Page 110 of Moonmarked

“No—it’s an incentive to kill. You celebrate murderers.”

“It’s a game.”

Rune’s voice rang in my ears. My head whipped to the side. His eyes were ahead as he spoke, but his attention was on me.

“Fae are brutal creatures. We are not like mortals. We look for reasons to die. Forever is a long time. Death doesn’t have the same meaning here as it does on Earth.” His words were calm, his voice almost a whisper.

My ears adored it.

I turned to look ahead, too, and swallowed hard. “Right.”

“Rune is right. Wearebrutal. And we celebrate strength, not murderers,” Lyall said. “This arena has seen many fighters, weak and strong. Shifters, vampires, fae—the best of the best have fallen in the Hollow, but today is a special occasion. Today, we’re going to present a creature that hasn’t been part of this game in a very long time.”

I looked at Lyall. “What? What creature?”

He smiled—sneakily, like he knew all the secrets of theuniverse, and he was about to unleash them on me right now.

“You’re just going to have to wait and see.”

He was genuinely excited.

Suddenly, the ground beneath us shook violently, and it sounded like a goddamn monster’s growl.

I’d lie if I said I wasn’t scared shitless. My hands locked tightly around the armrests, and my entire body froze in place, eyes wide open and looking ahead, though I had no clue what the hell I was even expecting.

Every person who’d been screaming or cheering or laughing in the arena stopped. The Hollow fell silent. Even Lyall wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing at all.

Then, with another groan that rumbled through the stone like the very bones of Verenthia were shifting, the doors at the far end split open.

Darkness spilled out first—thick, unnatural, and I was willing to bet anything that it would be cold as hell, too.

Then something moved out of it, something big, and the whole damn world heard his footsteps as he came.

At first, I thought it was a trick, a magic spell, an amplifier or something, just part of a show—but no. This wasn’t for show at all. When he emerged out of the darkness, crouched over even though those doors were huge, I forgot how to breathe completely.

There was no need for anyone to tell me what that was.

A fuckinggiant, at least three stories tall, muscles knotted like tree trunks beneath cracked, stony skin. He moved with the weight of mountains, each step causing the arena floor to tremble even more now that he was out in the open.

But it was the heads that made my blood run cold—yes, heads,plural. He had two of them—one snarling andbeastly, with golden eyes, the other eerily calm, its expression blank but for the twitching smile at the edge of its long lips. Both heads wore collars around the necks chained together for whatever reason, and he had what looked like bones linked into a chain like a belt around the hips.

More metal chains clinked as he moved, dragging a weapon behind him—a massive, curved blade made of brass-colored metal, wide enough to cleave a carriage in half. He wore leather and rags on his body, and open toed boots, which went up to his shins, on those large, monstrous feet.

The next moment, the crowd erupted into cheers and gasps and laughter.

Meanwhile, I had to remind myself to breathe.

“That’s Borg Bigol from the Giant Mountains. I only made a deal with him before the Whispering Ball when we caught him in the Eternal Water,” Lyall said from my side, and the fae on his other side were clapping their hands, obviously impressed. Even the queen had a smile on her face as she stretched her neck to better see the giant.

Only Rune didn’t clap, didn’t move, wasn’t surprised at the sight—because he knew. He probably knew the giant was here all along.

“What do you think, Nilah? Is he not impressive? I had never seen a giant before Borg. He’s quite something, isn’t he?”

I looked at Lyall for a moment—he was actually asking me that. “It’sa giant,Lyall. Maybe I’m mistaken but a giant should not be here at all. Do you not see how big he is?! It’s…it’s…”horrible,I wanted to say. Not impressive—horrible.

But my panic only made Lyall laugh. “He’s harmless, I assure you,” he said, then thought better of it. “Outhere, that is. In there, he’s pretty vicious, I’m told. Don’t worry, Nilah.” His hand closed over mine on the armrest, and the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention. “There’s nothing out there than can touch you when you’re next to me.”

There was something about the way he spoke, the arrogance in his voice, in his eyes, the smile that stretched his lips—it irritated the hell out of me.

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