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Kerrigan used all of her might and pushed Marcellius’s blade off of hers. He came at her again just as fast. She parried each of his moves, letting him maneuver her ever backward across the arena. Sand kicked up in her wake, a cloud forming where they had been.
A new scenario came to her mind. She smiled crookedly at Marcellius as he pushed her backward again.
“Why are you smiling like that?” Marcellius snarled. “You’re about to lose.”
“That’s why.”
His brow furrowed. “I wasn’t even supposed to be in this fight. Now, I have to deal with stupid little-girl mind games.” He clashed against her sword hard enough to rattle her arms. She grunted from the force of holding her sword up. “But Vulsan will reward me richly for destroying a Doma pretender.”
Kerrigan’s mouth formed an O of sudden understanding. “Vulsan put you up to this.”
“I don’t see what the point was,” he said, continuing to jab and thrust his sword toward her. She managed to meet him for every stroke, but her arms were getting heavy from the effort. “You’re not a Doma. Just because you look like one doesn’t mean anything. But I’d love to put Doma killer on my list of credentials.” He grinned as if he were the cleverest person to ever live.
Doma killer. Well, Vulsan probably wouldn’t like to hear that, now would he?
Kerrigan let the anger from all of this settle into her bones. Vulsan wanted her dead. Even if he didn’t know who she was, he still wanted her dead. He’d sent one of his champions to make it quick. Pathetic.
Well, she’d show him.
“I’ll give him your regards then,” Kerrigan said.
Marcellius gave her another dumb look, and she let her sword slip off of his next attack. He hadn’t anticipated her miss. His thrust passed straight by her shoulder as she ducked and rolled beyond his reach. The crowd yelled. Though it was hard in her haze to know whether it was excitement or outrage. Whether for her or against her. Marcellius caught up with her. She jerked her sword up at the last second to stop his next assault. But he leaned forward toward her, placing all of his considerable weight into the movement, and slowly, the sword inched closer and closer toward her face.
“Any last words?” he growled as the edge of his sword nicked her cheek.
She laughed. “Yeah. Duck.”
He blinked. “Duck?”
Then, Kerrigan threw a cloud of sand into Marcellius’s open eyes. He coughed, scrubbing at his eyes as he pulled away from her. She rolled to her side, kipping back to her feet with the smooth agility she’d honed over the course of her life. Marcellius barely met her next thrust. She wielded her sword like an expert, putting on the show that she’d promised. Showing just enough of her skill for them to realize that she’d let him get the upper hand, but she’d had it under control all along.
When he came at her again, she dragged her sword across his soft, exposed belly. He roared in pain and dropped to his knees. She grabbed him by the back of his head, letting her hand sink into the mass of dark hair that he never should have left down in a serious fight.
The crowd gasped as the tides turned in a matter of seconds. They weren’t shouting, “Doma,” anymore. Her name was on their lips.
“Red! Red! Red!”
“No, please,” Marcellius cried, begging for his life.
He’d been put in this position by the Doma. They were all just puppets, having their strings pulled. Still, she had to win.
She hated this part. She’d never done fights to the death for Dozan. He’d wanted her to, but it was senseless. This wasn’t war. This wasn’t a battlefield. It wasn’t even that moments when she had been beaten in the streets as a child. The same thing that had awakened her spirit magic and blasted her would-be murderers away from her. Dozan had saved her after she collapsed, but she would never forget again what that had felt like. She’d killed people before. This was the first time it felt senseless.
Vulsan had gotten to his feet. He was the adjudicator of these events. He’d demanded a fight to the death, but now, with his champion easily in her hands, it was his decision to make.
The crowd silenced as Vulsan raised a fist. At least Constantine had prepared her for this. Vulsan would choose if she had to kill Marcellius. Though she could barely see him across the span of the arena, she knew exactly what he would do based anger he hid behind his perfect golden face and the cruel twist of his lips.
His thumb went down.
“I’m sorry,” Kerrigan said to Marcellius, and she drew her blade across his neck.
The body collapsed forward into the sand, dead when she released him.
