Crush the King (Crown of Shards #3)(113)

My friends were up there as well. Sullivan, Paloma, Serilda, Xenia, Auster. They cheered and clapped, letting me know once again how much they believed in me.

Leonidas was also on the terrace, still sandwiched in between some of the Bellonan guards. The boy looked even paler and more worried than before, and he kept glancing around the terrace, as though he was searching for someone.

Slowly, the cheers subsided, and everyone took their seats again, although not before another round of clink-clink-clinks rang out, as people placed one final round of wagers. No doubt most folks were betting on Maximus to kill me, but that didn’t bother me. More than one person had underestimated me over the past year. Most of them were dead, but I was still here.

Cho held up his arms again, and the clink-clink-clinks of coins faded away. A tense, heavy silence fell over the arena, and the only sound was the royal flags snapping back and forth in the breeze at the very top of the structure.

“Lords and ladies, high and low,” Cho repeated in a much more serious voice. “We are here to witness a royal challenge between the king of Morta and the queen of Bellona. This is a black-ring match—to the death. Are you both agreed?”

He looked at Maximus, who nodded, then at me. I nodded and tightened my grip on my sword.

Cho glanced back and forth between the two of us, his hands still raised high. This might be a fight to the death, but Cho was still a showman, and he was going to draw the moment out for as long as possible.

“Begin!” he yelled, dropping his hands and scrambling back.

Maximus didn’t hesitate. With a loud roar, the Mortan king lifted his sword and charged forward.

I let out an equally loud scream, raised my own weapon, and rushed forward to meet my enemy.

*

Our swords clashed together in the middle of the arena, the concussive boom seeming even louder than the crowd’s screams.

And I almost lost the match—and my life—right from the start.

Maximus was much, much stronger than I had expected, and he almost knocked my sword out of my hand with that first blow. His enormous strength made me drop to one knee. I gritted my teeth, my muscles burning and my arm already shaking from the effort of keeping him from cutting through my defenses and killing me.

Maximus leaned forward, his shadow falling over me. “What’s the matter, Everleigh? Am I too powerful for you?”

I gritted my teeth again, still pushing back against his weapon. I didn’t have the strength to answer him—not if I wanted to keep my head attached to my shoulders.

“You stupid bitch,” he hissed. “Did you really think that releasing my strixes and my caladrius would cut off my supply of magic?”

For the first time, I noticed the hot, caustic stench of magic wafting off him—more magic than I had ever sensed from him before, even after he had drunk the strix blood during the kronekling tournament. Maximus was practically dripping with power, and the aroma was so strong that it scalded my nose, like I was breathing in fire instead of air.

“What . . . did you . . . do?” I rasped.

“I drank more strix blood.” A cruel smile split his face. “But not just one little bird and one little cup. No, I drank the blood of the strixes that my guards and I flew here on.”

Surprise spiked through me. I hadn’t considered that he might kill the larger strixes too, especially since they didn’t have nearly as much magic as the smaller ones that I’d freed. I had assumed he would keep the older creatures alive in case he needed them to launch an attack, but I should have known better. Nothing mattered to Maximus more than amassing power.

“How . . . many of them . . . did you . . . kill?”

His smile widened, and a bright, fanatical light gleamed in his eyes. “All of them.”

All of them?

Horror filled me, along with more than a little fear. The Mortans had had dozens of strixes. Maximus had slaughtered them all? Every last one? So that’s why he was suddenly so strong. The older strixes might not have had very much individual magic, but their combined power would have been more than enough to augment his own, especially if he had added his tearstone powder to the mix.

Maximus smiled again and drew back his sword for another, harder blow. I wouldn’t be able to absorb and stop this one, so I ducked down, threw myself forward, and rolled past him. Maximus’s sword slammed into the dirt where my body had been, hard enough to open up a wide, jagged crack in the ground.

I got to my feet, whirled around, and snapped my sword up again. Maximus also whirled around. He let out a low, angry growl, lifted his sword, and charged forward. I stepped up to meet him.

And then we fought.

Back and forth we battled in the black ring. Well, it was more like Maximus battled. He was so strong that I didn’t dare risk crossing my sword with his, lest he knock my weapon away. Instead, I lifted my shield and let it absorb his hard, brutal blows, although every single one of them still rattled my body and threatened to rip the disk off my forearm.

Maximus launched into a series of frenzied attacks, beating his sword against my shield over and over again. Not because he thought he could cut through the tearstone shield, but just because he wanted everyone to see how strong he was.

I couldn’t defeat him.

At least not like this. Serilda had spent much of the last year training me how to be a gladiator, but Maximus was by far the physically strongest opponent I had ever faced. I wasn’t going to best him in raw strength, and he was hitting me so fast and furiously that I couldn’t even swipe out at him with my own sword.