Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A heavy gold necklace hangs around my throat, bright as a sunlit serpent coiled to strike. When the light hits it, fractured beams scatter across the walls like splintered glass. It gleams like something sacred. But it feels like a shackle. Mallen notices, eyes flicking down, jaw tightening.
“You’ll never wear another chain, even if it is gilded in gold,” he says, quietly. A promise, not a question.
My shoulders ease, but he doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t offer comfort.
“Shall we go?” he asks, cool and clipped.
We walk in silence. His hand hovers near mine, never touching.
His jaw is set hard enough to crack and it’s not the trial making him rigid.
It’s me. It’s last night. The lie he recognized for what it was—and who it was for.
He doesn’t speak of it. Doesn’t rage. He just withdraws, leaving silence in his wake like a blade left hanging in the air.
Guilt churns in my stomach. He’s hurting. And I want to reach through the wall he’s built. I want to say I’m sorry. But I can’t say it aloud. Not when I’m not sure I am.
We stop outside the arena. Mallen turns. His face is granite. His eyes storm. There’s something in the way he’s holding himself—as if his own skin is too tight.
“It will be fast,” he says. Low, gritted. “I’ll be close if you need me.”
I hesitate, reaching for him. A small gesture. A plea.
He steps back. Almost imperceptibly. A slight shake of the head. He nods toward the doors instead. Dismissal cloaked as direction.
I walk forward, spine straightening. Each step is a refusal to be diminished. The arena opens before me like a wound.
My father smiles.
It isn’t warmth. It’s a grin carved from bone and ice, honed on the edge of cruelty.
He welcomes me with that hollow, rehearsed benevolence he wears like a second skin.
I move to my place beside him, slipping into the role he cast for me—princess, prize, ornament.
The sovereign daughter groomed for auction.
Below, the tributes stand in formation, prepared for whatever torment comes next. All of them follow Darian as he steps forward and bows. He stands tall as the others echo his movement. One of them sways, limping.
“Can’t we spare the injured one?” I murmur.
My father’s lip curls. “Rules are rules, Azhara. You’ve broken enough of them already.”
I don’t respond. The crowd roars, free from the burden of his malice.
The stone of the arena gleams white under the sun, too pure for what’s about to happen.
Arches rise like cathedral bones, and the people give thanks to their gods, blind to the blood being poured in their name.
A child balances on the railing with a fistful of sugared figs, giggling as a blood-stained banner dances in the breeze beneath them.
Darian’s gaze stays locked on mine. Clear, unflinching. Sky blue and sunlit gold. There’s a steadiness in him, a grounding. He’s unafraid. Or he hides it better than most. He turns slightly, directing the others with a single hand.
The arena is unchanged—sand underfoot, walls too sheer to climb, flags whispering in the breeze. But something is wrong. The crates along the edges are too large, too still. Five of them. And the servants waiting by the ropes look like they’d rather flee than follow orders.
I glance at Mallen.
He sees me. But he doesn’t move.
His stillness cuts deeper than a thousand outbursts. He’s showing me how often he’s come to my aid. And how he won’t do it this time. Not when I reached for another man.
It hurts. But I understand.
I’ve hurt him too.
And actions come at a price. In Starsfall. In life.
My father leans forward. His glee is starting to surface.
Whatever he’s planned—this isn’t strategy. It’s cruelty.
I go cold.
Sweat beads on my upper lip. My stomach twists. But I force my chin up.
“Perhaps the princess should begin the proceedings?” my father calls, loud enough to draw cheers from the crowd.
It’s not a request. It’s a challenge. Submission or strength. Let him humiliate me or let him turn my defiance into a spectacle.
My eyes flick to Darian. He nods. No theatrics. Just understanding. We are both pawns. But I still have hands. And I move them.
I draw breath and step forward. I make sure to meet my father’s eyes and raise my voice to carry to the crowd. “By my words, and by my will,” I pause to let the implications land, “let the next trial begin.”
The slaves open the crates and flee. Ropes pull them out of danger. The tributes form ranks, shields raised, knees bent. Braced for what they cannot see.
Silence falls.
Not the hush of reverence, but a void. A vacuum that devours even thought.
Something is coming.
The stillness presses down like a held breath, like a scream waiting to tear loose. The tributes shift, uneasy, as if the air itself could wound. Outside the stands, even the animals are silent. No birds. No wind. No gods.
Just the sound of a man vomiting in one of the stands, retching onto the arena’s stone because he already knows.
Then—smoke.
It spills from the crates. Thin tendrils at first, brushing across the sand like fingertips. Then thickening. Crawling. Shuddering. Growing darker with every breath it takes.
The air changes. The light bends. The smoke isn’t smoke. It moves like water, but it’s not water either. It pulses. It thinks. It seems alive, evil. And it hates.
A pressure builds in my chest. Not fear. Not entirely.
Recognition.
The smoke deepens—gray to black to a shade beyond midnight. A shade that swallows all light. A magic that devours instead of radiates. I know its name, though no one taught it to me.
Obcasus.
Not a spell. Not a force. A hunger.
Death made manifest.
Once, it was sealed beneath the deserts of the dead, locked in runes of salt and bone. Before the first gods fell. Before men grew bold enough to think they could tame what was never meant to serve.
Obcasus is the oldest wrong. A hunger that learned to wear magic like skin.
I stagger. My hands tremble. My skin prickles.
And in my marrow, a pressure begins to mount—coiled and blistering. There’s a thrum in my blood like a locked door remembering it has hinges. Like a breath drawn too deep in a place that forbids air.
The darkness inside me—still bound, still waiting—shift with want. With memory. With need. It presses against my ribs like it’s testing them for give. As if my body is no longer enough to hold the magic.
“What have you done?” I whisper, staring at the dark tide slithering toward the men.
My father laughs. Quiet. Cruel. “By your own hand, indeed. Don’t tell me you fear your own nature, Daughter.”
My magic coils tighter in the pit of my gut. I clench my fists, breathing shallow.
It pushes harder now, as if the veil between us thins—between me and the thing stitched into my blood. As if the darkness before me isn’t a threat, but a summons, and the magic buried deep beneath bone and rite and silence lifts its head. Not to run. To seek.
Its pulse beats in tandem with mine, not foreign, not separate—only divided. A mirror, unfinished. And I feel it lean into me, not as an invader, but as a part returning to the whole. The silence between us collapses. And for one breathless moment, I’m not alone in my skin.
Mallen shifts. Alert. Ready. His gaze is on me. But I don’t look at him directly. I let him feel it. Let him know: I don’t need saving.
I look to Darian instead. And he looks back.
Steady. Unmoving. Already waving his men back.
He’s going to face it. With nothing but a sword and the will to survive.
He sees what’s coming, what it is—and he doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t run. His stance lowers, breath steady, sword held like it’s part of his body. He’s already calculating how he’ll die.
And he’s choosing to do it standing.
All of Starsfall sees the decision settle in him like stone. If this is how the world ends, then it will end with his spine unbroken.
“It will kill everyone here,” I say. My voice is steel.
My father only smiles.
“Breathe,” my father says, and his voice is too calm. Too amused. “A sorcerer has ensured it will stay within arena walls. The tributes are the only ones who’ll die. The Obcasus will be recalled at the end of the trial. It can’t escape or set your blight free.”
I grind my teeth.
My cheeks burn hot. With shame. With anger too.
“Unless Darian defeats it,” I whisper.
Below, Darian steps forward, his shield discarded. His sword gleams in the torchlight as the black smoke coils toward him like a living thing. His spine is a line of tension. He watches the Obcasus, and it watches him.
He’s not just reacting. He’s baiting it.
The Obcasus spirals—slow at first, searching. Then faster, narrowing, hunting. The tendrils split and stretch across the arena, severing the space around the tributes like they’re being penned in for slaughter.
He moves again. A sudden pivot. A calculated lure.
The Obcasus lunges—and misses.
It crashes into the ground, a dense, writhing wave of black. Not smoke. Not shadow. It’s heavier than that. Like oil and bone and the air between heartbeats. It rises again, impossibly fluid, reshaping itself with every strike.
It should be beautiful. It almost is. But the cold crawling up my spine says otherwise.
“They don’t stand a chance,” I murmur. “The trials are meant to be fair.”
“They are meant to be decisive,” Mallen says, and his tone scrapes like flint. “Your father wants proof Darian can contain you.”
I don’t turn to look at him. “Would you set the same test? Or pass it?”
Silence.
No denial. No argument.
Just the iron stillness of a man too controlled to lash out but too possessive to like the questions. His fingers flex ever so slightly beside me. The heat of his attention licks through me, as if my body is a territory he’s already claimed.