by Ava Jae
I’m unarmed, and injured, and never had a chance in this fight, not really. But Deimos is whispering to Mal and Mal is crying and I’m not giving this up, I’m not losing hope, not even now. I have to do this. I have to survive. I have to.
Lejv leaps forward and the staff flashes out—I duck, scream, and slam myself into him. The impact rams into my whole body—my chest burns and my wrist is agony—but we crash into sand and something snaps and the top half of the staff whips over my head and disappears. Something hard slides under my good hand—I grab it, press it against Lejv’s neck, and—
The staff has ripped in two, leaving a sharp, splintered edge, which I’m pressing into Lejv’s neck with my good hand. I’m sitting on his chest, my feet buried in sand, my body aching, but here, right here, I have the edge.
I’ve pinned him under his own weapon.
It’s over. I’ve won the fight and Lejv knows it—he stares at me wide-eyed and his neck bobs with his final breaths.
“Make it quick,” he whispers.
And slowly, with sweat dripping down my back and agony coursing through my veins, everything clicks into place. I’m holding an unarmed man under the point of death. All I have to do is shove the staff shard up into his neck—break through skin and muscle and sever the artery and watch his dark purple blood pour into the white sand.
All I have to do is murder a defenseless man in cold blood and the throne is mine.
But this isn’t me. I’m not a murderer. I kill to survive, when we’re evenly matched and have to move fast to live. But not this—not a man who can’t fight back anymore, not when there’s nothing more he can do to fight for his life.
This is wrong. This isn’t a fight anymore. This is an execution.
The rules were clear: kill to win. But this is supposed to be a match for Kala to decide—this is supposed to be under the name of fulfilling Kala’s wish. But I can’t imagine serving a god who demands death to prove their ruling.
I can’t, I can’t, but I have to, and I—
I scream, lift the shard, and slam the unbroken side against his temple. Lejv grunts and stills beneath me, unconscious. And it’s over.
I stagger to my feet as the crowd explodes around me. People rush into the courtyard, and I’m shaking under the twin blazing suns, and someone slams into me, and wraps his arms around me as I stagger back, and Deimos is holding me like his life depends on it.
It hurts, but I wrap my arms around him, too, and he’s crying and cursing into the crook of my neck and I close my eyes. My whole body aches with the force of his grip, but I don’t care, I don’t care—I’m shaking like the suns are a million leagues away and the fingers of my good hand slip into Deimos’s thick, dark hair, and then he looks at me and my heart forgets how to beat.
Then I meet his eyes and my heart jolts to life again. My fingers brush softly against the hair at the base of his skull, and we’re so close we’re breathing the same air and Deimos’s nose is almost touching mine. And I know this louder than the beating of my pulse, stronger than the force of his grip: I want this, I want us, I want him, and we’re so close all it’d take is moving a breath forward and making it real.
The truth is undeniable: I need Deimos like I need air. Not just like a friend, like mine. I want to kiss him and hold him through the setting suns and rising moons. I want night and light to fold around us and wrap us in stars. I want to taste the laugh on his lips and never let go again. I want him by my side as my partner, as the prince I know better than myself.
But I hesitate. And maybe Deimos notices and maybe he doesn’t, but he doesn’t kiss me. Instead, he rests his forehead against mine, grips the back of my head, and his thumb rubs against the buzzed hair there. I shiver. Our noses touch and my fingers tighten in his hair, and we close our eyes and breathe together. Inhale. Exhale. Like one body. Like one person.
And it feels so good, so incredibly good to be so in sync with someone. Not just someone. Deimos.
“You’re okay,” he whispers. “Kafra, you’re actually okay.”
“Shae,” I croak. “Somehow.”
I’m not sure how long we stay like that—too long to go unnoticed, probably, but not as long as I’d like. But I’m sure as sand our hearts are beating together, and as much as my body aches just holding myself upright, I need this moment, this relief—whatever this is, I need it. I need him.
Then Deimos steps back and he’s smiling, and I’m smiling, and Mal hugs me and kicks my shin.
I laugh. “Ej! Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’m injured and very fragile.”
“Shut up,” Mal says, wiping his teary face with the back of his hand. “Deimos told me you dropped your knife.”
I grimace. “I did.”
He kicks me again. I laugh and Deimos smirks. “I was ready to jump in there and strangle you myself when you dropped it.”
“In my defense, I’m pretty sure my wrist is broken.”
“Hold on.” The voice comes from behind me—glancing back, Niro is crouched next to Lejv, touching his neck, probably feeling the pulse that’s still there. Because I made a decision, and the decision wasn’t what they wanted. “He’s still alive,” he says as Ashen approaches.
“Speaking of your wrist,” Deimos says, “let’s get you wrapped up. There’s no reason to stay here—any official announcements will come later.”
I glance at the rapidly growing gathering around Lejv—Niro has stepped away, but he’s smirking and the whole Emergency Council is discussing. But at this point, short of walking over and killing an unconscious man—which I’m not about to do—there’s nothing left for me here. So I turn away and we walk back together into the palace.
Alive.
“You probably should have killed him.” Deimos wraps my wrist with a tight, stretchy bandage. It aches deeply, but at least it’ll remind me not to move it while it heals. “Just to be sure, shae? But I understand why you didn’t. He was disarmed.”
“It would have been an execution,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I know. At any rate, it doesn’t matter—you won the fight, and no one can pretend otherwise. You made it impossible for him to continue the match.”
“I thought when the match was over, they were supposed to declare you won,” Mal says from across my bedroom. The low hum of voices projected through the glass fills the room, but I wasn’t paying attention to what Mal had playing.
“They should,” Deimos says. “Why? Are they making an announcement?”
Mal crosses the room and places the glass next to me. “It sounds like Ashen’s voice, but I can’t see his face.”
I glance at the screen. Ashen stands in front of a large crowd outside, addressing the people, I guess. “It’s him.”
Deimos swipes his hand over the glass, raising the volume as Ashen’s voice fills the room.
“… and while Eros clearly outmatched his competitor, as we all witnessed, both men are still breathing, so he did not complete the match as the rules dictate. Only one survivor, traditionally, emerges from such a fight, but Eros chose to ignore tradition and left Lejv unconscious in the sand instead, humiliating him. As such, the Council has decided we will choose who we feel is most worthy for the throne instead, taking Eros’s decision to disregard tradition entirely and humiliate his opponent into account, as well as Lejv’s failure to defeat the half-blood in the fight for the throne.”
Ashen bows and the feed goes quiet. The room goes quiet.
And then Mal whispers “kafra,” and something hot, and ugly, and full of fire and energy rears inside me and gathers in my throat and sets my mind ablaze.
“They’re going to pick Lejv.” The words sound strangled and foreign—not mine. Not from my tongue, not from my lips. “I won, and they’re going to pick Lejv, who’ll be pissed at me for humiliating him.” Louder this time, harsher, with edges that cut and leave my tongue tasting rust.
“Shae,” Deimos says, and his voice is nothing like mine. His is quiet and far away
—the sound of a man who knows he’s lost.
Because I have.
It’s over.
Mal and Deimos leave my room when I ask them to, which is good because the door has barely closed behind them when I lose it.
The scream breaks from my lips and rips out of my lungs. It tears from my spirit and pulls, and pulls, and pulls. It drags me to the ground and says enough. It says I’m so tired, it says I deserve to live. I punch the wall—the pain hits me all at once—your wrist is broken, genius—and I’m on the ground, holding my arm to my chest, and crying at my stupidity, screaming at myself for ever believing I had a chance, ever thinking any part of this competition would be fair, ever hoping life would go my way even just once.
I’m a half-blood. Half-bloods don’t get happy endings; I’ve known it my whole life. But this half-blood dared to dream. This half-blood dared to think maybe he’d suffered enough, maybe things would be different this time, just this blazing once, and he was wrong. I was wrong, and it doesn’t matter that I did what I needed to, it doesn’t matter that I fought and won against all odds. It doesn’t matter that this is literally in my blood, that I should have been here all along.
Half-bloods don’t get happy endings, and I’m no exception.
“Eros.”
Deimos is crouching in front of me. I’m not sure when he got there. All I know is my throbbing wrist, and my burning ribs, and the dull ache of my face, and the agony of losing not because I screwed up, but because I was never meant to win. This was never going to be a fair decision.
I should have known—no, I did. I just dared to hope it might be different and it wasn’t. Again.
“You still have a chance,” he says, “There are people on the council who support you, and even those who don’t would be hard-pressed to argue you didn’t win that match. Shae, you broke with tradition and didn’t kill Lejv, but you’re a break in tradition to begin with. It might be okay. It might not—”
“Just stop.” I push myself up with my good arm. “I lost, Deimos. They aren’t going to choose me. We’ve been pretending long enough, but it’s over. I’m done.”
“Eros, you were meant for this—”
“It doesn’t matter!” I shout, turning on him. “Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter Sira Asha was my father, it doesn’t matter there isn’t an accidental pregnancy with the Sepharon, it doesn’t matter he must’ve planned to have me, it doesn’t matter I won the match that was supposed to fucken decide who is the next Sira—none of that matters because Asha is dead so the Council gets to pretend they don’t really know what Asha was thinking and maybe he just wanted a half-blood as a fucken pet, who knows? We can’t know because Asha is dead, and he can’t speak for himself, and no one will fucken speak for me. No one will pick me when they can pick a real Sepharon instead. Fuck this. Fuck all of them. I’m done—I’m so done—”
Deimos grabs my left hand. I start to pull away—“what’re you …”— but then he slips the ring off my finger and holds it up. “This is Asha’s intention. He didn’t give this to you by accident. It isn’t a coincidence you happen to have the ring of Sirae.”
“They don’t care,” I say dully. “As far as they’re concerned, the only thing it proves is humans killed him.”
“But this is—”
“Deimos.” I grab the ring with my good hand and scowl at him. “Don’t you get it? Logic doesn’t matter. It’s not a coincidence I have it and I’m his son—I fucken know that—but they don’t care. All they care about is making sure a half-blood doesn’t sit on the throne, and they’ll break as many rules and traditions as they have to so they can justify choosing Lejv instead.”
Deimos purses his lips. “This is wrong. If you just—”
“If I just what? This isn’t up to me, Deimos! I’ve done everything I was supposed to—I’ve passed all their fucken tests and it. Doesn’t. Matter!” I throw the blazing ring, and it slams against the wall and thuds against the stone floor in pieces.
Oh, shit.
Deimos’s mouth drops open. “Please tell me you didn’t just—”
We race to the ring and drop to our knees, and the ring is now three rings. A black strip, a gold strip, and another black strip.
My face is flaming and heart is racing and I can’t believe I—I didn’t think—
I broke the blazing ring of Sirae.
Deimos and I snatch up the pieces—I grab the black bits and he grabs the translucent gold. “Does it fit back together again?” My voice is high-pitched, and panicked, and I just broke a fucken priceless artifact, stars above and sands below, and dammital—
I am so dead.
“This is ridiculous,” I say, “it can’t just—why is it so blazing fragile?”
Deimos runs his fingers over the smooth gold circle, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper. He stands abruptly and grabs the glass. “Come here.”
I do. Deimos rests the glass on my bed and looks at the golden circle again. “Did they tell you anything about the ring when … whoever gave it to you?”
“The guy who handed it over didn’t even know what it was,” I say. “The man who was originally holding it for me was Nol, but he … he died before he could pass it on.”
Deimos nods, bites his lip, then places the circle in the center of the glass. The glass lights up and a voice chirps, “Verify identity.”
I blink and the door whooshes opens behind me. “What’s going on?” Mal asks.
“Everything is fine,” Deimos answers. “Come on in, Mal. Eros, put your hand on the glass.”
I shake my head. “What is this? Why is the glass—does it always do that when you put stuff on it?”
“Naï,” Deimos says, “but I believe it’s meant for you. Put your hand on the glass.”
My hands are shivering and my pulse is roaring in my ears, but I do as he says. Text I can’t read flashes above my fingers, then the voice says, “Welcome, Eros d’Asheron,” and Deimos pulls my hand away.
And I can’t breathe.
My father is looking at me through the glass, and he’s smiling. “It’s good to see you, Eros.” My breath catches. I look at Deimos. “He can’t actually …?”
“I think it’s a recording.” Deimos nods at the screen. “Look.”
I turn back to the glass. My father is still smiling, but it’s a sad, soft smile. A knowing smile. “If you’re watching this, it’s because something has happened to me and I’m not with you as I should be. For that, I’m sorry. Your life will be difficult enough even with support systems in place—without them, I can’t imagine the hardships you must have endured. But you’re here, and you’re alive, and for that I can’t thank Kala enough.”
“Is that your dad?” Mal whispers.
“Shae,” I choke out quietly. “That’s Asha.”
“He sounds like you.”
“I imagine without me there, the Council will do everything within their power to try to stop you from claiming your birthright,” Asha says. “And so, as a precaution, I’m recording this message to confirm what my intentions have been from the start. The world will call you a half-blood, Eros. They will demand your life and call you impure—but they are so, so wrong. You, my son, are a bridge. You’re everything this world could be; you’re a manifestation of the unity between Sepharon and humans. This world is so divided, but I believe we can be united, I believe we can knit this world together, and it starts with you.
“I had you, Eros, with the love of my life—a woman who is human. You are my firstborn, and in case my intentions weren’t clear—in case choosing to have you, a son, and giving you the ring of Sirae wasn’t enough—you, and only you, should inherit the throne after me. Your mother and I chose to have you, Eros, because we believe no one will be better equipped to bridge the divide between the Sepharon and human than someone who is both. Someone who can empathize with both sides, someone who has seen everyone’s pain and lived amongst human and Sepharon alike.
“Eros, you are the true Sira,
and you are the only one I want to inherit my throne.
“When I finish this recording, I’m going to find your mother, who is having you right now on the night of the full eclipse. You have a bright future ahead of you, Eros, and I truly believe you will change the world as we know it and be a better Sira than I ever could be.
“I can’t wait to meet you, son. I love you already.”
He smiles once more and the recording ends. My face is hot and my body is shaking and this—
I was wanted. He wanted to have me, and he wanted me to be Sira, and this is everything I needed to hear and everything I thought I’d never hear.
My dad was a Sira and he only met me once, but he loved me before he ever saw me for himself.
Someone sniffles beside me, and Deimos flushes when I look at him. “Shut up,” he laughs, “you’re crying, too.”
I can’t deny it because I am, but I’m smiling, too.
“So, that was cool,” Mal says casually. “Now can we go show the Council?”
We don’t knock. The Council has gathered in the dining room, as they always do when about to announce a big decision, but this time orb-guides have been permitted inside to broadcast their decision to the nation. When the doors swish open and Deimos, Mal, and I walk in, Ashen looks like he’s just about to speak, and the orb-guides whir as they spin in the air to capture our entrance.
“How kind of you to join us,” Ashen says drily. “As I was saying, the Council has deliberated and—”
“Wait,” I say loudly. The orbs whir to face me again as I walk around the long, curved table full of royals and march right up to Ashen. “The Council doesn’t have all the information it needs to make the decision.”
Ashen arches an eyebrow. “The Council has looked over all of the information available to us—”
“Except this.” I hold up the golden core of the ring of Sirae. Ashen frowns at it, and Deimos taps a guide hovering beside my head as I lift the glass and place the ring on top.