Page 71 of The Blood of Gods and Monsters

No. That thought rings inside my head as the edge of competition threatens to cause me to make a mistake in this arena. The Gods don’t yet know who my God parent is. There’s no telling if my powers come from me or from the unknown Goddess who birthed me and then disappeared from my life. My hand tightens on the sword handle. I must handle this situation with care. Fight with enough to show them not to see me as weak, but just enough to not be a threat.

I reopen my eyes. What a precarious string we walk along.

“You may begin!” Axlan’s shout sends Theos sprinting.

I guess he’s not going to pretend that fighting doesn’t get his blood pumping. Amusement rises inside me as I let him go. Around and around, Theos runs, discarding the sheath of his sword along the way as I slowly draw mine.

All of the training that Ophelia beat into me pours through me. Not just the torture I endured, but the days and nights of lifting a sword over my head, the daggers I nicked myself on time and time again as I learned to wield them, throw them, handle them like an extension of my own body. The blood flow in my veins freezes for an instant as Theos’ feet leave the ground and he flies towards me, sword raised.

I react purely on instinct. Metal on metal clashes and sparks fly in front of my face. Heart slamming against my ribcage, I feel my face split into a smile and Theos blinks.

“Fuck, Dea,” he mutters, just low enough for me to hear. “Do you have any idea how crazy you look with that light in your eye? You look like Kalix.”

Good. Kalix is a psycho and psychos always win. Ruen might have beaten me before because I underestimated him, but I’m not going to let Theos go as easily. My smile widens as I step to the side and slide Theos’ blade down my own. The shrieking sound it makes echoes against my ears. It’s sharp and it would be debilitating if I weren’t already used to the noise. Without waiting for Theos to guess my move, I jerk my elbow back and slam it into his face.

“Fuck!” This time his curse is loud enough to be heard by all as his head snaps to the side.

We part and I move, faster than the wind circling me, I dive on top of him, lifting my sword. Despite his surprise, he manages to hit the ground and roll out from beneath me, and my blade slams into the safety of the earth. I turn my head, following him with my eyes as he lifts his sword again.

“Fine,” he mutters, turning and spitting out a wad of blood—likely from a cut on the inside of his mouth after the blow to his face. “You want to play it that way, baby? Then let’s play.”

And just like that, we do.

Theos is a fine sparring partner, his body languid in his movements but no less strong. He may not be as bulky as his brothers, but what he lacks in muscle he certainly makes up for in speed and agility. After a while, the two of us are coated in a fine sheen of sweat, and what I once thought was cool air has become unbearably hot.

Panting, I roll and stab my sword into the ground. Red liquid slips over my forearm where he’d cut me after his last strike. My eyes glance to the balcony. The Gods are still watching us with eyes full of judgment. They’re not even bothering to look at both of us. No. Their gazes are trained purely on me, evaluating me. They’re not going to have us stop until I reveal something and we’ve already been at this far longer than either of the others.

The distraction costs me. Solid hands close over my arms and lift me up and I let them. Dropping my weight throws Theos off when I know he expects me to react violently. Suddenly handed the full breadth of my body, he stumbles as he meets not just feeble resistance, but no resistance at all.

Off balance, Theos attempts to right himself. Before he can fully adjust, I rear back and slam the soles of my feet into his legs, kicking off and catapulting myself out of his arms. Whirling back to face him, the world fades away. My vision narrows. One breath. Two. Three. Too many. Faster and faster. That’s not right. They should slow down. I should be calm. I’ve done this many times before.

Darkness stretches over my vision. Theos’ face twists in the center of the long tunnel that my sight has become. “Kiera?” I can barely hear him over the roaring in my ears. Heat burns a vicious path up my spine.

“By the Gods, stop her!” I hear someone else say—sounding like Ruen. Is it Ruen?

I turn my head, trying to see him, but the end of the tunnel is becoming smaller and smaller. The light is far away and all I see is the dark. Shadows swarm me. Fear closes long skeletal fingers around my throat. Mentally, I reach out for some sign that it’s not real. That I’m still in the arena. Almost immediately, there are dozens if not hundreds of tiny little minds that respond to my own. They ground me, pull me back from the brink. Their emotions are a whirl of fear and anxiety, but they reply to my silent plea without a second’s hesitation.

That’s the thing about spiders. So many think they’re no more necessary than any other insect, but the world wouldn’t have them if they weren’t meant to be natural to this plane of existence. Spiders are pure in a way that no Mortal or Divine being could ever be. They are innocent and when I ask them for help, they don’t stop to consider how it will hurt them or not. They simply reach out their tiny little minds and feed me what I need to ground myself.

When the light returns, I see that I’m standing in the middle of the arena with Theos on top of me, shaking my shoulders.

“Kiera!” he’s screaming my name.

I part too-dry lips. “We’re … still fighting,” I croak out.

His eyes widen a split second before I send a blast of power at him. Theos’ body goes high into the sky as he’s flung into the wind. For all his supposed power, though, he never used his lightning on me. I watch it now as it arches around him in rippling waves as he uses that agility of his to twist mid-air.

In an instant, Theos is back on the ground, one knee planted into the sand along with a fist and his gold-blond hair hanging in sweaty clumps around his face.

“Enough!” Both of our heads jerk up at Axlan’s announcement. Panting, heart thundering in my breast, I look up into the balcony as Axlan raises his hand to command everyone’s attention.

“The mock battles have ended. This battle is a draw,” he calls out over the arena. “You are dismissed.”

My chest rises and falls with my heavy breaths as I get up off the ground and watch as the trio of Gods each turn and leave the balcony. Axlan is the first to go and then Makeda, but to my surprise, Danai is the final one to disappear from view as she pauses at the edge of the balcony and glances back. Her golden hair appears to glow around her as eyes dipped in the purest of honey delve into me. There’s an emotion I can’t quite recognize on her face, but as my brow creases, trying to understand it, she turns and then the God Queen is gone.

Across the arena, Theos collapses onto the sand with a grunt. “Fucking Gods,” he mutters.

Distant voices echo from the stands as the students rise, talking amongst themselves—both about the battles and the Gods’ presence. Two nearby thumps following each other back-to-back has me turning towards the end of the arena to find that both Kalix and Ruen have jumped over the partition into the middle of the arena and are quickly heading our way.

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