I rolled on top of Ivan, pinning him.

Pain slithered across my ribs.

Not mine—Raihn’s. Running out of time.

I looked right into Ivan’s eyes as I raised my blade, holding him still between my knees, his back pressed to the stone of the wall.

And I was looking so intently at him that I almost didn’t notice the movement out of the corner of my vision.

Raihn looked over Angelika’s shoulder—looked up, at the gates of victory. The Bloodborn woman had reached the top. She paused between the two doors, clearly hesitant. A Shadowborn man was not far behind her. He ran, not slowing, as he crested the top.

And he didn’t hesitate as he shoved her through one of the arches, forcing her to test the decision.

I seized up as the ground shook beneath me. I looked up just in time to see the flash of light from the gate consume everything.

Just in time to hear, in the mind that we shared, Raihn scream my name.

Just in time to feel a wave of pain as Ivan buried his dagger in my side.

And I had no time to react as his magic seized hold of my blood, my muscles. Forced them to move without my permission.

And hurled me into the thick of the bloodthirsty beasts.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Vincent had always warned me about what it would be like to be caught in a frenzy. “They will not wait until you are dead,” he said. “There is no sense. There is no thought. There is only hunger.”

I had thought about those words a lot in the days after Ilana’s death. What I had heard that first night in the Moon Palace sounded just as Vincent had described. She had been devoured alive, and she had been powerless to do anything about it. Her final moments haunted me.

Now, as my body flung me into a mass of starving animals, my muscles beyond my reach for pivotal seconds, only one thought stuck in my mind:

Was this how she felt when she died?

Ivan’s magic paralyzed me. I couldn’t move, but I was conscious as those beasts descended upon me.

The animals had been provoked into a delirium by the violence and starvation. They had formed tightly packed groups, all twitching muscles and foaming mouths, as if perhaps some part of them knew that it was their only chance at survival.

For a split second, it struck me as deeply sad. They were just animals, after all. Killers reduced to prey for entertainment. Just like all of us, really.

I felt it when the first one, a demon, grabbed ahold of my leg. Immediately, I was surrounded by so many that they completely shadowed the sky. All I saw was teeth and claws.

I couldn’t even scream.

Oraya!

Raihn’s panic flooded me. It was just as intense as my own.

I didn’t know what to make of that.

But something about that panic jolted through me, the burst of it sharp enough to cut through the remnants of Ivan’s magic. My hands flew out, stabbing wildly.

It wasn’t enough.

There were so many of them. I was bleeding too much. Blood was bad. Blood was dangerous. I lashed out with my blades, but it was futile panic in an endless sea of flesh and skin and fur and feathers.

I was going to die. Mother, I was going to die. My heartbeat was wild. Every pump of blood brought them closer.

I’m coming for you, Oraya.

I didn’t like that. How scared Raihn sounded. He had managed to slip Angelika, and he was running, running, running, pushing through the crowd on his side of the wall.

He wouldn’t be fast enough.

Use your magic, he urged. I saw flashes of his vision as he ran—sprinting up the unsteady stone of his path.

You aren’t even far from the end. Use it right now.

I couldn’t. I couldn’t grip my own power—even when I could, I produced little more than wisps of light. I fought and thrashed and struggled to calm myself, and—

I told myself, Fear is a collection of—

Fear is the fucking KEY to it, Oraya! Raihn’s voice, booming with fear of his own, filled both of our minds. USE IT. Pretend that you’re throwing me out the fucking window. Pretend that you’re dragging Mische out of that burning apartment.

Shameful tears pricked my eyes.

I didn’t know how. Didn’t know how to let go of that wall within myself. I’d built it for so long, cemented over every crack. Now I clung to it. Terrified of what would happen if I let myself fall.

I’m with you, Oraya. Right now. You don’t have time. We’ll go together. Alright? I’m with you.

That should have terrified me.

The beasts overwhelmed me. My back hit the sand. A demon crawled over me, its face inches from mine. It went for my throat—right there on the side, right where I had a scar that reminded me of the boy I tried not to think about every night.

Now, I let myself. Let myself think of him for the first time in so many years.

Let myself think of my parents, crushed in a broken building in a war that had nothing to do with them.

Let myself think of a little lost girl with dark hair hunted in a maze. A little girl with dark hair left alone in a ruined city.

Let myself think of a lifetime spent here, trapped by my own fear, trapped by these fucking predators, these monsters, these things that didn’t see me as anything other than livestock—

And then I realized. I realized that fear, when embraced, hardens and sharpens.

That it becomes rage.

That it becomes power.

I would not die here.

I let my fury explode.

I let it spill out through my mouth and my eyes and my fingers and the tips of my hair. I let it erupt all the way to the sky—past the stars, the moon, reaching for Nyaxia herself.

And I felt her reach back.

The Nightfire roared through me, surrounding me in a blanket of light and heat and power. It consumed everything—the demons, the hellhounds, the vampires. Consumed my skin, my eyes. Consumed, above all, my anger.

I WOULD NOT DIE HERE.

I gripped my blades but did not need to wield them as I rose. I barely remembered moving. Barely remembered stepping through a sea of white flames over Nightfire-eaten corpses that might have been animal, might have been vampire, on my way up the path, climbing and climbing.

I stopped only when I reached the top—when I looked up at the sky and saw the moon.

Suddenly I felt so, so small again. Awareness plunged back into my injured mortal body. Nausea churned in my stomach. My legs almost gave out, and I thrust my hand out to steady myself.

The flames fell away. My eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness in the wake of such blinding light.

I was at the top of the wall, in the center of the colosseum. My hand braced against the frame of the one remaining gate, the other now nothing but charred, twisted metal. I felt strange and unsteady and empty. Behind me, a tableau of devastation trailed from the sands of the arena up the crumbling wall of rock—scorched stones and piles of clean white bones.

The audience watched in silence, thousands of eyes upon me. Their faces all blended together. Vincent was out there, somewhere. I was going to look for him, but instead my gaze drifted down, just several paces away, to where the path from the other side of the arena crested the top of the wall.

Raihn.

He was on his knees, staring up at me. And that—the way he looked at me—was the first thing that felt real.

Real, and raw, and… and confusing.

Because he looked at me in sheer awe—like I was the most incredible thing he had ever seen. Like I was a fucking goddess.

I blinked and tears streamed down my cheeks. Whatever I had cracked open inside myself to access that power bled like an open wound.

Raihn rose slowly at first.