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“We should get the fladi lizard meat too,” I said, taking one of the cloaks. When we re-entered the sheriff’s office, Sandy began begging us to unlock her cage, but we simply ignored her as I piled the bloody meat into the cloak and tied it into a bundle I could carry over my shoulder.
When we moved outside yet again, a strange feeling crawled up the back of my neck, almost as if someone were watching me.
“Let’s get out of here,” Gwen said, glancing around nervously. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
“Agreed.” I slung the cloak holding our new supplies over my shoulder and headed out of town in the direction opposite of the one we’d entered from. I paused, glancing to either side. I didn’t know exactly where the final battle would be held, but the mountains rising to snowy peaks to my left called to me.
Yet I knew Gwen hated heights.
The lowlands it is, I decided, and veered off slightly to the right.
As we continued hiking, the air grew drier.
About a decahale later, as the sun began to set, the smell of water caught my attention. Peering into the distance, I glimpsed the beginnings of a new geographical region. “There,” I said, gesturing toward the bright green plant life in the distance. “That looks promising.”
“Can we get there before dark?” Gwen asked.
I dropped my new pack onto the ground with a heavy thump and reached into the much smaller one Dismor had supplied, pulling out a hand light. “It shouldn’t matter,” I said, shining the light onto the ground.
“A flashlight!” Gwen cried out happily.
I didn’t correct her—it didn’t flash, after all—and simply tucked it into the top of a pocket so I could reach it easily when the sunlight finally failed.
We continued moving toward what I hoped would be a more hospitable environment than this arid desert. There wasn’t even enough water in the atmosphere here to condense a full bottle’s worth, and that could eventually become dangerous.
We continued long after dark, our plodding footsteps the only sounds.
At least the feeling of being watched had passed.
Still, shouldn’t we be seeing some signs of other contestants?
“I’m worried about that, too,” Gwen confided. “What if we head the wrong way? Can we just skip the final battle?”
I laughed. “I don’t think Bloodworm will allow that. No, he’ll send something to herd us in the right direction if we go too far off track. Remember the barrier we encountered at the beginning?”
“The forcefield. Yeah.”
“If we hit something like that again, we’ll know we need to try another direction.”
She made a noncommittal noise, and I heard her thoughts. This can’t be terribly exciting for the viewers.
But I knew she was wrong. Watching a king use magick to kill a contestant? That would buy us some credit with Bloodworm—and I couldn’t even regret it, though I knew my people, my subjects at home, must have been horrified by the spectacle.
And so was I. Horrified that I had reverted to the olde ways so readily.
All it had taken was the realization that the woman I was growing to love was in danger, and I hadn’t hesitated to use the most forbidden of magics.
Death magic.
Perhaps I belong here among the criminals, after all.
That thought stayed with me all the way to the next environment. I led us far enough into to find a clearing among the flora, a place where we could camp for the night, surrounded by enough cover that we were unlikely to be discovered.
I’d been right—this area was lush and green.
Alive.
And that’s when the full enormity of what had happened hit me.
I had almost lost Gwen.
And I had used dark magick to save her.
Yet, I didn’t care.
I would do anything to protect her, I realized.
With that thought, I turned to Gwen, dropping everything I was carrying onto the ground, and swept her into my arms, crushing her against me as I claimed her lips with mine.
