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El would let Ryn die too.

Ryn didn’t look up at Heva when her name was called. She stepped into the circle, hardly giving her opponent a glance either. She waited to be thrown out of the circle, waited for all this to end. Waited for the soldier with the flute-whistle to blow it.

“Ryn.” Heva’s voice sailed into the ring. Ryn despised her own treacherous gaze for darting over to where Heva stood with her arms folded at the edge. “Win. It has to be you.”

Ryn shook her head in disbelief. She glanced at her opponent for the first time, at his greasy, white-streaked hair, at his giant stature, at his large-knuckled hands. Another man from cave five, like this was some sort of cruel theatrical production. A second chance to be humiliated.

The blast of the flute filled the cave, and the spectators roared. Sticky rice was thrown into the circle, pelting off Ryn’s arms and cheeks, a few grains sticking to her hair.

The man took one heavy stride toward her and shoved with both hands, tearing her out of her thoughts. Smells of breakfast and visions of dirty inmates spun by as Ryn flew, her fingers finding the corner of a table that wasn’t pushed far enough away from the circle. She cursed the table as she blinked at it. By the Divinities, she would have already been cast out of bounds if that wretched table wasn’t in the way.

The man behind her clapped for himself, cackling in laughter.

Ryn caught a glimpse of Heva pinching the bridge of her nose with her eyes closed. Praying like a madwoman. She looked like Geovani.

Ryn’s throat swelled at the thought. The old woman was like a character from a dream Ryn once had, before she woke up.

The man cracked his knuckles and did a dance around the circle, bringing roars of laughter across the cave. They chanted for him, “Yusuf! Yusuf! Yusuf!”

Ryn deserved to be mocked like this—No, she deserved to be mocked worse than this. Of all the people here, she was the only one who’d come face-to-face with the King of Per-Siana and had deceived him. She was the reason Matthias was dead, that Kai was probably dead. She was sure none of these petty criminals had done the horrid things she’d done.

Ryn glanced over her shoulder at the large man, wondering why he wasn’t getting this match over with. She thought about walking out of the circle now. But…

Heva was a solid statue with her eyes closed across the circle. Ryn wished her former guardswoman would open her eyes and see what she was making her friend do. But even so, Ryn’s shoulders dropped at the thought of Heva giving up her one last chance at survival for this. Ryn didn’t want this chance, hadn’t asked for it, but she couldn’t bring herself to waste it either. She wouldn’t forgive herself for throwing this awful opportunity away if something happened to Heva later.

Ryn released her grip on the table’s edge. She swallowed against her dry throat. “El,” she whispered beneath the howls in the room. She waited.

Silence.

Ryn grunted in disbelief. She knew it.

El had left her. Heva was wrong, and Ryn was about to get shoved again.

She took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. She’d try to hit the thug just once—for Heva.

“If you fight alone, you’ll be shattered.”

Ryn’s eyes peeled open. They lifted to the far wall ahead. There was no one standing before her, but of course, there wouldn’t be.

“I’m already shattered.” The words were a mere crack of sound. She barely registered who she was talking to, that El had actually replied at all. She wondered if she’d imagined it.

“Yes. You’ve been letting yourself stay shattered for a while.” A beat of silence. Something heavy filled Ryn’s eyelids and she touched her cheek, breaking a swelling tear with her fingertips. After all this time, a wretched tear had finally escaped. She rubbed the moisture between her forefinger and thumb, her jaw solidifying.

“I thought you were long gone,” she said, and a bitter taste filled her mouth. Why was El even talking to her after she’d renounced him in the prison below the palace? After she’d sent him away for good?

“I never left.”

She blinked, tears sucking themselves back into the corners of her enlarged eyes. The sounds of the room faded, replaced with a serene quiet; a quiet she hardly recognized anymore, yet knew all too well.

Months’ worth of lonely, sleepless nights and cold mornings flooded in. It didn’t seem possible—she hadn’t once felt El’s presence. She hadn’t felt any warmth at all.

Maybe she hadn’t wanted to.

Never?

Heat crept back behind her eyes. What did El mean, he never left? Of course he’d left. Of course El had abandoned her. She’d left him first.

Ryn’s shoulder was grabbed. The man flicked her in the forehead then pushed her hard, and she spun to the floor, landing on her hands and knees. It should have hurt, but the floor had turned to water… Ryn blinked the vision away. For a moment, it had looked like she was back in the Abandoned Temple, in the stream, resting in El’s presence. Like she wasn’t in prison at all—even the air had changed temperature, a breath of life whispering against her dry, sleeping bones.