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I duck with a yelp as she tosses her ax at my neck. I use my smaller size to my advantage and scurry around her. I stop in front of the table, sling one of the bags over my shoulder, and grab as many weapons as I can. I strap two daggers to my thigh, then reach for a sword.
I spin around, blade forward as a roar blasts from behind me. I dart to the left as the ax once again flies toward me, its owner furious. It nicks my shoulder, and I hiss as blood bubbles up from the wound and mingles with my dirtied skin. I clutch a hand over it and keep my sword extended as I scan the area.
So far, it’s just me and Ax-thrower. Everyone else is tied up in battle near the middle of the pit, including my allies.
“You don’t deserve to be part of this, and I’m going to prove it right here, right now.” Ax-thrower spits on the ground at my feet.
I wield my sword in a spin. It’s a showy move, but it also proves I know how to use it. I could let her think I’m small, weak, but I prefer to beat my opponents as nothing more and nothing less than myself.
She snarls and cleaves her ax toward my chest.
A loud clang rings out as my sword intersects her charge. My muscles bulge, and the wound on my shoulder aches as I hold my blade steady.I can’t hold it, I realize, just as the woman lets out a howling screech. I stumble back in shock, and the ax falls out of the woman’s hand.
She topples over, her eyes growing dim before she face plants in the dirt. A blade sticks straight out between her shoulder blades, and the culprit stands proud three feet away.
Sera is as covered in blood as I am now, her loose hair stringing around her in red and her chest heaving as she rips her sword free. She gives me a tense smile. “You got a weapon.”
“And bags.” I leap over the fallen warrior and grab two more bags from the table. “For all of us.”
Battle cries ring out, and the arena fills with the sound of boots thumping into dirt, slamming the ground with fury.
“Move to the forest,” Sera commands and points to the right side of the arena. “Harmony went to make camp.”
“What about you?” My heart stutters as I take in the group of warriors making their way toward us.
“I’m not done.” Her tense smile widens into something wild and uncaged.
I try to imagine the woman in front of me as the same gossiping simpleton I met in the streets, but I can’t. Whoever that girl was, she was a farce, a deception hiding the beast within.
And I realize how much Ineededto see that. To know another woman is as eager for blood lust as me, not willing to bow for anyone but herself.
Respect turns my vision red, and despite my exhaustion and my wound, I return her smile, drop the bags at my feet, and raise my sword. “Allies,” I tell her, as my ring finger’s constant tremor steadies.
She tilts her head in appreciation, then directs her attention to the coming herd. “They don’t know how to play dirty,” she says.
My smile turns lethal. “Perfect.”
There’s a millisecond before the roar, the clang of weapons, the lives shredded to pieces, and in that moment, I know I could die. I know it so intently that my heart races to a tune too fast to comprehend and yet too slow to not already be broken. I know I may not walk away from this fight, and I see my death in every pair of eyes staring back at me.
I turn my gaze toward Cristen. I don’t want to. But it’s also everything I want. I don’t know what I expect from a man who has done nothing but lie to me.
But I know I don’t expect the way his gaze is glued to me, his chin resting on his folded fingers as if in prayer. Not to the Gods. To me. There is so much hope and fear and certainty in that gaze — that one fucking look of his, and it unravels me.
That look is belief. He believes I will win this. He believes I am strong enough to beat strength itself, because that’s what this is. These female warriors arestrength.
He believes I’m stronger. Maybe he even believes I’m stronger than him.
In that single millisecond, that single forsaken look, I believe in myself. I know I can kill. I know I can be what I need to be for a job. But to win this, to come out on top, I can’t just be skillful. I must be power, and I must believe the muscles beneath my skin will not fail me. I must believe I can be a queen.
And as much as I want to find my brother, as much as I want to avenge my murdered parents, I also think, for the first time, I want something for myself.
I don’t just believe I can win this tournament. No, Cristen’s look offers me a perspective of so, so much more.
I will be the best damn Queen this kingdom has ever seen, I think and take off running into the battle with a cry of fury.
Then, I slash my sword through hearts, so they bleed like mine has for so long.
For too long.
