Page 8 of A Legacy of Stars (The Lost God Legacies)

8

STELLA

S tella squinted into the blinding daylight at the end of the tunnel as she followed the line of competitors toward the arena.

She’d felt so certain when she’d woken at first light that entering the Gauntlet Games was the right choice. Outside the Temple of Desiree, when she finally met back up with Arden, he’d been adamantly against it, but as they rode back to Olney, he slowly came to see her side. The tournament usually lasted about two weeks and that would be a blip compared to a lifetime together.

Every step so far had been fueled entirely by the determination in Stella’s heart. But, standing in the shadow of much bigger competitors as she marched to face the crowd, her certainty wavered.

It wasn’t just Teddy’s jabs about how this would be different than training. The more present terror was how her parents would react when they realized she’d entered. She was more afraid of their disappointment than whatever challenge the godly gamemaker would throw at her.

She leaned to look around the man in front of her, squinting to try to spot her parents in their place of honor as guests in the royal booth, but the tunnel didn’t have the right angle to see anything but the wall on the far side of the arena and the long stretch of dry dirt to get there.

Stella pressed her hand to the beaded bodice of her dress and took a deep breath.

The man in front of her glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and smirked. “Nice dress.”

Stella stared at him for a moment, trying to assess if he was taunting her, but his eyes looked more playful than anything else. He wore fine leather armor that looked from the intricate stitching like it was Novumi, but the coin marking on his left wristguard indicated he was a mercenary. What would a warrior for hire want from a tournament like this?

The man arched a brow and looked at her expectantly.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her mouth suddenly dry. “It’s from Novum.”

He winked. “I can tell.”

Cecilia had the dress made for Stella for this very event, which she was supposed to be watching from the safety of the royal booth. Her mother had helped lace her into the corset top and sat beside her while Rosie did her hair. Stella hadn’t been able to meet her mother’s eye the whole time, and she had done her best not to look at Rosie at all because her baby sister was a truly terrible liar.

She prayed Leo and Rosie had done as she asked and kept her parents distracted. Hopefully, they were so busy with the Saveros that they hadn’t even noticed her absence yet.

Anxiety pulsed behind her breastbone. She wanted to claw the bond right out of her chest. Behind that steely exterior, Teddy was an anxious mess, and it made it impossible to tell how much of what she was feeling was actually hers and how much was him.

Stella was vaguely aware of a priestess in gold robes giving instructions to the man at the front of the line, but horns sounded inside the arena, drowning out the sound of her voice.

The line of people started moving and Stella tried breathing in and out for even counts, the way her mother had taught her to do when she was young and still learning to control her magic.

She could hear her mother’s soft, chiding voice in her head as she stepped into the glaring sunlight. “Breathe, Stella. If you don’t control your emotions, they will control you and your magic.”

She’d grown out of most of the fits and starts of fire magic, but there was something in her that never really stopped burning. Now the magic sprang to life, rushing through her veins at the first hint of nervousness. She opened and closed her hands several times, trying to soothe the subtle tingling of her power.

She repeated the words her mother had taught her when she was too young to fully understand them. Brave with my hand. Brave with my heart .

Her mind filled in with perfect color, sound, and scent as the vision took shape. It was one of her earliest memories.

Stella’s mother sat next to her on the beach, her cheeks flushed from the cool breeze that blew in off the sea. Her father stood knee-deep in the waves, beckoning her toward him.

Cecilia had baby Rosie asleep on her shoulder, her other hand rubbing Leo’s back as he slept soundly on the blanket beside her.

“I want you to come in with me, Mama,” Stella whispered. “What if I go under and can’t come back up?”

Cecilia smiled. “Your father won’t let that happen and he is the best swimmer I know. He’s out here every morning. No one knows the sea better.”

Stella dragged her toe along the sand and glanced at her father again.

“I know you’re nervous, but let me teach you a spell for courage,” her mother said. “You just say, ‘Brave with my hand. Brave with my heart.’”

“But what’s the exchange for the magic, Mama?” she had asked.

Her mother had told her from the time she was young that all magic required an exchange. Her fire magic had been bound until she could control it, but once she learned to wield, it would burn through her personal energy reserves the same way running or dancing did, and if she used too much too fast, she would fall asleep. But spells, like the one her mother was describing, required herbs or blood or something else in exchange.

“In this case, you only need your will, and fortunately you have plenty to spare, Little Star.”

Stella frowned at her mother. “So I just say it and it will work.”

Her mother nodded. “It doesn’t hurt to repeat it.”

Stella snapped out of the memory as someone tapped her shoulder.

She whipped her head around to meet Teddy’s gaze. She had been mindlessly following the procession into the arena. The crowd roared from the stands around them as the man two in front of her turned to the right and took his place facing the royal booth.

It was almost her turn. In a moment, they would announce the competitor in front of her and he would step away and then her parents would see her and know what she’d done.

Her heart pounded with the sheer nauseating guilt of making them worry.

The man in front of her stepped away and her gaze didn’t go to her parents. Instead, she saw Arden immediately. He smiled at her. He looked so handsome in a light green tunic with gold embroidery. But, more than that, he looked proud—certain of her in a way that made her stand up straighter and finally take a deep breath.

She could do this. It was just a few more minutes and then whichever god created the three challenges would be introduced as gamemaker. She hoped it was Aelish. The goddess of truth could be blunt and confronting, but she was less prone to violence and less reckless with human lives.

Murmurs rushed through the crowd as they noticed Stella.

“Stella Selene McKay!” the announcer shouted, and the crowd roared .

Stella walked to her place beside the other competitors with her chin held high and turned to face the royal booth.

Her mother’s wide blue eyes stared back at her. Stella swallowed hard and smiled in a way that she hoped would come across as reassuring and not smug. She couldn’t bear to look at her father, but she could see the way his hand had a white-knuckle grip on the arm of Cecilia’s chair.

The noise of the crowd crescendoed to a deafening level as the announcer shouted, “Theodore Davide Savero.”

Every head in the royal booth whipped toward Teddy as he stepped up beside Stella.

His anxiety squeezed like a fist around her heart. She imagined shoving it out of her chest. How had her mother described the bond? Like a door between two hearts? Stella tried to slam her door closed.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Teddy. He was the picture of handsome stoicism, his shoulders back, hands clasped behind him, and gaze staring blankly ahead like he could see straight through the crowd. But inside her chest, his fear was like a wild bird thrashing against the bars of a cage.

King Xander was looking at him with practiced apathy. Stella knew the king well enough to know that he was probably just as nervous as her parents, but had spent a lifetime learning not to show it. Queen Jessamin sat perfectly still beside him, her lips tipped in a proud smile as if she’d expected this all along.

A swarm of hunters in dark green Olney regalia marched into the arena and positioned themselves equidistant around the walls. Stella would have felt a bit more comfortable if they had stationed guardians around the arena, since they were the most talented warriors, skilled at defending a position or important person. But the majority of the guardians were probably busy protecting the royal family and visiting dignitaries.

Security was more intense than Stella had ever seen it at the Gauntlet Games, but so much rode on this year’s tournament. When the war between Olney and Argaria ended more than twenty years ago, the people were restless in peace. Stella’s parents and the kings had created the Gauntlet Games as a way to channel that agitated violence into something contained. It served the secondary purpose of reminding people of the main tenets of their kingdoms: Wisdom, Memory, and Magic.

While it had kept war from breaking out and strengthened the alliance between the two kingdoms, the Sons of Endros had still managed to create tiny fissures of distrust in the last few years. The Gauntlet Games would be the first proper test of the emotional temperature of their people since King Xander had dismissed Isla as huntmaster of the Argarian army.

This would be an obvious place for the Sons of Endros to probe for weakness in either kingdom or the alliance between the two. That was probably the reason for so many hunters around the periphery.

The announcer stepped into the center of the arena and trumpets blared, calling the bustling crowd to order again. The man mopped sweat from his brow with a handkerchief and lifted his hands in greeting.

“Ladies and gentlemen, at the behest of Their Majesties King Marcos and Queen Ilani Teripin of Olney and King Alexander and Queen Jessamin Savero of Argaria, I welcome you to this year’s Gauntlet Games. We honor the original Gauntlet by keeping the peace it created through a three-challenge tournament. We have sixteen competitors eager to get started and prove they have the mettle to best their peers in challenges of wisdom, memory, and magic.”

The crowd broke into applause.

“Without further ado. It’s time for our godly gamemaker to appear.”

Stella held her breath as she glanced at the throne of honor, elevated slightly higher than the royal booth. Bright florals covered the railing in front of it and framed the intricately engraved golden chair.

Stella felt the crowd’s anticipation match her own. Several men patted their pockets in the hope they gambled on the right god.

Since the god in charge of making up the three tournament challenges rotated each year, many in Olney took bets on who would show. The frontrunner for this year’s games was Devlin, the god of wisdom and reason. He had not participated in five years, but was known for his games and puzzles, which made the tournament more fun and exciting to watch, and less violent.

Stella had her fingers crossed that it wouldn’t be Sayla, as the goddess of the hunt had an unnervingly casual attitude toward murder.

Stella was about to rank the gods in preference in her head when the air swirled and a blazing column of fire rose from the center of the arena. Teddy’s panic hit her through their bond before her eyes could register who she was seeing.

The god before them was tall and strong with dark hair that was silver around the temples. He brought his hand to the golden sword on his hip and fear sliced through Stella. She had only ever laid eyes on him in artistic depictions, but she knew that supernatural fear in the air immediately.

Endros, the god of war and discord, stood in the center of the arena, clad in golden armor and a broad smile.

Gasps went through the crowd, low murmurs turning into panicked whispers.

It had been twenty-five years since anyone in the mortal realm had laid eyes on the god of war—since the battle that had ended the war between Olney and Argaria and Cecilia had sent him from the realm.

Now that he was ascended, he could only appear for short periods of time in the living world and his power to create war and fear was much weaker. But even with limited power, Endros was a god whose effect on the human world was terrifying.

Endros held up his hands to silence the crowd. “Yes, I imagine it comes as quite a shock, but as you say each year—this position is open to the god who wants to claim it. I have not done so in twenty years, while others have regularly played the gamemaker. Who better to test the contenders’ understanding of the principles of this kingdom? To design a war game? ”

A smattering of tentative applause broke out.

Endros held up his hands. “Yes, I can see you’re unconvinced. So let me state my true intention. I thought that I was due and I wanted the chance to say once and for all that I condemn the acts of the Sons of Endros.”

More murmurs cut through the crowd. It was clear that the people of the two kingdoms weren’t won over.

“These men who use my name do not act at my encouraging. They are merely children—boys playing at war. I am not the god of war games. I am much greater than that and these acts are an insult to all I stand for. I condemn them and their frailty. They are no sons of mine.” He placed his hand over his heart and bowed to the crowd.

Shock went through the spectators in a wave.

Even Stella might have believed it if her parents hadn’t taught her never to trust any of the gods.

“I have no sons to speak of,” Endros added.

Several people gasped. It was meant to be an insult to his true son—Cato, the god of manipulation and influence. Cato, with his meddling, had a hand in his father’s death, and Endros wasn’t the type to abandon a grudge.

Endros grinned at the royal booth and offered a mocking bow. “Thank you for having me, Your Graces. I’m so excited to see what this year’s competitors are made of.”

Stella should have been more afraid of what the god had in store for her, but her mind was fixated on the fact that she was in for the scolding of her life when she got out of the arena. Some survival instinct in her brain wanted to focus on the more manageable problem instead of the suddenly much more dire threat of death.

Entering the Gauntlet Games was one thing, but once their parents realized they were bonded on top of Endros being in charge of the Games, Stella and Teddy would never hear the end of it.

The only consolation was that maybe Cecilia could convince Desiree to remove the bond and end that irritating distraction. That alone might be worth whatever lecture Stella would have to sit through .

Endros raised his hands. “I know you’re all eager to get to your opening parties and place your bets on your favorite contestants or maybe to bet against those you think will be eliminated early.” Endros winked at Stella and raised his hands high. “Let the Gauntlet Games begin.”