What the hell was wrong with him?

Many can’t exactly handle the weight of multiple minds, Raihn answered. Not like this.

Through Raihn’s eyes, I watched another man fall to his knees and struggle to rise. Maybe we were lucky that Mische wasn’t here, after all. I couldn’t imagine trying to support both of them.

I looked back to the wall and the doorways at its peak. Our goal, clearly. Or… one of them was. Extryn was a place of cruel chance, after all. No doubt one would lead to freedom, and one would lead to damnation.

But between us and that threat were so many more. I steeled myself as I looked out into the sea of teeth and claws and blood before me. Across the colosseum, Raihn did the same.

You ready? I asked him.

He was already lifting his sword. Always.

We threw ourselves into the onslaught.

At first, it was a struggle. The weight of Raihn’s mind weighed heavily on my own. I lost precious seconds to separating his senses from mine. I kept myself alive—barely—as I fought across the first stretch of the arena, but I was clumsy, allowing too many close calls.

Stop resisting it, Raihn snapped at me. Lean into it. That’s the only way we make it through.

It went against every single instinct I had. But he was right—I couldn’t fight him inside my mind and still focus on keeping myself alive.

We’d trained for this, I reminded myself. Not knowingly, but… we’d learned to accommodate each other, to anticipate and understand each other’s unspoken cues. Our partnership had never been about brute strength. It had always been about compromise.

This? This was just a matter of giving ourselves over to it.

And once we did that, we became a source of strength to each other, another well to draw upon. We might have been separated, but it was like we were back fighting side-by-side in the slums. I felt every strike he made, and he felt every one of mine.

Still, even as we found our rhythm, every step grew more treacherous. The beasts—clearly starved—were more numerous and agitated closer to the barrier. Worse, by now, all the other contestants were out of their cells. And we all understood acutely that our primary competition wasn’t the hellhounds or the demons—it was each other.

Only half of us would remain after this. We fought like it.

We were all forced together into the sands. Early in the trial, a Hiaj contestant tried to fly up above the carnage, only to immediately fall to the ground, wings shredded. A barrier. Wings or no, there was no avoiding the pit of death.

I was barely halfway across the arena, and already, I had to strike down someone every step. And perhaps Raihn’s presence in my mind fueled me, but it would have been a hell of a lot more helpful if he was actually beside me.

I don’t understand, I thought, frustrated. What is the point of this? We can’t actually fight together this way.

But before he could respond, pain sliced across my arm. I stumbled, losing precious ground to the Shadowborn woman who had come after me. I glanced down to see smooth unbroken leather armor on my own arm, but Raihn saw a trail of blood over his.

He paid for that moment of distraction as his attacker lunged for him again, again, again. I gritted my teeth and struggled to push back my own, at last shoving her into the grip of a nearby demon. But across the arena, I felt Raihn’s fight continue. He wasn’t faring as well. I flinched with every blow.

The memory of the demons from the first trial hit me, and with it came sudden realization.

Just now, Raihn had been hurt… and I had stumbled.

Who is that? I asked him. His vision came in broken flashes. I couldn’t see a face.

What?

Who is that you’re fighting right now? Look at his face!

I felt Raihn’s confusion, but he obeyed. As he countered the next blow, he showed me his attacker—a Hiaj Nightborn man with fair hair.

I knew him. Nikolai. I racked my memory. Who had he been paired with?

Ravinthe. He has a bad right knee, Vincent had told me at the feast.

I scanned the crowd. We were lucky. Ravinthe wasn’t far from me, just a few strides across the pit. I dove for him. Didn’t give him time to react—my weapon went for his right knee, a direct hit. His leg folded up beneath him, blood spurting. I plunged my blade into his chest before he had time to rise.

And just as I suspected, across the arena, Raihn’s opponent fell.

Shit, he whispered, a spark of pleasure spearing us both as he seized the opportunity to finish Nikolai. You’re good.

We were separated, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t still help each other. With this knowledge, we cut across the battlefield. Yes, we needed to get to those gates as quickly as possible, but each of us sacrificed small gains in speed to help the other, and that give-and-take meant that as a team, we moved swiftly.

But the contestants who still remained were strong, too. The Bloodborn, in particular, knew how to compete together. One of them was the first to broach the wall of stone, fighting her way up the winding path to the top. She had nearly made it by the time I reached the wall. It looked more like a mountain up close, a looming pile of stacked rock. The path to its crest was steep and precarious. Two others were ahead of me, chopping through stray hellhounds and demons that had made their way up.

Three coming up on this side, I told Raihn.

Two over here.

You’d better get here quick.

Only half of us would make it. Eleven.

Almost there.

I could see the path through his eyes, just a few strides ahead. We were both so, so close.

But I made it only a few steps up the path when excruciating pain tore through my back, then my shoulder. My knees hit the ground, a gasp ripping through me.

It took a few seconds to realize it wasn’t my body being slashed open, but Raihn’s. His sight was just a smear of clattering weapons—a cloud of red smoke—a flash of white hair.

Angelika.

I tried to pull myself up, braced against the rocks.

Go, Raihn told me. Keep going. I can handle her.

No. He couldn’t lie, not with our minds locked together. Not when I could feel each wound she opened on his body and how hard he struggled to keep up.

Healthy, Angelika and Raihn were almost evenly matched. But Raihn had just endured hours of torture.

Today, they were not evenly matched.

I didn’t even think about the decision. I turned back.

I have this, Oraya. Go!

I ignored him.

It took me a few minutes to find Angelika’s partner, Ivan, in the escalating chaos. I had to double back far—all the way down the wall. I found him in the thick of the fighting in the sands, dealing a weak finishing blow to a jaguar. He was injured, each step slow and limping.

This would be easy. It would just take me a few minutes to pick him off, and with him, Angelika.

Ivan saw me coming barely in time to react. A wave of acidic agony hit me as the red mist of his magic surrounded us. The wounds on his arms quivered with exertion—with the blood he had to use to fuel it.

I didn’t even let it slow me. I hit his arm, the poison eating at his skin immediately.

In Raihn’s battle, Angelika faltered. He took that opening, levied a strike—

Just as Ivan pulled back, his magic swelling. It nearly crippled me, unbearable paired with Raihn’s wounds. But I pushed through it, rolled, lunged. My blade sliced Ivan’s good leg to the bone.

It collapsed beneath him.

The two of us landed in a tangle on the ground. My battle with Ivan and Raihn’s with Angelika blended together, each reduced to wild flashes of burning muscles and blood and steel and magic.