Page 32

He throws back his head and roars with laughter again, a sound so loud, so sinister, it echoes through the chamber, bouncing off the stone walls and making my skin crawl.

“An alliance?” he sneers, the word dripping with scorn. “With you? You’re delusional.”

Suddenly, his gaze hardens, and his eyes turn cold and predatory. There’s nothing but pure malice in his features when he says, “Instead, I think I’ll take my sweet time teaching you a little lesson about how you should respect your betters, you filthy Gajari savage!”

A chill of apprehension lifts the hair on my arms. He doesn’t just want my coins. He wants to hurt me, to humiliate me. I see it in his eyes, in the way he’s looking at me, relishing the thought of the pain and the kill.

And I realize, with a lurch of my stomach, that he can…

Here, during the trial, anything goes. He can do whatever he wants with me, and no one would stop him.

Think. Think.

I fumble in my pocket and take out one of the coins. I force myself to appear weak, to cower.

“Easy, easy,” I say, my voice trembling with a pathetic, fake plea. “Just… just take it. Please.”

With a shaking hand, I toss the coin across the chamber, letting it clatter loudly against the stone floor as a deliberate distraction.

Kortyz hesitates, his eyes flicking between me and the coin.

It’s obvious that his greed is warring with his desire for violence. I know he’s not fooled, not entirely.

“Please,” I whimper, forcing my voice to break. “Don’t hurt me. Please. Just… take it… and leave. Please. I beg you.”

A triumphant, cruel smirk spreads across his face. He believes my act. He lumbers toward the coin that is only a step away from me, his guard lowered and his focus momentarily diverted. And when he bends to pick up the coin…

With a surge of pure fury, I launch myself forward, a feral snarl ripping from my throat. My knee connects with his nose, and I hear a satisfying crunch of bone and cartilage.

Let him underestimate the filthy Gajari savage . I’ll show him exactly how savage my blood is.

He roars with a loud sound of pain and fury, clutching at his broken nose. The scimitar clangs against the stone floor with a sharp, metallic sound.

Pure, primal survival instinct kicks in, and I scramble toward the fallen blade. But before I can get far, a hand, thick and hard as iron, clamps around my ankle. I’m yanked back with a violent, jarring motion that steals the air from my lungs.

My legs thrash and kick, but it’s useless.

He’s too strong. Another hand seizes a fistful of my hair, and with a jerk, he wrenches my head back.

A starburst of white-hot pain detonates behind my eyes as a fist slams into the side of my face.

My jaw throbs, and I taste the coppery and warm blood in my mouth as a choked-off cry dies in my throat.

He hoists me up effortlessly, and with a guttural snarl of pure hatred, he throws me against the hard stone wall.

Searing hot pain lances through me as first my shoulder, then the rest of my body slams into the wall before I drop to the hard floor.

My vision blurs, swims, and threatens to fade to black. But I can’t pass out. I won’t.

Through the haze of pain and rising panic, I feel it: thick fingers clamping around my throat, lifting me, dragging me upwards, pressing me against the rough stone of the wall.

The air thins, stolen from my lungs. I blink desperately, fighting to focus.

His face is inches from mine, a front of brutal fury and blood—his blood—splattered across his features.

“You filth!” he spits, his voice hoarse with pain and rage. “Gajari cur!”

The grip on my throat tightens with crushing pressure, and I claw at his hands in raw panic.

Use your sorcery!

But the thought, the instinct, is immediately followed by another hard certainty.

You will be disqualified .

I can’t go back to Firelands defeated. It’s more than just about losing the trial.

It’s a confirmation, irrefutable proof, of everything they’ve always thought about me, of every doubt and criticism.

That I’m weak, useless, a disappointment, and that is somehow worse than the suffocating pressure on my throat.

With renewed vigor, my hands scrabble uselessly at the hand clamped around my throat, trying to pry his fingers loose and scratch his skin, but his grip is unbreakable.

I kick, my legs flailing, desperate to connect to his manhood, just as Bahador showed me, but he’s too close; his massive body pins me against the wall, trapping my limbs.

This can’t be the end. Not like this. Not by his hands.

The thought is a silent scream, even as the edges of my vision begin to darken.

Fight. Don’t give up…

My hand, clumsy with panic, fumbles in my pocket until it closes around the wood I’d sharpened in the alcove. It’s smooth and familiar, the only solid thing in this swirling haze of terror. Summoning the last vestiges of my strength, I pull the sharpened wood free.

One chance.

That’s all I have. One strike. I aim for the curve of his neck, the vulnerable hollow where the pulse of his life throbs beneath his skin. And then I plunge the sharpened wood in with all the strength I have left in my body.

A sudden, shocking explosion of crimson splatters, hot and wet, across my face, blinding me, coating my skin, filling my mouth with a coppery, metallic tang.

The world becomes a blur of red…

Screams pierce the silence, filled with a pain that echoes in the ringing of my ears. Within moments, the pressure on my throat vanishes, and I fall hard to the floor.

My lungs scream as I gasp with ragged inhalations, gulping down air, the taste of blood and sweat clinging to the back of my throat.

My heart is beating as if a wild animal is trapped in my chest, and I can’t stop shaking.

My hand goes to my throat, trying to soothe the phantom pressure that feels like a lingering reminder of how close I came to death.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to block out the red and steady my racing pulse and ragged breathing.

But it’s no use. The world is still spinning.

My face throbs from his earlier punch, and my shoulder screams with every ragged breath.

My right hand, the one that met the hard wall, feels like a useless lump.

Kortyz stirs beside me, and I remember my objective. Trying to ignore the blood welling from his neck, I search his pockets with my one good hand and find his golden coin.

I crawl toward the coin I dropped earlier and put both coins in my pocket. Despite my triumph, I feel no sense of victory yet. I need to make my way to the inner ward before time runs out, and I am in no shape to fight again if another foe comes for me along the way.

I glance at the sword he was carrying, knowing I will need more than some rocks if I’m going to make it to my destination, but it’s too cumbersome and would only slow me down. Searching Kortyz’s body, I find a dagger tucked into his belt, which I promptly secure in my boot.

Ignoring the tremor in my knees and the searing agony in my shoulder, I push myself upright and move toward the open door. Just as I reach the threshold, a guttural whimper snags my attention back to the room…

I turn my head to see Kortyz still lying sprawled on the blood-slick floor.

His eyelids are shut, but his lips twist in a silent plea.

A crimson tide spills from the wound where my brutal strike found its mark.

The shard of wood remains embedded in his neck, like a grim dam that barely stems the flow.

He is dying…

Each of my ragged breaths rasps with this knowledge. My fingers tighten into a fist, and a wave of nausea washes over me, not from the pain, not from the fear, but from… guilt.

It was self-defense. He only has himself to blame for this.

I repeat this in my head as a hopeless plea for justification. He wouldn’t have hesitated to see me bleed out on this same cold dirt .

You should leave. Now.

But my legs refuse to obey. So I stand and witness his demise, like a coward counting the stolen breaths of another.

What madness is this? Pity for a would-be murderer? Flee!

There’s nothing I can do to save him. But the thought of abandoning him, to be drained of his own blood, holds me fast. I curse under my breath as I reluctantly return to Kortyz and kneel by his side.

The metallic scent of blood makes me nauseous.

I press my trembling fingers against his wound, desperately trying to stop the bleeding, but it only makes it worse.

Blood gushes out, staining my hands crimson.

So I sit still, like a tangled mess of confusion and despair.

He’s dying; there is nothing you can do.

But the harsh reality is undeniable: there is something I can do… I can use my sorcery to save his life.

You are not allowed to use sorcery during the trials!

But the truth is, I’m not entirely sure.

Any use of sorcery during the trial with the intention to influence the outcome for myself or others is forbidden.

But healing Kortyz won’t help me win and could even jeopardize my position.

And with his coin in my pocket and him unconscious, I’m not helping him advance to the next trial if I heal him.

However, can I truly be sure? What if he regains consciousness after my healing and finds another contender to kill and claim their coin? I would be influencing the outcome.

The risk of disqualification and a possible return to Firelands is too great for me to make a reckless gamble. I’ve come too far to lose everything now. Kortyz’s fate is sealed. It’s a grim consequence of his own actions. My path, however, lies open ahead.

But I remain seated, feeling rooted, as my opportunity for triumph hangs by a thread.

Inside me, there’s a raging storm of resentment.

He’s the symbol of everything I hate. He’s a cruel bigot who tried to end my life without a care.

A despicable person who hates people like me.

But… guilt sticks to me like a leech despite my better judgment.

They were right, back in Firelands. My Sage, the girls in my class, and even my father—they all saw the truth in me. That I was weak. The one who falters when eye to eye to a moment like this. A moment that requires resolve and a strong will.

Kortyz’s final whimper, sounding like a chilling death rattle, jolts me back to reality. It’s his last act.

A final curtain call before oblivion claims him.

As soon as that realization takes shape in my head, my hands as if possessed by a will of their own, defy the protests echoing in my head.

I fumble with my battered left hand, hovering it over his wound.

With a yank, I tear the wooden shard free, and a choked binding spell escapes my lips in the same breath to mend the wound.

I whisper another spell to pulse the blood through his veins and slowly drive his organs to regain their function. Or I hope, slowly enough, that he won’t wake up before sunrise. That he loses the trial but not his life.

Kortyz’s breathing is labored, but he’s no longer slipping away.

Disobeying the rules in the trials brings swift oblivion and a loss of consciousness within moments. I remain on my knees and close my eyes, waiting for the darkness to take me. But moments stretch into an eternity, and oblivion refuses to claim me.

A flicker of hope, timid at first, begins to take root in my heart. I cautiously peek open my eyes to find the grimy cellar unchanged. Does this mean I have remained in the trials? Does this mean I didn’t break the rules of the game?

I rise unsteadily, filled with disbelief and a racing heartbeat. But there is no time for questions, for wondering what happened, or for celebration. There is only time for action. I turn to leave, and my heart plunges into my stomach.

Another figure is blocking the doorway now.