Chapter 28

CHAPTER28

In one heartbeat, there’s silence.

In the next, a crash of sound.

There are gasps and shouts and roars and whistles. If anyone dares to stoke Ashen’s rage by booing, I don’t hear it. I focus on my surroundings as I stride through the maze, every corner and cache of traps burned into my memory. I follow the path of Pyrrhus’s group, rounding the corner where Valentina remains hidden now that the demons have passed. Her eyes glow, crimson beacons in the shadows. I give her a nod, but I don’t stop. She gives me one in return.

I don’t break stride as I reach behind my back and pull my katana free of its saya. And then I take off running.

It takes a few turns to catch up with the group. The scent of blood surrounds them like fog. Urtur presses them forward, following close enough to be menacing but far enough that the audience can see the obstacles the group encounters clearly. I hear Zida hiss over the wall to my left and know the groups are getting close to the courtyard where the weapons lay waiting.

I slow as I reach Urtur and use his body to block me from view, but the demons are so focused on what’s ahead of them that they don’t see me coming.

Music rushes toward us from every direction.

Mayday!! Fiesta Fever surrounds the playing field. The energy from the audience fills the cavern so completely that it feels like there’s no room for air. It washes over me. I smile.

Do I want to play rock and roll in a disco party?

Yes. Yes, I do.

The demons still haven’t seen me. They’re too distracted by the loud music and the beasts and the cheers. They run to the weapons in the wide room. Duman’s group is just a second behind Pyrrhus’s. There are only four weapons for the taking among eight competitors. Their tenuous threads of allegiance are about to snap.

I slip past Urtur and run after them, my arms pumping, my grip tight on the handle of my sword. Two of the injured demons fight over an ax. Another scoops up a dagger and runs for a corridor on the far side of the square as two men chase after her. Another pair of Reapers have Duman cornered, and he swings a scythe in wide arcs in a bid to hold them off. Pyrrhus grabs a sword but the archer from Imhas kicks the back of his knee and Pyrrhus goes down, a second kick to his wrist dislodging his hold on the weapon. Pyrrhus tries to fight back, but with his existing wounds from the dangers of the maze, he’s in little position to defend himself as the archer aims to strike him down.

I plunge my katana through the archer’s back before he has the chance.

My hiss is drowned by the rapture of the crowd that surrounds us. Guitars and drums trap my heartbeat. The stomping boots weave a beat through the lyrics. Crumbs of rock dislodge from the roof and rain across the Gauntlet. As my sword slides free of the archer’s lung and he falls to the floor, the crowd cheers.

They cheer for their Queen.

I grab the archer’s shoulder and turn him over. His eyes are wide with shock and pain. His pupils are little more than pins of flame. A bloody froth foams from his lips and nose as he exhales.

“Uh oh,” I say as I lean over the archer with a sweet smile and a wicked glare. He begins to convulse. His chest spasms. His eyes stay gripped to mine as I tilt my blade between us and examine the sharpened steel. “Looks like there might have been Angelwing poison on that blade. I wonder where I got more of that from.” I give him a smile of fangs and glowing eyes.

Eyes that glow ice blue.

I drive my blade through his throat, pinning the vertebrae to the stone floor and twisting until the satisfying pop and crunch of bone vibrates through my palm.

The air is charged, like static before the lightning strike. It’s the shock in the crowd. Someone screams. When the first hybrid gallops into the courtyard and barrels down a demon, a deafening ovation erupts around us.

The presence of the hybrids is like something both foreign and comforting in my thoughts. A ball of cotton rolling across the inner surface of my skull. The fuzzy presence of something that shouldn’t be in my head, yet feels soft and yielding, malleable to my own thoughts. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel like they push for too much space in my mind. Maybe it’s because I don’t tell them what to do. They want to be here.

They want justice from wherever it can be taken. And traitorous demons who hoped to force them to serve a war they never asked for? Well, that seems like a pretty good place to start.

I catch Zara Sargan’s eye as she enters the courtyard and smiles at the chaos spread before her. An ancient, powerful vampire, she seems to have withstood Semyon’s hybridization better than those creatures created from younger vampires, some of which are a grotesque combination of skin and snout, fur and fangs and claws. She gives me a little grin of pointed teeth then rushes forward as the players try to flee this latest, deadliest trap. More hybrids enter the space and I turn my attention to Pyrrhus who’s still on the floor, his jaw is clamped tight, though his wild eyes and ragged pulse belie the panic heating his veins. He clutches his hand to his chest. I smell the marrow of broken bones.

“Time to go,” I say, getting to my feet. I drop my left hand toward him. He hesitates to take it, even with the sounds of Joash screaming nearby as a hybrid slashes his calf with long claws as he tries to run toward us. “I’m picking your side.”

With a final exhale of trepidation, Pyrrhus takes my offered hand and I draw him to his feet. “Thank you,” he says.

“Don’t thank me just yet. If you fall at the bridge, I’m not fishing your melting flesh from the acid with a pasta strainer.”

Pyrrhus replies with a worried grimace, and then we take off for the corridor I know will lead toward the end of the maze. We pass the female demon around the first corner, her bloodied body turning to ash.

I help Pyrrhus dodge an obstacle of wires set on tracks through the floor and walls, ready to slice through whatever triggers pressure sensors built into the corridor. There’s a body sliced into numerous sections that are turning to cinders. There’s a severed foot on the floor and a trail of blood. It isn’t long before we encounter the foot’s owner staggering down the hall. I cut him down and we keep going.

It’s a few more turns when we make it to the unstable bridge.

Curls of acrid smoke drift from the deep pool of heated acid. It bubbles beneath the broken panels of the bridge that hang by frayed rope from a steel trellis. Some sections of the bridge are thin, narrow boards that twist in the slightest hint of shifting air. Others are large enough for two or three people at a time but are spaced far enough apart that we’ll need to jump.

I know I could leave Pyrrhus here to find his own way. I could backtrack all the way to the starting line. But if I do that, I’ll lose the crowd. No matter how great this show is, no matter how much is satisfies their need for violent entertainment, they would never forget it if their Queen came down to fight only to turn up a coward.

And right now, they’re cheering my name.

There’s no other way for either of us.

“You first. Take your time. I’ll watch your back,” I say as we climb the stairs leading to the broken bridge. Pyrrhus nods, his jaw crushing his nerves tight between his molars. When he starts the crossing, I turn to protect our back, my weapon at the ready. The crowd claps and whistles for every step he crosses, and they ooh and gasp for every near miss. But Pyrrhus crosses the bridge to the sound of the crowd calling his name. Part of me thinks he’ll take off now that he’s made it to the landing, but he doesn’t. He stands and waits, though I wouldn’t put it past him to try to steal my katana or push me into the acid if I make it to the other side.

I sheathe my sword and start to cross.

The first steps are easy, a row of narrow panels that shift and bump into one another. I hold the frayed ropes and make a mental note to add little hidden thumb tacks to them next time. If there’s a next time. Maybe I can see some of the merits in this gladiatorial battle if I can throw in irritating mini booby traps. I’m thinking about a paper-cut obstacle when my foot slips on one of the larger platforms, causing it to twist a few degrees back and forth. The platform pitches forward and I grasp the ropes to regain my balance without issue, but it must look worse than it is, because I feel a surge of worry in my mark from Ashen. He’s managed to keep his anxiety as a steady hum, but now it burns in my skin.

I jump to the next platform.

Pyrrhus calls my name.

The crowd drowns anything else he tries to say.

A heavy weight crashes against my back and I slam down on my belly on the platform. My breath flees my lungs. The board twists and sways violently, dropping a few inches on one side as part of the rope snaps. I manage to keep my grip on the wooden edge with one hand as I clutch the base of the rope next to my hip with the other.

The weight lifts a fraction from my back as the platform steadies. I feel a tug on the strap that holds my sword to my back. Someone is trying to take my weapon. My poisoned weapon. The one that could kill me too. Permanently.

This is a risk I knew I had to take. I had to make the stakes high enough. I can’t win this realm with half measures. I’ll never believe I’m worthy otherwise.

Except… I didn’t say I’d play completely fair. Though I feel a rough tug at my back as my opponent tries to free the handle from the saya, it doesn’t budge.

Ediye spelled the weapon to only release with my touch.

“Fucking vampire slut,” Joash sneers as I thrash beneath him, unsteadying the platform as he tries again to tug the sword free.

“Fucking demon douchebag.” An inferno of heat burns beneath my mark and I grit my teeth against the pain. I guess Ashen’s just realized I also had Ediye use her magic to bind him to his chair. “Though I guess I should thank you for coaxing the wings out again.”

I whip my kaiken from the sheath strapped to my leg and cut the rope beside my hip with a single slice.

The left side of the board falls but I stay gripped to its edge. Joash manages to clutch my saya and we both sway with the broken bridge as it swings above the acid.

I’m not strong enough to hold us both.

A determined growl rumbles in my throat as I sheathe my dagger and grip on to the edge of the platform with both hands. I kick my legs, trying to dislodge the demon on my back.

“Get off,” I hiss. “You’ll only go back to the Resurrection Chamber.”

“If I go, I’m taking you with me,” he grits out behind me. I glance over my shoulder with narrowed eyes as he laughs. “How do you know there’s not a guard there willing to give you an everlasting death, even at the expense of their own? The archer nearly succeeded in Imha, didn’t he. He was part of the Shub Lugal.”

Shit. He’s got a point. Joash laughs again as uncertainty and fear twist in my guts. Ashen feels it, his own panic and fury molten in my skin.

I firm up my grasp on the edge of the platform and thrash again, but Joash holds on. The rope creaks as we twist and swing. Fibers snap.

“Just let go, little slut,” Joash goads. The scent of acid burns my nostrils with every breath. “I promise it will only be agonizing for a few moments…this time.”

“She’s got other plans, wretch.”

I look up and Pyrrhus is there, clutching a broken board he must have pulled free from the railing at the landing. He smashes the splintered end into Joash’s face, hitting him over and over until finally he must damage something painful enough that Joash’s grip falters. His weight is suddenly free from my back and there’s a splash beneath me. I look down as he thrashes in gurgling agony, his flesh melting, slipping from his bones like heated wax. The scent of rendering skin bursts in hot bubbles.

“Reach, your grace,” Pyrrhus says above me, drawing my attention away as Joash sinks deeper into the smoky yellow liquid. Pyrrhus is lying on the next platform, his body hanging off the edge with the arm of his broken hand braced around its rope. His other is extended for me to take. “I will not let you fall.”

It’s the most unexpected thing that I feel the sting of tears in this moment when I look at Pyrrhus. It’s the determination on his face. The promise in his voice. Even if I’ve changed no one else’s mind about me, maybe I’ve changed his. He could still take my hand and let me go, but I trust myself enough to trust in him.

I reach for Pyrrhus’s hand. He hauls me up.

When we stand, hearts pounding and lungs burning, we look at one another for a moment that feels captured in a bubble of time. There’s a ghost of a smile in Pyrrhus’s face. A look of pride.

I surge forward and wrap him in a tight hug. The bubble bursts in the glory of the crowd as their cheers cascade into the pit. They chant his name. They chant mine. But he still hears me when I say thank you. He nods against my shoulder, his chest a little bigger than before.

We part and cross the last of the bridge, then descend the stairs on the other side. Ashen’s relief cools the edges of my mark. There’s pride as well, and gratitude. And still plenty of rage, presumably for being magically strapped to a chair.

There are only two more turns and a final booby trap before we reach the far wall of the maze. I let Pyrrhus climb the small pedestal first, and he reaches for me to join him. We keep our hands clasped as we look across the audience. The demons are on their feet for us. They wave their hands. They shout. Three words bound through the chamber, echoing from the black stone.

Hail Queen Leucosia.

I turn to Pyrrhus as guards stride from the edges of the playing field to escort us from the pit. “You’re free to go home now,” I say. “Thank you again.”

“Thank you, your grace. You gave me something…unexpected.”

I huff a little laugh. “Mercy shouldn’t be unexpected here.” I tap his chest where the tattoos of his House lie beneath his bloodied shirt. “It’s written right there. Mercy is stamped on your skin.”

“No, it is not mercy you gave me,” he says with a little shake of his head. He steps down from the podium as soldiers approach, but his eyes stay fused to mine as a faint smile crosses his lips, embers sparking in his eyes. “It is hope.”