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  At the edge of the Arena, the Cleaner stopped her and wound iron cuffs around her wrists—there would be no use of their Gifts in this fight. It didn’t matter, Gift or not, she was going to make sure Jeong understood the meaning of pain.

  Jeong was waiting within the Arena, and he smirked as she entered, having recovered all his natural arrogance. It was enough to blind her from all logic and reason; hate and fury swept up within her, rising like a crimson wave. She allowed the anger to sink into her bones and feed her will. Her focus narrowed until she saw nothing but Jeong standing before her. Suddenly, she felt stronger and more powerful than she could ever have imagined—she was going to make him pay.

  They faced each other waiting for Marcus’s signal to begin.

  When it came, Allyra lunged forward, and using every bit of her Gifted speed, she darted around Jeong’s first slow, almost clumsy attack. As she moved around him, she drew both swords in one graceful arc and made two quick slices across both Jeong’s wrists, forcing him to drop his swords. Next, she kicked in the back of his knees, and he collapsed forward. As he fell, she grabbed him around the throat and started choking him.

  It had taken no more than a few seconds.

  She wound her arm tighter around his throat, squeezing the breath from his lungs.

  “How does it feel?” she whispered in his ear. “How does it feel to gasp for breath and feel no air flooding through your lungs?”

  Allyra tightened her grip even further. “Do you know what the doctor told me?” she hissed. “He told me that Chi’s lungs were filled with sand. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine breathing in nothing but sand and feel it rasping through your lungs? To be so desperate for air that you continue trying to breathe even as the sand chokes you slowly to death.”

  She tightened her grip once more and heard Jeong’s gurgled gasps. “I thought you might not have the necessary imagination to do Chi’s pain and suffering justice. So, I thought I’d help you.”

  Jeong’s face turned red and then purple, and his gasps became even more labored. She maintained her grip on him but didn’t tighten it further, keeping him conscious and suffering.

  “Did you even think about saving him when you Evanesced out of there? Did you even stop to consider how he might die?”

  Jeong desperately dug his fingers into her forearms, his nails digging so deep into her flesh that it broke through skin and blood seeped out slowly. His legs jerked and kicked—the actions of a dying man. Allyra ignored it all, tightening her grip further. The darkness crawled over her like a storm cloud, ebony black, eradicating all light. Her pulse beat out an erratic rhythm in her ears. She wanted to kill him, she wanted to feel his life seep away—slowly and painfully. She held Jeong’s life in her hands, and for a moment, the hate ran so thick through her veins that reason was almost obliterated. She teetered on the knife’s edge, as bitter vengeance threatened to consume her.

  “It’s hard for me to believe there’s justice in this world when you’re here and Chi’s gone. But I have to believe in justice, in a world that could be better despite all the ugliness within it. I have to because Chi believed it, and he was better than either of us,” she spat out at Jeong, her words punctuated by quick and shallow breaths.

  Allyra released her grip and tossed Jeong to the ground where he lay, gasping furiously. She stood above him, looking down disdainfully, holding the tip of her sword to his throat.

  “You don’t deserve to live you slithering coward,” she said carefully, trying to keep her voice from shaking with emotion. “But if Chi were here, he would argue for you, and out of respect for his memory, I’m letting you go.”

  Allyra stepped back, and the Cleaners walked into the Arena, four of them pinning Jeong’s limbs to the ground and others carrying a vat of molten iron. One of the Cleaners wore a mask, not of silver but rather half silver and half gold. He held a long, wicked nail in his hands and started hammering it into Jeong’s limbs. Five holes in each arm and leg. Power surged from the four Cleaners holding Jeong down—their Gifts combining to keep Jeong both awake and alive, though a process that should easily have killed. Jeong’s howls of anguish filled the Arena, the type of tortured sound that would echo long after silence reasserted itself. Many of the onlookers turned their gaze away, but Allyra watched steadily. For once, her feelings aligned with the brutality of the Gifted world. Every scream equaled retribution, and every shriek—justice.

  Once the holes were formed, the Cleaners poured the molten iron into them. Jeong’s screams increased in a violent crescendo until it silenced as he faded into a dead faint. The silence weighed heavily over the Arena as the Cleaners completed their grisly task and dragged Jeong’s prone form from the Arena.

  The silence fell like a curtain of water over the flame of Allyra’s anger, reducing it to ashes. She felt empty and hollow and desperate to be away from all this—the brutality, the death, the Gifted, everything.

  Allyra took one look around the audience at the expressionless faces of the Council and the sickened horror on those of the Competitors. Jason met her gaze steadily, his dark eyes inscrutable, his expression unreadable. She turned on her heel and stalked from the Arena.

  As she walked, she loosened the straps of her baldric, allowing the leather to slip through her fingers until the swords fell to the ground. Each step was quicker than the last as she rushed toward the Shadow Causeway, desperate to get back to the Training Grounds and the relative privacy of her room.

  Behind her, Henri called out her name, but Allyra ignored her, her steps breaking out into a run. The trip through the Shadow Causeway would normally have taken fifteen minutes, but at a sprint, it took no more than five. Blindly, she ran through the empty corridors, heading straight for her room. The door closed behind her and she stripped off her clothes, letting them fall thoughtlessly to the ground. In the shower, she turned the water up, as hot as she could bear, and stood beneath the stream of water, wishing it could wash away her grief and hate.

  Facing Jeong in the Arena should have brought her some level of peace or at least acceptance of Chi’s unnecessary death. Yet, without hate burning like acid through her, all that was left behind was a yawning crevice of infinite darkness and the certainty that it was all so pointless.

  She stood beneath the water for a long time until the water ran cold over her. Eventually, she emerged, shivering, with her fingernails turning blue. But she embraced the cold, sure that it was better than feeling nothing at all.

  Jason was waiting for her, sitting on the couch with a tray of food on the low coffee table before him. He glanced up at her, taking in her wet hair and shivering body, but made no comment.

  “I thought you might be hungry,” he said casually.

  There was a lump in her throat that she couldn’t swallow away, and the idea of food only made it grow larger. She shook her head.

  “I’m tired,” she said, as if it were an explanation.

  If she believed him capable of it, Allyra would’ve described the look on Jason’s face as concern. But she was too exhausted to consider it further. She teetered where she stood, her mind bombarded by thoughts of Chi. Images of him as she’d known him and images of what his body had looked like all merged together in a grotesque film, sending shivers through her body that had nothing to do with the cold. Jason stood and wrapped her in his arms.

  Alone. She felt so alone in the world with nothing to hold onto, blown around at the will of the wind. But Jason was here, solid and real, steady in a chaotic world, and she held onto him with a death grip.

  She fisted her hands around his shirt, her knuckles turning white. She buried her face into his chest, willing the trembling to stop. She tried to force her weakness away, but the shaking seemed endless, like a vibrating string.

  Jason untangled her fingers from his shirt, winding them between his own. As he had done in the freezing desert night air, his incredible heat bled into her, briefly chasing away the cold and hollowness. Slowly the uncontrolled sh
ivering retreated, and in its wake, like seashells on the shore, raw and honest grief was revealed, and finally the tears came.

  Jason allowed her to cry until her grief was spent, and then he offered her a tissue and said abruptly, “Let’s get out of here. I’m buying you a drink.”

  Chapter 18 – Allyra

  The road was dark and isolated, a scene taken directly from a horror movie. Massive oak trees towered over it on both edges, thick foliage blocking out the pale moonlight. But the road was a little too well maintained, and the patches of lawn between the trees were too perfectly mowed—manicured carpets of green—for it to be a true horror movie. There was nothing run-down about this place, and every little detail screamed money.

  The night was still with only a feeble wind brushing through the trees, the sound of it lost to the distant rush and ebb of waves crashing into the shoreline.

  “This is where you wanted to get a drink?” Allyra asked incredulously, keeping her voice to a whisper, unable to shake the feeling that they weren’t supposed to be here.

  “Just trust me,” Jason replied shortly, striding briskly down the road.

  It didn’t build confidence that he too kept his voice to a whisper. As a precaution, Allyra reached out with her Gift but found nothing to suggest they were anything but totally alone—on a deserted road, in the middle of nowhere. Maybe she had stumbled into her own personal version of a horror movie.

  “Explain again why we couldn’t have driven down here?”

  After an hour of driving from the Elemental College up toward the sparsely populated West Coast, Jason had chosen to stash the car in some bushes a couple of kilometers back.

  Jason turned to her with a wicked grin. “Well, we’re not strictly meant to be here.”

  Allyra ground to an abrupt halt, and Jason rolled his eyes at her.

  “Come on,” he said, “live a little.”

  “You said a drink, not trespassing,” she replied scornfully. “And I prefer not to end up in a jail cell.”

  The dim light did nothing to hide his exasperated look. “Don’t you ever get tired of following the rules? Don’t you ever just want to throw caution to the wind and taste a little danger?”

  “Danger?” The word burst from her lips, her voice lifting in disbelief. “I’m a Competitor in a competition with even odds that I might lose a limb or even die. I just lost a friend in the most horrific manner. Trust me, I’ve tasted more than enough danger to last me a lifetime. I’d prefer to live a boring little life.”

  Jason took a deliberate step closer to her, pushing himself into her space. He seemed to come alive in the night—his normally dark eyes glittered, like fire reflected in ebony glass. “You’re lying,” he said, his voice no more than a whisper, a caress in the night. “If that were true, you would’ve run after the Elemental Trials—disappeared into obscurity and normalcy. Gone to have your two point four kids with Jamie in a house with a white picket fence. But instead, you chose to stay.”

  “I have my own reasons for staying, and they have nothing to do with being an adrenaline junkie,” Allyra retorted.

  Jason shrugged. “Maybe, but I think it’s more than that. I saw it in your eyes today, as you beat Jeong. I saw soaring satisfaction, pleasure in your own power. I think you’ve started to realize that you’ve been asleep for a long time. And you’re finally waking up to a world that’s bigger and more exciting than you ever imagined.”

  She lowered her eyes, afraid that he might be right. That beneath the empty grief and horrified anger there was an undertone of pleasure and delight in her newfound power. Which, if true, might be the greatest evil of all. She might argue that she had no real choice but to compete in The Five Finals and given different circumstances she would’ve never chosen to be here. Never chosen The Five Finals. Never chosen to watch her friends die and certainly never chosen to be on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere with Jason. But life, in all its unpredictable and ruthless glory, had changed her. The game had taken a pliant pawn and changed her into something altogether more dangerous. The Allyra from before would’ve been back at the car already. In fact, one look at the dark road, and she would’ve never gotten out of the car. The fact that she was still standing here, considering Jason’s words, meant that he was right—there was a small part of her that had woken to the thrill of danger.

  As if he could see her wavering, Jason took hold of her shoulders, determined to win her over. “Give me tonight,” he said, “and I’ll show you what it feels like to truly wake up.”

  She was silent for a long time, torn between habitual caution and the sudden exhilarating impulse to leap into the unknown. The choice between socks for Christmas or a mystery box. Even with the knowledge that the mystery box might just contain a mass of slithering snakes ready to leap out, the mystery box won. For one night, she wanted to forget it all, the death, the brutality, the overwhelming guilt. Tonight, she wanted to be free of the responsibility weighing heavily on her. “Fine,” she said, “but if we get caught, I’m blaming it on you.”

  “We’re Gifted—if we get caught, it’ll be because we chose to get caught,” Jason replied with characteristic insolence.

  A few minutes later, a large, wrought iron gate materialized out of the gloom. Through its rounded designs stood a guardhouse, but like everything else, it appeared deserted.

  Jason knelt by the gate and she felt a sudden surge of power from him as he reached for his Gift. With practiced ease, he sent a jolt of electricity down to the motor, and the gate slid open noiselessly.

  “Excellent,” Allyra quipped, “now we’ve graduated to breaking and entering.”

  Jason ignored her and moved swiftly down the driveway toward a huge house, built in the style of an Italian villa. It was a triple-storied monstrosity, wealth having skidded right past taste. The front door was immense—wooden with a rounded arch, set with iron bolts and a set of ringed doorknockers.

  Jason stopped and looked at her expectantly.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Open it.”

  Self-consciously and with more than a little suspicion, Allyra pushed on the door but found it very much locked. Jason let out a quick huff of amusement. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

  “You said open it,” Allyra replied defensively, feeling particularly stupid for imagining such a colossal house would be left unsecured.

  “I meant for you to use your Gift.”

  Allyra stared at the door and then back at Jason. “How?”

  “Seriously—so uneducated.”

  It was the same accusation he’d thrown at her during the Elemental Trials, but this time, the bite was gone, leaving his voice light and teasing.

  Jason pointed to the lock. “This is just a classic cylinder pin-tumbler lock. Normally a key would be required to line up the tumblers—the operative word being normally. But luckily, we have you, and you are anything but a Norm. As small as that keyhole is—it is still filled with Air. Reach in, line up the tumblers, and open it.”

  He made it sound so simple. The concept was easy enough to grasp, but whether she could put it into practice was an altogether separate question. When it came to her Gift, she’d always excelled at pure power, but opening the lock called for precision and delicacy.

  Allyra closed her eyes, and the world melted into a tapestry of interwoven threads. Ignoring the others, she grasped the thin yellow threads that formed the keyhole, and following them, she formed a picture of the key that would fit into the keyhole. She pushed and twisted tentatively, sending her own energy through the threads until there was enough to push the tumblers into place. The lock turned with an audible click, and the wooden door opened without resistance.

  The triumphant smile was quickly wiped from her face when an incessant, electronic squeal filled the air. Her eyes widened. “I hope you know the alarm code.”

  Jason walked over to the alarm keypad, his steps leisurely. “When are you going to learn? Gifted means you d
on’t need anything quite so mundane as a security code.”

  He fell silent and put his hand against the alarm panel, his brows creased in concentration. A few seconds later, the squeal fell silent, and Allyra’s heart retreated from her throat. The blinking red light turned to green, and Jason shot her a grin. “Well, Gifted and a basic understanding of electronics.”

  She shook her head disbelievingly. “This is ridiculous—what do they teach you at the Great Colleges? Thievery 101—Introduction to Burglary?”

  “Well, that’s not strictly on the curriculum—it’s just a little something I picked up along the way.”

  “In your years of living dangerously, I suppose?” she asked caustically.

  “So, considering a career change yet? You and I would make out like outlaws.”

  Allyra laughed. “Like Bonnie and Clyde?”

  Jason shrugged. “Sure, but without the death by a thousand bullets.”

  Allyra shook her head again, still disbelieving over just how easily they’d broken in. “I don’t think I’m ever going to bother locking a door again—seems like a distinct waste of time with Gifted people running around.”

  “This is a Norm house with Norm security. The Gifted have better ways of protecting against their own kind.”

  “Warding.”

  Jason nodded. “Yes, that and much more intricate things besides.”

  He led the way down some stairs and said with a glance over his shoulder, “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To find the booze. I promised you a drink, didn’t I?”

  Allyra followed him down the stairs and into a cellar, but her proper upbringing meant that she couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling of guilt currently taking up residence in her stomach. “This is all sorts of wrong,” she muttered.

  “Wrong?” Jason asked, not bothering to look up. He was studiously sorting through various bottles of liquor—picking them up, reading the label, and setting them back down.

  “You know—against the law?”