CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Thorne leaned against one of the fragile stone columns, sunlight coming through the crumbled window behind him. He was silhouetted, but I knew that armour – it was mine too.
‘We should go,’ Josie muttered to me. In the empty quiet of the pillar, it felt too loud.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not letting him push me around anymore.’
I felt her tense. ‘Fine. Put your helmet on and don’t die, I’m going to get help.’
The arm I had around her dropped. Knowing better than to ignore one of her ideas, I slid my helmet back on to my head. I blocked Thorne’s view of Josie as she left, staying between them.
‘Not going to scurry away with your little friend?’ Thorne pushed off the column and stalked forward. ‘Looks like I have a time limit for our little talk. Every day those prissy medics kept me in that place I thought about how I’d pay you back.’
He all but cracked his knuckles as he approached. The helmet had been a good idea. I felt my suit come back to life as it connected together, ready to take the impact that Thorne was about to dole out.
‘You want to fight? Fine. We both know how it turned out last time.’ I edged to the side, keeping myself out of arm’s reach.
He laughed and pushed down his faceplate. ‘It’s a little different than last time though, isn’t it? Little bitch doesn’t have a dragon to defend her.’
I pushed down my own faceplate and curled my hands into fists. ‘I know you’re arrogant, Thorne, but not even you can get through this armour.’
His laugh echoed out from inside his helmet. ‘Can’t I?’
He reached on to his back and pulled off his weapon hilt. It clicked into his palm and lit with a flourishing orange light into a gigantic great sword.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’
He ran at me, swinging the sword down over his head, aiming for mine. I swerved out of the way, narrowly missing the sword, nearly blinded by the light of it flashing past my face. Thorne wanted to kill me.
He swung the sword again and again. I barely moved out of the way in time, the absurd reach of the weapon gaining on me. Whatever time I had before Josie got back wasn’t enough.
So I reached for the hilt stored on my back.
It clicked into my palm with a comforting familiarity. The axe sprang from the hilt just as I brought it up to block another attack. The glowing blades clashed, the light repelling against itself. My visor dimmed, filtering out the light as it pressed up to my face.
‘I was going to deal with you over summer.’ He spat the words through his helmet. ‘But you went and disappeared. Coming back here was a mistake, one I’m going to correct.’
Thorne ripped away. I stumbled forward and scrambled for balance, but ran out of time before Thorne was on me again. He hit down with the great sword, going for the overhead swing again. I lifted my axe up, the shaft taking the hit and sending me down on to one knee.
I cracked against the ground hard enough that my armour sent the reverberations all over my body. The smooth stone floor of the pillar gave my boots nothing to grip on to. I tried pushing back against the sword, but it only resulted in my toes slipping.
I rolled out instead. For one horrifying moment I was on my back, exposed. Thorne towered over me and drove his sword into the ground next to my head, not even an inch away. I slammed my foot into the side of his knee and promised to never complain about Bach’s combat training again.
I scrambled back on to my feet and brandished my axe. My shoulders heaved in time with my breaths.
Thorne let the tip of the sword graze the ground as he came for the next assault. Stones scattered against my armour as he swung it upwards. Using the cracked stone tiles for grip, I hooked his blade with the axehead and kept the sword moving past me, throwing Thorne off balance.
I may have had youth and months of training on my side, but Thorne was the healthiest he’d been in years thanks to me and he didn’t seem to have any morals to hold him back.
‘You’re really going to try and kill me here? I get trying to fake a race accident, but death by giant orange sword? It’s going to be more obvious than your cheating.’ Thorne was beyond reasoning with, but there was nothing like goading someone to force a mistake.
His head whipped up. I heard a grunt from inside his helmet as he charged, his sword dragging behind him.
‘Ah, fuck!’ I dived aside, failing a tuck and roll, and so grateful that Josie had told me to put my helmet on as my temple cracked against the ground.
‘Stop!’ – He chopped down, narrowly missing my feet as I scrambled back. – ‘Moving!’ He was throwing the sword down over and over, slicing the ground between my legs as I backed up against a column. Even at close range he was missing. Sloppy. Too angry to see straight.
I couldn’t help but smile – pissing off men was a specialty of mine.
‘Why did you decide to take the bribes, Thorne?’ I asked, knocking the sword back as it sliced towards my neck. ‘Were you already losing and decided to make some cash from it, or did you become this shit after being paid?’
The greatsword slammed into the column by my shoulder, cracking through inches of stone and into my pauldron. My armour dented and began to buckle from the continued exposure.
‘Maybe you were so afraid to fail that you stopped trying altogether?’
I kicked against him, shoving him back with one foot and bracing myself with the other, pushing myself away from the column.
‘Or maybe, Thorne,’ I said, short on breath, ‘maybe you’re just a washed-up piece of shit, past his prime and ready to toss out in favour of a new generation.’
He rushed forward. I brought up my axe to take the sword, but that’s not what hit me.
His hand shot past the weapons and locked around my throat.
We fell backwards against a broken wall, my armour stopping my spine from being crushed.
My feet scrambled below me, my toes brushing the ground as I was raised up.
My axe fell from my hand as I instinctively brought it up to claw at my neck.
Thorne cast his weapon aside too. With his free hand he released his faceplate, pushed it up, then did the same to mine.
The whites of his eyes were shot with red, his pupils blown wide. A faint opalescent glow lit his irises.
Sweat dripped down his brow and spittle flew as he spoke.
‘Shut your whore mouth.’ He bit out every word. ‘It’s not money that’s ruined this sport, it’s trash like you.’ His hand tightened around my neck. There were no armour pieces to protect it.
The air making it through to my lungs was lessening. Darkness started to seep into the corners of my vision. I dug my fingers through his, desperately trying to speak.
‘Sou—’ I coughed, choking on my own closing windpipe.
He loosened his hand, leaning in closer. ‘Got something to say?’
‘Yeah,’ I heaved, gasping in precious air. ‘Sounds to me like you’re a sore loser.’
A vein throbbed on his temple. It was all the time I needed to jab my fingers forward, right into his eyes. Bach hadn’t taught me that one – it was a Cam special.
I slid to the ground, inhaling as much as I could. The two weapon hilts lay on the ground next to me. I kicked them away into the rubble of the destroyed wall. He was crouching, searching for them while pressing on his eyes.
I stood on shaking legs and readied myself for another round.
As I watched Thorne through bleary eyes I couldn’t help but wonder if Cam would be proud.
I was still letting my oxygen-starved thoughts roam free when people rushed in, shouting so much that I didn’t hear any of it.
I raised my hands. There was no plausible deniability here.
They ignored me. Thorne was tackled to the ground by Volitant security – the same ones who had escorted me away after the interview. It felt like a lifetime ago. Now they held Thorne to the ground, putting his hands behind his back. They yelled to each other, pointing around the room.
Slowly, still unsure, I lowered my hands to my sides. It didn’t help that all my energy was gone, I didn’t even have it in me to stay standing for much longer.
‘Lena!’ Josie wobbled over. With my faceplate pushed up I didn’t have my visor to keep my vision steady.
She scooped an arm around me, tucking a hand under my armpit. I let myself go, drooping into her.
‘You did so well, Lena.’ She unhooked my helmet strap, freeing my airways further.
How did she know I needed that?
‘It’s over now. He’ll never fly again.’ We watched Volitant security drag Thorne away. ‘Between this and damaging the arcanite, he’ll never see daylight again either.’
My brain was grinding slowly. Thinking was like wading through mud. Like flying against the wind.
‘How …?’ I wanted to ask how she knew. Why Volitant came in and only took him away.
A man in bright yellow came over, frowning. A medic.
‘Your helmet,’ said Josie, squatting next to me after lowering me to the ground.
The medic eased off said helmet. Josie took it.
‘I turned the comms back on and let it go live to the casting networks. I figured at least one of them would see it and send it out. Turns out all of them did. Both continents saw and heard everything.’ She placed a hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze that my flight suit dutifully replicated underneath.
I gave her a lopsided grin. ‘You really are always right …’
Then I passed out.
‘Josie,’ I put up a finger on my left hand, then added one more for each name. ‘Mystery attacker, Theo, the Bolls … and Thorne.’
‘I think you’ve been hit in the head one too many times. Why have you put me on a list with them?’ Josie sat a few feet away from me by Gottyk’s head. Under it really – he’d laid his snout on her lap as he slept in the aviary.
I sat cross-legged on his back. Since being reunited he hadn’t let me breathe without him monitoring, so I’d decided sitting on him while he snoozed away his post-race fatigue was best. Napping wasn’t a bad idea.
My own brief loss of consciousness hadn’t been restful at all.
I’d walked up most of the steps to the aviary myself.