Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

Keera

A hand landed on my shoulder, and I jumped before realizing it was Neven. His warm gaze was a welcome sight to my frayed nerves. I had spent the remaining rest days of the Trials firmly ensconced in his textile stall, not trusting myself to join in the festivities after my last social liaison had apparently been a ploy by a would-be assassin. While I worked with Neven, fetching and carrying or making change, he never brought up the coming duels or tried to pry details from me about the prior challenges. If he made conversation at all, it was idle gossip about the other stall owners, and I appreciated him making space for me in the normalcy of his life. For the last weeks, my nerves grated, and increasingly disturbing dreams about the Viper haunted my sleep. The last one had echoed the first dream of intimacy I had when arriving at Kelvadan, but this time my companion wore the Viper’s face. I woke from that dream with an overwhelming rush of both heat and cold washing over my skin. The time spent in Neven’s stall was a safe haven from such confusing dreams and the speculation of the Trials.

Now, Neven held out a pot of black paint and gestured to my face, offering to help me apply it across my eyes. As the individual duels were fought starting in the afternoon, moving into evening, it would be all too easy to be blinded by the sun.

I turned away from the fight currently underway, glad for the distraction. Watching the competitors only made bile rise in my throat at the thought of my own impending duels. I had never truly expected to make it this far in the Trials, and the volume of the audience’s cheers with every clash of blunted sabers jangled my nerves.

I shut my eyes and focused on Neven’s cool, damp fingers tracing a stripe across my face.

“I’m glad you don’t have to fight in the first round after placing so highly in the race.” Neven made casual conversation as he worked. “It’ll keep you from being as tired in the later rounds.”

“You say that as if I’ll be fighting in the later rounds,” I grumbled, half under my breath, but he seemed to hear me none the less.

“You’ve made it this far.”

“I’m still not sure how that happened. I’ve only been training for a few months,” I pointed out. Even though Aderyn and the queen had put their faith in me to win the Trials and prevent war in Kelvadan, standing here facing down the final duels held the strange blurred quality of a dream. Perhaps I was still lying in the empty sands, drowning in my own blood and having fevered visions of what being in the final round of the Trials would be like. Still, the visceral sensations in my body told me this was real. Perhaps the desert really had chosen me, and I would defeat the Viper to save Kelvadan—and finally earn a real home here in the Great City.

Or maybe, I would fail the queen, despite all her efforts to help me.

Nerves jangled my belly, making the fruit I had eaten for lunch churn uneasily. I swallowed my nausea down, unwilling to waste the food by retching it up.

“You act as if keeping yourself alive in the desert for years wasn’t any sort of preparation.” Neven finished up and wiped his hands on a cloth tucked into his belt. “Besides, the Trials are where the desert picks her Champion, and she is never wrong. People who have trained for years for the Trials have lost to those the desert deemed worthy.”

“Some people in Kelvadan seem to think that the chosen of the desert is nothing more than a myth,” I pointed out. Even more believed that being crowned Champion was a sign of some great destiny, but that didn’t seem to fit me right now either.

“Every myth comes from some truth.”

I opened my mouth, but my response was drowned out by the crescendo of the crowd. Turning toward the ring, I peered over the heads of those in front of me to the ring where the duels took place. The two competitors were caught in a grapple. One man had the other’s blade arm trapped by his side, essentially disarming him. The fighter didn’t give up, grabbing at his opponent’s sword.

The crowd gasped as the pinned man wrenched his competitor’s saber free, hitting its previous wielder over the head with the pommel. He stumbled back, tripping over his own feet, stunned by the blow. In a flash, his adversary had both sabers crossed at his throat.

The gong rang out above the cheers and hollers of the crowd.

“Silas moves on to the next round.”

The victor offered his hand to his opponent and helped him to his feet. They clasped forearms, and the loser rapped his knuckles to his brow in respect.

“The next match will be Badha of Clan Otush and Keera of Kelvadan.”

My lunch threatened to reappear again, but the feeling was drowned out by the leaping of my heart at the announcement—I was a citizen of Kelvadan. I was fighting for this city that had welcomed me with open arms when nowhere had ever felt like home.

I unsheathed my blunted saber and marched into the ring, the eyes of the crowd weighing heavily on my back, but I raised my chin. My opponent bore a green sash, the color of Clan Otush, and raised her arms boldly in the air as she entered the ring. The hollers and cheers told me that she was a favorite of the spectators, and she seemed to revel in it. I avoided looking to either side, instead focusing on my opponent.

She sprang forward with a flurry of attacks as the gong sounded, driving me back. I quickly changed my momentum, moving to the side so she wouldn’t coral me into the edge of the arena where I would have no room to maneuver. My mind raced, trying to recall the words of wisdom Aderyn had about fighting opponents so fast and nimble.

In a flash, a strike came at my unprotected side. Before it could slash me in the ribs, I turned, lifting my elbows over my head, and catching the blade in a hanging parry. The force knocked the saber off course, and I moved the momentum into an overhead strike.

Badha’s eyes widened as I pressed the advantage, only just missing her shoulder with my downward blow. I couldn’t remember any of the drills Aderyn had put me through, but it didn’t seem to matter. My body did.

Time blurred, and the whistling of wind filled my mind. In a matter of moments, or at least that’s what it seemed, my opponent had her empty hands in the air, my saber at her throat.

I lowered my weapon quickly, uncomfortably familiar with the feeling of a saber point at my throat and loathe to subject anybody to it, even if it was blunted. Badha clapped me on the shoulder with a rueful but friendly smile as we made our way out of the ring.

I stopped at the edge of the ring, crestfallen as strangers offered me smiles and pats on the back. My arms hung limply at my side, tip of my practice saber dragging on the ground. Standing among the crowd and accepting their congratulations felt like belonging—something I had craved for so long it felt carved into my identity. Now though, it felt oddly as if it were happening to somebody else.

The next few fights passed as I stood dumbly among the crowd, but I was pulled from my reverie as a familiar figure, broad shouldered and imposing, pushed into the ring. This time, the onlookers didn’t cheer but were overtaken by a sinister hush.

With the mask on, I couldn’t see the Viper’s expression, but his body language gave away nothing. He simply swung his sword back and forth in a few passes as if to loosen up, the whistling noises it made carrying across the ring.

The blood drained from the other fighter’s face as he took in his opponent. I couldn’t say I blamed him. Even though I had technically bested him in the hunt, everything I had seen from the Viper spoke of terrifying competence, from the effortless way he had kidnapped me and lugged me across the desert, to the swathes of competitors he had eliminated during the melee. The man who had pressed a gentle hand to the nape of my neck and offered to help me contain my magic was nowhere to be found .

I hadn’t even registered the gong ringing, and the Viper’s adversary was face down in the dirt. The onlookers barely had time to react, a stilted rumbling instead of a cheer filling the arena.

“The fighter from Clan Katal wins the match!”

The Viper stood in the ring over his opponent. He didn’t offer his hand, but he hesitated. His fallen adversary scuttled away on his hands and knees and scurried out of the ring, clearly unwilling to take the assistance up even if it were offered.

A shiver ran up my spine despite the heat of the late afternoon as the next duelists were called forward. If that ruthless efficiency won the Viper the title of the desert’s Champion, peace would no longer be an option for Kelvadan.

My next fight passed in much the same way as the first, my enemy felled by my body before my mind could process what was happening. It might have been Aderyn’s training, embedded in my muscle memory, and letting my instincts be the guide, but the sensation was unnerving. By the time I found myself in the semi-final match, my skin itched as if too tight, and the chatter of the crowd, growing in pitch and excitement, felt like dozens of flies swirling around my head.

The fights grew more brutal, competitors putting more force behind their blows, with each passing match. The only person besides the Viper I recognized that had made it to the duels was Nyra. I blinked in surprise as her name was called, not having realized another fresh trainee was still in the Trials.

I straightened as her fight began, only to slump again almost immediately. Her opponent parried her opening move easily, knocking her blow aside and rapping her firmly on the wrist. The blow caused her to yelp, and her blunted sword dropped to the sand. I grimaced. Aderyn had used that move on me enough that I knew it caused your hand to go numb, your grip useless.

Nyra retrieved her sword and shuffled from the ring as her opponent was declared winner. I fully expected her to brush past me as she left, but she paused, touching two fingers to my elbow.

“Good luck,” she murmured. Then, she melted into the crowd at my back.

It was the first time any of the trainees had acknowledged me since the accident with Dryden. Even those who disliked me were counting on me. My heart hammered.

But every time my name was called, “Keera of Kelvadan,” it served as a balm to my fraying nerves. I represented Kelvadan, and it was a responsibility at which I would not balk. Not when they had given me more second chances than my own parents. After all, I had promised Aderyn I would fight in the Trials, and she had never been anything but kind to me. Even as Aderyn hovered off the queen’s shoulder across the arena, Neven stood stalwartly and silently at my back.

My feet carried me into the ring for the semi-final match. With a quick feint I baited my opponent to parry. Then I ducked my blade under his and drove it forward into his sternum. He raised his hand in defeat. With a single and anticlimactic trap, I had won, moving on to the final match.

The cheering of the crowd at my swift victory clashed with the growing sense of unease.

I watched the Viper fell enemy after enemy, each with so little fanfare, it was if he didn’t find any of his opponents worth any extraneous movement. The woman he had just defeated limped out of the arena after taking a harsh but fair blow to the leg ten seconds after the gong had sounded. Despite whatever luck—will of the desert or otherwise—that had brought me this far, despair began to rise in my throat. Nobody could stand against the Viper’s skill.

“The fighter of Clan Katal will fight in Keera of Kelvadan in the final match!”

The hum that rose might have been from the crowd or the rush of noise in my head. Somehow, this ending had seemed inevitable since the race this morning, but my mind had shied away from the reality of what was coming. There was no way I would make it to the final round, yet here I found myself, walking into the packed dirt circle on numb legs. Now that I was here, I was certain this was as far as my newfound skills would take me.

Neven patted me on the shoulder as I passed him to enter the ring, and I forced my chin up. Even if I walked toward defeat, the people of this city had given me so much more than I deserved. I wouldn’t sentence them to war without a fight.

By now, the sun hung low in the sky, the long shadows lending a dreamlike quality to the affair. Or maybe the feeling of floating while weighing more than Daiti was from the odd way sounds filtered through my ears to my frazzled brain, warped as if I were underwater.

All I knew was that my gaze locked on to the figure who entered the ring across from me, not actually that much taller than me, but larger than life in the way he haunted my thoughts since the day he had first said my name.

Silence hung thickly in the air, and then the gong rang. This time, I leaped off the start, opening with a series of quick slashes. The Viper parried easily, knocking my blade aside, but not throwing any attacks back. We circled each other for a moment, and my gaze darted over his shoulders and chest, looking for any hint of the next attack. I found none.

An overhead cut crashed down on me, and I threw my block up just in time. Unprepared as I was, the force of the blow drove me to one knee. I teetered backward. He raised his hand to strike again while I was off balance, but I let my momentum carry me, rolling backward over one shoulder as his weapon struck the sand where I had knelt just a moment before. As I sprang to my feet, I kicked at his weapon, throwing a horizontal slash, but he was too quick. Reversing the momentum of his blade to knock mine off course.

He circled once again, and frustration bubbled in my throat, the strangled sensation of a repressed scream. He was fast enough that he should have been able to land a blow while I was on the ground, but he hadn’t. The Viper had the audacity to toy with me, even when the fate of the Ballan Desert rested on the results of this fight.

I leapt at him with a flurry of blows, increasing the force behind them until my muscles strained. He matched them, strike for strike. My blade skittered along his, and sparks flew through the air before we separated. I panted, winded from my attack, but if my opponent was tired, he showed no signs.

Now he advanced on me, twirling his blade in an arc I could barely follow. I dodged his strike, but only just, the wind from his sword brushing my cheek as it swished past. He drove me back, attacking in earnest now. I stopped at the edge of the ring, attempting to hold my ground, and our blades locked.

He pressed the advantage of his greater size, bearing his weight down into me. My knees shook as he pushed forward, the blank mask of metal over his face hovering inches over my own. My legs gave out, and I fell to my knees again but refused to let me guard drop and surrender. Still, it was only a matter of seconds before he would overpower me.

The sand beneath my knees shifted, and the shouts of encouragement from the crowd at my back became garbled and overwhelming. I was going to lose. I was going to fail Kelvadan, after I had found my purpose to survive once more in saving the city from this war. All those who had put their trust in me would be lost, and I would be alone again.

A familiar yet unwelcome sensation washed over me, and magic bubbled beneath my skin. The last thing I saw before magic erupted forth from me was widening silver eyes behind a sheet of metal.