Inkmistress (Of Fire and Stars 0.5)(96)

Guilt tasted bitter on my tongue. Even if I could tell Nismae now that the king had the Fatestone, it wouldn’t change anything. He’d already achieved what both of us hoped to prevent, and the amulet was no use in battle anyway. All it would do was ensure that whoever won and wore it never had to age again.

When Ina tired of letting the chimera chase her, she snapped off his tail in one bite. She spat it at the feet of the king, and it rolled through the sand toward us, oozing blood, still writhing.

I gagged.

Then she used a burst of flame to torch the chimera’s wings, and tore out a mouthful of pinion feathers while they still burned.

My stomach heaved again.

Gorval’s shrieks now were not of challenge, but of agony as he clumsily flapped back to the ground, barely managing to stop his fall. The sound of his pain cut me to the core. If I could have done anything to help him, I would have. I didn’t care that my instructions had been explicit—save my power for the king if the battle came to that point. But in my weakened state, there was little I could do for Gorval without having enchanted him before the battle. I had to save my power whether I wanted to or not.

When Gorval hit the ground, Ina was already there with a swift strike to the neck to end him. He collapsed into the sand, but she wasn’t done. She picked up his dying body in her claws and flew a victory lap around the coliseum, showering the spectators with blood and sand as they screamed and cheered. I pulled up the hood of my red cloak, shuddering as Ina passed overhead—and for the first time, grateful for the color of the wool.

Ina finally dropped the carcass in front of the door to the king’s side of the coliseum only a few lengths from where I sat. Her nearness made me shiver with nerves. If she knew how much support I was supposed to lend the king, would she pluck me out of the audience and kill me for fun? It was against the rules of the challenge, but I wasn’t sure that mattered.

Ina paced through the ring while attendants cleared the body and raked up as much of the blood from the sand as they could. She lashed her tail, eyes still glittering with bloodlust, impatient for the second challenger to arrive. She didn’t look the slightest bit winded, and the chimera hadn’t managed to land a single strike on her. The only blood on her was mine, and she hadn’t even needed to use the magic of it yet. Nismae still stood waiting in the wings, biding her time for the battle that mattered.

The longer they went without using the enchantments, the more nervous I became. It was true that the strength of my magic was more than a match for Nismae’s, but she had time and experience on her side. I was exhausted from spending two nights in a tomb.

High Councillor Raisa ascended the stairs next. She moved unsteadily, using the railing to support and guide herself. But once she entered the ring, she straightened, the years seeming to fall away as she skimmed power from the thoughts and feelings and emotions of everyone in the coliseum, all of which still ran high from the battle. Her magic stung, like thorns or nettles working their way into my skull. As she did so, her body unbent itself until she stood steady on her feet, looking closer to forty winters of age than the many centuries she’d lived.

Ina roared and it sounded like laughter. She wasn’t the least bit afraid. I clenched my cloak so tightly I thought my hands might go numb. What none of us knew was how many of my gifts Nismae might have been able to impart to Ina with my blood. If she had figured out how to use the most dangerous of my powers, all it would take was a tug on the threads of Raisa’s magic to pull her away into nothingness, to hand her over to the shadow god.

Part of me wanted to make a break for it—to race across the ring to the challenger’s side and find Hal. Get Zallie and the children and leave now before the worst of the battle could come to pass. I didn’t know how to help the king who had betrayed me so deeply, who had left me to die. But how could I switch to Ina’s side when she and Nismae had done things just as terrible?

Unlike the ill-fated chimera, Raisa was not going to let Ina make the first move. She flicked her hand and a cloud of magic floated toward Ina, who snapped at it, only to freeze in place when it hit her. She backed up quickly, shaking her head, trying to free herself of the misty shroud following her. She screamed a roar of frustration and hurt.

And then I remembered what spirit users could do: give other people emotions and feelings that didn’t belong to them. All Ina’s worst fears were coming to life inside her mind. Raisa was not a fighter with weapons, but with emotions.

At first, Ina shrank back, but as soon as she realized she couldn’t escape the illusions Raisa had woven into her mind, her fury boiled over. She thundered around the ring, roaring, shooting out random bursts of flame. The audience shrank back from the edge, some of them only narrowly avoiding incineration. Raisa wove a spell around herself like a luminous golden shield, separating herself into two people, then three, then four. The illusions kept splitting until a dozen of her circled Ina.

Would Nismae do her part to stop this?

Ina turned in a panicked circle in the middle of the arena, then leaped into the sky. All the Raisas raised their hands, and Ina crashed to the ground as her equilibrium was thrown off by Raisa’s spell. Then the illusions closed in.

The crowd surged to its feet. This had never been how we expected this battle to end, with Ina cowering in the center of the ring, keening from the psychological torture wrought on her by a person centuries older than her. Only Ina’s tail twitched, sweeping through one of the illusions, and then her head snapped up. Something about the feel of the magic as her tail passed through it must have reminded her of the Sight. One of my gifts. A gift she could now use thanks to my blood.