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All the while, Helene watches, growing more infuriated every time she beats me in combat—or witnesses someone else beat me. She’s itching to say something, but her stubbornness won’t let her.

Until, that is, she finds Dex and Tristas tailing her to the barracks two nights before the Third Trial. After interrogating them, she finds me.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Veturius?” She grabs my arm outside Skulls’ barracks, where I was heading for a bit of rest before a graveyard shift on the wall. “You think I can’t defend myself? You think I need bodyguards?”

“No, I just—”

“You’re the one who needs protection. You’re the one who’s been losing every battle. Skies, a dead dog could best you in a fight. Why don’t you just hand the Empire over to Marcus right now?”

A group of Yearlings watches us with interest, scurrying away only when Helene snarls at them.

“I’ve been distracted,” I say. “Worrying about you.”

“You don’t need to worry about me. I can take care of myself. And I don’t need your...your henchmen following me.”

“They’re your friends, Helene. They’re not going to stop being your friends just because you’re mad at me.”

“I don’t need them. I don’t need any of you.”

“I didn’t want Marcus to—”

“Screw Marcus. I could beat Marcus to a pulp with my eyes closed. And I could beat you too. Tell them to leave me alone.”

She gets in my face, anger radiating off her in waves. “Call them off.”

“Not gonna do it.”

She crosses her arms and stands inches from my face. “I challenge you. Single combat, three battles. You win, I keep the bodyguards. You lose, you call them off.”

“Fine,” I say, knowing I can beat her. I’ve done it a thousand times before.

“Now. I want this done with.” She makes for the closest training building, and I take my time following, watching the way she moves: angry, favoring her right leg, must have bruised the left in practice, keeps clenching that right fist—probably because she wants to punch me with it.

Rage colors her every movement. Rage that has nothing to do with her so-called bodyguards and everything to do with me and her and the confusion rolling around inside the both of us.

This should be interesting.

Helene heads for the largest of the empty training rooms, launching an attack the second I’m through the door. As I expected, she comes at me with a right hook, hissing when I duck it. She’s fast and vengeful, and for a few minutes, I think my losing streak might continue. But an image of Marcus gloating, of Marcus ambushing Helene, sets my blood boiling, and I unleash a vicious offense.

I win the first battle, but Helene rebounds in the second, nearly taking my head off with the swiftness of her attack. Twenty minutes later, when I yield, she doesn’t bother to relish the victory.

“Again,” she says. “Try and show up this time.”

We circle each other like wary cats until I fly toward her, my scim high.

She is undaunted, and our weapons crash together in a starburst of sparks.

Battle rage takes me. There is perfection in a fight like this. My scim is an extension of my body, moving so swiftly that it might be its own master.

The battle is a dance, one I know so well I barely have to think. And though the sweat floods off me and my muscles burn, desperate for rest, I feel alive, obscenely alive.

We match each other stroke for stroke until I get a hit on her right arm.

She tries to switch sword arms, but I jab my scim at her wrist faster than she can parry. Her scim goes flying, and I tackle her. Her white-blonde hair tumbles free of her bun.

“Surrender!” I pin her down at the wrists, but she thrashes and rips one arm free, scrabbling for a dagger at her waist. Steel stabs at my ribs, and seconds later, I am on my back with a blade at my throat.

“Ha!” She leans down, her hair falling around us like a shimmering silver curtain. Her chest heaves, she’s covered in sweat, hurt darkens her eyes—and she is still so beautiful that my throat tightens, and I want so badly to kiss her.

She must see it in my eyes, because the hurt turns to confusion as we gaze at each other. I know then that there is a choice to be made. A choice that might change everything.

Kiss her and she’ll be yours. You can explain everything and she’ll understand, because she’ll love you. She’ll win the Trials, you’ll be Blood Shrike, and when you ask for freedom, she’ll give it to you.

But will she? If I’m entangled with her, won’t that make it worse? Do I want to kiss her because I love her or because I need something from her?

Or both?

All this passes through my head in a second. Do it, my instincts scream.

Kiss her.

I wrap her silk-smooth hair around my hand. Her breath catches, and she melts into me, her body suddenly, intoxicatingly pliant.

And then, as I pull her face toward me, as our eyes are closing, we hear the scream.

XXXIII: Laia

The school is mostly quiet when Izzi and I emerge from the slaves’

quarters. A few students still out head to the barracks in small groups, their shoulders slumped with tiredness.

“Did you see the Farrars go in?” I ask Izzi on the way to the training building.

She shakes her head. “I was sitting there staring at those pillars, bored as a stone, when I noticed one of the bricks was different—shiny, like it had been touched more than the others. And then—well, come on, I’ll show you.”