There’s no way I want to spend the rest of my very long life being Cyrus’s prisoner or personal gargoyle-for-hire.
That being said, I don’t actually want to die. And so I lay on the speed, using every ounce of strength and energy I have to go faster, faster, faster. Joaquin is still coming at me, but I can tell from the way he’s flying that he’s convinced I’m going to chicken out at the last minute. Convinced that there’s no way I’m going to actually let myself get into a giant collision with a dragon.
But he’s wrong, way wrong. And his mistaken conviction means I have an advantage. Right now, it’s a small advantage, but I’m willing to take anything I can get. Which is why, as the dragon bears down on me, wings spread wide and flames shooting out of his mouth, I do the only thing I can do.
I veer just a couple of inches to the right and clench both my hands into fists as I straighten my arms out directly in front of me and tuck in my own wings…and then I punch a giant hole in the center of his wing and fly right through it.
Joaquin screams in agony and starts spinning out as he plummets to the ground, unable to do anything but fall with his broken, torn-up wing. I feel bad—of course I do—but an injured wing is totally fixable, especially with Marise in charge of the infirmary.
A gargoyle’s lifetime chained up in a dungeon? Not so much.
Leaving half the Circle to run wild, power hungry and unchecked, throughout the paranormal world? Double not so much.
I vaguely notice Joaquin magically disappears from the sky just before he hits the ground, likely teleported to the infirmary. Either way, they’re down a player, and that can only be good news for me.
The crowd is shouting now—at me or for me, I don’t know or particularly care—but I don’t take so much as a second to glance over at them.
Instead, I do a backward corkscrew and deep dive toward the ground as Cam closes in on the goal. No way is Macy’s scummy ex getting that ball over the line. No freaking way.
Except Cole is there, too, waiting to take me out if I get too close to Cam—or if he can think of another reason to do it. But I haven’t come this far to lose to some mangy dog with a God complex, even if he is in human form, so instead of moving in front of Cam to stop him, I take him from behind—with a well-placed kick to the back of his knee.
He cries out and starts to fall, bobbling the ball in the process—which is exactly what I’ve been waiting for. I snatch the ball out of midair and somersault backward, planning to take to the air a second time. With one of the dragons down, my odds just got a whole lot better in the sky.
But before I can get more than a couple of feet off the ground, Cole leaps at me. I’m not fast enough to get away, and he manages to twist his arms around my waist as he tries to wrestle me to the ground.
I fight him the whole way—the gargoyle’s stone way more effective than my human body would be in this situation—but before I can land one really good punch, we’re falling straight into another goddamn portal.
This portal is narrow and fast—so narrow that my wings are scraping hard against the sides of it and so fast that it’s actually crumbling the edges of them. Terrified I won’t be able to fly if I lose too much of my wings right now—the info from the library said gargoyles can regenerate certain things but it doesn’t happen instantly—I do the only thing I can think of to do. I shift back to my human form.
But that’s no better, because I’m still in this portal with Cole and the ball, and while I’m trying desperately to get my hands on the comet, Cole is trying desperately to get his hands on me. I start crawling away from him, using his own body as my ground, arms stretched in front of me as I try to grasp the ball that’s spinning along in front of us. But Cole has a different idea, and he grabs on to the back of my pants and pulls me straight back toward him, even as I claw at the icy portal in front of me.
He finally manages to get me turned over and then wraps his hands around my neck and starts to squeeze.
115
He Totally
Deserved That
Panic fills me—wild, overwhelming, desperate—as I realize this isn’t about the ball. It isn’t about the game or even about the Circle itself. This is about Cole and how much he despises me. More proof—if there was any doubt—that Cole has never given a damn about the Trial. He only cares about hurting me.
Which makes him a million times more dangerous.
Get up! the voice deep inside me says. Get him off. He’ll kill you.
I want to shoot back, Thanks, Captain Obvious, but the beast doesn’t deserve my snark. He’s just trying to help.
My hands are on top of Cole’s now, my nails scoring his skin as I try to pry his fingers from around my throat. But he’s a werewolf, with werewolf strength, and I can’t get him off me no matter what I do.
And I do a lot.
I twist and buck and kick and claw and try to roll over, anything to make him let go, anything to dislodge his grip for even a second, but he doesn’t budge.
Suddenly, I sense the weird feeling again, the one that says we’re about to exit the portal, and I brace myself for my one chance to run, to get away.
But even as the portal empties us onto the field, shooting us out, Cole’s fingers don’t dislodge.
We hit the ground fast and hard, and Cole grunts in pain. I take that one split second of inattention and try to run with it, body bucking wildly even as I reach for the platinum string inside me.
If I can change back to my gargoyle form, I can end this right now—he can’t strangle stone, after all—but no matter how hard I try, I can’t do it. Keeping Cole from tightening his fingers and crushing my windpipe is taking every ounce of energy and focus I have. Grabbing on to the platinum string takes concentration and precision, and I’ve got neither going on right now.
Suddenly, the ball flies out of the portal, too, smacking Cole in the side of the face. He doesn’t so much as flinch. To be honest, I’m not even sure he knows it hit him—once again reinforcing the idea that this Trial doesn’t mean shit to him.
Get up now! the Unkillable Beast orders me again.
I’m trying, I really am. But I can’t catch my breath, and I can barely think. Everything is going gray and cloudy inside my head.
There’s a part of me that knows Cam just ran by and scooped up the ball, so I have a fleeting thought that I’ve already lost this game.
And then another fleeting thought about how fucked-up everything is if that’s what I’m worried about right now, when death seems a much more imminent concern.
Desperate, I try to reach for Hudson’s power—pretty sure now’s the time to use it—but I can’t unlock it, can’t focus without oxygen to sift through the memories enough to find the one where he left—