The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(93)

I would fight fire with fire.

A lot of fire.

“Ajani!” I shouted. But my voice, hoarse from the ravages of Varro’s choking, was lost in the din of the mob. Quint put a hand on my shoulder and, instead, blew a deafening blast on his whistle. I waved my hands over my head and cried, “Now!”

Out in the field arena and waiting for my signal, Ajani drew her bow and arched her back, aiming at the stars overhead. Then she loosed and shot a flaming arrow arcing up into the sky. It hung there at the top of its arc, like a blazing star itself . . . before sailing down to slam into the ground right between my feet. The missile stuck there, still aflame, and my Amazon contingent ran forward—each of them now equipped with one of the fire chains Cai and Quint had carried with them in their legion packs.

Kallista and her sisters gathered around Ajani’s arrow and set their cage balls alight. Then they poured through the ludus gate and out onto the field of battle, swinging their flaming weapons in great roaring circles above their heads. The appearance of fire-wielding Amazons sent the crowd in the stands into a rapture of bloodlust as the girls from the ludus that was named after Amazons now had to turn and face real Amazons.

At the sight of us, the Achillea gladiatrices who’d accompanied me to Corsica sent up a Cantii war cry and surged back into the fray with renewed vigor. Bloodied, battered, but on their feet. Every single one of them, and a glimpse of Elka—right in the thick of it—hewing a circle with her spear did my heart as much good, I’m sure, as it did Quint’s. He and Cai wasted no time wading into the fight, and I left them to it, turning my attention to the rest.

The makeshift arena had erupted into fresh chaos with our arrival.

I saw Thalassa and Kore fighting back-to-back like they were partners in a dance. Hestia cut a swath through a clot of Dis guards with her sica blade, and Gratia faced down an Amazona gladiatrix who was actually bigger than she was. Ajani laid down arrow-fire cover for those who needed it, and Antonia brandished with devastating grace the crescent blade that had become almost a part of her. Everywhere the crowd looked there was something for them to slake their thirst for excitment. At the center of the ring of clashing combatants, there was a wide, empty space—an arena within the arena where Sorcha and Thalestris battled grimly.

I rushed to join my sister so that, together, we could put an end to all the madness that Nyx and Thalestris had wrought.

“You’re weak, Sorcha,” I heard Thalestris taunting in a voice like spitting venom. “Lame and old and half-blind . . .”

“My only weakness was trusting you, Thalestris,” Sorcha answered. “My blindness was in thinking you were worthy.”

The Amazon snarled. “You were never the warrior they said you were.”

Sorcha circled to her left, guarding against attack on that side.

“You’re right,” she said. “I was never Achillea. I was Sorcha of the Cantii. And it’s high time I reclaimed that name. And that mantle.”

My heart swelled to hear those words, but it wasn’t going to be easy for her. Sorcha was holding her own, but she wasn’t gaining any ground. They were too evenly matched.

It was my intention to disrupt that delicate balance.

I circled around to Thalestris’s flank, but she wouldn’t be drawn away from her focus on Sorcha. Instead, she kicked up a discarded retiarius net that lay on the ground and kept me at bay with it while she still wielded her spear one-handed like it was an extension of her arm. I darted and feinted, probing for any gap in her defenses, but Thalestris had none. The crowd jeered and shouted, urging us to spill blood, but I was nothing more than a nuisance to her. A buzzing fly. Barely a distraction.

So I made myself a target instead.

The next time she whipped around with her net, I let her catch my blades—both of them—in the knotted ropes. A fatal mistake of a young fighter. A gladiolus . . . Thalestris was used to that, and she pounced on my vulnerability, teeth bared in a triumphant grimace as she yanked the net forward. I let her pull me off balance. Into the circle of her striking distance. The makeshift stands thundered and shook as the crowd roared madly and stomped their feet.

I prayed to the Morrigan that my sister could see what I’d done . . .

That she would be fast enough . . .

She was my brilliant warrior sister. And she didn’t disappoint.

I’d left myself wide open to the strike. But in the scintilla of a moment when Thalestris reared back with her spear, she left a space. It was on her defensive side—an opening most fighters wouldn’t have been able to exploit—but in her drive to end me, she forgot for that instant who her other opponent was.

The Lady Achillea. Sorcha of the Cantii.

She sprang forward, with her off-kilter style, and dropped to one knee. Sorcha brought her blade up and around . . . and thrust into the space beneath Thalestris’s arm as she tore my swords out of my grasp. Thalestris’s body bent like Ajani’s bow, arcing away from the blow.

All at once, the crowd fell silent.

Every other fighter in the field froze.

“When you greet your sister in the afterlife,” Sorcha said through bared teeth, “you can tell her I beat you too. Me, and my sister.”

Thalestris was dead before she hit the ground.

When I’d killed the Fury in my very first fight, her gaze had softened and her lips smiled, and a lifetime’s worth of rage had emptied out of her. She’d found serenity with her last breath. Thalestris went to her death grappling her anger and hatred to her soul. Defiant to the last, she would not relinquish her vengeance, not even as she passed from the world. Her face remained frozen—like one of Varro’s death masks—in a rictus of malevolence. A countenance she would wear for all eternity in the Lands beyond Death. I could not even pray for her peace.