Chapter 46
Elora
Elora froze.
"Miss me?"
The voice was unmistakable, slick as oil and twice as vile. Her body tensed, every nerve screaming before her mind could even form the thought.
No.
Slowly, she turned her head—just enough to glance up, enough to see him.
Gerard.
He’s alive. He’s here.
A worn leather eyepatch stretched across his ruined right socket.
The surrounding skin was a sickly pallor, the puckered and discolored flesh a harsh contrast to his smooth and handsome features.
The three scars she gave him looked like deep, jagged crevices, stretching from forehead, under the eye patch and down to his lips and chin.
But he was smiling.
Smiling down at her with that one remaining eye glittering with amusement. With rage.
Her confidence shattered in an instant. Her knees didn’t buckle—she wouldn’t give him that—but something deeper inside her did. Some corner of her mind curled in on itself, small and trembling. The sound of a belt buckle. The scent of sweat mixed with crushed grass.
No, no, no—this wasn’t then. She was stronger now. But her body didn’t know the difference.
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
This wasn’t like fighting Snatchers in the woods. This wasn’t sparring with Rell or burning down labs or clawing her way to freedom.
This was him.
And he was looking at her like he already owned her again.
“You should’ve killed me,” he whispered against her ear.
The world tilted. The arena, the shouting crowd, Thorn’s speech echoing through the stone and bloodthirsty silence—it all melted into static. All she could hear was him. The rasp of his voice, dragging across her skin like dull teeth.
“You took this from me—” He yanked her hand up, forced her to touch the edge of his ruined jaw. The skin was raised and ridged like melted wax, still angry and healing.
No. No, no, no.
His skin.
Her hand.
Don’t touch. Don’t feel. Don’t be here.
She tried to pull away, but her body wouldn’t listen. Her limbs felt numb, her skin too tight. Her mind screamed at her to shift, to run, to fight, but the ring was gone, and she was just… Elora. Just the girl he’d pinned to the dirt. Just the girl Thorn had twisted and corrupted.
He dropped her wrist and held her close against his chest. She could hardly see the executioner sharpening his blade, or hear the crowd cheering. She could only feel. Feel his hand as he caressed the smooth skin of her cheek.
“The show doesn’t end with Tehvan. No. You will be punished for your disobedience.
Here. In front of everyone.” He leaned in, words like poison.
“Then you’re coming home.” The panic was a living thing, clawing up her throat.
She couldn’t fight it. Couldn’t stop it.
It took everything she had to keep herself from screaming.
Rell’s voice whispered in her ear through the tether. “Show them they don’t own you. Rain fire on them.”
Something inside her cracked. Not loudly—not a scream or a burst of rage. Just a quiet, splintering sound. The sound of a boundary breaking inside her own head. The line between fear and fury. Between Elora and the thing Thorn made her.
And through that crack, the fire slipped in. The heat didn’t burn. It recognized her. Welcomed her rage. She didn’t speak. She didn’t gesture. She only thought it—and the fire listened.
Flames erupted from the brazier and screamed across the air in wild arcs.
They rained down in jagged spheres, striking the stage like falling stars.
But not over her. Not over Tehvan. Every plume she guided slammed into the guards, knocking them back, setting hair and fabric alight.
Two went down screaming. Another staggered, trying to smother the blaze licking at his armor.
She turned her focus.
Thorn.
A fireball aimed squarely at him burst against the air—inches from his face. He didn’t flinch. A shimmer around him rippled like heat off stone.
Gerard snarled, his coat scorched and one arm singed—but no burns. No blood. Just a blackened outline across his chest, glowing faintly. Enchantments. Expensive ones. Coward’s armor.
Didn’t matter.
Elora ripped herself from Gerard’s grip just as the next fireball surged, catching him off balance. His hand missed her, grazing only the edge of her cloak.
She stumbled toward Tehvan, his head finally lifting—bleary-eyed, confused, but breathing. She didn’t give him time to think.
“Up,” she barked, grabbing his arm and yanking him to his feet.
He moved slowly. Too slowly.
Another fireball streaked past overhead, bursting against the far wall of the arena. More guards were spilling in now, shouting orders, weapons raised. She couldn’t think about them. She had to move. They had to move.
The cuffs at Tehvan’s ankles clinked, metal still chaining his feet together.
She yanked a corrosive shard from her belt, smashed it against the lock. The acid hissed and frothed like it was alive, eating through the metal in seconds. The chain snapped, dropping uselessly to the ground.
He swayed.
She grabbed his shoulder, grounding him. “Come on.”
The surrounding air shimmered with heat and chaos, smoke twisting upward as her fire scorched through the stage.
“Do you see that gate?” she whispered to Tehvan, barely able to hear her own voice over the chaos. "We need to get there, now.”
Tehvan stumbled, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “We won’t make it…” he managed.
“Yes we will.” We have to.
Smoke stung her eyes, tears blurring her vision, but she could still make out the gate ahead. It felt miles away, but she pushed herself forward, dragging Tehvan with her.
Guards' heavy footsteps pounding against the sand, their shouts growing louder with each step.
Then, glass shattered around her and Tehvan.
Elora barely had time to register the bottles smashing to the ground before enchanted roots erupted from the earth.
They twisted and writhed like living serpents, wrapping around her ankles.
She stumbled, her balance giving way as the roots tightened, pulling her down.
"Tehvan!" she cried. He too was caught in the roots, his movements sluggish and labored, each step a battle against the tightening grip of the earth itself.
A guard closed in, his spear raised, and Elora tried to focus on the fragile connection she still held over the elemental.
The guard was almost on her when a dagger lodged in his skull, burying itself with a wet thud.
He fell, lifeless, weapon clattering from his hand.
In the stands Rell was already moving, another blade flashing in his grip before throwing it into the temple of another guard.
She reached for the fire, desperation clawing inside her as fierce as the roots outside.
Her mind screamed, pulsed, pushed. Just a little closer.
Just a little further. She needed to break through this time—she couldn’t fail—she—The flames answered.
They burned hotter than her fear, striking the roots and splintering them with a crackling roar.
Smoke and steam billowed, searing Elora and Tehvan’s skin as they ducked away on instinct.
The sudden release sent them sprawling, but the roots were gone.
The heat was a slap to her senses, snapping them back into focus.
“Move, Tehvan!” she shouted. And they were running again. The gate closer now. Bodies falling behind them with tiny knives protruding from skulls. Hopefully one of them was Gerard.
Thorn’s voice erupted through the chaos like an unleashed beast. “Enough!”
The single word boomed through the arena, resonating with a dark, unnatural force that seemed to vibrate in Elora’s bones.
She turned her head in time to see Thorn uncork a vial from his belt, its contents swirling with a malevolent darkness.
As the liquid spilled out, it transformed into thick, black smoke, tendrils coiling around Thorn like a living entity.
The tendrils surged outward with a hungry speed, spiraling across the arena floor, reaching into the stands, and curling through the air like smoke with a mind of its own.
The darkness seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting with each passing second, swallowing the arena in an oppressive, choking fog.
Elora felt the first touch of the smoke as it brushed against her arm—a cold, clammy sensation that instantly sent a jolt of fear through her veins.
She could feel it pulling at her, a force that was both physical and magical, dragging her, inch by inch, closer to Thorn.
She could hear others shouting, their cries cut short as the tendrils wrapped around them, pulling them toward the center like some monstrous, dark whirlpool.
She dug her heels into the sand, struggling to resist the pull, but it was like trying to fight against a current in a raging river. Tehvan stumbled beside her, his own strength no match for the power that was dragging them both toward Thorn.
The pull intensified, and Elora felt her feet slip forward, the ground beneath her seeming to give way.
Her entire body trembled, a frantic tension building against the inevitability of the darkness swallowing them whole.
She was running out of time, running out of options.
They were getting closer, and Thorn’s magic was relentless, dragging them into the very center of his trap.
Light repelled darkness—that much she knew, even if this was dark magic unlike anything she’d ever seen before. Her fingers closed around the flash shard.
She hurled its contents into the air above them and a brilliant burst of white light exploded outward, filling the arena with a searing radiance. The shadows around them recoiled violently, creating a brief gap in Thorn’s magic. Elora seized the moment, pulling Tehvan forward.
Thorn’s laughter rang out, sharp and taunting.
Elora glanced back, just in time to see him toss another potion into the air. The bottle shattered against the ground, and all the shadows from his previous attack coalesced into a single, massive form—a beast of pure darkness.
It towered over the stage, easily three times its size, its body a chaotic fusion of animals that should never have existed together.
It wasn’t solid—it flickered and warped, parts of it dissolving into wisps of dark smoke only to reform a moment later, as if it were composed of pure nightmare given shape.
It lunged toward them, faster than anything Elora had ever seen. Every step it took sent tremors through the ground, and as it roared, a sound like a thousand tortured voices erupted from its maw, shaking the walls of the arena and sending waves of fear rippling through the crowd.
They were so close, the gate only a few paces away, when the beast leaped into the air. Its massive paws crushed the ground, the impact knocking Elora forward. She scrambled to her feet, reaching back to grip Tehvan’s arm. But her fingers only raked through air.
She turned to see Tehvan beneath the beast’s massive paw.
“No!” she wailed. Tehvan’s face contorted in pain.
His eyes met hers, and his mouth moved. Trying to speak.
But Thorn didn’t care for last words. The beast's claws drove down, piercing through Tehvan’s back with a sickening crunch.
His body jerked, and then went still, his eyes still on her, but the light within them fading.
Elora’s piercing cry echoed through the air, a gut-wrenching combination of pain and sorrow that reverberated like a sharp blade slicing through silence.
It was a raw, primal sound that seemed to come from the depths of her soul.
Her legs buckled beneath her, the strength draining from her body.
Just as darkness threatened to close in around her, a thick cloud of smoke erupted at her feet.
“Tehvan!” she cried, reaching out, but a strong grip tightened on her arms, practically lifting her off her feet. “We have to go!” Someone shouted, their voice urgent, pulling her up with one strong motion. She barely had time to register Rell’s presence before he was dragging her toward the gate.
She couldn’t see anything, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.
The weight of the loss pressed down on her chest, and she felt herself slipping into a numb void, the world spinning out of her control.
The noise of the crowd faded into the background, replaced by a deafening silence in her mind. Tehvan was dead.