Page 116 of Moonmarked

Some broke. Some broke the fae.

All six players were already dead.

My insides hurt. The pain came from the heat and the cold that fought each other inside me as I watched, holding myself back, knowing that I couldn’t do anything to stop this, that if I jumped off this fucking box right now and fell down there, I’d just make matters worse by dying. Rune wouldn’t stand a chance then. And if I tried to do the magic that vibrated inside me like I did at the mermaid cavern,everybodywould see. Everybody would know.

I don’t care.

The thought echoed in my head over and over—I couldn’t care less if somebody saw me or what they made of it. I only cared that Rune survived.

The giant shook his fists in the air for the audience before he turned to Rune, both heads grinning—one in mockery, the other in bloodlust.

“And the last little faeling come to die,” the left head said, and he sounded…wrong.I couldn’t really put myfinger on it, but he sounded fucking wrong when he spoke. Not robotic, not animalistic—something in between.

Rune didn’t answer, though.

Instead, he reached into the darkness spinning about his legs and pulled out a single sword that shone silver. He was too far away so I couldn’t see if it was the same one he’d fought the fae in the tunnel with, but I wished it was.

And the memory calmed down my racing heart a bit, too.

The way Rune had moved. The way he’d killed those incubi in the basement. The way he’d been sparring with the moving trees by his forge that night I found him.

He will be okay.

All that energy that was buzzing inside me calmed down a bit, too. It was ready—I felt it rushing down my arms, and my hands didn’t look like they were glowing right now, but again, I didn’t care. My eyes were on Rune, and the moment he needed it, I was going to makeeverythingI could in this fucking place rise in the air, then fall.

Just like at the cavern.

“He will make it,” Lyall whispered at my side, arms crossed in front of his chest as he moved back and forth, nervous.

“He will,” I thought I said.

Finally, Rune moved.

My heart paused as he charged forward, swift as the fucking wind, dodging and jumping and ducking to get away from the obsidian shards sticking out of the bloody floor of the arena. His sword was raised, and I expected him to charge at the giant by jumping on the pieces of obsidian like the other players had done, but instead when the giant’s heads roared, Rune fell on his knee and etched a line into the Hollowfloor.

A whisper—I swear I heard it. I heard Rune’s voice as he whispered four words I’d never heard before.

The audience gasped.

Shadows came alive all around the arena, as if he’d called them, and they were responding. Tendrils of darkness peeled themselves from the cracked floor—the shadows of the obsidian shards—like vipers, and they charged at the giant’s legs as he ran, shaking the entire arena with each step.

By some miracle, they stopped him.

The roar shook me to my very core—and even the Hollow rebelled against it. Because the cracks that had been empty and dry until a second ago were now pulsating orange with a light coming from underneath them. Rising fast toward the floor.

My eyes didn’t dare blink. The fuckinglavabubbled as it came onto the surface slowly, almost lazily, as if hungry for bodies to swallow.

My instincts took over. The heat won over the cold for a moment, and it rushed down my hands lightning fast. I looked at my skin, expecting it to start glowing, expecting gasps and questions, and Lyall to demand I tell him what the hell I was doing, and instead I got…

Nothing.

The energy, the heat, the cold—everythingremained inside me, and no matter how hard I focused to let it all out, it didn’t come. My hands didn’t light up. The pressure didn’t release from me the way it did before.

I waslocked inside my own fucking self.

I looked at Lyall, the question at the tip of my tongue, but he didn’t notice me. He was focused on the arena, no hint of a smile on him, no hint of the usual spark in his eyes. Whether he had anything to do with this or not didn’tmatter—Ireallywas stuck here, and I couldn’t do anything to help Rune. Whatever magic wrapped around this fucking box, it was stopping me. It was locking every ounce of that light and that energy in.

And I was about to scream at the top of my lungs.

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