Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(42)
Aurora thinks of Isabelle and William. News of the war doesn’t really reach Aurora here, and she has no idea how far the Vultures have advanced by now.
She scans the crowd until she finds the one unmasked face among them: the stark-white face of the queen, like a shattered plate, once perfect. Her gaze is intent and secretive. Nervous energy builds in Aurora’s chest—What does Malfleur have planned? She must steel herself. There’s nothing the queen can make her do that she won’t do, now, for the sake of passing her test, living another day, stalling until she gets close enough to kill Malfleur. And surely there’s nothing the queen can ask that’s worse than hurting Wren.
But then she remembers: Wren escaped, and the queen must be angry.
She will want her vengeance.
She will want Aurora to pay.
A long chain wraps around Aurora’s ankle, giving her enough length to traverse the arena but not enough to leap into the aisles above or escape.
The floor shines like a silver-black coin, and when Aurora steps forward, dragging the chain behind her, she finds out why—it is actually a shallow pool, no more than ankle deep, with gently sloped sides. As she steps into it, ripples move outward, reflecting the dim gray light in widening rings. The chain disappears beneath the surface like the water snakes that used to swim in the river by Nose Rock.
There is a second entrance on the opposite side of the arena, and fear creeps up Aurora’s neck when she sees a hulking figure being dragged in by several Vultures. They are struggling to restrain the creature, whatever it is, or whoever it may be.
Aurora swallows. She has been given no weapons. Here she is, standing at the lip of the arena feeling like a complete and terrified fool.
They shove her opponent into the open. It is a man—not a beast. She heaves a sigh, but her relief is short-lived. Light catches on his broad shoulders, muscular beneath his black leather and metal armor. There’s a bag over his head; he thrashes, splashing out onto the arena, causing water droplets to spark upward like flying diamonds. Through the sound of the water, she can hear a different sound: the man is snarling, like the wolf had been.
Another shudder of fear moves through her.
Two Vultures pull off the bag and nudge the man forward. His tangled, dirty blond hair sweeps down to his chin. When he shakes it out of his face, Aurora’s breath catches in her throat. There is a kind of awakening in her body as she recognizes him . . . him. It’s Heath. The same stubbled square jaw. The same arrogant face. But where his warm eyes had once kept him from looking too harsh, they now flash darkly, making his entire appearance seem sinister.
Her heart curls up like a scared hamster, clawing with tiny feet at the sides of its cage. Something occurs to her just as he tenses and sees her: she is going to feel all of this.
Of course. How very clever of Malfleur.
Before she has time to react, he lunges, his own chain dragging with a high squeal along the floor, then muted by the water. He grabs her from both sides with an intake of breath, almost as if he’s lifting her into an embrace, and for a moment she feels the surge of his touch in every nerve ending. He throws her backward.
Water soaks her clothes as she catches herself on the floor with her elbows, preventing her head from cracking open, and she scrambles to stand before he is on her, pushing her down, one knee between her legs, pinning her shoulders, her head back in the water. The shallow water fills her ears, blunts the noise of his spitting and snarling. She’s frantic, unthinking—she claws at his face with her nails and he snarls louder, rearing. She rips at his hair, yanking his head to the side. She spits in his eyes—those muddy green-brown eyes that now seem like twin pits of darkness.
What has happened to him to make him this way? Something rises in her to meet him, and she realizes he is feeling what she has been feeling: that same corrupting magic pulsing in both their veins. Another one of Malfleur’s pets. Only he is much farther gone than she—he must be, because he seems to show no fear at all, no hesitance, only brute fury.
“Heath,” she whispers, testing her voice with him. None of the Vultures will be able to hear her.
His hand moves to her cheek, and maybe she’s broken through to him. She recalls in an instant his first caress, how it scared her in a whole other way, how she feared she might lose herself in it. And now his thumb finds her lips and tugs them apart, wrenches her face to the side so that she is forced to gulp and choke on the dirty water.
Everything in her shoots alive with excruciating hurt—her bloodied mouth, her banged head, her screaming wounds, the places where Heath has pressed against her to hold her down, the freezing water lapping at her face. Something in her splits apart then too—and that is a whole other kind of pain: the pain of betrayal, of powerlessness.
She struggles and flails, but he is heavy on top of her, holding her down, and he will drown her or bash her head into the ground, she’s sure of it.
But still she bucks against him, bites at his hand, snorts out the water that has gone up her nose and manages to wrench one arm free. She flaps against the water, fruitlessly splashing, and then her hand finds something beneath the surface—a jagged object, slightly larger than her hand. She grabs it—a big stone—and swings it up, bashing it into the side of Heath’s head. Blood comes out of his ear. He reels and pulls back—not far, but enough for her to squirm out from under him.
She is panting, heaving, crawling across the water away from him, dragging her chain by the ankle, but it’s heavy, so heavy. She feels something else in the water and grabs for it, unseeing, even as she can sense his hot breath behind her. She pushes up to kneeling, her muscles crying out from the effort; she turns just as he plunges toward her again. The object in her hand splashes out of the water, and she discovers what it is by wielding it—a morning star club, black and barbed with metal.