Page 16 of The Breaker of Stars

I couldn’t afford that right now. Not heading into a fight that she was right about: it would not be fair. It would take everything I had to win and uphold that promise to keep her safe.

If I was going to get us both out of here with a reading that would hopefully give us answers, I had to remember that she didn’t want to stay. She chose to lie, chose the chancellor who used her, over me.

So, I looked over my shoulder and met those olive eyes. Forced myself to memorize the hurt that bloomed as I growled, “Why do you care, Vale?”

I ducked beneath the rope and faced the mountain of a warrior who had spread his name across the territory. His frame was a bit larger than mine, but our height was about even. Long onyx hair was knotted at the back of his neck so opponents would not pull it, and the wrap around his hands was stained. Not replaced after each fight as a professional did, but trying to intimidate me instead.

Organizing all those details, I forgot everything else.

I shut out Vale’s damaged expression and the way it panged through my chest. I shut out the mission I was here on and the worry I carried for my friends down south. I shut out my own opinions and the hurt I clung to.

And when my fist connected with Ledger’s jaw for the first time, a depraved part of me sang.

Chapter Seven

Vale

You never forget the smack of fists on flesh. Not when it was a scar burned into the delicate recesses of your childhood mind. Critical, formative years lost to it.

Helpless, too young to do anything. That was how I felt again as Ledger’s fist met Cypherion’s cheek.

The fight had been going on for four minutes already according to the clock ticking away above the ring. Most didn’t last this long even, and they weren’t appearing to slow down.

Four minutes of both fighters getting in blows.

Body numb, my fingers tightened around the rope as Cypherion took another punch. His head snapped back as he stumbled. He righted himself, scanning his opponent, but not quickly enough to avoid a second hit to his ribs.

I winced, practically feeling that one myself. It was going to bruise, if not fracture.

How did he not dodge it? He had tracked that hit, watched it and tried to move but not quickly enough. His reflexes were usually faster than that.

Cypherion swung out, but Ledger moved impossibly quickly, rotating around the back of him. And Cypherion seemed disoriented.

“No, no, no,” I muttered, cutting through the crowd to pace around the ring, my stomach knotting. I ignored their complaints and slurs—rowdy viewers stepping on my skirt and elbowing me—tugging my cloak tighter around me as I followed Cypherion’s dizzying, dancing steps.

I wasn’t in the fighting den, though. Not fully.

A part of my mind was back in the temple, watching a friend be punished for incoherent readings. I had rarely been hit, as my magic was stronger, but I watched. And as Cypherion barely dodged another blow, it all rushed back to me.

Marble that once shone, now smeared with blood. Had they always been tainted? I’d wondered in later years, when the memories woke me in the night, in a city far away from the pain.

As you must, we were to say as the punishments were doled out.

They scrubbed the floors spotless, but how clean could marble really be after that? Some stains tarnished the brightest stars.

Some broke them entirely.

Ledger ducked Cypherion’s next hit and caught his wrist, swinging it behind his back, and I winced. Cypherion stifled a pained grunt, but it radiated down my bones.

He could have cried out, and the sound would have been buried beneath the crowd’s shouts, but he wouldn’t reveal that hint of weakness no matter how badly it hurt.

My mind was cramped with jeers. Was my vision spotting?

A streak of blood dripped down the side of Cypherion’s cheek. It crawled so slowly, like a fate suspended in time, until it finally dripped over the line of his jaw and splattered to the dirt. I stumbled along the rope further, not certain where I was going, just that I needed to do something before I watched more of that crimson stain the floor.

I wanted to get on my knees and plead for him to keep fighting, to even the score, but—my vision swam again.

“Vale?” someone said behind me, and I froze. The voice was airy with disbelief, but there are some you never forget, even after more than a decade. Particularly the ones you heard screaming under those punishments as a child.

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