Page 34 of Ironhold, Trial Three

“I will find a way to do it,” I say. “I won't let her have the satisfaction of seeing me fall. But what about you? You were hurt in your fight against Malira.”

My fingers trace the spots where Alaric was wounded. He hisses in pain, but the wounds are much less severe than they were. My guess is that it's Stefano's work.

“Careful, I didn't have enough time to get everything fully healed. Malira wounded me badly in our fight. You were right about her being dangerous.”

“I saw,” I say. “I made Lady Elara take me to her private box to let me see the fight.”

Alaric holds me closer. “You didn't need to do that. You should have focused on dealing with the drugs in your system.”

"I needed to know if you were alive or dead," I say. "One of the worst things Ravenna did was making me go to the receiving room. Not just because of what almost happened there, but because she deliberately timed it so I wouldn't be able to see your bout. I wouldn't be able to know what was happening. Ithink she hoped that you would be killed while I wasn't able to watch so it would hit me harder."

“I think you're assuming that everything is part of her cunning plan,” Alaric says.

“Isn’t it?”

"I'm just saying don't overestimate her," Alaric insists. "Ravenna is clever, but she's still limited in what she can do, and I think half the time she takes credit for things because she wants to seem as though she's in control of everything."

Or maybe she really does have the power to control what's happening in the colosseum. She entered the games specifically to gain power and influence. Now, it seems she is wielding it from within.

In some ways she is a mirror to Lady Elara. Both noble women work from the shadows. Both are trying to use influence built up during the games to affect Aetheria. The difference is that Lady Elara seems to be trying to change things for the better, while Ravenna is only interested in herself.

"I hope you're right," I say. I reach for Alaric, but he pulls back from me with a gentle smile.

“It's not that I don't want to,” he says. “But neither one of us is in any shape to do anything. We need our strength, and… do you really want to be with me so soon after you’ve seen me kill?”

It's the first time he's expressed any remorse for killing. I was under the impression that slaying his foes didn't mean much to Alaric. Now, though, he seems to assume that I will think less of him because I saw the moment when he killed Malira.

And maybe being around him has changed me too, because I feel more than ready to kill Ravenna. I have killed people before, in the heat of the combat, but I have never felt the kind of hatred I feel now.

Alaric is right, we both need to save our strength, but even so, I hold to him for long moments. I don’t want to let go of him tonight.

“My mother managed to pick up some of the gossip about the fourth trial,” Alaric whispers to me. It isn’t comforting or romantic, but it is something I need to hear. “She says that it will involve beasts.”

“That makes no sense,” I say. If Ravenna is manipulating the trials, she will want something that might prove a real challenge to me. Even the emperor and Lord Darius have no reason to make things easy for me. “Why would they put a challenge in that I have the ability to deal with?”

“Maybe it’s random,” Alaric says. “Or maybe they feel that they can’t have a set of trialswithoutincluding beasts.”

“Or maybe there’s some deeper meaning to it all,” I suggest.

“Not everything needs that kind of deeper element,” Alaric says. “The games are dangerous enough without looking for plots around every corner.”

That’s true, but in this case, I’m pretty sure that the plots are there. So why present me with a trial where I’m likely to do well? I’m convinced that there’s some trick to this, some point that I’m not seeing.

But I can’t work it out, and the truth is that I’m tired. Too tired to do anything other than lie there in Alaric’s arms, waiting for sleep to claim me. We both need all the rest we can get, because in the morning, we will face the beasts.

Chapter Twenty Three

Morning comes all too soon, and with it, the next challenge for us to face. I still feel weak and groggy after being drugged yesterday. Maybethatwas the point of it: maybe this trial is meant to be something that I should be able to handle easily, and now I have been sabotaged so that I can’t.

That prospect weighs on me the whole way down into Aetheria, so that I can barely bring myself to look around at the crowds on every side. They continue to throng by the side of the road when by now in a normal set of games, the crowds would have thinned out to only the most fanatical and committed.

Instead, it seems thateveryonein the city is on the streets. They continue to shout our names, continue to cheer for us and throw tokens of affection. And other, darker tokens. A lump of bloody meat hits my armor, bouncing off onto the street.

“Maybe if you get some blood in you, you’ll fight, coward!” a man calls out. After my bout with Rowan yesterday, it’s obvious that they haven’t forgiven me for the lack of blood and death. They want me to be someone I’m not, some brutal killer with no remorse, who lives only to entertain them by cutting down my opponents in the most spectacular way possible.

They want me to be someone like Alaric.

That thought makes me uncomfortable, and that discomfort in turn makes me wonder why. I’m with Alaric, I care about him. I shouldn’t be disconcerted by everything he is. How can I reject the brutality of the games and still be okay with the ease with which Alaric kills?

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