Chapter 28: Terra

“Pah, can you please not?”

“Please not what?”

“I’ve known your brother for a long time. Just, please don’t say to think of you like that.”

“Jesse’s wonderful.”

“He eats skin off of his toes. He bites it off with his teeth and swallows it.”

“He doesn’t.” I laugh and slap his arm. “Stop—” My breath catches in my throat. My hand on his tricep. My world narrows to that one point. My fingers curl around his muscle, marveling. Perfection. My heart leaps into my throat, and I step closer.

“Kahn,” a high voice behind him says. “I thought you said you’d get me something to eat. I’m terribly hungry.”

“Alora, your next match.” The tension in Duncan’s tone tells me I’m nearly out of time. So much for the restroom.

I release Kahn’s arm and step backward. He shakes himself, like a wet dog.

“Who is that?” I hate that my question comes out husky and soft. Like I’m asking him about her because I have a claim on him.

But at the thought, my heart says mine.

No, I remind myself. He’s not mine.

“I’m Vanessa Houghton,” the redhead says. “Kahn and I are getting married next month.”

He scowls darkly. “No, we aren’t.”

She smiles at me, but it doesn’t touch her eyes. “We had a disagreement, and we’re working on the date, but we’re engaged.”

“We broke the engagement off last night.” Kahn’s voice is flat, but his eyes soften. He drops his volume down substantially. I have to strain to hear him. “We’ve been through this, Vanessa. We were always a political match, and we’re no longer a good fit.”

She scowls at me. “Because of her?”

Yeah, because of me? I can’t keep my eyebrows from drawing together.

Kahn shakes his head and points behind me. “You’re out of time.”

Duncan’s climbing into the arena. I sprint through the crowd and up the stairs just in time.

My opponent, Titan, is the largest citizen I’ve ever seen.

The sun has dropped a little in the sky, and it casts shadows across his face. I’m not petite or dainty—in fact, I’m pretty tall—and he’s still more than a hundred pounds heavier than I am. His arms could wrap around two of me. Every part of me is drenched in sweat. I expected the crowd to thin out a bit as the day grew hotter, but if anything, the audience has grown. In the corner of the courtyard, I even spot a few men I recognize as Healers. I raise my hand to them, and they beam. They clearly recognize me, too—at least by the rumors. Lord Sterling’s daughter, hidden among the Healers for a decade and then some.

This time, for the first time since my disastrous selection of staffs, I choose something other than hand to hand.

I choose swords.

The crowd murmurs, probably wondering why, though to me it seems obvious. I could never compete against Titan at hand-to-hand. He’d squash me like a bug.

When the flag drops, I dart to the right to evade Titan’s first swing. A single hard parry from him, and I’ll crumple. Adding a blade to the mix is my only hope to balance the scales with someone this size, but he’s still going to pack a depressingly hard wallop. I Lift a handful of dust and use it in various places to block his jabs and strikes. It works well enough that it gives me an idea.

With his next swing, I Lift a pile of sand and fling it into his eyes. He cries out and rubs at them, and I run around behind him, moving rapidly. But once I’m in place, I hesitate.

I saw the Healers behind us. There are Healers here, I remind myself. If I think about it much more, I won't be able to do it. And it needs to be done if I want to win.

I slice my blade across the backs of his legs, dropping him to the ground.

My stomach flip flops, but after he falls backward, I shove my blade against Titan’s throat and force him to the ground. Then I Bind his hands enough to hold him down. Jesse said he's a weak Lifter, but when he pushes against my Binding, it almost snaps. I manage to hold him for the count of three, barely.

Bile threatens as I climb out of the ring. I sliced his hamstrings. I shudder. How can Titan fight any more, given the state of his legs? I wish I had any other ideas of ways to take him down. At least I know the Healers can step in once this is over. They’ll bandage him up until then.

“That was awesome,” Jesse says the very second he finishes his match. My brother has defeated Quincey and Pratt, moving up two places against the one he lost to me.

I can’t think of a single thing to say. ‘Congratulations’ feels wrong.

Every time I close my eyes, I see my blade shearing through the flesh on the backs of poor Titan’s legs. Blood spills out, drenching the mat. I’m gripped with a terrible fear that there’s no point to any of this. “I shouldn’t have done it. I should have accepted defeat.”

“Alora,” Jesse says. “He will be fine. They’ll Heal him, and he’ll walk again.”

I nod.

Jesse’s voice is urgent. “This may feel pointless to you, but the higher you rise, the more people will rally to Dad’s standard. This matters. It may be the only Ascension that has ever really mattered. Without enough support. . .”

He doesn’t say it, but I know.

When Amun comes for me, we’ll lose. My life is literally on the line. I drop my head into my hands.

“How are you?” Jesse crouches next to me. “It’s a lot of violence for someone who spends her days performing.”

“Too much.”

Jesse’s hand on my shoulder is a balm.

“Physically I'm fine, but I've never been this. . . worn out. And every time I close my eyes.” I shake my head.

Jesse tries to tuck a few stray hairs back into place, his fingers unable to shove them past my Binding.

“That’s not good.” I tug on the stray hairs that should never have escaped. “This has never happened.” I close my eyes and realize that I can feel it, the tiny drain on my abilities that’s coming from the Binding on my hair.

They’re right. Bindings do pull energy.

Jesse frowns. “At least you only have Stefan and Kahn left, although Stefan's an amazing fighter. Wickedly good, really.”

And I'm so tired that my hair Binding is fraying, literally and figuratively. “Wonderful.”

“But I think you’ve done enough. Truly. You’re not a trained fighter, not yet, and what you’ve done is nothing short of tremendous. You’ve shown them your great strength and your ingenuity.”

Without Kahn around to shred my brain, I actually hear Duncan call us for the next round. “Stefan,” I say.

Jesse nods.

I climb into the ring, checking out my opponent. He looks a lot like every other Unit Leader, but his eyes concern me. They dart left and right, not nervous like prey, but confidently like a hawk choosing between a squirrel and a rabbit for his dinner.

I ask for swords again. I select a small, light sword that has almost no embellishments. Unlike the troupe’s performance swords, this blade is wicked sharp. The second the flag lifts, Stefan comes for me. He spins, darts, and swipes. I'm so tired that I forget to think. I'm back on a tight rope, performing a dance. I leap over his blade and drop below it. I may have no strength left to Lift, but I still sense his body and blade clearly. I close my eyes and for some reason that helps. I block each strike and begin to jab and swing offensively, too. People are talking and shouting all around me, but I tune it all out and focus on Stefan.

I want desperately to defeat him with just a blade. These people think I’m beneath them—uneducated and untrained. To them, I’m a nobody worth nothing who still poses a tremendous threat.

I burn with a desire to prove them wrong.

But my shoulder isn't totally healed, and my legs have improved, but they're throbbing. I've been fighting in the sunshine all day long. My arms are tired, my legs ache, and my back cries. My blocks slow. My attacks wane. When I open my eyes, it’s clear that Stefan sees it, too, my total exhaustion. He launches a series of lightning quick blows I’m too drained to counter.

I only spare my forearm from a deep slice from his blade by Binding air just in front of it. I've always Bound objects in the past, like dust, dirt, fabric, or rocks. I never realized air would work. No doubt every one of my opponents knew.

I’m an uneducated dope, in way over my head, thrashing around with sheer dumb strength.

And Binding that spot of air felt as challenging as Lifting a wagon.

The Bindings holding my hair in place slip, and my head aches with the effort of pulling it back away from my face.

Stefan’s next strike is too fast—I can't stop it. I can't move in time, either. I try to Bind air in front of me, but I’m too weak and the sword shoves through it, slicing through my shirt and into the skin of my stomach. Blood pours out of the wound. The sharp pain energizes me enough to jump backward. I need to Lift his blade and get it away from me. I narrow my focus until all I see is his sword and I pull.

Nothing happens.

I try harder to feel Stefan's blade, but I can't seem to focus. The harder I try to focus on the blade, the more I feel things around me. Stefan himself, the ring surrounding us, the ropes, the ground, and even beyond. Flagstones, millions of blades of grass, hundreds and hundreds of people standing shoulder to shoulder. When Stefan's blade arcs toward me again, this time flying toward my heart, I’m desperate to stop it.

I reach down deep and pull as hard as I've ever pulled. The world vibrates all around me—the ring floor, the flagstones, the people, even the individual blades of grass all tremble, the grass and people bowing backward, the ring and cobblestones lifting in the air.

And then everything drops.

I only feel one thing, the thing I can't stop. Stefan's blade enters my body, headed for my heart. One voice cries out in anger as pain consumes me.

Surprisingly, it's not my shiny new father, Duncan.

It’s not Jesse, either.

The voice of fury is Kahn’s.

I meet his eyes for a moment, frozen in time, before the blade pierces my heart and the pain—it eclipses everything else.

Until the world, blessedly, goes black.