Page 205 of Blood Feast

She couldn’t let Miranda’s life end like this.

Cassia took her dagger in both hands and slammed it into the temple floor. Stone chips flew at her, nicking her face. She didn’t even feel them.

The unbound power of the letting site rushed up through her dagger. Endless cords of life and fire were right at her fingertips. If only she could reach a little farther, she could take hold of them. On her own terms, just as the Black Roses had triumphed in the tower’s trials.

Cassia pulled. Her vision hazed under the onslaught of Lustra magic from below. But the fire fought her.

Skleros brought the axe down.

The blade rang on bronze. Miranda, rolling to the side with a hair’s breadth to spare, sprang up with her dagger. Skleros doubled over. She pulled her arm back, her blade now bloodied.

Skleros took one step back, clutching his abdomen. “Your blade isn’t enough to strike me off the board, little girl.”

Her empty hand moved. From her sleeve, she drew Skleros’s stone dagger. “No, but yours is.”

Emotion seeped from behind Skleros’s dream wards. His horror crept over Cassia as the color drained from his face. Miranda smiled.

Skleros drew a long, curved butcher’s knife and was upon Miranda in an instant. She had already sheathed her own relic dagger somewhere Cassia couldn’t see. Snatching up her digging fork, Miranda disarmed Skleros with one move.

She fought with more strength than any human her size should possess. Cassia understood the power that came to your body when you were fighting to save—or avenge—the people you loved.

Miranda stabbed the digging fork into Skleros’s chest and drove him onto his back. The smell of melting bronze filled the air, and he hissed, arching on the tines. Then frost skittered across the sun disk, and Miranda released the digging fork. Skleros lay pinned, his breath rattling.

Miranda dawdled his relic dagger in one hand. “Now who is learning his place?”

“You’re a child!” For the first time Cassia had ever heard, Skleros sounded afraid. “You can never defeat a champion from the first game.”

“My youth is my advantage. You’re so ancient, you’ve forgotten what it’s like to fear for your own survival. To be weak. Fear and weakness make me powerful.”

“The Master only has use for the fearless and strong.”

“Wrong. The Master values the survivors above all.”

Two stilettos appeared in her free hand, and she flung them in quick succession. They landed in Skleros’s hands, and the bronze glowed hot again, then cooled around her blades.

Miranda knelt over him and pressed his relic dagger to his gut. “Tonight, I will survive, and you will die slowly. No running back to the Master for a new body this time. You’ve played your last game, and I won.”

Cassia turned her head away as Skleros began to scream.

While Miranda was focused on her revenge, the Black Roses might have a chance to escape.

Fire was death. Fire was life. Life—survival—was what awakened beast magic. If the portal in this temple obeyed soothsaying, then the fire must demand beast magic. Cassia had none, but she did have a Will to survive that had brought her though every trial. She could only hope the temple would respond to that.

She pulled harder on the temple’s magic. The web of spells shivered.

Skleros’s wails turned to deep, pleased laughter. Cassia didn’t want to look, but she did.

“Miranda.” Kallikrates spoke with Skleros’s bloody mouth. “How I missed you.”

She cupped Skleros’s cheek. “Master.”

“My clever girl. He never should have underestimated you. While he grew arrogant, you kept your eyes on the endgame.”

“Always.”

“You have proved yourself more powerful than he. You shall take his place in my games for all time.”

An unnatural current of magic rose from Skleros’s corpse and swirled into Miranda’s mouth. A shudder went through her, and she bowed her head.

---