With such wan coloring in the vegetation, it comes as no surprise that it requires four times the amount of indigo to dye even the simplest garment. I can’t help but wonder if the colors of our Continent are the exception, or if the isles are.
—Unnbriel: Isle of Dunne by Second Lieutenant Asher Daxton
Blood trickles down the top of my left forearm to drip from my fingertips. I’ll have a scar to match the one Tynan gave me during Threshing. I grit my teeth through the burn of pain and look up.
“She faces Marlis!” the priestess shouts, and the soldiers behind us cheer.
Xaden whips in my direction, his eyes flaring with something that looks a little too close to terror to be comforting before he returns to whatever weaponry they’re negotiating.
Marlis moves into the plaza, unfolding her muscled arms. Blood spills from her hand, splattering the stones. She moves like she’s used to the weight of heavier armor, and she tucks the short strands of her flaxen hair behind her ears, coloring the strands red.
Three combatants. This had always been their plan.
“Unfair!” Golden anger courses down the bond and into my veins, heating my skin.
“Your ire will not aid her. Control yourself,” Tairn demands.
“No!” Aaric reaches for me, and I shove Dain’s and Xaden’s uniform tops into his hands.
“Yes.” I quickly take off my own to free my arms and add it to Aaric’s pile, leaving me in my armor and undershirt. It’s almost a relief in the cloying heat. “Don’t let him move,” I say to Cat. She grimaces but nods. The scattered raindrops cool my skin as I walk toward the center of the plaza and whatever is about to be my path.
But Andarna’s anger doesn’t dissipate. It blends with mine, growing with every step I take. I am not weak.
Marlis sizes me up as I approach, then huffs a laugh as she rolls her shoulders.
“I’ve taken down bigger,” I tell her as I step between Dain and Xaden.
She lifts an eyebrow, and I wonder if she speaks the common language.
Dain’s mouth twitches, but he doesn’t translate.
“It must be the same for all three,” the silver-uniformed commander says to Xaden, eyeing me with pity.
“Then it’s daggers,” Xaden says.
My head whips at Xaden. “Your swords are your best—”
“Daggers,” Xaden tells the commander, earning a smile from our trio of opponents.
“Agreed,” Dain chimes in.
I could overrule them. This is my mission. But while choosing daggers gives me an advantage, it’s not like they’re not both lethal with the same form of weaponry. “Agreed.”
“So it is.” The commander nods, and the other three begin to disarm, handing their weapons to the temple attendants who scurry in our direction. “Best of three.”
Xaden and Dain hand their swords off to an attendant.
I scan the blue robes quickly, but there’s no sign of the girl with hair like mine. Movement catches my attention to the right, and when I look at the statue of Dunne, I would almost swear her eyes flash golden and glance my way for a second.
Just once it would be nice if Andarna would stay where I ask her to.
“Use your speed,” Xaden instructs me as he removes all weapons but the four daggers he carries sheathed at his sides. “Aim—”
“Stop.” I put my hand on his chest, and my brow puckers at how fast his heart races. A raindrop splashes on my forearm. “This is just a challenge without a mat. Dain wins his match. You win yours. I’ll win mine.”
Xaden’s jaw flexes.
“Whatever you do, don’t watch me. You can’t afford the distraction.” I tap his chest. “And don’t die.” Retreating three steps, just out of his reach, I unsheathe two of my daggers.
Then I face Marlis. My estimate was about right—she has at least ten inches and a good fifty pounds of muscle on me. Reach and strength are hers, too, so agility and speed will have to be mine.
Dain and Xaden turn toward their own opponents, putting enough distance on either side of me to give ample space to maneuver.
“Begin,” the commander orders as all others step off the plaza.
My focus narrows to Marlis and the smug tilt of her wide mouth as she palms only one of her two daggers and starts to circle me.
This is just a challenge. Xaden and Dain are on the other mats.
Let’s go.
I flip my left dagger to pinch the tip and rotate the other so the blade runs parallel with my arm as Marlis fake lunges twice, trying to throw me off-balance.
If I were a little more scared and a little less angry, that might have worked. Instead of falling for it and slipping on the wet stone, I flick my left wrist, throwing my dagger at her shoulder.
She dodges as expected, and the blade flies by. I take the opportunity to rush her, swinging my right fist toward her torso to slice across her chest—no stabbing here.
I don’t want her to die, just to yield.
Someone shouts beside me, but I keep my gaze locked on Marlis. Dain can handle himself. He has to.
Marlis dances backward with a bemused smile, avoiding each of my swipes. Faster. I pour my energy into speed and lunge, finally making contact along the side of her ribs—the one area that isn’t protected by her chest plate. Blood stains her silver uniform as I draw back, but I’m not fast enough on the retreat. She hisses at the same moment she strikes with her own dagger, stabbing into my side with so much force I hear my rib crack.
Her blade glances off my dragon-scale armor, and I stumble sideways from the blow, drawing controlled, deep breaths to try and block the nauseating pain that erupts under my left arm. No mental trick in my arsenal can contain the waves of star-bright agony, but I manage to stifle the scream that fights its way up my throat as steel clangs behind me. I will not be Xaden’s distraction. Adrenaline kicks in, coursing through me like power.
Marlis glances at her blade in confusion, then lifts her gaze to mine, staring at me with macabre fascination and a small glint of what I think might be appreciation. “I’ll remove my armor if you do, too,” she proposes in the common language, giving me precious, necessary seconds to breathe through the worst of the pain.
“I’ll pass.” She’s too tall for me to chance a leg takedown and too strong for me to expose myself any more than necessary. All I have is leverage, and that means getting closer to destabilize her. I crook two of my left fingers at her as rain begins to fall in earnest.
Her eyes flare, and she cocks her wrist back.
I’m already dropping to the ground when she throws.
The blade passes overhead so closely I can hear it whistle, followed by the rhythmic pounding of boots on the wet stone. Careful to keep control of my blade, I shove myself up with every ounce of strength in my arms and force my feet beneath me an instant before she arrives.
She slices for my throat, and I leap backward as I hear Xaden hiss in pain.
I fight every instinct to check on him and throw my right forearm up to block Marlis’s next assault. She hits with bone-rattling strength and cuts into my forearm.
Now.
I drop my blade, using every second I have before the pain hits to follow her downward swing with my bloodied arm, reaching for her wrist. Rain slickens her skin, but I grab hold and throw my weight with my shoulder, driving her hand toward the ground and dragging the rest of her body along with her own momentum.
She stumbles and I take the opening, wrenching my torso upward and grabbing hold of her knee. I lock it against my chest, lacing my fingers, then quickly ram my shoulder into the pocket between her upper thigh and hip.
“Faster! Aetos is already unconscious!” Andarna warns as Marlis swings for me, her blade flying toward my face.
Fuck.
I hold tight to Marlis’s leg and barrel my weight downward into her joint, throwing her completely off-balance and forcing her backward.
Her blade clatters against the ground and she falls like a toppled statue, her back smacking into the stone. She shouts, but I keep hold of her leg, and only when she tries to twist out from underneath me, flipping to her chest, do I let go, diving for her hands.
I wrench her wrists behind her back as the metal of her chest plate scrapes stone, then sit, locking her arms in place with my thighs. Light flashes in the sky above us, and rain comes down in sheets.
“No!” she screams, arching upward to buck me off.
“Yes.” I draw a dagger and press the tip to the side of her neck as thunder rumbles. “Now, yield.” A quick glance to my left confirms Andarna’s assessment. Dain is unconscious on the ground, blood pooling around what I can see of his shoulder, and Palta’s boot is against his neck.
“Never.” Marlis tenses under me.
“I have you!” Blood runs down my arm with the rain, turning her tunic a mottled shade of pink.
“Perhaps,” she admits, turning her face to the right and laying her cheek against the ground. “But Costa has him.”
Holding my blade against her neck, I chance a glimpse to the right, then do a double take.
Costa has Xaden pinned to his back, his dagger inches away from Xaden’s face. Xaden’s fighting, both his bloodied hands wrapped around Costa’s wrists to keep the blade from plunging, but it slowly lowers under Costa’s weight.
NO.
“Keep me pinned? Or help him?” Marlis asks. “Choices, choices.”
Xaden is seconds away from that blade meeting his face, and gods only know if Dain is even breathing under that boot.
Rage devours me from the scalp down, storming through my veins in a surge of heat that sizzles the rain on my skin. I yank my dagger from her neck, flip it, and throw in one smooth motion.
My blade lodges in the fleshy part of Costa’s shoulder, and he bellows, his torso slackening for the one heartbeat Xaden needs to knock Costa’s blade loose. It skitters across the stone, and I immediately look away, replacing the thrown blade with another from my thigh and pressing its tip against Marlis’s neck in less than a second.
“Yield!” I demand, anger burning so deep it reaches my very bones. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Xaden throw a punch in Costa’s face, then yank my dagger from his opponent’s shoulder and bring it to his throat.
“No!” Marlis shouts, and the air charges in a way I’m all too familiar with.
We’re in danger out here.
“Fucking yield!” The heat within me snaps outward and breaks with my voice.
Lightning streaks downward and strikes to the left and right. Rock cracks. Thunder immediately follows, rattling the ground and leaving only the patter of rain and silence in its wake.
I startle but manage not to nick her neck.
“I yield,” Marlis whispers, her eyes wide beneath me. “I yield!” she shouts.
Costa’s head whips in our direction, and Xaden slams his fist into his jaw. The fighter topples to the side, completely unconscious.
“She…yields!” the commander yells, and guards rush in.
I remove my blade and crawl off Marlis, then stagger to my feet as lightning cracks in the distance. Palta steps away, and to my relief, Dain appears to be breathing as Cat and Aaric race toward him.
Rain streams down my face when I look upward, finding Andarna between Sgaeyl and Tairn on the wall, her scales rippling with alarming speed in various shades of black. “Are you all right?” I ask.
“I am…angry,” she says, her head swiveling in a serpentine manner as her front claws crack the edges of the wall’s masonry. “Their laws say one match, not three.”
“Was that you?” Xaden arrives at my side, and I busy myself with checking for injuries. He now has two cuts on his arms, one of which will definitely need to be sewn shut, and his jaw is already bruising. “The lightning. Was that you?” he repeats, lifting my chin between his thumb and forefinger and searching my eyes.
“No.” I shake my head. “I mean…” The heat. The anger. The snap. Weird. “Just coincidence.” Or Dunne. “There isn’t any magic here.”
“Right.” Two lines appear between his brows and his gaze sweeps over me, then catches on my arm. “Fuck, you’re cut.”
“No worse than you are,” I tell him as the rain lets up. “But I think she broke a rib.”
His eyes slide shut and he cups the nape of my neck, then presses a hard kiss to my forehead. “Thank you. That throw probably saved my life.”
“Good thing I didn’t miss, or I don’t think you’d be saying the same thing.” My arm trembles as I sheathe my dagger and his hand slips away.
“You never miss.” He glances over my head. “Looks like Aetos is going to need some stitches in that shoulder, but Aaric is bringing him around.”
“I said I’m fine!” Marlis shouts behind me.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” someone replies.
Oh no, no, no. My stomach lurches. Please tell me I did not just hold a blade to the Queen of Unnbriel’s throat.
I pivot slowly to face what I’m sure is about to be a squad of royal executioners. A row of guards waits a respectful distance behind Marlis, who stands a few feet away with her arms folded over her armor.
“Well?” she asks, her mouth pinched in annoyance. “Two out of three victories. You’ve earned your audience.”
My heart starts beating double time. “I didn’t know who you were.”
“You weren’t supposed to.” She cocks her head to the side. “Are you going to speak, or has this all been for nothing?”
“Aaric—” I glance toward our friends.
“I only speak with those who best me,” Marlis interrupts. “And you are wasting my time, Amarali.” She hurls the word at me like an insult.
Bolstering myself with a deep breath, I lift my chin. “We’ve come for two reasons. First, we’re seeking the seventh breed of dragon.”
Marlis narrows her eyes. “If there were such a thing, this isle hasn’t seen fire-breathers in centuries. I’m afraid you’ve come looking in vain. What’s your second purpose?”
It isn’t quite a crushing blow, considering I’d already suspected as much, but the sorrowful pulse of disappointment coming down the bond tells me Andarna doesn’t feel the same.
“Allies,” I tell Queen Marlis. “We’re in a war that might claim every life on the Continent, and we need allies.”
“And you think we’ll fight for you?” Marlis stares at me like I’ve sprouted another head.
“I was hoping for with us.”
“Hmm.” She glances at Xaden, then up to the top of the wall. “You can’t afford our services.”
“Try me.” Hopefully Aaric forgives me for promising whatever is in the coffers.
“How did you do it?” Marlis asks.
“Take you down?” I reply as the storm blows past and the rain shifts to a drizzle. “It was a matter of leverage, targeting your joint to throw you off-balance—”
“I know what leverage is,” she snaps. “You took me down for the simple reason that I underestimated your abilities and allowed you close enough to throw me off-balance. How did you do that?” She gestures behind me.
I turn, following the motion, and stumble for words. The terraced seats carved into the wall are cracked down the middle, and the rock is charred black where lightning struck.
“I didn’t,” I answer, pivoting to face her. “You have no magic here for me to wield.”
Xaden moves to my side as Aaric helps Dain rise to his feet, holding the side of his head.
“And yet you’ve destroyed something that stood for seven hundred years before your arrival.” Her eyes narrow slightly. “Perhaps it is truly Zihnal who blesses you. Good luck when you search that particular isle. They have a mean streak.”
“So you won’t fight with us?” I ask, trying to stay on topic and holding desperately to hope. No other army would be as effective.
“I think I prefer a Deverelli approach to an alliance for now,” she replies. “You may take shelter in our jungles and have hunting rights for yourselves and your mounts should you need to rest on our isle. But as for fighting alongside you, I’m afraid the price is something you’re unwilling to pay.” She turns to leave.
“What do you want?” I call after her as Aaric, Cat, and Dain head our way. “At least name your price.”
“The same thing everyone in the isles craves.” She pauses and looks back over her shoulder. “Dragons.”
