Chapter 42
Iwake to emptiness and silence. Light streams through the unfamiliar window, casting long rectangles across the floor.
For a moment, I blink in confusion, trying to place myself. The events of last night crash back. The creature, the pain, Zeriel's swift actions. The fact we shared a bed. My shoulder throbs dully beneath the bandage, the sore skin on my hands a reminder the creature wasn't a nightmare.
I sit up and move to the half-open door. It creaks as I push it wider.
Zeriel stands in the small kitchen, back to me.
He’s already in the empire-issued suit, blackish-blue with a line of silver at the collar and cuffs.
It’s made to be a uniform, yet it fits close across his chest and shoulders, moving like it was cut for him alone.
Forest light slips through the window, catching in the dark waves of his hair, now combed back.
He turns, his brown gaze catching mine, holding a moment too long to be comfortable before shifting away. “How are… the injuries?” he asks, voice low.
I let out a breath. “Sore, but I'll manage.”
He nods once, clears his throat. “Your room’s cleaned... We leave in half an hour.”
My stomach lurches at the sudden reminder. Preliminaries. Selen's words from last night reverberate in my skull.
I hurry to the bathroom and shower. My fingers fumble with the tiny buttons of an emerald-green gown as I dress.
The silk slides cool against my skin, a jarring contrast to the knot of dread hardening in my gut.
Every breath feels too shallow, like my lungs can't quite expand against the pressure building inside me.
When I emerge, Zeriel’s already armed, blade buckled at his side, every inch of him the empire’s favored gladiator. His gaze moves discreetly over the length of me, before rising to my eyes. “Ready?”
“Define ready,” I murmur, tugging at my sleeve.
He leads me outside, where the clearing is alive with activity. Champions and their entourages gather in small clusters, their voices a low murmur beneath the strange, whispering sounds of the forest. The luminescent trees seem dimmer in the daylight, but still pulse with an unsettling glow.
Blaise Malvric stands near the center, resplendent in crimson and gold, his blond hair reflecting the light. As we approach, his gaze slides to me, and the faintest smile touches his lips. Cold, knowing, victorious. My skin crawls.
Beside me, Zeriel’s expression hardens into something lethal.
His eyes lock with Blaise's, and in that moment, I see murder in them.
Not the quick, clean kind he deals in the arena, but something slower, deeper, a promise of pain long-savored.
If looks could kill, Blaise would be a smoldering pile of ash.
Overseer Pellvorn waits at the clearing's heart, hands clasped behind his back. His deep forest-green uniform gleams, the embroidered dragon almost seeming to writhe with each shift of the fabric.
“Champions,” he calls, his voice carrying across the space. “Your transport awaits.”
He points to somewhere deeper in the trees, where I realize a line of dragons awaits, unlike any I've seen before.
Gloamwyrms, the native species of the Twilight Forests.
They're immense yet slender, their bodies lithe and sinuous, scales the color of deep indigo with faint, pulsing patterns that seem to echo the forest's glow.
Their eyes are enormous, pupil-less orbs of liquid silver that reflect our faces back at us.
“These creatures will convey you to the Umbral Arena,” Pellvorn continues. “Please mount with your entourages.”
Zeriel approaches one of the waiting gloamwyrms, placing a steady hand on its flank. The creature turns its massive head, those mirror-eyes taking us in with eerie stillness. I follow, my legs feeling unsteady beneath me.
Zeriel swings himself onto the dragon's back, then extends a hand to help me up. I accept it without argument and settle behind him, my hands finding purchase on his waist.
“Hold tight,” he warns, just as the gloamwyrm tenses beneath us.
I do, fingers digging into him. “Try not to make this more dramatic than it has to be.”
I’m praying this won’t be another spectacle like the night of the Imperial Approach. My nerves are too shot as it is.
But instead of launching into the air, the drake surges forward on powerful legs, its body weaving between the luminescent trees with startling speed.
I gasp as my body jolts against the hard planes of Zeriel’s. Could’ve warned me it runs like a drunken serpent.
The other gloamwyrms follow, each carrying their champions through the forest in a strange, undulating procession.
The wind whips at my face as we race through the undergrowth, the forest blurring into streaks of blue-green light. Despite their size, the dragons move with uncanny precision, never once crushing a tree.
And then I hear it: the distant roar of a crowd, growing louder with each passing moment. My grip on Zeriel tightens involuntarily. His shoulders shift, the barest acknowledgement, but he doesn’t pull away.
“We’re close. Just try not to claw through my ribs before we get there.” His voice is pitched just loud enough for me to hear over the wind.
The trees thin, then part entirely, revealing an enormous structure rising from the forest floor: the Umbral Arena.
Shaped like a vast oval, its dark stone is carved with intricate patterns that seem to drink in the daylight.
Massive pillars support ascending tiers of seating that encircle a shadowed central space.
I wonder how old this place is, if it was raised back in the time of the old courts.
The weathered pillars and runes look ancient enough.
Once, arenas like this might have been sanctuaries of oath and ritual, where courts gathered to bind themselves to dragons, to test their strengths in ways that honored our gifts.
Now the same stones serve only to cage the broken, to turn survival into spectacle.
I can’t decide what’s worse—that our ancestors might not recognize it at all… or that they would.
The gloamwyrms slow, then halt before a grand archway. The entrance. One by one, the champions dismount, gathering at the base of a spiraling staircase that winds upward along the arena’s outer wall.
Zeriel swings down first, then turns and reaches for me.
His hands find my waist, firm and sure, the heat of his palms seeping through the thin fabric before I can think to breathe.
I grip his forearms, the muscle under my fingers shifting as he lowers me—far more gracefully than I would have managed on my own.
“Remember what Selen said,” he murmurs, voice close enough that I can feel the brush of it against my ear. “We watch. Nothing more.”
I don’t nod, but I don’t protest. My throat now feels too tight for words.
We ascend the staircase, each step bringing us closer to the hubbub of the crowd. At the top, we emerge onto a viewing platform reserved for the champions: a semicircle of velvet seats overlooking the arena below.
For a moment, I forget how to breathe.
The “arena” isn't a simple sand pit like I'd imagined.
It's an entire section of forest, enclosed within high walls.
A microcosm of the Twilight Forests themselves.
Clusters of luminescent trees, small clearings, even a stream winding through the center, all contained within a space the size of a small village.
And the people. Gods, the people.
They spill into the arena from small gates along the perimeter, a flood of fae in simple tunics. Each wears iron bands around their necks and wrists.
I recognize the Ironhold recruits immediately by their gray outfits, clustered together near one entrance.
But they're vastly outnumbered by the green-clad fae pouring in from the other gates—recruits, prisoners, mostly from this province judging by the stark paleness of their skin and longer than average ears.
Their faces are harder to make out from this distance, but their movements speak of even more confusion, fear, anger.
And they keep coming, a seemingly endless stream of bodies filling the forest arena, dozens turning into hundreds.
My eyes frantically search the gray-clad group until I spot them: Lira with her dark braid, Nyx's distinctive stance, Vex's slight frame, Talyra’s wary poise.
They've formed a tight circle with Selen's other women, backs to each other, eyes scanning the perimeter like cornered wolves. Except Sariah… I still don’t spot her.
The gates finally close. The last green recruit stumbles into the arena, bringing the total to what must be nearly a thousand souls.
Heat rises, bitter, to the back of my throat.
Of course, the empire will say we deserve this.
Lawbreakers. Dissidents. That we’re examples to be made, warnings to keep the provinces’ peace.
But staring down at the faces below, I know better.
Most of them don’t look like villains. They look desperate, backs broken under rules that were never ours, forced into lives that hollow us out.
Not rebellion, not treason. Just survival—and the pull toward what still lingers in our blood, which the empire has twisted into crime.
I see it etched into their bodies. Split lips. Blackened eyes. Raw abrasions where iron bites into wrists and throats. The swollen face of a woman who can barely see. A boy limping on a ruined knee. These aren’t random conscripts. They’ve been softened first—beaten, starved, broken down.
Dissidents. Troublemakers from the outer provinces.
Not the usual mix of thieves and debtors thrown into prelims. No, these are all fae who pushed too close to the truth of themselves, punished in public. And the Ironhold’s own are cast in too, thrown like kindling to keep the fire burning.