Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

Maybe it’s because the air builds with an electric charge the closer they get to the wall, but Calla’s energy starts to return, gathering in her chest and flowing out to her limbs.

She raises a finger, pressing it to her lips to hush Eno. There’s a very clear distinction where the city ends and the wall begins. The buildings at the edge of San halt in a line. Beyond that, there is a wide swath of yellowed grass, the clearing used to hold piles of discarded computers and every loose unwanted item that gets pushed out of San-Er if there’s no way to repurpose it.

The wall only climbs to the sixth floor of its nearest buildings. From outside, any onlooker with good eyes could peer up at the higher windows and observe San-Er’s civilians going about their daily routine.

Eno hovers over Calla’s shoulder, the both of them waiting at the end of Gold Stone Street.

“You’d think we would get some better sunlight here,” he says, blinking at the clouds. “Maybe blue skies are just a myth.”

“Blue skies are real,” Calla mutters in reply. They are what she remembers most about rural Talin: the endless blue, stretching into the horizon until it joins with the green ground. “There are just too many factories causing pollution in San-Er.”

But Eno only frowns. “Why are we here?”

“There’s supposed to be another player nearby. I don’t see anyone, though.”

They did walk relatively slowly, so it’s possible that the player has since wandered away. Nevertheless, they can’t have gone far, especially if they aren’t aware they’re being hunted.

“Stay put and be my eyes,” Calla says. Her eyes trace up the wall. “I’m going to have a look around.”

“Stay put?” Eno calls after her, though Calla is already striding across the ugly grass. “Didn’t you want my heeelp ?” That last part turns into a whine, loud enough for Eno’s voice to echo across the whole clearing.

Calla whirls around, pointing a warning finger. “Keep watch. Be good.”

She approaches the rusty ladder and shakes it vigorously to make sure it is securely fixed. When she’s satisfied that the ladder won’t detach from the wall anytime soon and throw her to her death, she props a leg up and starts to climb, taking the rungs two at a time.

Her ascent is fast. Halfway, three-quarters, then the top. She pauses there, hands clutched around the end of the ladder. Though she climbed up to get a better look at her surroundings inside the wall, she’s suddenly mesmerized by the view outside instead—the grass that stretches on as far as the eye can see, the peaks and valleys that glisten off in the horizon.

Her wristband sits heavy on her skin, dull in the gray light. The clouds are getting darker and darker, and when another roll of thunder comes in the distance, Calla almost lets go of the ladder, taken by surprise. Her skin prickles. The first drop of rain falls, landing a fat drop on her cheek.

When she became Calla, she gained insurmountable power, the unbelievable capacity to mold the world as she saw fit. She’s never really thought about everything she lost.

“Hey!”

With a start, Calla whirls around, facing San again. Eno. She can’t see him anymore, though his panicked shout echoes up the wall.

“Eno?” Calla calls. She slings herself onto the left pole of the ladder, opting to slide down its side rather than sparing the time to go rung by rung. Her hand is reaching into her coat, where she shoved the chains she stole, but the moment her feet land on solid ground, she feels a whistle of air. Calla slings the chain forward, narrowly blocking a knife hurtling for her head.

Two people, running toward her. Their sleeves are pushed to their elbows. No wristbands.

What?

By a narrow margin, she swerves to the left and avoids the blow of a sword from one of the attackers. A man with a stud in his lip. Calla straightens up. Is this the work of the Hollow Temple? Are they after her or Eno?

No time to consider it. Calla lunges for the knife that was thrown at her, stepping hard on the handle so the weapon whirls into the air and lands in her palm.

“Eno?” she shouts again. There’s no response. Where is he? She whirls up fast and throws the blade, embedding it dead in the man’s eye. She doesn’t wait for him to hit the ground; before he has scarcely stumbled from the attack, she hauls her chain up and whips the second man hard, metal links colliding with the blunt new weapon he draws. The end wraps fast around the pseudoblade. A hard tug, and the weapon slips. Just as the second man ducks, scrambling for retrieval, Calla whips the chain again. It wraps around his neck. She pulls him in with one fast yank.

“Who are you?” Calla seethes. As soon as the man is close enough, she seizes her catch, squeezing his jaw hard. “Who are you?”

“No one, I’m no one!” the man answers fast, tears rising to his eyes as he struggles against her grip. “Please, let me go, let me go—”

“You’re not a player.” Calla hauls the man up, and his legs kick out, trying to find his bearings. There’s no use—the chain is still tangled around his neck. It only takes another tug to hold him tighter. “So why did you attack me? Are you Crescent Society?”

“No,” the man gasps. “No, we were recruited by an outside source. I have no grudge against you, I swear. Spare me my life.”

“Who?” Calla demands. Her nails dig in deeply, gouging five weeping wounds into his face. “Who sent you?”

“I don’t know!”

A slight twist, an attempt to move away. Calla releases his face, only so she can pull Chami’s dagger from her pocket.

“Please,” he tries to wheeze past the chain. His struggling legs leave tracks in the grass, overturning the yellowing plots with brown sludge instead. “Please, I was only taking on the paid tasks. They gave us instructions to hunt you down. That’s it, that’s it!”

“Useless,” Calla spits. “Damn useless—”

“They had black eyes! That’s all I saw!”

For a second, Calla stops. She feels her hands go cold, loosening on the chain just enough that the man tries to twist up.

Black eyes.

A flare of rage rushes through her chest, and before she knows what she’s doing, she’s slashed his throat, the blunt dagger catching on skin and crudely tearing through. The jagged rip opens his thickest arteries and veins, spurting blood with a vengeance. In seconds, the man is unmoving, surrounded by a puddle of crimson. His eyes turn dull.

Calla rocks back on her heels. Her breathing comes hard.

Every royal is bound to lose their mind sooner or later, drunk on the power in their hands. For Calla, especially, who remembers what it was like to be helpless, power has an unimaginably tantalizing pull. When she’s not careful, she feels the poison seeping into her thoughts. She entertains what it would be like to kill for the throne rather than for liberation. She imagines taking the divine crown for herself and never having to be weak again, imagines the whole kingdom—the whole empire —kneeling before her.

“Eno?” Calla yells, snapping back into the present. “Eno, where are you?”

She gathers up the chain in her hands, shaking blood off the slick metal. The clearing near the city wall has turned eerily quiet. A twinge of panic twists her throat, then numbness—a terrible, aching numbness.

Calla doesn’t break into a run and scramble to search the vicinity. She doesn’t call out again. If there was no response the first time, then it isn’t a mystery. She can wish otherwise as much as she wants, but she understands San-Er well, better than she understands herself sometimes, and when she walks over to the alleyway, she isn’t surprised to find Eno’s body.

His eyes stare glassily at the sky. There’s a wound at his side, impaling right into his heart.

Calla crouches down.

“You little shit,” she mutters, and her voice breaks.

It was going to happen sooner or later. There can be only one victor.

But he could have pulled his chip. He could have chosen life instead… a miserable, dirty life, hungry and sick and cramped, persistently in fear of debt collectors.

Calla knows that most who take part in the games have no other options. The kid wasn’t stupid; no one would be throwing their name into the king’s lottery if it were that easy to walk away. Still, there was a part of her that had hoped otherwise, that there was some third path for Eno with a bag of coins and a comfortable nook in Er to settle in. San-Er offers the chance at a middling life, and for some, that is plenty. Out in the provinces, that wouldn’t even be an option. The provinces are split between two extremes: either utter destitution or palatial opulence reserved for councilmembers and former victors of the games.

Yet somehow, out of all the people in the kingdom, from San-Er to the borderlands, it was Calla who had invaded her way into becoming a princess. Wouldn’t she have ended up exactly like Eno if she hadn’t?

“I hope you are among the last,” she says, smoothing Eno’s eyelids down until they are closed. “I hope…” She trails off, daring a glance up at the wall. She hopes they count this death as hers in the games. Add it to her tally. The guilt can smear her hands. This death is on her conscience to avenge.

Everyone who is responsible for this misery will fall, one by one.

There’s movement atop the wall. Border guards. Calmly, Calla rises to her feet, waving at them for a brief moment before slipping back between the buildings. By the time they clamber down the wall, she will be gone. Eno’s body will be the palace’s responsibility.

Calla clutches her fists tight and makes a sharp turn. She steps over a crate, then enters a building at random and treks up the stairs, heading for the rooftop to navigate San-Er from above instead. She is soaked to the wrists in blood. Her sleeves are stained, as is the hem of her shirt.

Black eyes , the man said.

She knows only two people in this city with black eyes. August and Anton. And Prince August needs her alive to do his dirty work.

Calla shoves the door open, almost blowing it off its hinges as she barges onto the rooftop. Her boots strike heavy against cement, her coat billowing to either side of her. She is not merely a contestant of the games moving on to her next kill. She is initiating a battle march.

They gave us instructions to hunt you down.

So the time has come.

Anton Makusa has turned on their alliance.