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“Let’s see how it pans out,” I said. “Could be you, maybe me.”

The group nodded and Caterina moved to step up to the ring.

“Wait,” Phyllis said. “I’d like to go first.”

We all turned to the matriarch of the group. It would help our numbers for sure, but ...

“You sure you want to fight?”

“They won’t expect it.” She shrugged. “And if I can take one or two down, it will help. The fact that someone has been trying to kill us ... I want a piece of them.”

She was still super pale. I stared at her. “You got it. Phyllis first, then Caterina.”

I wasn’t sure at all, but I trusted Phyllis.

I put my palm out and slapped hands with each of my teammates ... with each of my new family.

“Let’s kick some asterisks!”

It took about ten minutes for the other teams to decide who was going first. I took note that Julius was way down the line. Fine by me. I was going to go second to last which meant that however many idiots were left ... that was how many I had to handle.

In the center of the arena was a circle set in stones. We had to stay within that circle and not disturb a single stone or we were out.

To win, we had to knock our opponent out, make them submit, or toss them out of the circle. Similar to the hand-to-hand combat, only this was no holds barred. Magic. Fists. Weapons.

When Phyllis stepped up first, the other team – cause let’s be honest, it was a single team now – they laughed so hard someone in the back fell over. Her shoulders sank a little. She needed to have fight in her, she needed to be pissed off ...

“You got this Phyll,” I said, knowing exactly how touchy the nickname was for her. I needed her to be full of fire for this.

“Stop calling me that,” she snapped over her shoulder.

“Okay, soon as you knock a half a dozen out.” I grinned at her, and she glared right back.

“Just like Nico,” she said. “You know how to push me.”

The wind swept out of me, and I just about went to my knees.

Did she know he was my father?

But the fight was on, and my eyes were trained on Phyllis. She was about a quarter of the way inside the circle now. Her opponent was a young woman from Kirinash.

The girl sniffed at Phyllis as she stepped over the ring of stones.

Phyllis didn’t give her a chance. She used a quick rune of air and pushed the girl right back out, so she landed on her butt outside of the ring.

“One point to House Phoenix.” A voice boomed. I didn’t know the voice, but it tickled at my memory banks. Deep, resonant. One of the older students maybe? Someone from Draconell?

We cheered and I watched with absolute frucking glee as Phyllis straightened and rolled up her sleeves.

She took the next three opponents out so fast they barely had time to cast a single rune. I’d known she was fast, and of course she’d been in school for years longer than anyone else ... I just hadn’t thought she had the fire in her. Not with what had happened to her all those years ago.

I grabbed a hold of Fable’s hand. We were going to win this, and Phyllis was going to take them all out. I could just see it in my mind now. A sixty-year-old taking out the best of the best, over and over again.

We’d all be drinking from the whiskey teapot tonight! There was no way Tarquinius could send half of us home if Phyllis cleaned house all on her own.

There was a shuffle in the ranks and the students that were at the back of the line ... they moved up.

Ramusan “Ram” Wintreck stepped into the ring, a brute of a Wolven. House Wolven was known for their violent tendencies, and him more than the others. And we’d already locked horns with him – we knew just how mean he was.

“Oh, my gods,” Ellie breathed out. “He’ll kill her.”

“No, he won’t.”

I stepped up to the edge of the circle and flicked my fingers against my thigh. A rune for bravery that my mother had traced on my cheek how often? At least once a week when I’d been a child afraid of the dark.

“This rune carries my love, and gives you strength, Harlow. Don’t forget it.”

And I hadn’t. I just hadn’t needed to remember it until now.

I connected to it, drawing my own energy and strength, imbuing the rune with them both, then finally casting it toward Phyllis. Her back straightened and a shiver ran through her spine.

Ram had a blocking rune up before he even stepped into the rune circle, and the fight was on.

Phyllis moved like water around the ring, her hands flashing as she avoided the physical blows.

I fed her my energy, eyes focused on their every move, ready to jump in if I had to.

Ram flung a rune at her feet, tripping her and sending her to the ground. Behind me a gasp went up through our group.

“Get up, Phyllis!” I shouted, but she stayed down on her hands and knees as Ram strolled toward her.

“You shouldn’t be here. You’re weak, useless.”

Phyllis looked up at him, and I’d never seen such rage in her. “I am not weak.”

She’d been spinning a rune with the hand furthest from him, her off hand. She rocked back and flung the rune with a scream, the colors and shape of it telling me everything.

A tornado spun around Ram, twisting him off his feet and flinging him out of the circle, slamming him into the far wall of the Coliseum.

“Point to House Phoenix. Well done, Phyllis. Well done.”

That same voice. Who the hell was commentating?

“I am out,” Phyllis hobbled to the edge of the circle. I caught her around the waist, and she looked at me. “You aren’t like him; he never would have done that, I felt the boost from you.”

Shared power, that’s what she meant. I squeezed her around the waist. “You are a damn rockstar, Phyllis.”

Her smile wavered and then the rest of the team were there, lifting her toward Ellie to heal her hands and knees.

“That counts as a loss. You cannot leave the ring unless you are beaten, or forfeit your match,” Tarquinius said.

I shrugged. I would take it, Phyllis had done more than her part. One of us would go another round in her stead. “Caterina, you ready?”

She bobbed her head, and I saw her weave a rune for bravery behind her back, letting it sink into her skin before she stepped into the circle.

The fights were brutal. There was no holding back on any side.

Caterina dropped six fighters before she went down. Gary managed three. Marina had four before she was thrown clear of the ring.

Fable also wove the bravery rune before she went in, and she took out another five. On her sixth fight, my spine tingled, like someone had walked over my grave.

I looked around the Coliseum to see dark clouds – the ones that Phyllis had claimed to have seen – wrapped around the space. The sky began to crackle with lightning, deep booms of thunder reverberating in my chest.

Fable backed up and I put a hand on her shoulder, giving her a boost of strength. My own reserves were low, but I didn’t care. We were winning.

My friends were killing it. “You got this.”

Fable grinned and put her hand on mine, squeezing it back. “ We got this.”

We both turned to face her next opponent. As he stepped toward Fable, he flicked something overhand toward our friends behind me. I turned with it but didn’t understand what the tiny blinking red light was until it was too late.

It landed in the huddle where Ellie was tending to Gary’s wounds.

And exploded.

Students were flung everywhere.

Screams rent the air, and the team across from us cheered. Not that I could hear them, but I could see them high fiving one another, faces plastered with grins.

The blast was meant to disorient us, to shake us up. Because if it was meant to kill us, it would have carried a bigger punch. It wasn’t even on par with the fireball that Draconell had flung at us.

I was on the ground, flat on my belly as I stood up. Fable was outside the ring, and I went to her first.

I put a hand on her and felt her breathing.

I touched the velvet pouch with all the stones my friends had etched their auras on, and that connection to them lit up like a beacon in the night.

My friends were hurt, and scared, but they were okay.

Not unlike the bond to Typhon, I could just pick them out at the edges of my senses.

Across the ring stood the biggest monster of House Draconell. The one who’d thrown the bomb.

Mortan Blackstone.

“Full circle,” I growled. “It’s about time we dealt with you.”

“Continue!” Tarquinius bellowed. I glanced at the headmaster, and the encouragement on his face. He tipped his head in my direction. Because this was what it might look like, facing Nocta – facing someone who had no conscience.

“This is war, Ms. Daygon. And real war is messy and full of surprises.”

Mortan flicked his wrist, his runes prepared as I moved toward the ring. Someone was yelling at me, but the words were fuzzed as I focused in on the prick in front of me.

He wanted to do more than beat us.

Every line of his body was set to do damage that wasn’t supposed to happen. Call me crazy, but I would have bet money in that moment he’d been behind the flaming rune the Draconell team had cast.

I didn’t prep a single rune as I stepped over the threshold of the ring.

“Take her out, Mort!” Julius yelled.

Mort smiled, greasy, confident.

He kept spinning runes and I didn’t so much as twitch. “You aren’t going to fight now? Going to just stand there and let me level you?”

I knew the rune I wanted. Bone shattering, I would make him hurt for what he did to my friends. I could feel their injuries – could feel the broken ribs and the gasps for air, could feel the open wound across Caterina’s side and the blow to Phyllis’s head.

He was a monster.

My fingers itched to spin the rune and cast it at him, but the timing had to be right.

Mort rushed me, a rune flying. I spun to the left, dropped down and kicked out at his knee, catching it hard with the heel of my boot. The bone snapped and I swept upward, jump-kicking and snapping my other foot into the bottom of his jaw.

His eyes rolled, but he stayed on his feet.