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And Merden was using the same power now, shoving magic at Darnell’s feet. The dirt rumbled and cracked beneath his boots, causing him to trip and stumble. Bones clattered down from the towers lining the pit, shattering like icicles.
He leaped in the air, landing in an unbroken spot, but Merden was quicker. She funneled the same intensity at his body next, tossing him around like a sack of flour while he struggled to gain footing and focus his ice magic. Again and again, his clumsy speed took him just out of range before she caught up to him, blasting the ground out from under him each time. But I could see his energy flagging. She was wearing him down, and the audience was transfixed by her display of blood magic.
“No more blood magic! Put up a fair fight,Mother,” Darnell finally roared, his frustration winning.
My jaw dropped, and the hush in the crowd was palpable. “Did... did he just say...” I couldn’t get the words out.
“He fucking did,” Blaise whispered, her eyes glued to the two vampires in the pit.
As the words echoed around the ballroom, repeated from vampire to vampire in rustling whispers of disbelief, Merden finally fumbled, her eyes darting up to the crowd to assess their reactions.
Her distraction was her downfall.
Darnell crouched to keep his stability on the crumbling ground, then unleashed a final icy blast as he screamed in wordless rage at the woman he’d just outed as his... mother?
My brain still didn’t understand it.
And everything else in my world short-circuited when Merden staggered and fell, flat on her back, stunned and blinking up at the dark ceiling of the ballroom.
“She fucking lost,” Kas breathed, as the mist began to spiral into the arena, building a protective barrier between Merden’s unmoving form and Darnell’s shaking one. She wasn’t dead, but something in her looked broken, even from where I stood.
The silence finally cracked open in the crowd, and the noise grew deafening. I looked helplessly between Blaise and Kas. What was supposed to happen now? How was I going to kill her if the mist did it?
I fuckingneededthat closure.
“Sacrifice,” Blaise mouthed to me over everyone’s shouting, and I shook my head, unable to believe Merden could love anyone enough to sacrifice them to the mist - and have it count. But Blaise pointed down into the pit, straight at Darnell. My heart forgot to beat for a second, and then it sped recklessly up through my chest and into my throat.
She was right.
The mist had lowered, and Merden was on her feet, braced by a pair of guards. More guards were waving their arms to quiet the crowd, and Darnell was just standing there, ramrod straight as he stared her down. The challenge in his eyes was tangible.
“You weren’t supposed to win,” she said to him. I couldn’t hear the words, but their shape was unmistakable on her lips, and pain I’d never known was possible flashed across her face.
“I call sacrifice!” Merden cried up into the crowd suddenly, her voice thin and strange. She searched the mass of vampires, her eyes fixing on Girard for a brief moment. His face was justas shocked as mine, and for a moment I wondered if Darnell had been lying when he called her Mother.
“I will sacrifice my only son, Darnell, of Merden and Raleigh, to the mist. Let the ancestors accept my sacrifice as proof of all I have done and will do for Saori Sang.”
And before another heartbeat passed, she’d attacked the stunned Darnell, ferociously tearing the skin away from his neck and guzzling down his blood. I forgot how to breathe as I watched the scene unfold.
“Never in all my life did I see that coming,” Kas said slowly when Merden finally raised her head, rivulets of bright blood dripping down her chin as the mist rolled in to claim Darnell’s body from her.
“Merden wins the match!” the head guard shouted as the crowd began to howl.
She raised her arms in victory, but I wasn’t so sure her fans were still cheering. Something about what she’d done was even darker than Jillian’s sacrifice, and only part of it was the idea that she’d hidden a son from the entire Queendom. Even through the first three Trials, none of us had suspected Darnell’s secret past was part of Merden’s.
They didn’t even look alike, though I’d been relieved to hear his father’s name was Raleigh, and not Girard.
If I’d had another brother - even a half-brother - that she killed, I didn’t think I’d have been able to wait to kill her, no matter what Ancient Magic was on the line.
“Wait,” I whispered as Merden climbed a rope ladder out of the pit and followed her guards toward the throne, shoulders back and head high.
“What is it?” Kas asked, sounding worried. I didn’t answer him. I bolted, shoving through the crowd until I stood before Merden’s dais.
“What is your fucking problem?” I screamed up at her, out of my mind with senseless rage. I knew in my heart that I could still win the Trials - that none of what had just happened truly mattered - but I still couldn’t stop myself from confronting her and calling out her unbelievable selfishness.
“You will not speak to your Queen that way,” she hissed, advancing to the edge of the platform with hands raised as though she might strike me down with more of her cursed blood magic. But the mist was there, shimmering and swirling between us. Reminding her thatshewas a competitor too, and she wasn’t allowed to hurt me outside of a designated match.
Some of the crowd had turned and begun to watch us, huddled just out of reach beyond the competitors’ table. I could see Kas heading in to stop me, but I wanted them all to know. Ineededthe word to spread about how fucking goddamn selfish she was - how there was no way in hell she would ever deserve to be their Queen.
