Page 98 of On Brutal Thrones

Fake Nyx watches me, dagger raised, that little smile still playing at the corners of her mouth.

My mind races backward through everything that’s happened since the Trials began. Every creature. Every injury. Every moment I thought I couldn’t keep going and somehow did.

What’s something I would never do?

I push farther back. Before the Trials. Standing before the gods. Joining Thorian. Lyra being taken. Shaw and his men, which feels like another lifetime entirely.

Fight after fight tumbles through my mind. And then I realize: there’s one thing I’ve never done. One option I’ve never even allowed myself to consider, no matter how frightened or hurt or exhausted I became.

Especially not here.

Because Lyra is waiting on the other side.

I lower my dagger, and fake Nyx’s smile disappears. My heart gives a violent thump.

Slowly, I take several steps backward and lower myself into the sand. She doesn’t follow. She just watches me, head tilting slightly as if she can’t understand what she’s seeing.

Good.

My hand is shaking so badly that the dagger trembles between my fingers. I extend my arm, then toss it away. The blade lands in the sand with a soft thump.

“I give up.”

Fake Nyx blinks.

Then blinks again.

Once, when I was little, we had a chicken who ran headlong into a fence pole. He was never quite right afterward. He walked in circles and stared at things with a dull, bewildered look, as if the world had stopped making sense to him.

The not-me looks like that now. She blinks rapidly, her expression almost vacant. For the first time since she climbed out of that lake, she doesn’t know what I’m going to do.

A tiny spark of hope flares inside me.

Then she starts walking toward me and that hope turns straight into terror. What if I’m wrong?

My discarded dagger suddenly looks impossibly far away.

She comes closer, her black eyes fixed on mine, the blade in her hand catching the pale light.

I could die from this gamble. The thought makes my stomach cramp.

Every instinct in my body screams at me to move. My legs tense. My fingers dig into the wet sand. My heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my throat. Fear turns the saliva in my mouth coppery.

Get up.

I don’t.

Fight.

I force my muscles to loosen.

Run.

I stay exactly where I am.

“I’m giving up,” I repeat, though my voice shakes this time. “I’m done. Go ahead and kill me.”

She just might.