Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(48)

Ty looks up at Saedii, his jaw squared, stare narrowed.

“I’m the commander of this squad. I lead, and they follow. Your brother among them. My sister isn’t a warrior. My crew aren’t warriors. So if anyone’s getting thrown down into that pit, it’s me, and me alone. The son of Jericho Jones doesn’t need help making a handbag out of some lizard.”

I falter at that, my eyes on my brother’s. “Ty …”

“You said these people respect fearlessness,” he says softly, still looking up at Saedii. “This is as fearless as I get. Tell them, Scar.”

I translate, watch Saedii’s eyes narrow at Ty’s words.

“Not them,” he tells her, pointing at his chest. “Just me.”

The Unbroken Templar leans back in her throne, one black fingernail tracing the line of her eyebrow. Her baby drakkan wraps its tail around her arm and trills in her ear. Mama Drakkan bellows in response.

“If you wish to die alone, Terran,” she says, “so be it.”

Saedii nods to the guards around us, and before I can really protest, they’re shuffling us back off the gangplank. I call out as the stamping begins again, a rising thunder building with the pulse in my temples. Ty is my baby brother, the only family I have left. I’m his big sister—I’m supposed to be looking after him.

“Tyler!”

The Unbroken warrior who’s remained with Tyler hands him a small, ornate blade from his belt. The knife is barely big enough to cut a protein loaf, so what use it’s supposed to be against a twenty-meter-long killing machine is beyond me. The Syldrathi warrior in the pit below presses the controls again, and the doors to the drakkan’s lair slam closed. She scampers out of the pit as the beast prowls around underneath us, its roar shaking the deck beneath my feet. My stomach flips and rolls inside me. Fin reaches down to squeeze my hand. Ty looks at me and winks.

“Throw him in,” Saedii calls.

The Unbroken lifts his hand, but Ty’s already moving, jumping down into the pit rather than be tossed in off balance and snapped up before he can react. His boots crunch into the stones, and the drakkan roars.

Its wings must have been clipped, because it doesn’t actually fly, instead leaping into the air and gliding down toward Ty with its fanged mouth open wide.

Ty’s already moving, rolling behind one of those strange metallic outcroppings. The creature crashes to the ground where he stood a moment before, whipping toward him with a bellow of rage, long neck uncoiling like a snake as it strikes. But my brother’s moving again, rolling, using the barricades to protect himself, desperately scanning the arena for some way out of this.

“Tyler, watch out!” I scream.

I can’t believe this is happening—it doesn’t feel real, the stamping feet and trembling roars washing over me in awful black waves. Ty is fast, agile, trained by the best in the academy in hand-to-hand combat. But the thing he’s fighting doesn’t even have hands. It leaps into the air again, up over Ty’s cover, its barbed tail smashing into the dirt as my brother rolls aside. It lashes out with long arms, carving chunks out of the metal—and, yeah, apparently this thing cuts metal with its claws.

Shards spray across the stones, some as big as Tyler’s head. It swings with its tail, smashing into Tyler and sending him sailing through the air, tumbling across the glowing stones as I scream again. My brother rolls up to his feet, one hand clutching his ribs as he stumbles away from another strike. I can see blood on his brow now, spattered at his lips. I can see how horribly, hopelessly outmatched he is.

One direct hit, and I’m going to lose the only family I have left.

I glance around at the Syldrathi, rage swelling in my chest.

How can they just sit and watch this?

Actually, there’s no just about it. They’re cheering. They’re watching this one-sided death match and reveling in it. Where’s the honor in that?

How can this possibly be fair?

I look up at Saedii and swear to myself, vow on Dad’s grave, if something happens to my baby brother …

I’m going to kill you, bitch.

Tyler’s running out of room, out of breath, out of moves—it looks like that last tail swipe hurt him bad. The drakkan charges, all sinew and muscle, serpent quick. Tyler leaps forward, desperate, diving under the snapping arc of its jaws toward the center of the pit, skidding on his stomach along those smooth, glowing stones.

The drakkan twists around and leaps into the air, its hobbled wings spread, my brother below it. Tyler is clawing at the ground, trying to get to his feet, raising his little knife in desperation. I’m thinking maybe Ty’s maneuvered himself underneath it to strike at its underbelly, but that knife is nothing more than a toothpick.

The drakkan shrieks in triumph and descends.

Tyler rolls, and flings the blade—not up at the beast’s belly, like I thought, but across the pit. For a second I think he’s had all his sense knocked loose, that he’s wasted the one weapon he has, that he’s just killed himself for sure.

But then I see the blade tumbling, arcing, end over end—a perfect, beautiful throw that sends it sailing hilt-first into the control panel on the wall.

Ty is already on his feet, diving forward as the doors to the drakkan’s lair crack wide and slam apart. The drakkan bellows as the ground opens up below it, thrashing its useless wings as it plummets back down into the holding pen it crawled out of. The thing strikes the floor with a thunderous whunnnggg, its shriek of rage echoing on the metal. My heart is rising into my throat, my eyes wide. But Tyler is up on his feet, charging desperately, small stones flying as he leaps, arm outstretched toward the controls just as the monster comes lunging back out of its lair. It’s a race: Tyler versus drakkan, human versus monster, feral hunger versus the desperate, indomitable will to survive.