Page 30

“Fuck you,” the team leader snarls back. “You filthy dragon shifter whore of a?—”

Draven snaps the guy’s wrist.

Another scream rips from his chest.

Stopping halfway across the room, I summon my magic and shove it at the guy. Latching on to that violet flame of pain, I blow it into a raging inferno.

His scream turns into a cry of pure agony. It’s so loud that his voice breaks halfway through. And he shakes violently against the wall.

Draven turns his head and glances at me over his shoulder. I give him an unapologetic shrug. He tilts his head to the side in a half nod, approval lining his features. Then he turns back to the Unseelie fae.

“The key,” he commands.

The guy sobs and gasps in breaths through the intense levels of pain that I’m forcing him to feel. Draven digs his fingers into the guy’s broken wrist, and another world-ending scream of pain tears from his throat.

“Okay, okay,” he blurts out.

“No,” I say before Draven can reply.

The Unseelie fae snaps his gaze to me, and a flash of fear pushes out the pain in his eyes for a second. I quickly release my grip on his pain and latch on to that fear instead. Something terrifyingly vicious awakens in my chest as I flash him a ruthless smile while I start to increase his fear.

Glancing at me over his shoulder again, Draven arches an eyebrow in silent question.

“Let him go,” I say, still continuing to increase the guy’s fear.

Draven doesn’t even hesitate. He immediately releases his grip on his captive.

The Unseelie fae lets out a whine as his now broken wrist falls back down to his side, and his eyes are filled with fear as he just stands there, staring at me. I keep increasing his fear until he is shaking against the wall. Then I cast a discreet glance at the audience.

Everyone seated in this section is watching our confrontation with bated breath. The ones who were standing up appear almost frozen as they stare intently down at us while the ones who were still sitting down have all leaned forward in their seats. As if they want to get as close as possible.

I let a smirk curl my lips.

They wanted a show.

I’ll give them a show.

With my magic still turning the team leader into a trembling mess, I lock hard eyes on him.

“Crawl up to me and surrender your key, and I’ll consider not maiming you too badly,” I order, echoing his own words from earlier, with a mocking smirk on my lips.

He immediately drops to his knees.

A gasp rips through the audience above us. Apparently, this isn’t something the team leader for the Yellow Faction would normally do. But with me manipulating his emotions, he doesn’t exactly have free will anymore.

Whines of pain escape his lips as he crawls across the sand on his broken wrist. Once he reaches me, he sits back on his knees and reaches into his yellow fighting leathers to get the key. His undamaged hand shakes so badly that he almost drops it.

I soak up the terror in his eyes like a fucking psycho as he drops the key into my waiting palm. But it just feels so good. This power. This absolute power I have over him right now. It’s intoxicating.

White lightning crackles through the air.

The kneeling man jerks as it hits him in the back. His eyes go wide and his body spasms before he topples to the side. He hits the ground with a thud, sending a small cloud of sand swirling up.

Draven glances down at him as he steps over his unconscious body to reach me. His golden eyes burn like wildfire when he meets my gaze. My heart flips as he leans closer and places his lips right next to my ear.

“Fuck, you’re hot when you threaten people,” he murmurs in my ear.

Pleasure crackles down my spine and heat floods my veins.

“If you’re done eye-fucking each other, we still have a job to do,” Isera’s voice comes from somewhere to my left.

A different kind of heat sears my cheeks as I remember that we’re not alone. In fact, we’re in a packed arena full of people watching us.

Clearing my throat, I take a step back to put some distance between me and Draven. He gives me a sly smile but then turns so that we are all facing the same way. Or rather, the same section of the audience.

We won the battle, but there is still no way out of this room unless the audience turns one of the walls for us again.

Standing there side by side, we stare up expectantly at the crowd.

The ones who were waving yellow banners are glaring down at us as if they want to murder us.

But the rest look more uncertain. A few of them look like they’re about to give us an applause, or at least cheer, but then they glance hesitantly at the others.

We gave them a nice show. But we’re still outsiders.

When no one opens any of the walls for us, Isera lets out an annoyed sigh under her breath. Her eyes begin to glow again as she summons her magic.

Ice crackles and glints in the bright sunlight as she creates steps along the stone wall that the Yellow Faction came from. Then she gives the crowd an elaborate bow, which seems to surprise them as much as us, before she jerks her chin at us to follow.

A few scattered cheers of approval come from the crowd as we jog up the ice steps and up onto the top of the stone wall.

From up here, I can see the layout of the entire arena. Countless rooms and corridors fill the entire sand ground, except the very middle, where a round space has been left empty. It’s impossible to tell from this distance, but I assume there is a door somewhere in that space.

While Isera forms another staircase on the other side of the wall, I quickly sweep my gaze over all the rooms in search of the other teams. A jolt shoots through me when I realize how close both the red team and the blue team are to our location.

The White Faction is on the other side of the arena, but the green one is about halfway between us and them.

And all of them jerk their heads up to stare at us where we’re standing on top of the wall.

“Let’s go,” Isera says, and hurries down the ice steps as soon as they are finished.

We dart down after her.

“Azaroth’s flame,” Galen exclaims as we reach the room below where he, Alistair, and Lyra were pacing like restless wolves. “What the hell happened?”

“We got the key,” Draven replies, and nods to me.

A grin spreads across my mouth as I hold it up. They all stare at it.

“It’s white,” Alistair says.

“Uhm, yes,” I reply, frowning at his strange tone. “It’s…” I trail off as realization finally slams into me before I manage to end with a miserable, “White. The key is white.”

A collective groan escapes us all. Because the key we started with is also white.

Shoving the useless key into one of my new belt pouches, I rake a frustrated hand through my hair. “After all of that, the key is fucking white.”

“So now we have two white keys,” Alistair summarizes rather superfluously.

“Yeah.”

“Guys,” Isera interrupts. Her eyes are fixed on the openings on the other side of the room.

But she doesn’t need to say anything else, because realization floods my chest like icy water.

All the other teams saw our location when we were forced to climb over the wall.

I curse under my breath, glancing between the two openings while my pulse thrums in my ears.

“We need to move. Now.”