He didn’t answer. He just pointed to the ring drawn out on the ground in chalk. Someone was already stepping into it — a broad-shouldered boy with a cruel grin and golden-furred ears flicking through his hair. A shifter.
“Seriously?” I muttered.
Slade’s face was stone. “Fight.”
I didn’t even have time to protest before the boy lunged.
I barely parried his first strike, and the force of it jarred my whole arm. He was fast, confident, and clearly used to this — circling me like I was prey. His smirk widened when I stumbled.
“You’re the king’s new pet?” he sneered. “Thought you’d have teeth.”
I didn’t answer. I was too busy not dying.
The shadows were closer here. I could feel them—slithering beneath my skin like whispers, coiling through my veins, waiting. This place was steeped in them, like the whole arena was stitched together with threads of darkness.
So, when the shifter lunged again, cocky and fast, I didn’t step back. I let instinct take over.
I let go.
My body melted into smoke.
His strike sliced clean through air. His momentum carried him forward, and he stumbled, eyes wide with confusion.
“What the—?” he yelped, spinning to find me.
Gasps rippled from the others circling the arena. Even Slade’s brow twitched ever so slightly. I blinked back into form just behind the shifter, heart pounding, my breath shallow with the rush of it.
It had worked. It had actually—
But the moment passed.
I tried again—reaching inward, grasping for that same unravelling sensation—but this time, nothing happened. No shadows answered. No smoke. Just me. Flesh and blood and panting lungs.
Shit.
The shifter recovered fast.
Too fast.
Before I could react, he slammed into me with a brutal shoulder-check that knocked the wind from my chest and sent me sprawling onto the dusty floor. My head hit hard. Dazed, I saw stars.
“Guess the magic tricks got a cooldown,” he sneered.
The silence in the arena was sharp-edged now. Watching. Waiting. Judging.
I heard footsteps. Heavy. Controlled.
Slade stopped beside me, looking down with unreadable eyes. No sympathy. No anger. Just silence.
I gritted my teeth and forced myself upright, swiping the blood from my lip with the back of my hand.
“Get up,” Slade ordered, voice like gravel and ice.
I blinked up at him, vision swimming. Every part of me throbbed—shoulders, ribs, even the backs of my eyes.
“I can’t,” I breathed, the words slipping out before I could stop them.
Slade didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just stared down at me with that same expressionless mask he always wore. Cold. Hard. Untouchable.
