Page 114 of Moonmarked

“And you’re the prince!”

He looked at me, eyes wide and dark, lips parted, terrified for real. “Nobody can intervene once the Hollow activates. It won’t allow it.”

My knees shook. If I hadn’t been resting my weight on that stone railing, I’d have collapsed on the floor long ago.

Lyall’s words spun in my mind like a fucking tornado, and my eyes were on Rune, who was no longer looking at us, and no longer trying to get close to the walls covered in roots. He was moving farther away from the giant instead, toward the other six players on our side of the arena, his back turned to us, his steps steady even though the ground continued to shake.

“It’s okay,” Lyall whispered then. “It’s fine. He’ll win. It’s Rune—he’ll survive this.”

He’ll survive this.

The storm inside me paused.

“He survived so much worse. He’ll survive this, too. He’ll win the game.”

My eyes closed. Memories rushed through me—specifically one of Rune when he was sitting across from me at a half rotten table somewhere in the Neutral Lands, telling me about the different creatures who lived in Verenthia. Telling me about dragons and giants.

They’re just big, that’s all. They don’t possess any kind of active magic. Fae can kill them easily.

Those had been his exact words if my memory was anything to go by. He said it himself that fae can kill giants easily, and he was fae, wasn’t he?

A fae who didn’t have access to his full magic, true, but a fae nonetheless.

My heartbeat slowed down. Air moved into my lungs with more ease.

Pitch black obsidian shards began to explode out of the cracks in the ground in the arena, some small, some as big as the giant’s foot—and I was surprised. I didn’t even have to hold back a scream.

Rune is going to survive.There simply wasn’t another option.

The Hollow—whatever the hell that even meant—pulsated with magic, basically sealing Rune and everyone else down there in a tomb.

The crowd was already cheering again, twice as excited now that they’d witnessed Rune’s fall. Nobody tried to help him or called for the queen to stop the game—nobody. They just cheered.

Then Rune looked up at the box—atmeagain. Not at Lyall or the crowd, but at me. I felt his eyes on mine even if I couldn’t see them, and I hoped he felt mine, too. I hoped he knew how much I believed that he was going to somehow beat that giant, and win.

He wasn’t going to just survive this—Rune was going to fucking win.

For a moment, everything else faded away. The screams, the stomping of the giant, the hollow beat of the drums that suddenly began to thunder through the air.

Rune was standing there alone beneath a darkening sky, locked in with a creature more than three times his size—and all I could do was watch.

Lyall broughtme the glass of water I’d left on the armrest of the chair and promised me that I’d feel better if I drank. Idid, just to get him off my back, but the water made no difference.

I stood there with him by the stone railing, holding onto it whenever I thought my legs would give up on me as I watched the fight with my heart in my throat—because, yes, it had already begun, and it was more brutal than I could have ever imagined if I lived another hundred years.

The Hollow pulsed with noise. The audience leaned forward in their seats, their golden eyes fixed on the arena below, where the players fought for their viewing fucking pleasure.

Meanwhile Rune stood at the far edge of the field covered in obsidian shards. He moved from one side to the other but didn’t engage in the fight, not yet. That’s why I was still breathing semi-normally, I thought. Even though he was far away I could tell that his every muscle was coiled tight, his senses sharp. He hadn’t reached into his shadow pockets to draw out those swords of his yet—because he would. He had to. There were no other weapons he could use down there, only the ones each player had carried in themselves.

He’s a sword maker. He has a lot of swords,I reminded myself, words Rune had said to me himself once.

The other six players had already charged the giant, their battle cries swallowed by the roaring crowd.

The giant loomed at the center. He’d let go of that weapon he’d carried by a chain into the arena, like he didn’t feel he had a need for it at all. His skin was the color of weathered stone, his eyes like pits of darkness, two massive heads twisting on separate necks as he scanned the players coming from all sides. He broke the smaller obsidian shards with ease with those monstrous feet as he went, and with each step the ground trembled.

The first to die was a fae dressed in golden armor, with a large sword in his hand, another strapped to his back. He jumped impossibly fast over the obsidian shards and threw himself in the air like he thought he had wings to carry him, his blade raised high, aiming for the giant’s face.

But the giant's left hand moved so fast it blurred. It grabbed the player mid-air, crushed his body with a sickening crunch before hurling him against the Hollow wall.

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