The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(63)

“Fallon . . .” I turned back to see Sorcha surveying the gathering carnage through horrified eyes. “Stop this madness.”

“I’m not leaving you—”

“Go!” Sorcha snapped with a hint of her usual spark. “Just . . . stop this fighting!”

I glanced over at Arviragus, who managed to shrug as he continued to saw through a knot the size of my fist. “Do as she says,” he grunted. “I’ll manage this. Eventually . . .”

I hesitated for another moment. Sorcha lifted her face to me, eyes pleading.

“Please, Fallon,” she said, her voice raw like a wound. “I want no more dead girls on my conscience. No more blood on my hands. No more ruin . . . Make this end.”

How? How could I do that? I didn’t even know that I wanted to. I wanted revenge on Thalestris just as much as she’d wanted it on my sister and . . .

That’s it.

The thought brought me up short. I realized then that, in a way, I was locked in the same cycle Thalestris was. And I had been, ever since Sorcha had first disappeared from my life when I was a girl. All I’d wanted was revenge until the moment I’d found her again, alive and whole and mine. But when she’d been taken from me a second time . . . that thirst for vengeance had reawakened. Spilled over into my quest for retribution from Thalestris and her tribe, and I’d dragged my ludus sisters straight into the bloody heart of it.

They were getting hurt. They were hurting others. And it wasn’t even their fight, any more than it was the Amazons’. The only problem was that, as much as it might have been mine, I was one girl with two swords, and I couldn’t stop the fighting with my blades. But maybe . . .

Maybe I could stop it with my words.





XII




I STEPPED AWAY from Sorcha and shouted “Stop!” as loudly as I could.

I had to shout it three more times—twice in mangled Greek—before anyone even started to take notice. Cai and Quint, oddly enough, were the first to put up their swords. Used to taking orders, I supposed.

“Stop!” I shouted one more time, my throat raw. “Gratia, damn it!—put that girl down!”

Gratia looked at me like I was mad but, eventually, she lowered the Amazon girl she had lifted off the ground in a rib-crushing bear hug back down to her feet. The girl collapsed to her knees, gulping for breath, her face flushed purple. One by one, the other duels subsided. All except the one raging between Elka and Thalestris. The two of them were locked in a vicious struggle to disarm each other of their spears. With Elka distracted for the barest instant by my shouting, Thalestris managed to thrust her away, and they both backed off into defensive postures.

Like a pair of hungry tigers, they circled each other, waiting for an opening.

“Achilleans!” I shouted one last time. “Drop your weapons!”

Well, then they really did think I was mad. I could see it in their faces. Disarm? We’d been winning. But then I threw my own swords—both of them—to the ground to show them just how serious I was.

“Elka!” I strode through crowd of combatants. “Do it.”

To her credit, my dear friend trusted me enough to do as I said. Elka dropped her spear at her feet. Thalestris went statue-still, her spear still held at the ready. But for the moment, she didn’t move. In her mind, I’m sure, my command to disarm was most likely a ruse.

One eye still on her opponent, Elka turned to the two gladiatrices nearest her—Hestia and Kore—and barked, “You heard her. Do it. Blades on the ground!” She turned to the girl on her other side—Antonia—and glanced down at the weapon strapped to her arm. Antonia raised an eyebrow at her.

“You can just put your arm up, maybe,” Elka said.

Ajani stepped forward then and gestured to the rest of our girls to drop their weapons too. The moment they did, the Amazons closed in, still bristling with their blades, and surrounded us.

Thalestris spun in a circle, howling, “Kill them!” as she brandished her spear over her head and brought it down in a lethal arc—aimed straight at Elka’s head—only to have her blow blocked by the staff of the Amazon matriarch whose nose I’d bloodied with my head-butt.

“Hold!” the gray-braided warrior shouted.

“Don’t cross me, Areto!” Thalestris snarled, straining against the staff.

“There is no honor in killing an unarmed opponent,” the woman named Areto said through gritted teeth.

She heaved like her muscles would crack and threw Thalestris off, holding her at bay with a defensive stance. The other Amazons were frozen, visibly torn by the conflict in their own ranks, but it felt as though Areto’s command was a fragile dam holding back a deluge. And if my gamble failed, they would cut me and my now-unarmed friends to pieces.

“There is no honor in this fight at all,” I said, directing my words to the Amazons in general, but mostly to Areto.

“You are the ones who began it,” she said.

“No.” I pointed at Thalestris with an outstretched arm. “She did.”

“Liar,” Thalestris snarled at me, teeth bared like a hunting cat. “I seek only to avenge a wrong and appease the goddess that we Amazons may once again thrive. Your Roman-loving sister’s lifeblood in exchange for the blood of my sister, Orithyia—precious, sacred Amazon blood—that watered the sands of the bastard Romans’ arena.”