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Wonder where I got that analogy, I thought, as another of her little pets hissed at me.
I didn’t hiss back, but it was close. It was damned close, especially when those green talons started eating into my skin. I was suddenly glad that I was almost tapped out, because if I’d had the power to spare, I swear to God—
“Where are we?” she asked, slightly less politely.
“Where does it look like?” I snarled, which I was probably going to pay for later, but damn it, I didn’t need this right now!
“Cassie!” Rian said urgently.
“I’m thinking!” I told her. And I was. But mostly what I was thinking was that we’d just gotten Casanova killed.
And then I knew we had, when the crowd went crazy, the wash of noise like a physical blow. And the huge doors at the end of the arena opened with a sound like tearing metal, cutting through even the cacophony going on below. I gripped the railing, praying for something doable, something easy, something, anything, that Casanova might actually be able to handle.
Annnnnd that was not it.
“The fuck?” I said in disbelief.
“No,” Rian whispered, her hand gripping the rail tight enough to bend it.
“How wonderful,” the consul said, leaning over the balcony like a girl at a parade, trying to see better.
I seriously considered shoving her in.
But then Casanova was running back this way, no longer trailed by anything, because everything else in the arena had just dove for cover, a hundred little creatures burrowing under the sand all at once, melting away like they had never existed. Leaving him alone in the huge space except for the gigantic thing that had just crushed one of the guards under a massive claw, with a crunch that echoed off the stands and through my head. And then I was grabbing Adra by the front of his natty gray jacket.
“Why don’t you just kill him? You may as well!”
“Cassie.” It was Mircea’s voice in my ear, and his hand on my shoulder, but right then I didn’t care.
“The contest rules are clear,” Adra told me.
“This isn’t a contest, it’s slaughter!”
“And the selection is random—”
“It’s bullshit! Give him something else! Give him a chance—”
Soft gray eyes looked down
into mine, but they weren’t angry. They were watchful, curious, intent. As if he couldn’t quite figure me out.
And then Rian pushed between the two of us, her beautiful face distorted by pain and fear and the same impotent rage I felt. “Let me go to him!”
Adra looked at her. “You have been pardoned.”
“I renounce it!”
“We can do that?” I asked, my hands clenching on Adra’s lapels.
Like Mircea’s on my shoulder. “No!”
“Can we?” I asked urgently, staring up into bemused gray eyes. Because I might be able to—
And then I was being jerked away, hard enough to almost send me to the floor, but for the arms caging me.
“Mircea,” the consul said.
“She isn’t facing that thing!”
