I had always loved all those old stories about my ancestor Bryn Bellona Winter Blair and her gladiator history. I had always thought that it must have been so wonderful to be a gladiator, to be a hero like she had been.
There was nothing wonderful about this.
The chants, cheers, and screams that twisted people’s faces; the sharp, shrieking whistles that spewed from their lips; and especially the sour, sweaty eagerness that soaked the air. They all made me sick, and I wanted to vomit, even though I hadn’t eaten anything today. Somehow, I managed to push down the thin, watery bile rising in my throat, along with my disgust. I had brought this upon myself, and all I could do now was see it through to the end.
Even if that end was most likely going to be my death.
I stepped into the black ring. Emilie kept firing up the crowd, but I looked at the troupe box. Serilda was relaxing in her plush chair, a glass of sangria in her hand. Sullivan was sitting on the edge of his seat, his body tight with tension.
Our gazes met and held. For some reason that I didn’t want to think too much about, the sight of him loosened some of the tight knots of disgust, worry, fear, and dread in my stomach. I snapped my sword up, silently saluting him. After a moment, he nodded and forced himself to smile back at me. He didn’t relax his tense posture, though.
My gaze cut to Serilda. A smile curved her lips, and she lifted her glass in a silent toast. I reached around and deliberately, mockingly flicked the black feathers in my hair, telling her exactly what I thought of her blood sport. Her smile widened. My insult hadn’t bothered her at all. Smug bitch.
I let out a breath and faced Emilie. The gladiator had been sequestered from the rest of the troupe this whole week, so I had seen her only in passing, whenever she was in the training ring, sparring by herself. But I could clearly see the hate in her brown eyes now, and I could definitely smell the hot, peppery anger wafting off her body.
Cho lifted his hands, calling for silence, although it took a while before the crowd finally quieted down.
“This is a black-ring match,” he said in a loud, somber voice. “The winner lives. The loser dies.”
Instead of cheers, another small but distinctive sound rang out all around the arena—the clink-clink-clink of gold, silver, and bronze crowns being passed from one hand to another. The thought of strangers betting on my life filled me with disgust again. This time, I grabbed on to the emotion, along with the accompanying anger.
Cho gestured for Emilie and me to step forward so that we were both standing in the middle of the ring. He bowed to Emilie first. She returned the gesture; then he turned and did the same thing to me. I bowed back to him. Cho straightened up and gave me a sly wink. So did the dragon on his neck. The gesture touched me. I winked back at them both, then tightened my grip on my sword and focused on Emilie.
The ringmaster raised his hand and looked back and forth between the two of us, drawing out the moment and amping up the tension and suspense.
“Begin!” Cho yelled, and scurried back out of the way.
Emilie snapped up her sword. With a loud, angry roar, she charged at me.
* * *
Even though I had seen her fight in the training ring, as well as in the arena bouts, I had never faced Emilie myself, and I hadn’t realized how fast she was. She closed the distance between us in the blink of an eye, and I barely had time to snap up my shield before she was swinging her sword at me.
Her sword slammed into my shield with a harsh clang that seemed even louder than the crowd’s screams. That one clang kept ringing in my ears, like someone playing the same note on a piano over and over again, even as I whirled around, barely dodging Emilie’s next blow. Her sword bit into the dirt instead of my leg, but she didn’t seem to mind. She smiled, and her eyes glowed with an eerie, almost fanatical light as she twirled her weapon around in her hand, getting ready for another strike.
I expected her to use her speed to move in for another quick blow, but Emilie circled around me, moving slower now and slashing her sword through the air in wide arcs. Not trying to hit me, not at all, but playing to the crowd. Emilie thought there was no way that I could beat her, and she was going to enjoy every single second in the spotlight.
The crowd loved her theatrics, and everyone surged to their feet, clapping, yelling, and cheering. The crowd’s encouragement made Emilie further exaggerate her movements. Soon, the yells and cheers turned to snickering laughter, all of it aimed at me, since I kept lurching away from her.
So many things about the Black Swan had reminded me of the palace. But none as much as this moment, with Emilie and the crowd openly mocking me the way that Vasilia and everyone else at the palace had so many times. Seven Spire had been its own arena, and I had survived there for fifteen years.
I could survive this arena too.
I ignored the bright glare of the spotlights burning against my face. The yells, screams, and snickers of the crowd. The soft thud of Emilie’s footsteps on the hard-packed dirt. The sneer on her painted face. I tuned it all out and focused on myself.
I let go of my emotions—all my disgust, anger, fear, panic, worry, and heartache. Everything that had weighed me down since the massacre, everything that had made me timid and cautious, everything that had ever made me feel small and weak and helpless. I let go of them all until the only thing left was cold calculation.
Then I focused on Emilie, analyzing everything I knew about her and searching for a weakness, like I had done so many times before at the palace, whenever I had listened to the tone of someone’s voice, instead of their words, or noticed the faint cracks of emotion around the edges of someone’s mouth, instead of their pleasant smile.
Emilie kept prancing around the ring, taunting me. Her arrogance was clearly her weakness. Now, how to best use that to my advantage?
My gaze flicked past Emilie, and I looked at Paloma, who was standing in the tunnel entrance along with Cho, both of them with worried looks on their faces—
Emilie must have sensed my distraction because she lunged forward and lashed out with her sword, moving almost too fast for me to follow. I barely managed to lurch to the side, but this time, I couldn’t completely avoid the blow, and her sword sliced into my right arm.
I hissed with pain, staggered back, and glanced down. Emilie had opened up a deep gash above my elbow, and blood was already sliding down my skin and plopping to the dirt. Not a practice swing, but she hadn’t been trying to kill me either. She could have easily taken my entire arm off with that blow, but she wanted to hurt and humiliate me first.
Emilie held up her bloody sword, and the crowd cheered even louder.
She’s going to kill you unless you find some way to counter her speed. Paloma’s voice whispered in my mind. She had told me that the first morning we’d started training for the black-ring match.
I flexed my fingers, feeling the icy power of my immunity running through my body. It would let me neutralize Emilie’s speed, at least temporarily, just as it had let me overcome the poison in Paloma’s body. The only problem was that I actually had to touch Emilie to make it work. So how could I do that without getting her sword in my gut in return?
A hasty plan formed in my mind. I didn’t know if it would work, but it was my only chance. So I drew in a breath to steady myself and slowly let it out.
And then I threw down my sword.
The cheers cut off, replaced by mocking jeers and sharp guffaws of laughter.
“What is she doing?”
“Doesn’t she know how to fight?”
“Idiot! You’re supposed to actually use the sword!”
I ignored the insults. They were nothing compared to all the horrible things that Vasilia had done to me. Besides, the sword was no big loss. Given how badly my arm was throbbing, I wouldn’t have been able to hold on to it much longer anyway. Instead, I stared at my sword, marking the spot where it had landed carefully in my mind, like the way that Lady Xenia had covered the floor of her dance hall with large paper
Xs when she had first started teaching me the Tanzen Freund.
When I had that spot firmly fixed in my mind, I pulled the shield off my other arm, gripped it by the edges, and held it out in front of me.
Emilie smirked. “Killing you is going to be even easier than I imagined.”
“Then shut up and do it already, you arrogant, preening bitch,” I hissed back.
She let out a loud, angry scream, charged at me, and swung her sword at my head, trying to lop it off with one brutal blow. Playtime was definitely over.
I sidestepped the strike, but instead of lurching away like before, I whirled around, lunged forward, and rammed my shield into her chest, along with the rest of my body.
I put as much force into the move as I could, and we both fell to the ground, with me on top of Emilie. She slammed into the dirt, and she lost her grip on her own sword and shield, both of which skittered away.
“Get off me, you bitch!” she snarled.
She kept shouting curses, even as she squirmed and squirmed, trying to wriggle out from under me, but I didn’t let her get away. She wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice, and this was the only chance I had to throttle her speed with my immunity. So I wormed along the ground with her, keeping the shield in between us and my body on top of it to keep her pinned down.
My dead weight was putting pressure on Emilie’s lungs, and she slowed her struggles to suck down some much-needed air. Before she could start squirming again, I snapped up my fist and drove it into her face.
Crunch.
For the second time this week, I landed the perfect punch and broke her nose. Emilie screamed, but the sound quickly turned into a cough, as she tried not to choke on her own blood.
“Did you see that?”
“She punched her right in the face!”
“Now we’ve got a fight!”
Those jeers from the crowd turned into shouts of approval, but I tuned them out. I didn’t need any encouragement to punch her again.
I drew my fist back for another strike, but Emilie snarled, put her hands on my shield, and shoved it and me off her. I lost my grip on the shield, which rolled away, and landed hard on my left hip. She lashed out and kicked me in the ribs. This time, I was the one who screamed with pain.
Emilie scrambled to her feet, her head snapping left and right, searching for her sword. I was still on the ground, and I didn’t have time to get back up onto my own feet before she darted away, so I lunged forward and wrapped my hand around her leg, right above her sandal straps. I sensed her magic the second that my skin touched hers, and I reached for my own power and sent my immunity racing out into her body, trying to snuff out all her speed.
Emilie screeched again and tried to wrench away, but I dug my nails into her skin, deep enough to draw blood, and forced her to drag me along the ground behind her.
“What are you doing?” she yelled. “Get on your feet and die with some damn dignity!”
I could have told her that dignity was overrated, and that I had lost all of mine long ago, but I couldn’t afford to waste a single breath. My right arm felt like it was on fire from where she had cut it, and more and more blood was oozing from the wound and dripping down my skin. Sweat also dripped down the sides of my face, not just from the exertion of the fight, but also from trying to throttle her speed. I could feel her magic rising up and fighting back against my own power. I gritted my teeth and reached for even more of my immunity. I imagined it flowing out of me and into her, as though I was dunking her in an icy river.
And it worked.
All at once, her magic fizzled out, like a soufflé caving in on itself. The second that I felt her magic, her speed, vanish, I let go of her leg and rolled away. Emilie wasn’t expecting me to release her, and she stumbled forward, since I wasn’t holding her back anymore.
I had no idea how long it would take for Emilie’s speed to return, but I couldn’t afford to waste a single second. I scrambled to my feet, whipped around, and darted forward, heading toward the center of the ring where I had thrown down my sword earlier.
X marks the spot. The weapon was right where I had left it.
My hand had just closed over the hilt when gasps rang out. Emilie must have picked up her weapon again too. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her shadow zooming toward me on the arena floor. It looked like she had regained some of her speed as well.
There was no time to think. I picked up my sword, whirled around, and thrust it up and out—right into her stomach.
Emilie screamed, and her sword slipped from her fingers and clattered to the ground. She tried to wrench away, but I gritted my teeth, wrapped both hands around the hilt of my sword, and shoved the blade deeper into her body. She looked at me, surprise flashing in her eyes, along with pain—so much pain.
Emilie opened her mouth as if she were going to scream again, but she coughed instead, spewing blood all over my face, neck, arms, and chest. The drops stung my skin like wet, warm bees, making me hiss, although they didn’t do any damage. Emilie stared at me a second longer, then her legs buckled, and she dropped to the ground, with my sword still stuck in her stomach.
Dead—she was dead, which meant that tonight’s victor was the newb gladiator.
The Black Swan.
Chapter Nineteen
I loomed over Emilie, watching her blood seep into the dirt. Then I looked down at my own body.
Her blood had spattered all over my fighting leathers, turning them even blacker than they already were. My own blood was also still trickling down my arm from where she had cut me. A few drops slid off my fingertips and landed on a white feather that was still stuck in Emilie’s hair. I shuddered with revulsion.
Serilda had given me the wrong costume, the wrong name. I wasn’t the Black Swan—more like the Bloody Swan.
A dull roar filled my ears, slowly sharpening into a cacophony of sound. I glanced up. Everyone was on their feet, cheering, clapping, yelling, and whistling louder than ever before, all because I had killed Emilie.
Cho must have sensed my anger and disgust because he stepped into the ring, rushed over, grabbed my hand, and raised it high into the air. “And our champion is the Black Swan!” he called out in a booming voice, much to the delight of the crowd, who roared again.
I ground my teeth, letting the cheers wash over me, even though each loud shout, piercing whistle, and appreciative clap made my stomach twist into tighter knots. I had never enjoyed being the center of attention, and I longed to run out of the arena, but I couldn’t do that. Not with the crowd still yelling, cheering, and screaming in delight.
“How much longer is this going to last?” I muttered to Cho.
He started to answer, but a sharp trill of music cut him off. The loud notes sounded over and over again, each trumpet blast louder than the one before, and the music quickly drowned out the cheers. But even stranger was the fact that I recognized the tune—the Blair family royal march.
Why would they be playing that? Was it some Bellonan tradition to mark the end of a black-ring match?
The crowd stopped cheering, and everyone turned toward the main entrance. Beside me, Cho let out a soft, muttered curse and looked up at Serilda, who was still in her box, along with Sullivan, although both of them were standing now. What was going on?
Serilda made a sharp motion with her hand. One by one, the arena lights snapped off, but the royal march kept playing and playing. Sickening dread punched me in the gut, and my heart hammered in time to the beat.
The music roared to a climatic finish, then abruptly cut off. For a moment, everything was still, dark, and quiet. Then a single spotlight snapped on, highlighting a woman standing at the main entrance to the bleachers.
She was dressed in black boots and leggings, along with a tunic made of fuchsia silk. The bold color perfectly accentuated her gray-blue eyes, along with her blond hair, which hung in thick, loose waves. A sword with a large pink diamond set into the hilt was sheathed in a gold scabbard that dangled from
her gold belt. A matching dagger was also hooked to her belt. All put together, she looked like a fairy-tale princess come to life.
I focused on the gold crown studded with pink diamonds that were shaped like laurel flowers that rested on her head. No, not a princess anymore. A queen now—one who was drenched in even more blood than I was.
Vasilia was here.
* * *
The new queen smiled into the bright glare, and everyone started cheering again. Of course they did. They thought that she had survived a brutal assassination attempt—not that she’d been the one behind it.
The louder the crowd cheered, the wider Vasilia smiled. She lifted her hand and waved at everyone. Then her smile slipped away, her face sombered, and she lowered her hand, as if she were suddenly overcome with emotion thinking about everything that she—and the rest of Bellona—had lost.
Vasilia bowed her head, her gold crown glowing under the spotlight. Silence swept over the crowd, and more than a few people sniffled and wiped away tears.
The moment passed. Vasilia lifted her head and waved at the crowd again, who cheered for her even more wildly than before. She waved to them again, then headed into the arena.
And the bitch wasn’t alone.
Nox strode in behind her, the spotlight making his blond hair gleam almost as brightly as Vasilia’s crown, and Felton trotted in as well, clutching a red ledger. A dozen guards, all wearing fuchsia tunics and gold breastplates, also entered. There was no sign of Maeven.
Vasilia moved over to the bottom row of bleachers and started shaking hands with her well-wishers. Nox, Felton, and the guards trailed along behind her, eyeing the crowd. Please. As if she was in any real danger. Even if someone was stupid enough to attack, Vasilia could easily cut them down with her weapons or fry them with her lightning.
Up in her box, Serilda stabbed her finger at Cho, then at me, and made a sharp, waving motion with her hand.
“Come on,” Cho muttered. “Our presence has been requested by her royal highness.”
For a moment, I didn’t understand what he meant, but then I realized that Vasilia was slowly but surely making her way up the bleachers to where Serilda and Sullivan were in the troupe box. Vasilia must have seen the match, and now, she wanted to meet the winner.
Kill the Queen Page 21