Kajmar was already preparing to move away from me before I closed the distance between us. But I pushed myself harder, threw myself at him in those final seconds.

My dagger slid far too easily into his chest.

But Kajmar didn’t fall.

I tumbled to the ground as he jerked away from me, then seized when another screeching song paralyzed my mind. I barely evaded an arrow, then forced myself back to my feet.

Kajmar’s wound gushed thickening globs of blood down the center of his chest. Yet still, he moved.

I’d hit the heart. I was certain of it.

But of course he hadn’t fallen. He wasn’t alive. That heart wasn’t doing anything for him anymore.

Atroxus continued to fill the arena with layers of flame. The heat was becoming unbearable. The free space I had to move around grew smaller and smaller.

I had minutes. Less, maybe.

I threw myself at Kajmar again. And this time, instead of stabbing him, I dug my fingernails into his necrotic flesh and dragged him closer, holding back vomit at the stench.

They weren’t real gods. Just puppets. I couldn’t kill what wasn’t alive, so I needed to dismantle him.

His mouth was only open because his jaw was slack. Up close, I could see the unnatural swell in his neck—whatever spell or enchantment had been wedged down his throat sat there, surely. Nyaxia had no sound magic. Whatever spell made this, it would be an object that had been obtained from a different god.

How grimly funny. Something that Kajmar’s magic had once touched was now being used to mock him.

I hacked through his throat as hard as I could.

His body spasmed and thrashed like a fish caught on a line. The explosion of sound felt like it would rupture my eardrums. It tore through me like a bundle of razor blades.

But I couldn’t stop. Not for a second.

I slashed at him again. Again. Again. Old blood spattered my face.

I let out a roar with my final strike.

The sound went suddenly silent. My blade cut clean through the corpse’s spine. Glass shattered, glints of it emerging from the gored throat.

Kajmar’s body fell to the ground at my feet, still twitching, while his head remained in my hand, my fingers gripping the tangle of his hair.

Too long.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ix lift her bow.

In the opposite direction, the flames swelled again.

I couldn’t avoid both at once.

I forced all of my muscles to work in a final burst, pushed them against all odds, and hurled the head at Ix with all of my strength as I dove.

I rolled across the sand. Dimly, above the sound of the roaring crowd, I heard a dull thump. I recovered fast, already running by the time I hit the ground.

Seconds from the fire engulfing the pit.

I’d struck my target. Ix struggled to right herself, now a collection of uncoordinated limbs that sagged against the wall, her bow tangled in broken fingers.

I didn’t slow as I hit her, blade out. I went right for her hands, slicing them off at the wrist. The nice thing about month-old flesh is that it cuts easily. The bow fell with her decaying hands.

I seized it before it hit the ground.

The arrow was already prepared. I pressed myself to the wall. Aimed.

Across the ring, Atroxus floated there in his ring of fire. Whatever magic trickery fueled his flames sat in his chest, the flare of it visible beneath the paper-thin rotted skin of his ribcage.

My target.

I didn’t hear the rapid screams of the crowd, or the crack of the flames, or even the pound of my own heartbeat.

I called and called and he wouldn’t come.

I only heard Mische’s sobs over the abandonment of the god to whom she had given her life.

Nightfire tore over the length of my arrow. It became a shooting star of fury as I let it fly.

It buried right into Atroxus’s chest, the core of his power. For a moment, his fire and mine—warm light and cold—clashed with each other.

Mine won.

The flash blinded me. I staggered against the wall. When I opened my eyes again, the fire was gone. The corpse that lay in the center of the pit didn’t even remotely resemble Atroxus. Actually, it didn’t look like a person at all.

The door groaned open. The shriek of the audience reached a crescendo.

I wiped my bloody hands on my bloody clothes, grabbed my blades, and walked through without looking back.

I stepped through the door with my weapons ready, but this part of the arena was empty. It was a semi-circle against the barrier of the stands with three other doors built into the walls that divided the colosseum. Two of them remained closed.

I looked up at the audience—at the sea of blood-drunk faces. I heard some echoes of my name, here and there. I didn’t know if they were cheering for my victory or for my death. Maybe both. Who cared, so long as it was a good show?

Thousands of faces, and yet my eyes fell to Vincent’s as if they already knew where to find him. He was in the front row, standing alone in his box. The chair there was designated for him, but he wasn’t sitting. Instead, he stood against the rail, clutching it.

The expression on his face rearranged everything inside me, like one of Ix’s poison arrows to my gut.

After our fight, I’d expected to see Vincent the king here. I saw him look at me as a threat that night, even if it was only for a few seconds. And once Vincent saw a threat, he never saw anything else.

And yes, this man had all the trappings of Vincent the wartime king—the visible wings, the exposed Heir Mark, the crown perched over his brow.

But those wings were pulled in tight, as if his nerves had tied his muscles in knots. The exposed Mark seemed less of a show of strength and more like his heart was open and vulnerable. And his face—he looked at me like he felt every stab, every burn, every wound on my skin.

I was so ready to hate him. I wanted to hate him.

I could hate Vincent the king, who had slaughtered whatever family I had left, who had overseen the torture of my people, who had relentlessly killed and destroyed.

But how could I hate Vincent, my father, who looked at me that way?

My anger made everything certain and easy. My love made everything complicated and difficult.

I allowed myself to be distracted.

It was Vincent’s eyes, flicking up a split second before I turned, that saved me.

I whirled around just in time to dodge the arrow. A breath later, and it would have been buried in my back. Instead, I let it soar over my left shoulder, a streak of black smoke—magic—trailing it. The crowd laughed and shouted as it landed in the audience, causing a flurry of activity behind me.

Ibrihim limped from the second open door.

Fuck.

I didn’t know how he was alive.

He held his bow in an iron grip, but he’d let his arrow fly, and now he struggled to ready another one. His once-good leg now dragged behind him, twisted and mangled. His hands were so covered in blood that I couldn’t tell how they were injured, only that they were, and badly. If there was any doubt, the fact that he couldn’t even reach for his quiver put it to rest.

He lifted his head, his mouth twisted into a grim line of determination. One eye was missing, blood running down his face.

Mother, he had fought. He had fought so hard.

I approached him. He didn’t take his one eye off me as he fumbled with his weapon.

Behind me, the sound of the crowd changed in a way I couldn’t make out at first. It was only as I was two strides before Ibrihim that I realized…

Laughter.

They were laughing at him.

Ibrihim managed to ready his bow. But his hands were trembling so badly that his fingers kept slipping from the string. He would never be able to draw it.