Page 41 of Ironhold, Trial Three

“No!” She says. “I am a noble woman. A free gladiator! You cannot-”

“I am the emperor!” Emperor Tiberius roars. “I may do as I wish!”

Ravenna's fear fills her face. She is looking round as if she might run, but I'm not sure where she will run. Even if she somehow makes it out of the colosseum, she will be faced with an empire that is hostile to her, and in which she will be hunted down.

I stand there for several seconds. I know that all I need to do now is step back and let the guards take her. She will be punished for what she has done. She will die for it, probably in a horrific fashion.

I don't know what it is that makes me speak up. Maybe it is the potential horror of her fate. Maybe it's the sense that things shouldn't end like this. Or maybe it's the memory of Naia, manipulated by her and ultimately left to die.

“My emperor!” I call out.

“What is it?” Emperor Tiberius says. He sounds as though he’s expecting me to plead for mercy for the condemned gladiators. The annoyance in his tone makes it clear that would do no good, even if I tried it.

"Ravenna did all this so that she could face me in combat at the end. She thought she would have an advantage because she would have her full powers while I would wear a dampener. Nowshe wears one too. Rather than execute her, why not let her have this fight that she has longed for?"

The emperor looks as though he might rebuke me, but then he looks thoughtful. “Is this some plan to try to be merciful with her, Lyra?”

I look to him, then to her, then back again. “Not with her. Not after everything she has done.”

When I look at Ravenna, I feel only a steely determination to finish this.

“Very well,” the emperor says. “It will be as you suggest. Selene, move clear of the sands. Leave the dampener around Ravenna’s wrist.”

Ravenna is clawing at that dampener, as if she might be able to remove it. She should know that it's impossible for her to do so. Only someone else can take it from her. Eventually she seems to realize that and determination settles over her face as well.

"All right," she says. "Powers or no powers, I can still beat you. You shouldn't have suggested this, Lyra, because all that's going to happen now, is that I'm going to kill you and I'm going to get to survive. You could have seen me dead just by walking away."

“And I'm sure that's what you would have done,” I say. “Always trying to twist the situation, always trying to get the biggest advantage. But I'm not you.”

“No, you aren't,” Ravenna says. “You're a fool. You could have been my friend, Lyra. We could have done great things together.”

“People like you don't have friends,” I snap back. “You just have people you use.”

“Enough talking,” the emperor commands as the arch magistrate clears the sands. “It is time for this to end.”

I stand opposite Ravenna, lifting my spear, testing the weight of my weighted chain. She has her spiked chain in her hands, her curved knife held ready.

“Gladiators, begin!”

Chapter Twenty Seven

We rush at each other, my spear thrusting for her heart while her spiked chain whips around at my face, we both dodge to the side just in time, avoiding each other's weapons and coming around for another pass.

Each of us has what we want in this moment. Ravenna has a chance to kill me and take a position where she is feared if not respected, and she will preserve her life. I have a chance at revenge. I am determined to take it. I attack again, thrusting with my spear at her leg. She spins aside from the attack, slashes at me with her knife and keeps moving.

We are both fighters who are trained to move quickly, to hit and run, to dart in and out of range. We circle one another, looking for openings. Ravenna attacks me with sweeping blows of her spiked chain, but there is no obvious pattern to it, nothing I can time to get inside. I punctuate her attacks with thrusts of my spear and swings of my weighted chain. For the moment, at least, neither of us has the advantage.

“You might as well submit, Lyra,” Ravenna says. “You’re not as skilled as me.”

I know that's true. Ravenna has been in the arena longer than me and has built up more skills. More than that, I haven't spent my time trying to kill people, while she is nothing if not deadly. Do I really have a chance here?

I can feel the weight of my power trying to press on me, slowing me down, even with the effect of the dampener. Without it I'm sure she could make me give in completely. She could make me beg her to kill me. Even like this, I must fight against the pressure of the doubts that she throws at me, the insistence that I'm not good enough, that I will never be her equal.

The effort of that slows me, and I'm not fast enough to move away from the next attack. She slashes me with her knife, hot pain flaring along my side, blood spraying onto the sand as the crowd roars its approval.

I throw off her control, reaching out with my own magic for the eyes of the carrion crows, borrowing some of their reflexes and their sight. It makes me faster, letting me dodge her next attacks. Our magics seem to balance one another, her attempts to slow me down offset by what I have been able to gain from the birds. If we had our full powers we could do so much more but with both of his restricted like this, it is going to be a physical contest between us.

I slash with the head of my spear, spin around and swing my weighted chain at her head. She leaps over the spear, then cartwheels away from the chain, sending the end of her own chain at me so that I must weave aside or be cut open by the vicious spikes.

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