Breath of Fire

by Amanda Bouchet

  My blood ices over. I have one knife, a left hand, two men, and no time.

  I’ll be useless against the bird, so I slide my last blade from its loop and throw, letting instinct take over the motion. The Kobaloi knife hits the Magoi in the neck, just below his ear, sinking straight to the hilt. My aim felt off, but the knife struck true. The man falls, his flames extinguishing.

  Kato’s head lolls to the side. His eyes meet mine, glazed with pain, and he says my name. I can’t hear it over the crowd and the rain, but I read it on his bloodless lips.

  “Hold on!” I yell back.

  Kato keeps looking at me. His throat works, like he’s swallowing the idea of death.

  I glance toward Griffin. He’s a mess, but still holding his own.

  The fireball-throwing Magoi turns on me. I head straight for him and take a direct hit to the chest. The top of my leather breastplate burns away. Sparks shower my neck, chin, and shoulders, and I hiss. He hits me again, and my exposed flesh blisters as breath-stealing pain sears me in a flash of hot red and angry black.

  The need to end this round and get us all out of the arena alive overrides the pain as my body absorbs the magic, learns it, and then begins to heal. Fire ignites in my left hand. The Magoi’s eyes widen in disbelief. That’s right. A magic thief. Not something you see every day. Or ever.

  I throw, and he ducks. Damn it! I missed.

  I throw again, and again, wasting the magic I’ve gained because he’s fast and I’m lumbering toward Kato with an increasingly useless right side. My foot drags through the boggy sand. My arm hangs limp at my side. I don’t even feel the hole in my hand anymore. Finally, when I’m standing protectively over Kato, I throw the last fireball I have in me and then squat to swipe a knife from Kato’s belt.

  Rising, I dart another look at Griffin. Blood runs in rivers down his lacerated arms. Razor-sharp wings crash into the sand, his arms, his sides. Griffin tries to bring his legs up to push the bird back with his feet, but the creature curves its tail feathers under and loosens a triumvirate of blades into his upper thighs. Griffin throws his head back and howls.

  My emotions flatten into deadly calm. This ends now.

  I take aim at the fire thrower as he turns on Flynn, who just planted his ax in his previous opponent’s chest. Leaving his preferred weapon behind rather than take the time to dislodge it, Flynn rushes the Magoi, speeding up as he tosses his short sword from his left hand to his right.

  A fireball flies from the Magoi’s hand. Flynn dives, rolls, and rises without ever slowing down. He charges like a Centaur, his big shoulders bunched, his auburn head lowered, his strong feet kicking up sand.

  Backpedaling, the Magoi gathers another blaze in his palm. Flynn bears down on him with death in his eyes.

  I draw my left arm back, cursing the lead weight of my right side. My balance feels off, and my sense of where my body is and how it should be moving has been annihilated. Cold sweat dots my brow. I send out a hurried prayer to Poseidon as I stiffen my wrist, my blade reflecting the lightning streaking across the sky.

  A knife lands in the Magoi’s chest, but it’s not mine. I didn’t let fly. He stumbles, and his fireball implodes before he can launch it at Flynn.

  Jocasta throws a second knife. Her aim is bad. Her feet aren’t right because she’s favoring her injured leg, and she lets go too soon. The knife still sinks into the Magoi’s chest next to her other one.

  Kobaloi. Tricky little creatures. Suddenly, I really do believe the sinew wrapping the hilts of our knives retained some of the Kobaloi’s innate magic. I missed when I was aiming at Titos and then hit the flaming Magoi when I thought I wouldn’t. Another Kobaloi knife just corrected Jocasta’s faulty throw. They were shockingly expensive, but not such a worthless purchase after all.

  The fire thrower drops to his knees, dragging in a breath that will never fill his lungs or satisfy his craving for life. I limp past him as he hits the wet sand face-first. No hope of air there.

  The rain tapers off, then stops altogether. The crowd is going wild. Carver swings his sword one final time, the tight arc severing his opponent’s head. Before the man even hits the ground, Carver is running toward Griffin at a speed no human should be capable of.

  Griffin has help, so I turn to our final adversary apart from the bird. Eliminating her may be the only way to stop the creature. The knife in my hand has only one target now, and she’s behind a thick, burning wall so high I can’t see her to take aim.

  Hardening my resolve, I move toward the flames and then limp straight through them, taking a breath of fire. Silence descends on the arena, making the roar of the blaze in my ears and my inevitable scream that much louder. My clothes are too waterlogged to go up in flames, but they heat and sizzle and steam, burning me anyway. My skin reddens, blackens, blisters. My hair crackles and glows. My eyes feel like glue. The rest of me is an inferno.

  Bathed in agony, I draw magic deep inside. It burns through me until it becomes mine. My body shifts—readjusting, healing, overcoming—and when I emerge from the flames, I’m upright, I’m breathing, and I can see.

  With the influx of new power comes knowledge. This is Phoibos’s Fire. Rare. Uniquely Fisan as far as I know. Named after the Magoi who helped an ancestor of mine annex a chunk of Tarva during a Power Bid. They pushed the Tarvan border back enough to steal three great cities. Sykouri resisted. My ancestor let his army plunder the metropolis and then ordered it burned to the ground with most of its population trapped inside. Phoibos’s Fire is one of the hottest, fastest burning fires known to man and Gods alike, outdone only by Dragon’s Breath and matched only by the flaming exhales of certain deadly Drakons.

  My boots crunch over sand heated into glass. Old fears make my heart pound. I just announced to the world that I can steal magic. That I can walk through an Elemental Mage’s fire and live. I am an anomaly. I am stupefying. Terrifying.

  The crowd is still hushed. Too much attention. Too many eyes. Too much expectation. My life now—mine and Griffin’s.

  “You have one chance,” I tell the Fisan Magoi. “Call off the bird.” My voice rolls from me with a low, thundering pitch. It carries, louder than it should be with power I don’t understand. Movement in the arena haunts my peripheral vision, thousands of people cringing at once. Their fear doesn’t make me happy, but it somehow feels right. It’s my right.

  The female Magoi stares at me with a mixture of horror and fascination. She draws a sword. It’s about the same length as mine, which I leave on my back. She takes a careful step away from me, wary of her own fire. Her straight brown hair wafts on currents of heat.

  “Who are you?” she asks.

  A seductive, dark part of me wants to push into her mind. To order her. Punish her. Make her bleed like Griffin is bleeding. I haven’t been able to wrench the bird from her. Maybe I’ll just wrench her.

  My thoughts are steeped in bitterness. Wouldn’t that make Mother happy? The Agon Games ripping my conscience to shreds.

  “I am mercy, but I am also death. Call off the bird.”

  She doesn’t move, but her flames suddenly slam into my back, engulfing me.

  I feel no pain, just more magic, and my lips twist in a feral smile. Power is a whirl of color and heat. Fire rides my skin. I inhale it deep into my lungs. This magic is mine now. It can’t hurt me, and yet I could turn it back on her and melt her down to bone.

  The look on her face tells me she knows it. Her flames crawl higher, burn hotter. I step out of the blaze before my clothing disintegrates. I won’t let Griffin suffer a moment longer.

  Floating on a magic charge helps me forget the lead weight of my body. My fingers tighten around Kato’s knife. The metal is hot, but the grip is wrapped, allowing me to hold on to it. Even with my left hand, my aim is good. Perfect even. Right in the eye—soft, easy to penetrate. Ending. The woman falls backward, carried over by the kni
fe’s momentum. An instant later, her flames snuff out, leaving me suddenly cold.

  I turn and nearly run into Flynn and Jocasta. Were they trying to reach me? Through a wall of fire?

  Seeing them and the anxiety in their eyes snaps some of the threads holding me together and saps my courage. I want to fall into Flynn’s arms. I want him to carry me because I’m so heavy and tired, and my feet don’t work like they should.

  Instead, I drag myself toward Griffin as fast as I can. Carver is banging away at the bird, but his blade slips off the armored feathers. The only chink seems to be in its underbelly, and the huge metallic bird is still thrashing over Griffin. The hilt of Griffin’s sword pounds into his chest with each powerful beat of the creature’s wings. His arms shake, and there’s a terrifying amount of blood.

  My feet tangle up in each other, and I nearly fall. Flynn catches my elbow, but I shake him off, not willing to lean on him, not even looking at him. Believing I need help is the beginning of the end.

  “I have a plan.” I stumble forward, counting on willpower and sheer insanity to get me through.

  “What plan?” Flynn sounds distraught. He sounds sick with worry.

  I don’t answer. He might try to stop me.

  When I reach Griffin, my husband roars at me to get back. His cheeks and jaw are sliced to ribbons, like his arms, sides, and legs. Shredded clothing. Split muscle. Bone. But he’s still fighting. He caught the bird so I could eliminate the Magoi. His strength amazes me. Honors me. I’m not sickened by his state. I’m impressed. The man I love endures. He is me, and I am him. We are forged of the same passion and violence, and we have hearts of iron.

  “I know what to do.” Magic leaps inside me. The ice shard around my neck throbs once, sending a shock of cold through my chest. It gives me strength. Griffin gives me courage.

  “Get back!” he bellows. His grip slips on the blood-slicked hilt of his sword, and his face reddens as the ball at the base grinds viciously into his chest. His great, bloody arms tremble. “You swore to me!”

  I swore to take only calculated risks. I calculated.

  A final step puts me right behind Griffin’s head. My left arm flies out as the Stymphalian Bird’s head jerks up. Its black eyes meet mine, and I clamp my hand around its beak in the split second before its wings sweep forward and stab my arm.

  Blades pierce both sides. Pain is sharp. Then hot. Then consuming. I grit my teeth and don’t let go. I can do this. I force my focus away from my throbbing arm and search for the spark of consciousness I need to take inside me and overpower.

  The bird wrestles its head down, pulling my hand down with it. It unleashes the metallic feathers from its crest, and three short blades slam into my abdomen.

  The sound that explodes from my mouth is inhuman. Griffin cries out with me. Shadows pulse around the edges of my vision—a blackness that threatens us all.

  Terrified of the growing dark, I look down. Griffin looks back at me, and I have light. But my light looks like his heart just broke.

  I grip his eyes with mine like I grip the Stymphalian Bird’s beak, simply refusing to let go. The heavy numbness on my right side spreads across my chest to my left shoulder. The blades in my left arm burn like the fires of the Underworld, and my upper abdomen is on fire. Not sobbing in agony defies human nature. But Griffin’s eyes hold mine back, grounding me and enthralling me like every day since the moment we met.

  “You are Catalia Fisa.” In his words, I read a fuller meaning. He believes in me. He believes I can do anything I set my mind to.

  I breathe again. Once. Twice. Selena is just beyond the gate. Our bodies will hold out because I’ll give them no other choice. Survival is a mind-set. I will live. Griffin will live.

  The spark I’d been searching for ignites in my head. The bird’s consciousness merges with mine, and a concentrated point of magic bursts behind my eyes, blinding, then uncomfortable, then simply there.

  “Retreat!” The command is louder in my mind than in my mouth. We don’t know how to kill the Stymphalian Bird. A hole straight through it doesn’t even make it bleed. The best I can do is force it to leave, eliminating our final opponent in the arena.

  The creature stops thrashing. I draw more power like a breath, pulling it from my own body. Currents of magic move like lightning under my skin and thunder through my veins. My hair lifts on a strong wind, and the ground beneath my feet shakes as a thunderbolt cracks overhead. Flashes and rumbles follow even though it’s not raining anymore. This is another storm.

  People scream, and I smile. There’s blood in my mouth. It coats my teeth. It tastes like victory.

  I own the bird now, for as long as I choose. “Retreat.”

  Metallic feathers slide from my arm, pulling on muscle and grating through bone. I release the beak with a gasp. Griffin moans at the same time. Not for his own wounds. It’s my pain that’s too much to bear. My storm crashes to the pit floor with enough force to shake the venue. I stagger, falling into Jocasta. She catches me under my arms, but I hardly feel her. The venom from the bird’s bite is dulling everything and turning my limbs to rocks.

  “Go to Kato,” I say. “Don’t leave him alone.”

  Jocasta steadies me and then goes, limping and slowed by her own injuries.

  Using their swords, Flynn and Carver push the bird off Griffin’s blade. The creature lands in the sand and then rights itself, bringing its lethal wings docilely against its sides. The hole in its body closes over. Metallic feathers regenerate. It cocks its head and looks to me for direction because my will is its entire world.

  I stare back, suddenly seeing a kindred spirit in this unbreakable creature. It didn’t choose to be here. It was caught and used. I can intimately relate.

  “Go,” I command. “Go to the Ice Plains and there, be free.”

  The Stymphalian Bird takes flight, its terrible wings slicing a whistling knife-song through the wind.

  Griffin throws his sword aside and then rises partway. He pushes up on one elbow, but then his arm gives out, and he splashes back into a lake of his own blood.

  I sink down next to him. His chest is one of the few places that isn’t shredded, so I lay my head on it, my ear above his heart. The beat doesn’t sound like usual. It’s irregular, pounding. His large hand comes up to grip the back of my head.

  I exhale magic and strength, unable to keep from losing both. My bones are anchors, my blood thick, my muscles like stones. I’m down now, and I’m not getting up. My vision dulls. Pain goes distant, which is never a good sign. I try to keep it alive in my mind, as if that will somehow keep the darkness away.

  The first gong sounds. Two more, and then the Gameskeepers will come. Selena is close. I don’t know what state Kato is in. Jocasta is injured. Griffin has lost a small person’s worth of blood, and I…

  I swallow with difficulty. “Did it bite you?”

  “No.” Griffin’s voice rumbles beneath me. I want to be closer. I want to fall inside him and sleep.

  “Why?” He sounds wary. And tired. And far away.

  “Poison.”

  He grips me tighter. He doesn’t know his own strength at times, but I don’t care. His fingertips press into my scalp and tether me to him. To the world.

  “You’re stronger than poison. You’re stronger than anything.”

  His faith in me is humbling. It’s sometimes delusional, but not today. Today, I will live, because I am Catalia Fisa, and I do not break.

  CHAPTER 31

  Groaning, I stretch and then force my eyes open. Our second combat was three days ago, and there’s not a single part of me that doesn’t still ache. Poison is the pits. Getting burned and stabbed isn’t much fun, either.

  I turn into Griffin’s big, warm body. His cuts are healed, his split muscles knitted back together, his blood replaced by food and rest. His heart beats steadily under my ear.r />
  It took some work to fix Griffin up, and the healing had to go painfully fast so he could stop bleeding. Selena easily closed Jocasta’s stab wounds, which hadn’t hit anything too terrible. Flynn and Carver were more or less fine. It’s Kato who worries me. Even healed—and Selena only just got to him in time and treated him first—like me, he’s still at half strength.

  Testing myself for what must be the hundredth time in the last two days, I probe my body for Phoibos’s Fire. I must have burned through my magic reserves with the compulsion, the storm, and then healing from my injuries, because there’s nothing left. It’s just me, and even my invisibility is dormant, walled up until I more fully recover.

  Stifling a yawn, I keep my touch light as I smooth my hand over the hard ridges of Griffin’s abdomen. I couldn’t use Phoibos’s Fire in the final round today anyway. The Gameskeepers would eliminate us for initiating offensive magic since I didn’t declare any upfront. Still, it would have been nice to have something like that in reserve. Better to be kicked out of the Games than killed.

  I close my eyes again, but thoughts of this afternoon keep me awake. Winning the final round wins us entry into Castle Tarva. It wins us access to the Tarvan royals without spilling any blood outside the arena. It’s a good plan. A crazy, wonderful, terrifying plan. But even if we win the Agon Games, the fight won’t end today in Kitros. The Tarvan royals won’t go down easily, which is something we’ve all sort of ignored thinking about.

  I take a deep breath. One battle at a time.

  The sound of Griffin’s steady breathing relaxes me enough to fall back toward sleep. Healing comes with extreme fatigue, for both the injured and the healer. Even Selena has hardly risen for two days.

  Just when I’m drifting in a comfortable place, Mother’s voice snaps me fully, harshly awake. “The Agon Games? Really, Talia, that’s something we watch, not something we involve ourselves in.”