Page 29 of Ironhold, Trial Three

My emotions roil inside me. I don't know what to think or to feel, and even as I'm trying to decide, a sound comes from the arena. There is a kind of gasp from the crowd, followed by sounds of disapproval, and a cry of pain that is in a voice that I recognize only too well.

“Rowan!” I exclaim.

Confusion reigns in me, and I rush to the iron gates, wanting to see what is going on. It takes me a few seconds to make sense of it all. Rowan is being pulled from the rubble of the deadfall. Healers are dragging him onto a crude stretcher to carry him.

I gasp at the impossibility of it all. Somehow, Rowan has managed to survive. I'm still crying, but now the tears are tears of joy. All of the grief that was in me releases all at once and I feel as though I might collapse. Rowan makes another sound of pain, and even though I can't stand to hear that, it is proof that he is alive.

My hand goes to the gates. I want to rush out there to him. I want to go to him.

Alaric grabs me, holding me back.

“Let me go!” I insist. “I must go to him.”

There is hurt on Alaric’s face, but also determination. I guess it was easy for him to forgive my feelings for Rowan when he thought that Rowan was gone. Now, the fact that I care enough about Rowan to want to run to him must be like a slap in the face. Still, he holds on to me.

“Think about it, Lyra,” he snaps. “You can't go out there.”

“What do you mean?” I demand. “I need to. And they can’t stop me. I was involved in that fight too!”

"That's my point," Alaric says. "You have been declared the victor of this fight. At the moment, that still stands. You haven't done anything wrong. But if you go out there, what's to stop the emperor from demanding that you finish Rowan?"

It takes a second for the full horror of that thought to hit me.

“He wouldn't,” I begin, but I know it's false even as I say it.

“Of course he would,” Alaric retorts. His eyes narrow. “We both know the emperor has been targeting you. Well, someone has, and he's the best placed to do it. The whole point of his little speech at the start was that he was going to get to make you kill someone, or watch you be killed. He still hasn't forgiven yourrefusal to kill Vex. If you go back out there, he will make you kill Rowan.”

And he's already set out the penalty for failing to do it. I could go out there and refuse, but that would just mean that we both get executed.

“Rowan has tried to cheat the system here,” Alaric says. “That, or he just got incredibly lucky. Either way, if the emperor sees a way to force things to end the way he intended, he'll take it. You can't go out there. I won't lose you like that.”

He holds on to me, making sure that I can't leave, but he has already convinced me. As hard as it is to stand here and wait, I must do it. I stand, not moving a muscle, waiting and hoping as the healers drag Rowan back into the space beneath the arena.

The moment he is through the gates, out of the emperor's view, then I run to him.

“Why did you do that?” I demand, looking down at him as he lies on the stretcher. “How did you even survive?”

“I knew it was the only chance we had to both survive,” Rowan says. “Your idea of putting on a good enough show wasn't going to work. There was no way the emperor wasn't going to see someone die in your fight. So I gave him what he wanted, or at least the impression of it.”

“How?” I say. “I saw you fall. I saw you crushed.”

“By stone,” Rowan says, then winces in pain. “I have control over stone. I was willing to bet that I could have enough to keep myself alive. I was able to keep it from crushing me and maintain enough space to be able to breathe.”

“But you're injured,” I say.

Rowan’s face shows his pain again, and the sight of that makes my heart ache in sympathy.

“This wasn't the stone. This was the fall.”

“And that fall has broken your leg,” one of the healers says. “A bad break. We need to get you onto our slab to start to workon it. Even then, I doubt you'll be able to take part in the rest of the games.”

Rowan’s wince then has nothing to do with pain. He has ruled himself out from the rest of the games to save me. To stop me from having to kill him. He has kept us both alive, but at what cost?

In previous games, it would have been simple. Our friend Naia had more skill with healing than anyone I have seen. But she is dead now, killed by Vex. It won't be so simple to undo the damage that Rowan has done to himself here.

I am grateful to him, and more than that. In the moments when I thought he was dead, the pain I felt for him wasn't just that of a friend. It is confusing and difficult, and one look at Alaric’s expression says that he sees all of it.

Chapter Twenty

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