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His wings drooped.
Gasps sounded throughout the arena as his body tumbled, rolling midair and nosediving to the ground. He landed with a loud, echoing thud that kicked up sand and rocks.
Silence fell.
Sana’a’s heart pounded, her eyes reeled, and her mind swam with adrenaline.
Her hands trembled as she recalled her SHärd daggers. Wiping the blood off on the leg of her suit, she sheathed them, her eyes still fixed on K’grona’s corpse.
Blood thundered in her ears, but it was the utter quiet in the arena around her that shook her to the core.
Every single being present was staring at her, stunned.
Whispers and gasps started sounding and resonating through the coliseum, a concoction of disbelief and awe filling the air.
They crescendoed into wild vocalisations of wrath.
K?stian streaked into the arena, urging calm as outrage spilled over into shouting matches and screams across the grand complex. ‘Calm,’ he bellowed, ‘calm!’
But his voice was lost to the roar of collective rage.
His eyes stabbed at Sana’a, but she met his accusing gaze with a raised chin of defiance. She saw something else in the depths of his glare. A grudging respect.
‘What have you done?’
Sana’a turned at the outraged whisper as Kaniz bounded onto the platform.
‘You killed a kavalier,’ the k?thi master went on, reaching to clutch Sana’a’s blade arm and leaning into her ear so she could shout above the rising clamour. ‘You broke the rules.’
Sana’a froze. ‘It was either him or me. You saw that, didn’t you?’
‘Still, you could have conceded.’
‘So my neck could be sliced off by his necrotic weapon? You heard him and what he used on me. This was no bout. It was a planned killing. You saw it!’
‘Regardless, you’ve tarnished the name of our k?thi; my reputation, too, hangs in the balance.’
Sana’a stared at Kaniz, her heart aching at the disappointment in her friend’s eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ the Shotelai woman whispered, her voice ragged with emotion. ‘But It was either he or I. I was only trying to protect myself.’
Kaniz’s expression softened for a moment. ‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘You have to come with me. We must leave the arena before this place goes up in barbs, koyas, and flames.’
Sana’a nodded, her mind whirring with the consequences of her actions.
As they exited the ring, the crowd erupted in shock and outrage.
For one second, as she stared ahead with a wooden focus, she saw a shape flit toward her at the corner of her eye.
An old king, a shadow of royal wraith-ness, a ghostly reminder of what once was and now would never be again.
She almost fell to her knees in that moment, wanting to give in to the the loss and despair weighing down her soul.
More angry cries rose from the sponsor’s box, cutting through her fog.
She glanced up to see an enraged woman leaning over the edge of the monarchical stand.
Kalila.
