Page 46 of Kissed By the Gods
He’s savoring this. Feeding on it.
I close my eyes. I start to slide into a familiar darkness—the same darkness that suffocates me in my sleep. Only now, it’s a comfort. A small, battered part of me wants to curl up in it and let go. To finally stop fighting and let my soul findrestwith my parents and my brother. With Alden and Irielle.
But another part—the part of me that lives in the darkness, I think—answers back.
I’m not finished.
Without knowing how, I gather the jagged pieces of myself, the darkest pieces, and knot them tighter, weaving them into a shroud that surrounds my mind. It slips outward, stretching like a shadow at the edge of my thoughts, my emotions. My fear doesn’t belong to him.
I go to dig my fingers into the dirt, searching for strength or reality, but it’s not dirt I’m grasping. It’s something dark, shifting around me. I wrap my fingers around a thread in the darkness and follow it back to the source, back to something that’s malevolent and gleeful, wrapped in casual cruelty. It doesn’t have a body or even a shape, but I know it’s Maxim. I grasp both hands around that thread of toxic pleasure and shove it back at him with all the fury burning inside me.
From far away, so far away, someone starts gagging. The darkness eases, the ground solidifies under my hands.
I open my eyes. Maxim has reared back, with his hands now clutching his own throat. I suck in a ragged breath at the same moment that I ram a knee upward, smashing his balls. He falls forward slightly with a strangled wheeze, and I slam my forehead against his mouth.
I use the scythe between us to shove him backward, its leverage overcoming his weight advantage. I scramble to my feet, but I’m dizzy. Instead of pursuing him, I fall back to regain my breath and my balance.
What … whatwasthat?
Like my gaze is pulled there, I find Ryot again. He’s jumped into the pit, but he’s being held back by several other Altor.
“Eyes on the godsdamn fight,” Ryot snarls at me.
I rip my gaze from Ryot’s to find Maxim again. This time, when he lumbers to his feet, I can tell he’s moving slower. He also needs time to recover, watching me as we circle in the ring. He spits a wad of blood into the sand.
“How did you do that, bitch?”
I have no idea. My mind reaches out, trying to grasp back into that … place? But it’s gone.
Still, that jagged shroud surrounds my mind. Of course, I’m not going to tell him that. I manage a grin.
“How does it feel to know you’ve been unmanned by a girl? That a girl drew first blood?” I rasp out, my voice coming out mangled from my swollen throat.
“First blood is irrelevant. Only last blood matters.”
“Well, last blood certainly matters themost. But I will take that from you, too.”
We circle for several minutes, each waiting for an opening. His eyes shift to the right, and I take the opportunity to swing my scythe in for a kill shot, slashing it across his body.
But it was a trick.
Without even looking at me, he whips a hand around my scythe and uses it to drag me into him, his other arm coming up to punch me in the temple. If he gets my weapon, I’m dead, so I clutch the scythe with both hands and brace for the blow, praying to Thayana that it won’t knock me unconscious.
His fist connects with my temple, hitting my new scar. The force is near blinding in its intensity and I’m suddenly grateful to Thayana for the suffering she forced me to endure, because I find myself oddly separated from the pain. I’m sure I’ll hurt later, but right now it’s not real.
But the force of the blow doesn’t only affect me. Maxim cries out in pain and releases his grip on my scythe, immediately cradling the hand he used to punch my temple. His hand looks crushed. I stare at it, shocked.
“She’s cheated!” Maxim cries. “She wears adamas under her bandage!”
Adamas? What? I bring a hand up to tentatively touch my temple.
“Hold!” Archon Lyathin cries out. “The fight is over. The penalty for cheating is execution.”
Outraged murmuring breaks out from the audience.
I turn to face Archon Lyathin, making sure to keep Maxim in my peripheral vision. “Are you blind to the judgement of the gods?”
Lyathin’s lips curl in disgust. “We’re not fools, girl. We can all see Maxim’s hand. Remove the bandage and face your shame.”
