This punishment is for both me and Nico. Me for being a traitor, for slipping through the cracks, for being Raevald’s bastard granddaughter and almost costing him his crown. Nico, for his association with me.
I glance up at Nico. His eyes still scream, Fight!
Fight, how? I ask.
“It is time for the Offered, a traitor among us, to give her blood back to the Sun.”
The crowd goes quiet.
I’m shoved forward and stumble several steps, tripping over my own feet. When I look back up, another soldier stands at the altar next to Nico. Arlen. He doesn’t give me a second glance and is quick to grab my hands, hold them down as Nico, keeping his eyes on mine, looking into me, right through me, pushes the point of the blade into my palms.
And he’s slow about it.
Slice.
I wince.
He’s trying to bide us time. Figure out how to get out of this. But there’s nothing.
A second slice.
No way out.
A second, more pained wince.
Nico places my palms against the altar, where my fresh blood blossoms atop the rusty stone. He catches my eyes; his pained, red at the corners, so powerless.
The crowd cheers.
I picture my mother, the soldier. Poppy, so strong. Countless lost Basso faces who never had a chance.
It’s time.
I don’t know how, but I must fight.
Whipping my arms around, I swat the closest soldier—one right behind me—against the ear. Blood dribbles from it, and his fist comes toward me, landing at my jaw.
I stumble into the altar as blood bursts in my mouth.
The other soldier, the one who helped drag me out onto the Coliseum floor, jumps toward me as I struggle to my feet.
They aren’t used to the Offered fighting back, but the shock is long gone. “No, she’s mine!” says the soldier I hit.
The rope around my wrists loosens, but I can’t get free, so I jab him as hard as I can with my elbow in the eye. He squeals in pain, doubling over, both hands covering his eye like he’s trying to keep it in his head.
That’s when I see his knife, how it’s large and jagged and dangling from his belt. I dodge for it. The other soldier bounds toward me, catching me around the waist. But the knife. The knife is just within my reach.
I grab it with my fingers by the tip of the handle.
Clasping it between my hands, I bring it down, shoving the blade into the thigh of the second soldier, now behind me.
He screams, letting go of my middle. I lunge forward, jabbing the other one in the shoulder, the blade catching onto something as I yank it out. He yelps in pain, falling to the ground.
The crowd is split: half booing, the other half cheering for more fighting. More blood.
I look to Nico. He dives for Arlen, knocking him down, and scrambles to reach for his sword. But he doesn’t see the two guards rushing up behind him.
Nico’s lifted up off the ground and dragged away kicking, arms straining against the guards’ tight grips.
Now free of Nico, Arlen charges toward me.
“Get her, boy!” a man yells from the stands.
I work to cut my hands free.
“Put her in her place, the traitor!” another hollers.
“Finish her!” rages over the speaking-trumpet. I glare at the balcony. Raevald’s hands are folded under his chin as if in prayer, golden cone he yells through slung over his finger.
Nico shouts my name and one of the guards punches him so he slumps forward, still slung between them.
But he manages to lift his head. Find my eyes. His eyes are still his. Still Nico.
Arlen approaches me.
I free my hands, then hasten backward, knife shaking. Both soldiers writhe on the blood-splattered snow. Arlen steps over them like they’re rocks, a part of the landscape.
A mass of clouds moves in front of the Sun, giving everything a gray tint, shading Arlen’s face, distorting his expression.
More Imperi soldiers and officers gather at the doors around the Coliseum floor. One carries a large hatchet. Walking past us, he leans it against the altar. I expect him to join the fight. He doesn’t and, instead, returns to his post.
Then it begins.
“Come on!” Arlen yells.
I flinch.
“Come on, traitor! Fight!”
The crowd loves it. They squall and holler. “Fight, fight, fight!” they chant.
Nico, still dazed, still within the soldiers’ tight grips, looks at the crowd, then back at me. Despite the threat of another fist to his face, he yells, “Fight, Veda!”
As much as I want to run to him, find some way to get us both out of this, we’re far outnumbered.
And he’s right. I’ve got to keep it going. Stall as long as I can.
If I don’t fight back, we’ve got no chance. I’m biding my time. For what, I have no idea.
I run full force, slamming both my fists into Arlen’s chest. I lay him out flat on his back, all the air knocked out of him. But he jumps to his feet like it was nothing and comes for me, shoving me to the ground, the back of my head hitting it with a thud.
Stars haze my vision.
I kick him in the stomach hard as I can.
He falls back, but is above me again before the stars in my head have disappeared. My cheek is against the ground, the snow. Arlen lifts his foot up over my face. He brings it down. Nico somehow manages to get free and runs toward us. He screams “No!” but is just as swiftly pulled back toward the wall again.
Everything draws out like I’m watching it pass me by in a string of pictures.
Crack.
My jaw.
The snap echoes between the walls of my skull as white-hot pain shoots down my throat and into my ears, pushing water from my eyes.
One shaky whimper flees my lips. Just one.
His boot—now a vise with the ground—clamps my cheeks between the hard grate of its sole and the sharp, icy gravel beneath me.
Snow drifts down, sweeping me with cruel, frosted kisses.
The Coliseum is taller, more menacing, than ever. This time, I’m the cause of all the commotion.
Down here, the large stone arena orbits me—the traitor—mocking the Sun instead of honoring it. Each towering arch surrounding me is an ashen rainbow, cracks and all. And below each arch, the stands are crammed, stippled with faces like small dewdrops piled on grass. The Coliseum is strong as always, but today, it’s suffocating, the unbreachable walls yards away yet closing in on us.
We’re positioned front and center, the main attraction: a Basso girl, her executioner, and her closest friend, Bellonian heir, forced to look on. Our stage: snow and dirt. Our audience: the blood-hungry citizens of Bellona. Hungry for a show.
And a show they’ll get.
I’m numb and frozen and burning all at once. Long strands of hair stick to my forehead and hang over my eyes. Blood trickles thick from my nose down the back of my throat. It tastes of tin. I spit it out. Blood sprays the snowy ground.
The crowd cheers.
“More!” several shout as one.
“Traitor!” a woman calls out.
A child lets out a high-pitched “Off with her head!”
Mass laughter ensues.
They lust for this, are entertained by it, feed on and frenzy over it.
But all of that is background noise. At this moment it is only me and one other—Nico, who’s somehow managed to drag the two soldiers struggling to pull him back several steps toward me. He holds me with the intensity of his eyes. Each fleck, each shadow. I know so much and so little of those eyes.