No.
Blazing.Like I just gulped from a bucket of lava.
The fire swells with a fluttering rage until it’s thrashing against the tight confines of my gut, intent on melting me from the inside out.
I open my mouth to ask what’s happening—what she did to me—but all that comes out is aroar.
Essi grips my hand. Cups it to her cheek. Nuzzles my palm as her eyes fill with tears that overflow, stripping clean trails through the ash on her cheeks. The last thing I see before the fire consumes me.
And I fall, flailing into the dark.
Another shrill scream pitches into my holding cell, one of the many that fringe the arena.
I heave my chin from my chest, looking through messy streaks of sweat-laden hair. A dribble of blood seeps into my eye, distorting my already broken view of the blistered fight pit ahead.
My gaze snags on a razah—hunched and gnarled like a scorched, crusted fae bearing no ears, nose, or hair, as if it’s all been sizzled off. It’s slit mouth gapes, full of more jagged teeth than a dragon, beady eyes homed in on its fleeing target: A female fae with blistering welts all up her legs, fear hot in her wide eyes. Her long hair is a pale streak as she sprints across the arena, making me picture Kyzari. Not my niece, like I’ve been led to believe, but my own flesh and blood.
Mydaughter.
The beautiful proof that the love her mah and I shared was fuckingreal.
It hasn’t sunk in yet, still floating on the surface like a gift I’m too afraid to pull within for fear it might fall apart in my hands. Because that’sexactlywhat it might do.
What she might still do.
The fleeing fae stumbles, the motion threatening to tip my guts.
“Get up,” I scream, muffled through my gag.
GET UP!
The razah lunges. Tackles her, quick to dip its head and rip a shred of meat from her leg.
Incapacitated, shehowls. A sound that shreds me, hauling a whimper up my throat as she claws at the smoldering ground. Dragged backward across the jagged terrain, toward a volcanic boil that gulps them both to the clamor of my muffled screams.
Not Kyzari, I remind myself, over and over.
Not Kyzari—
But she’s someone else’s daughter. Perhaps someone else’s love, or their meaning for existence.
Someone else’s everything, now gone.
I yank the thick iron cuffs suspending me to the ceiling, activating their runes. Almostwelcomethe gnawing pain that flares in response, making the cold metal cuffs feel like toothy jaws sinking through my flesh and bone.
A cruelty, I guess. It pales to the masticating ache in my chest. Like those same shackles are clenched around my heart, chewing every time it beats.
I do my best to void the unquenchable agony; to compose myself as other victims get torn up. Guts ripped free, slopping against the steaming ground. Their dying screams are drowned out by the roar of a ravenous crowd I can’t see from down here. Hoots and howls that linger well after most of the beasts have skulked back into their fiery wombs, fresh meals in tow.
I shiver despite the heat, still haunted by that cold seep numbing me from within. From that vial of liquid Sereme forced me to ingest, a second and third dose since fed to me against my will.
It’s entirely possible it’s having the same effect on Rygun, that he’s none the wiser of my suffering, but I’m not taking the risk, forging more ofmyself—of my essence—into a scale I pack upon the internal wall cutting him off. A wall I’ve been reinforcing, now so thick it’s held even in the moments I’ve lost consciousness.
Rygun is mighty, but this far south, the cold would claim his life. A slow death, but it would prevail.
If he catches a single sense that I’m in danger, he’ll hunt me down. Turn this into an even bigger tragedy.
I set another solid scale in place—
