Chapter 29

CHAPTER 29

The coliseum looms ahead of her. The longer she stares at it, the more it blurs into some abstract shape, losing all meaning. Its lights are on their highest setting; its crowds are already gathered thickly, the rumble of conversation audible even at a distance.

One foot in front of the other. One cut after the other. That is all that needs to be done. It is all that can be done.

Calla takes a shaky breath. She presses into the crowd, stepping through the coliseum gates and merging into the audience. They don’t pay attention to her, not looking closely enough to realize she’s one of the very players they are waiting for. She pushes forward. Keeps pushing until she has approached the ropes delineating the boundary between spectator and player.

Calla’s hands touch the velvet. It feels as clammy as death.

In one swift movement, she ducks underneath and is on the other side, the sheath of her sword clattering against her leg. Without the stalls, the coliseum looks absolutely vast in size, her footprints in the rough dirt appearing like specks in the gargantuan battleground. She is a lone figure, half her face masked and the other half squinting furiously up at the palace, circled on all sides by spectators.

Calla is at an impasse with herself.

King Kasa must die, and she will not gain access to him unless she is the victor of this battle.

There can be only one victor, but she doesn’t want to kill Anton.

With every cell of this forsaken, stolen body, she doesn’t want to kill Anton.

The palace balcony stirs with movement. Calla strides forward. It feels as though the whole coliseum is leaning in her direction, as if the structure itself shifts with her every step. She knows it is the people, that their attention and movement make it seem like the walls are bearing down on her, but nevertheless, she fantasizes about the coliseum growing legs and running off, taking its arena and its vicious games along with it.

Calla comes to a stop below the balcony. Seconds later, August steps out and leans over.

“Hello,” he calls down.

“What have you done?” Calla asks furiously.

August splays his hands flat on the balcony rail. He looks so much like a diplomat prince, his hair shining under the light, his white robes with nary a stain upon them. Beneath him, Calla might as well be a peasant again, slammed right back into the body of the girl the rest of the kingdom—including herself—has forgotten about. Her hands are bloody; her forehead is bruised. Her hair is a mess, as is her clothing, ripped and torn and disheveled.

“What is more important to you, Calla?” he asks. “Your lover or the kingdom?”

Calla doesn’t say anything.

“You cannot answer me,” August continues. “So I chose for you.”

He points forward. Calla whirls around. From the farthest end of the coliseum, a figure ducks under the velvet ropes, looking dazed. Calla almost doesn’t recognize Anton, but then he stumbles closer, and she identifies him by the jacket he was wearing earlier in the day.

Anton throws a hand up over his eyes, adjusting to the lights of the arena. Bruises mar the skin along his cheek and down his jaw. Though he continues forward, looking like he can barely comprehend where he is and how he got there, he does draw his knives, pulling them from his jacket.

“Ask yourself, cousin.” August’s voice floats down more softly now, each word delivered like gentle poison. “If you refuse to kill him, will he refuse to kill you? Was winning for Otta important enough to risk both your lives?”

He steps back, receding into the balcony’s shadows. Though he doesn’t say it aloud, his unspoken question reaches her all the same.

All this time, has Otta been more important to him than you?

Calla clenches her fists. She starts to stride forward, toward the center of the arena.

“WELCOME,” a voice booms across the coliseum. She doesn’t know where it’s coming from. She doesn’t know whose voice it is, only that it must be accompanying the reels, broadcast out to every viewer who cannot bear witness in person. “WELCOME TO THE FINAL ARENA BATTLE. NUMBER FIFTY-SEVEN. NUMBER EIGHTY-SIX. PREPARE YOURSELVES.”

From the other end of the arena, Anton begins to move at a quicker pace. His expression is stricken, brows knitted together in bewilderment. He waits until he and Calla are close. Then, he halts where he stands, raising his arms as if to indicate surrender.

“Princess,” he calls, and Calla curses him: curses him in the name of every old god, because even looking at him makes her flesh and blood and guts hurt like they are being strewn apart. It doesn’t take a blade to carve open a heart. It only takes a soft glance.

“They took you,” Calla says. Her voice cracks. She has to shout to be heard, voice muffled through her mask, but her volume doesn’t matter. The rest of the coliseum can’t hear her, words drowned by the vast space and stamped into the red dirt before it reverberates outward. “They took you, and I couldn’t stop them.”

Anton shakes his head. There’s a faint purple imprint across his neck, like the burn of rope, marking him alongside the rough scratches on his cheek. They must have tied a bag around his head to prevent him from jumping until they brought him to the Juedou. They must have planned this with every intention of forcing her hand.

“It doesn’t matter.” Anton surges forward. “Calla, we can leave. We can cut a line right through the crowd, run for the wall, and leave.”

Bitter anger crawls up her throat. He should have pulled the chip from his wristband and exited the games before they ended up here, head-to-head in the arena. Because he knows that she can’t leave. She will not leave before her task is complete.

“BEGIN THE FINAL BATTLE.”

“It’s too late, Anton,” Calla says, and she draws her sword. “It’s too late for us.”

Something is breaking in her chest. By every known rule, qi is as incorporeal as light, too sacrosanct to be felt by the ordinary human, known only in concept and never in perception. But at that moment, Calla thinks she can feel hers. Her qi splitting into two, becoming two separate beings with two separate souls. One half is an inferno, a deep, visceral rage that has been burning since Talin rode into her village. The flames fuel her bones, breathe life into the first inhale she takes every morning. The other half is a lonely breeze. It searches for a distraction, an oasis, an escape. It doesn’t want to save the world; it wants more moments in the dark of night, staring at the neon that streams through the gaps of the blinds, held in someone’s arms.

Calla swings. Anton shouts out, like he hadn’t expected she would actually do it. Like he can’t comprehend that they are fighting—truly fighting, witnessed by thousands upon thousands who scream for blood to be spilled, who scream to satiate a different hunger in their stomachs.

“This isn’t the only way,” Anton says. His words come short, his breath winded as he blocks Calla’s next swing. She had been aiming for his ribs, but with his quick block, she only cuts a shallow surface wound. Nevertheless, the draw of first blood is enough to send a roar through the crowd. “We don’t have to play by their rules.”

“We do .” Calla grits her jaw tight, her teeth ringing when metal clangs against metal, her sword colliding with the bend where Anton’s two curved knives meet.

She pulls back and kicks out, but Anton only meets her with defense, grasping her ankle and throwing her off-balance. Calla falls, elbows colliding with the brittle dirt for the barest second before she rolls up again, both hands around the grip of her sword. One inhale. Forward. Exhale. Lunge to the left. Anton stops when she stops, attacks when she attacks, but with every clang of metal, Calla hears August’s voice curling in and out of her ear, tainting her thoughts. She can’t stop fighting now.

Anton blocks her hit, angling her sword down. In the process, his knives slash the back of her arms, and Calla cries out, almost dropping her weapon when a deep cut tears through her jacket and blood appears.

“Calla, there will be no end to this,” he heaves. “Look at us. We’ve fought before. We are evenly matched. We will both be dead by the day’s end.”

I know, Calla thinks. You will die. But once King Kasa is dealt with, I’ll follow you.

“I love you,” Calla says aloud. She swings her sword even harder. She breaks through the block that Anton makes with his knives and cuts at his thigh. The gash opens deep. “I love you, so this is a favor to you. I will spare you from having to land the blow on me. I will take the burden.”

Anton’s lips thin. Though the arena is uproarious and overspilling with havoc, Calla catches the exact moment that his eyes darken.

“That’s ridiculous,” he spits. “You take no burden. Kill me, Calla, but tell the truth. Kill me because you love your kingdom more.”

Calla stills. Anton moves, and she almost crumples to her knees, taking the cut right across her chest. He controlled his attack. It wasn’t meant to be a killing blow; it was only meant to hurt.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.

Anton makes another cut. He asks, “What has Talin ever done for you?” This attempt, at least, Calla swivels from, letting her jacket take most of the blade. The omnipresent voice of the coliseum has risen in volume as it narrates the fight. “Why does it deserve your love?”

“It doesn’t have to do anything for me.” Calla’s breath is turning shallow. She is tiring. But she can find an opening. She knows she can. Every opponent has a weak point, the palace used to tell her. They’ll show their hand at one point or another, peeling apart their shields to welcome a killing blow. “Love isn’t deserved. It is given freely.”

Anton’s eyes flicker up. He looks at the palace, at the glorious structure that looms above them in the darkness, backlit by the glow of the coliseum.

“My dear princess,” he says. “You fight to change who sits on the throne. But I’m afraid that will not achieve what you think it might.”

Perhaps it will not be so easy once King Kasa is gone. Nevertheless, it is a start. It is more than anyone else in San-Er has ever managed to do.

Calla leans back, putting weight onto her heels. This time, she doesn’t lunge immediately. She follows Anton’s gaze, sighting August at the edge of the balcony again. He rests his elbows on the railing, shoulders braced in tension, hands clasped together. He is waiting. Waiting for Calla to finish what she said she would. What she promised she would.

Calla turns around. She blocks August from her sight.

She drops her sword.

“I can’t do this,” she rasps. Tears flood her eyes, more tears than she has let herself cry in years. They drop down her face in abundance, flowing with all the sorrow that has been tamped down.

The audience is stirring in commotion. Spectators push against the velvet rope, leaning as close as they dare to get, trying to catch whatever words are being exchanged. From above, Calla thinks she sights motion: cameras, flown overhead for the reels. She blocks it out. She blocks all of it out and sinks to her knees, too exhausted to hold herself upright.

Anton’s knives fall from his hands. He comes forward—slowly, gingerly—until he is directly before her. Both of them are stained with blood, old and fresh.

“Calla,” he says, kneeling as well. His arms come forward to wrap around her. Calla leans in, and the arena, the broadcast, the constant hum of the twin cities—everything fades away. She clutches at him and lets herself have that second, that moment of reprieve, her cheek resting on the warmth of his shoulder.

“It’s okay.” He presses his lips to her ear. “I believe in us. I believe there’s another way out.”

Calla exhales shakily, her hand tracing down his spine. All these years, hiding in the dark corners of San-Er, she has never been looking for a way out: she has been looking for a way back in.

“Anton,” she whispers. Every opponent has a weak point, the palace used to tell her. “I’m sorry.”

Here was what they taught her next. How to reach the heart from behind, so long as the blade is long enough.

She lets her dagger fall from her sleeve. She plunges the blade in.

The dagger sinks to the hilt, and Calla draws away.

Anton does not move. His expression is shocked, frozen, but he does not look surprised. He must have known that this is who he chose to love. He must have known when he first watched her play in the games, unsympathetic toward those who fell to her sword. He must have known when he learned of her true identity, because a past like that requires vengeance, carves a hole too deep to fill with anything less than rivers of blood.

“Calla,” he says again. This time, the pain in his voice cuts Calla deeper than any dagger through the back could, but she bears it, she bears it as his breathing shortens, as his eyes lift and desperately seek some sort of help.

None is coming.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. Her hands clutch at his sides, at the red stain that spreads and spreads and spreads. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Anton’s eyes close. For a second, he seems to have stilled, rendered into a statue. Then he sways, and when Calla catches him, holding his head toward her, his breathing has already stopped.

“Anton.”

Calla sets him down. She acts in a daze. For several long seconds, she puts her hand on his chest, believing that he must be feigning the act. But the gray pallor is already setting in, the stiffness of a body with its qi extinguished.

Anton Makusa is dead. She’s truly killed him.

All around her, the coliseum starts to cheer, first at a humble magnitude, then growing to a fever pitch. They clutch one another and scream at the top of their lungs, delirious with the finality of the games. The Juedou has been won. The king’s games have a victor.

Number Fifty-Seven, the star of the scoreboards.

Calla cannot catch her breath. She can only close her eyes, feeling the weight of the world crushing down on her shoulders.

They cheer for Fifty-Seven, the final survivor among a crowd of eighty-eight, all of whom have given their lives for this very moment. They scream praises for the spectacle that helps them forget everything else in San-Er, the player covered in blood who kneels before them in penance.

The crowds do not know. They cheer and they cheer, thinking this is simply another year of the games come to a close. A coldness sinks into Calla’s bones. A sheet of invisible steel, plating over her heart, over her chest, building her up for one final strike. The crowds do not lose their exuberance; the noise only grows when Calla staggers upright, somehow managing to stand steady on feet she cannot feel.

They don’t know that they are cheering for their lost princess, the cause of Er’s worst bloodbath, returned to finish her violence.

Calla’s eyes snap open, glowing royal yellow.