Page 50 of Ironhold, Trial One

“Are you dangerous to me?” I ask her.

She smiles. “Of course. Oh, I have no intention of hurting you, but you never know when you will be pitted against someone, forced to fight them.”

“And could you kill me if they demanded it?" I ask.

Ravenna’s expression darkens. “You know that they'll punish you for that, right? For refusing to kill Vex? If you’re lucky, it will just be another beating. If not… they’ll find a way to hurt you for it that will last. When we are told to kill, we kill.”

“And what if we didn't?” I ask.

“Then I’m not sure Ironhold would mean much at all,” Ravenna says. She sighs. “I like you, Lyra. I suspect you are one of the more powerful people here. I would like to consider you a friend. It's just… in a place like this, true friendship is a luxury even the wealthiest among us can barely afford. There is too much of a chance that we will be told to kill one another tomorrow.”

“But we can do the best we can in the meantime.”

“That's true," she says with another smile. She holds out her hand. “Friends in the meantime?”

I clasp her hand. “Friends in the meantime.”

After she leaves, I get back to practicing. I see Rowan starting to practice, and he is doing what I suspected he might, trying to force himself to deal with thrown objects when he cannot see them. Zara is lobbing wooden balls at him, and he's trying to dodge them with his eyes shut. Trust Rowan not to leave any weakness if he can avoid it. He's even avoiding some of them, obviously able to read the timing of her throws through the change in pressure on the ground. He's working bare-chested, the faintest of scars showing where he was wounded. It's hard to take my eyes off him as he works.

He opens his eyes and looks over at me as I approach, obviously able to feel me coming through the ground.

“You really think you can learn to dodge everything like this?” I ask.

Rowan shrugs. He’s moving more easily now, and I find myself thinking about the way we held back a couple of nights ago, about the possibilities that are open to us now. But I don’t feel the same sense of desperation, the same sense that we must actnowor we might not get another chance. The attraction is there, but I don’t want to rush in the same way yet.

“We have to work to get better. Lord Darius and the others will keep setting us more and more difficult challenges. If theyknow we have a weakness, then they can exploit that at any time.”

A weakness. I find myself thinking about what Alaric said, about caring too deeply about other people being a weakness. I know the attraction that I feel for Rowan, I know how much I feel the need to be near him, to bewithhim, but if I do that, am I just putting both of us in danger? Will someone try to use it against us?

I hope that Rowan will be worth the risk. For now, I stand beside him, shutting my eyes the way he did. I cannot feel through the earth, but I can still borrow the eyes of birds. It means that I dodge the first few throws from Zara easily.

“How are you doing that?” Rowan asks. He waves the question away. “No, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you’re incredible, Lyra. But I worry about you.”

“You worry aboutme?” I ask. “You’re the one who got hurt, Rowan.”

“And I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again. But you’re going to make enemies now. People have seen how powerful you are, but you’re also not doing what they want, and you aren’tsomethingthey want. The challenges will only get bigger from here.”

His concern for me only makes me feel closer to him. It also makes me think about everything that is to come in the coming seasons of the games at the Colosseum. I have survived one set of the city's holy days, one set of brutal and deadly games to appease the masses. I have learned skills I never imagined I might be able to master. I have fought for my life, not once, but multiple times.

I have killed, and I have refused to kill.

I know I still do not fully understand the games. People like Alaric and Lady Elara speak about them as if they are the political hub of Aetheria, rather than just a brutal spectacle.They are a place where nobles want to be seen, and want to get close to the gladiators. I suspect they are a place where grudges and politics play out in the deaths of others on the sands. Lord Darius speaks of them as a holy thing, while Alaric seems to see them as full of a glory I cannot find.

I know I still have a lot to learn when it comes to the games, but for now, at least, I have survived.

EPILOGUE

The violence of the games might be done, but it turns out that there is still one more parade that we must take part in. One more morning spent marching down into Aetheria, some of us in our armor, others, like Vex and Ravenna, in their noble finery. I note that Alaric chooses to dress more like one of the ordinary gladiators than like his fellow nobles, aside, as usual, for a single trailing piece of cloth in the purple of his house.

None of us has weapons for this part. We are not here to fight, but to be seen.

There are not as many people out to watch this procession as the one at the start of the games,but it has a more joyous note. There are more musicians among the crowd, while priests intone prayers for all of those there, even as acrobats tumble past them.

We do not make our way to the colosseum this time, but to a grand, open space in front of one of the temples of the city. It has the sword and purple corona symbol of the emperors flying above it, and whole rows of white robed priests stand on its steps. There is a grislier side to it too. Bodies that I believe have been taken from the arena dangle on spikes around the temple, as if hanging there as an offering to the gods. If I fall in the colosseum, will my body hang there?

There is another figure waiting there, too. The emperor stands at the top of the steps, flanked by a mixture of soldiers, nobles and priests, who look at him reverently, as if he were some kind of living god, rather than just the ruler of the city and its surrounding empire.

He waits for us to move into position, the crowds of the city standing around us, before he begins to speak.

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