Page 20 of House of Lilith

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For a second, I stay frozen in place, my mind buzzing. I’m only vaguely aware of the tense silence all around me as I watch the balls come to an abrupt stop and remain hovering in the air, peaceful and unmoving.

My heart skips a beat.

Then they move again and I flinch. But it’s slow and lazy, the way they start buzzing around.

Still, it makes everyone around me get a move on. I sense Max and Nikolay break off from our group, Max walking into my line of sight. His eyes are fixed above. He’s watching, frowning. But my attention is on the balls, my gaze drawn by the one making a left around one of the stone shields, then the one diving down a little and almost touching the ground, then the one buzzing past one of the Fiáins.

Buzzing… almost like bees.

It’s only when one of the Grimms, a vampire girl I don’t know, almost slams into me that I snap out of it. She throws me a frown and turns her attention back up, continuing to move like a predator.

I look around and realize I’m the only one from our team still standing where we found ourselves when the gong sounded. The rest have all dispersed across the Ring, along with the Fiáins. And no one has made the first move yet, but they all look as tense as if they’re about to.

Come on, Nyx, I tell myself.

My fingers hovering right above my knife holster, I start walking, slowly, fixing my eyes on one of the balls again. I take a deep breath, imagining the silence in the room I usually train in, and all the noise in my head finally subsides.

What remains is the Game and the Game only.

I assume I need to avoid the shields, I think as I watch the ball make a lazy U-turn around one of them. But what’s the point? What am I supposed to do here?

I frown. It can’t be about catching the balls. That would be too simple, right?

Just as I think that, I see one of the Fiáins approach the one I have my eyes on.

I stop midstep.

For a second, he hesitates, but then he leaps up into the air, his arm swung back.

Instinctively, I jump back.

Time slows down as I watch the ball stop, stay still for a second and then start spinning in place like crazy, producing a disgustingly loud machine-gun type of noise.

The next thing I know, the ball is merrily buzzing away while the shifter is lying on the ground, wailing as he clutches his thigh.

The silence that ensues is thunderous. For a second, it feels as if it’s finally gotten to everyone’s heads. This isreal.

I gulp, my eyes rounding as they sweep over the guy’s body, seeing more puncture wounds than I can count, the one on the thigh heavily bleeding out.

There’s a murmur from the audience as he gets zapped out of the Game.

And I’m vaguely aware of the rest of the players having stopped to watch the incident in tense silence.

But once the wounded one is out of the Ring, there’s a sudden and dramatic shift in the atmosphere.

Playtime is over, I think as I force myself to keep moving, my hand hovering above my knife holster as I scan my surroundings.

All of a sudden, there are one hundred and ninety nine individuals getting a move on. I hear cracking sounds and my head snaps to my left to watch a fae-blooded Grimm summon a shield to defend himself. I see a blur dart past him, my eyes following it to see a girl from my House starting to chase one of the balls. And my nose gets filled with a familiar musky scent as I watch a couple of Fiains jump up, shift midair and hit the ground running, separating so as not to break the rules.

Apparently, the goalisto catch the balls, I think as I keep stalking across the Ring. It’s just that the balls themselves have magic andwillattack you if you try.

Observe, I first need to observe some more.

I scan my surroundings for the girl from my House, eager to see what the plan is. I spot her just as the ball she’s chasing stops and turns to her, moving to attack. She deftly evades it, spins around and tries to catch it.

Hoping to do it quicker than the ball can react?

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