and the breeze takes them like ashes. There is no joy in this. No celebration. No triumph.
The crowd cheers. Darian steps forward and lifts his sword in salute. He is playing the part they want from him—the golden prince, bold and brazen—but his eyes are on me.
He kneels, picks up a fallen petal, and raises it to the sky before sliding it beneath his breastplate. The gesture is pure theater. The court sighs and claps. The women swoon. They still think it’s a love story.
They still believe.
His gaze never leaves mine. And despite myself, I flush.
My father notices.
“You’d almost think you cared for him,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “Do you?”
“No,” I say, the word shaped like poison.
He isn’t just another man about to die. His isn’t a name to be forgotten or a body to be buried. I don’t know what Darian is to me—but I know he’s not nothing.
Darian smiles again, slow and knowing, and the court devours it. I clench my hands until my nails bite flesh. Too late. They’ve seen it. It doesn’t even have to be true. The story writes itself.
“Can we get this over with?” I snap before I can stop myself.
“I thought you’d never ask, Highness,” Mallen says, stepping forward with grim elegance.
He raises his hand, and the roar of thousands falls into silence.
Even the wind obeys. Starsfall holds its breath.
Darian bows once more and strides into the arena’s heart.
The sand waits. The gods wait. The gates groan.
Three daemons. That is the usual offering. Creatures torn from nightmare, caged beneath the arena. Mallen traps them himself, ensuring the quota is met. What we were, what we are, and what we might yet become. Their hunger is the same as mine, their darkness born from the same night.
Blood buys us peace.
And they are the price of containing my magic.
Mallen lowers his arm, and the trial begins. Trumpets tear the hush. Winches catch, and the iron gates grind upward, chains screaming under the tiers. Sand whispers as the crowd stills. The ward sigils along the rim flare cold and then steady. But this year, something’s different.
The first daemon bursts into the arena on two legs, towering three times Darian’s height, its shoulders scraping the lifted gate.
Its hide is oil-black stone, ridged and scarred beneath the ward light.
Ram horns curl from its skull, and its jaw unhinges too wide, rows upon rows of jagged teeth.
Spittle hits the sand and smokes. Its arms hang to the knees, fingers hooked into sickles, and jointed legs end in split talons that bite the ground.
A barbed tail lashes, carving furrows. It roars, and the sound shudders through the tiers.
The tributes don’t scatter. They form a line—shoulder to shoulder—at the heart of the arena, boots set in the churned sand. Blades lift. Helmets turn as one, like a dare thrown at the dark. Not frightened boys. Not desperate conscripts.
A unit.
Darian barks commands. Two clipped words. His hand cuts left, steadies, and the line shifts with him. They move like water, fluid and precise. Gone is the charming rogue with the devil’s smile. What remains is colder. Sharper. A commander born of blood and battlefield.
These men aren’t carpenters. Not merchants or dockhands dragged into sacrifice. They are trained. Drilled. Ready. They hold the ground and make it theirs.
I step to the railing, heart hammering. I dare to ask, for the first time, could they survive this?
My father watches with a predator’s stillness, his fury like heat on my skin. He had not foreseen this. I glance at Mallen—his features carved from shadow and ice, his expression a sculpted mask of bored detachment that only highlights the glint of fury beneath.
“They’re working together,” I whisper, just as the gates open wider.
“Yes,” Mallen snarls back. “Darian has a plan. This will be interesting.”
The men from Larksbind still don’t run. They turn in sync, shields locking, bodies bracing. It’s a soldier’s wall—disciplined, fearless—but this isn’t a man they’re facing. It’s a nightmare made flesh, the kind of horror that lives between a heartbeat and a scream.
The daemon lowers its horned head and bunches to charge, claws gouging trenches in the sand. The Larksbind line doesn’t waver. Shields stay locked. Feet stand set. Darian takes the point, blade lifted, voice low, calm and defiant.
They’re not going to break. They’re going to die.
My fingers clamp the rail, breath catching in my throat. I squeeze my eyes shut.
A scream splits the air—high, violent, inhuman. It tears through the crowd and lodges in my chest, a sound born from pure pain. I nearly drop where I stand.
My body rebels—quaking, breath ragged, skin damp with sweat. But beneath the panic, something deeper unspools. A terrible knowing.
This isn’t sport. It’s sacrifice.
Shouts echo from the arena. Panic. Orders. Footfalls pounding earth. A crash like thunder. Then another.
And then—stillness.
I force my eyes open, expecting ruin. But the daemon lies severed and steaming, black blood pouring into the sand.
Darian stands beside it, sword raised and dripping.
The crowd erupts, wild with disbelief and glee. Their cheers shake the stadium as if the earth itself is celebrating.