Inkmistress (Of Fire and Stars 0.5)(95)

“But you did,” I said coldly. “Why do you think my fingers look like this?” I held out my hands. The ends of my fingers were still scraped and tender from clawing my way out of Veric’s coffin.

He shrugged. “It’s not important now. Finish your work. You can’t turn your back on me without risking Zumorda losing its magic. You’re half made of magic, so that seems unwise at best.”

“You . . . you betrayed me,” I said. And it seemed perhaps Eywin had, too, though I didn’t know to what extent.

“I did what’s best for my people,” the king said. “We have a fine and prosperous kingdom. Now with the Fatestone I can rule it forever.”

Forever. Even demigods didn’t live forever. Mortals were certainly not meant to.

“Prosperous . . . so that your people are driven to banditry to pay their taxes? Fine . . . when you have multiple massacres in the space of days?” I asked him. I’d only sworn my services to him because I thought it was the path to the Fatestone. What was I supposed to do in battle now that he’d made the truth about himself clear?

Annoyance finally cracked his facade. “I don’t have time for this right now. I don’t have to defend my rule to you. You are but a subject who serves me for the greater good. Remember that.” He walked away to where Gorval and Raisa made their own preparations on the other side of the room.

None of my words had meant anything to him.

I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t know what to do. My blood already painted his skin. I could wait until he entered the arena to break the enchantments and let Ina make short work of him, but what then? The kingdom would collapse. The same would happen if I tried to tear him apart myself, and since he was bound to the gods, it might incite their rage. Then what? I doubted they would give me the chance to rewrite history under those circumstances.

No good choice existed.

There was nothing left to do but see the battle through—if not for myself, then for my kingdom. I had to survive so that I could get the Fatestone back from the king and rewrite the past. It was the only way.

I went out to the royal viewing box and waited for the battle to begin, casting glances into the audience, looking for some sign of Hal. I shivered with nerves even though the snow had stopped.

In keeping with tradition, as the challenger, Ina entered the battlefield first.

When the doors on her side opened, the crowd shouted a mixed chorus of cheers and boos. She wore white again, fitted pants that would allow her to move without getting caught on anything and a white shirt that floated around her like silk. Only the faintest swell of her belly indicated that she’d had a baby just one moon ago. I doubted anyone else noticed.

It was hard to look away from her face, which was painted with my blood. She could have put the symbols anywhere, but I knew why she’d done it—to strike terror into people’s hearts. To make sure they remembered her whether she lived or died in the challenge. Even in human form, she looked fierce and feral, more animal than human.

Three red streaks were smeared vertically down one of her cheeks, and two horizontal ones adorned the other. At the center of her forehead, the blood had been painted into a circle. The markings glowed with magic in my Sight. Nismae had grown masterful with her enchantments in the time she’d had to practice. I caught a glimpse of her just inside the entrance to the challenger’s quarters, waiting at the ready to manipulate the energies of Ina’s enchantments.

Where in the Sixth Hell was Hal? My anxiety was reaching a fever pitch. I wanted to talk to him. I needed his help figuring out what to do. How could I support the king after his vile betrayal? Had he hurt me more or had Nismae? I didn’t even know anymore.

Ina stopped about a quarter of the way into the coliseum, looking very small in the middle of the battlefield, but that illusion was dispelled the moment she took her manifest. As she changed into the dragon, the crowd stomped their feet and roared. She leaped straight into the air, breathing a plume of flame that showered the audience with sparks. Then she landed and stalked around the ring, making a display of herself. No one dared to defy the boar king by carrying Ina’s flag into the king’s coliseum, but everywhere I saw people with white ribbons tied around their wrists. She was not in this alone. Most of her supporters seemed to have come from outside Corovja. They were the people of small towns, of overtaxed cities, those who had felt distant from the crown for far too long. Ina was their champion and their voice. Now she had to fight for them.

Gorval emerged from the king’s side of the stadium as the first champion of the king. He walked out in human form as Ina had. The crowd murmured in confusion. People asked each other who would pit this shrew of a man against a dragon. I knew he’d been hiding something, but I didn’t understand until he took his manifest.

Gorval’s body rippled and expanded. When the magic stopped distorting the area around him, I gasped. His manifest had the body of a lion, the wings and head of an eagle, and the scaly tail of a serpent—a chimera, someone who had taken multiple manifests. I had never seen or heard of anything like him before, not outside of legends. He screamed his own challenge, a sound so high and sharp the entire audience collectively winced.

Then both challenger and champion took to the sky.

The chimera wasted no time, using his ear-piercing scream to his advantage. But Ina had both size and speed on him. She dodged his attacks with ease. My body trembled with memory watching her—she was even more deadly than the reckless creature she’d been when she killed the bandits outside Amalska. Nismae wasn’t even going to have to touch the powerful enchantments she’d set.