I glanced up at Director Thalen, who sat perched on his viewing platform like some ancient carrion bird surveying a fresh battlefield, and the grin that spread across his skeletal face was wicked enough to make devils weep with envy.
He began to rise from his wheelchair, one gnarled hand gripping his cane, the other braced against the armrest.
I could see the satisfaction radiating from him in waves—this was what he’d wanted, what he’d orchestrated, a spectacle worthy of his twisted sense of theater.
The crowd held its collective breath, waiting for his pronouncement, waiting for him to declare the match finished, but before he could speak, before the words could leave his lips, a sound scraped across the sand that made my stomach drop.
"Wait!"
The word came out strangled, desperate, torn from lungs that had been hammered into submission. I watched with a mixture of disbelief and exhausted irritation as Elvina pushed herself up from the sand, her arms trembling with the effort, blood dripping from her split lip and painting the golden grains beneath her a dark, glistening crimson.
She rose to her knees, swaying slightly, her emerald eyes blazing with something caught between fury and panic. When she spoke again, her voice was louder, more insistent, cracking around the edges like glass under pressure.
"I-I’m not finished yet," she spat, the words hissing through clenched teeth. "The match isn’t over. I can still—I haven’t yielded—I can still fight."
I stared at her, genuinely impressed by the sheer audacity of her delusion, the way she clung to this fantasy like she could somehow salvage this disaster, as though willpower alone could repair the shattered remnants of her pride and reputation.
It was almost admirable, really, in the way watching someone try to swim against a riptide is admirable—you know it’s futile, you know they’re going to drown, but there’s something compelling about the desperation of it.
I tilted my head, letting a slow, languid smile curl across my lips, because if she wanted to drag this out, if she wanted to keep performing for the crowd, then who was I to deny her the stage?
"Oh?" I said, my voice carrying across the sand with that particular blend of amusement and condescension I’d perfected over years of needling people with fragile egos. "You’re not finished? Forgive me, Elvina, but from where I’m standing, you look pretty fucking finished. Actually, you look like someone tried to finish you, succeeded, and then went back for seconds just to be thorough."
Her face twisted, something dark and ugly flickering behind her eyes. She lurched forward slightly, one hand bracing against the sand to keep herself upright.
"You don’t understand," she rasped, her voice taking on that manic edge that suggested reality and her perception of it had parted ways some time ago and weren’t planning on reconciling. "This was supposed to be my moment. My triumph. I was supposed to destroy you, supposed to show them all that I was—that I am—"
She broke off, sucking in a shuddering breath. I could see the wheels turning behind her eyes, desperately trying to construct some narrative where this wasn’t a complete and utter humiliation.
"You cheated! You must have cheated. There’s no way someone like you, some gutterborn piece of trash, could have beaten me in a fair fight!"
I laughed then, a sharp, genuine bark of amusement that echoed across the arena, making several spectators in the front rows lean forward with interest.
"Cheated?" I repeated, savoring the word like fine wine. "Elvina, darling, we just engaged in what historians will probably refer to as ’that time the shadow mage got her ass handed to her by a succubus with a grudge and a really good reading habit,’ and your first instinct is to claim I cheated?"
I shook my head, letting the motion carry all the mock-disappointment I could muster. "Let me explain something to you, slowly, because I think the repeated blows to your head might have damaged your comprehension skills. I studied. I prepared. I learned everything I could about your magic, your techniques, your family’s rancid legacy, and then I used that knowledge to systematically dismantle you in front of everyone you’ve ever tried to impress. That’s not cheating—that’s called being smarter
Her jaw clenched, her hands curling into fists against the sand. "You think you’re so clever," she hissed, her voice dropping into something low and venomous. "You think you’ve won something here. But all you’ve done is make an enemy of people far more powerful than you could ever imagine. My family—my patron—they’ll destroy you for this! They’ll take everything from you, strip you down to nothing, and when they’re done, you’ll wish you’d died here in this arena."
I let the threat hang in the air for a moment, watching her face, reading the desperation beneath the bravado, and then I shrugged with deliberate casualness, because nothing deflates a dramatic threat faster than complete indifference.
"You know, threats are so much more effective when they come from people who aren’t currently bleeding into the sand and struggling to stay conscious," I said lightly, and then I let my gaze drift past her, scanning the crowd with the kind of calculated precision that would seem casual to anyone not paying close attention.
My eyes found them almost immediately—Brutus in the front row, his massive frame impossible to miss, Freya slipping through the crowd near the western exit, Mia hovering near the stairs that led to the upper tiers, and Renly positioned near the eastern archway, all of them moving with the slow, deliberate purpose of people executing a plan as they disappeared from the room.
A smirk tugged at the corner of my mouth, small and private, the kind of expression that promised something delicious was about to happen.
Elvina’s eyes snapped to my face, catching that smirk, and I saw the exact moment calculation replaced rage in her expression—she’d spotted an opening, some perceived vulnerability in my distraction, and her survival instincts kicked in with the desperation of a cornered animal.
Shadows began to coalesce around her hands, dark tendrils rising from the sand like serpents preparing to strike, her lips moving in the beginning of an incantation that would probably have been quite impressive if I’d given her the time to finish it.
But I didn’t.
I’d been waiting for this, actually, had practically baited her into it with that little moment of inattention, because people like Elvina were so predictable in their desperation.
I glanced at her, just a quick flick of my eyes that conveyed exactly how little her attack concerned me, and then I drove my boot into her face with every ounce of enhanced strength I had left.
The impact was brutal, decisive, the kind of strike that doesn’t leave room for interpretation. Her head snapped back with a sound that made several audience members gasp audibly.
The shadows dissipated instantly, unraveling like thread pulled from a tapestry, and she collapsed backward into the sand, her body hitting the ground with a heavy thud that sent up a small cloud of dust.
She lay there for a moment, breathing in ragged, wheezing gasps, her eyes wide and glassy with horror, pain, and the dawning realization that this wasn’t ending, that I wasn’t going to let her slip away with whatever dignity she thought she had left.
I stepped forward, nudging her ribs with the toe of my boot—not hard, just enough to test her awareness—and spoke with the kind of false cheerfulness that probably qualified as psychological warfare.
"Get up," I said, as though we were having a perfectly reasonable conversation and she wasn’t lying in a spreading pool of her own blood. "Come on, Elvina, where’s that fighting spirit? That delusion you were clinging to so desperately?"
She sputtered, blood bubbling from her lips as she tried to form words, and I rolled my eyes with theatrical exasperation because honestly, this was taking far too long and I had a schedule to keep.
I reached down, fisting my hand in her dark hair, and hauled her back up to her knees with a force that made her cry out.
She swayed there, barely upright, held in place only by my grip on her hair. I leaned closer, bending until our foreheads were nearly touching, until I could see every flicker of emotion in her wide, terrified eyes, could drink in the horror and helplessness that radiated from her like heat from a forge.
"Look at you," I murmured, my voice pitched low enough that only she could hear, intimate and cruel in equal measure. "The mighty Elvina, reduced to this. Tell me, does it hurt? Knowing that everyone out there is watching you break? Knowing that your patron is watching you fail?"
Her expression twisted then, that horror transforming into something else—rage, sudden, delusional, and desperate, the kind of fury that came from someone whose entire worldview was crumbling and who couldn’t accept the reality of it.
"You’re nothing," she spat, the words coming out wet and slurred around the blood filling her mouth. "A slave. A whore! You think this changes anything? You think—"
A sharp, clear whistle cut through her words, slicing across the arena with perfect timing. I glanced back over my shoulder to see Brutus standing in the front row, his arms crossed over his massive chest, a smirk playing across his face that told me everything I needed to know.
That was the signal. The plan was in motion. Everything from here on out was theater of the highest order, and I was about to conduct a symphony.
I released Elvina’s hair, letting her head drop slightly, and straightened to my full height, addressing not just her but the entire arena.
"You know what the difference is between you and me, Elvina?" I asked, letting the question hang in the air like smoke. "I know exactly what I am. I don’t use my family name or inherited power to exact dominion over others. I don’t pretend my cruelty is justified by blood or breeding."
I paused, letting my gaze sweep across the crowd, watching as they leaned forward, sensing that something was about to happen, that this wasn’t just a fight anymore—it was a revelation.
"But you? You’ve spent your entire life wrapped in lies, in secrets your family buried so deep they thought no one would ever dig them up. Well, guess what?" I smiled then, sharp and dangerous. "I brought a shovel."
The crowd’s murmur began as a low rumble, confused and curious, voices overlapping as people turned to each other with questions written across their faces.
And then the room exploded into motion.
My crew advanced from all sides of the arena simultaneously, each of them carrying heavy burlap sacks that bulged with their contents, moving with a synchronized precision that would’ve made any theater troupe weep with envy.
Bronze-plated guards burst through the archways, their armor clanking, their voices raised in commands to halt, to stop, to put down whatever they were carrying, but they were too late—they’d always been too late, because this was the moment we’d planned for, the moment everything had been building toward.
I caught Brutus’s eye across the sand and gave him a small nod, then turned back to Elvina with a grin that probably made me look half-insane.
"You wanted a show?" I said, my voice pitched just loud enough for her to hear over the growing chaos. "Let me give you a show."
I raised my hand in a single, dramatic flourish—because if you’re going to destroy someone’s life, you might as well do it with style—and my crew responded instantly. They hauled the sacks into the air, swinging them with practiced motions, and then released the contents in a coordinated explosion of parchment.
The room erupted as dozens—no, hundreds—of papers burst free, fluttering and spinning through the air like a blizzard made of damning evidence, each one a perfect copy of the pages I’d marked in that ancient tome.
The papers descended on the crowd like apocalyptic snow, settling onto outstretched hands, landing in laps, drifting down from the upper tiers in lazy spirals that seemed to mock gravity itself. The noise level exploded, voices rising in confusion, in shock, in growing outrage as people began to read, as the words sank in and the implications became clear.
Elvina stammered, her mouth opening and closing uselessly, eyes tracking the falling papers with the kind of horror usually reserved for watching your own execution.
"No," she whispered, the word barely audible over the chaos. "No, you didn’t—you couldn’t have—"
"Oh, but I did," I said cheerfully, rocking back on my heels and crossing my arms over my chest as I watched the crowd’s reaction unfold like a beautiful, terrible flower blooming in real time.
A nobleman near the front snatched one of the papers from the air, his eyes scanning the text with the speed of someone accustomed to parsing legal documents, and his face went pale, then red, then purple with rage.
"Saints preserve us," he breathed, loud enough that several people around him turned to look. "Is this—can this be real?!"
"Look at the seal!" someone else shouted, their voice cutting through the din with sharp clarity. "It bears the mark of the Director’s apprentice! This is verified documentation!"
Almost instantly, every eye in the arena shifted toward the viewing platform, toward Tora, who stood frozen beside Director Thalen with an expression of pure panic, his hands raised defensively as the noblewomen who’d been fawning over him moments ago now stared at him with a mixture of shock and dawning comprehension.
One of them actually took a step back, her hand pressed to her mouth, as though proximity to him might somehow implicate her in whatever scandal was unfolding.
"She’s a devil!" a voice rang out from somewhere in the middle tiers, shrill and accusatory. The word seemed to unlock something in the crowd, because suddenly everyone was talking at once, voices overlapping in a cacophony of outrage and disgust.
"Did you read this passage?" someone near the western archway called out, waving their paper in the air like a battle standard. "She was modified—modified!—as a child! They used the souls of other slaves, children gods damn it, for their experiments!"
The words hung in the air like a physical blow, and I watched as the crowd’s energy shifted from curiosity to fury, from shock to moral outrage, the kind of collective anger that could topple kingdoms if given the right push.
The chaos swelled, building like a wave preparing to break, and then it was shattered by a voice so loud, so commanding, that it seemed to physically press the air from the room.
"Elvina!" The fat man in purple robes was standing now, his chair knocked backward in his haste, his face so red I briefly worried he might have a stroke right there on the viewing platform.
His hands gripped the railing with enough force that his knuckles had gone white, and when he spoke again, his voice carried the kind of barely restrained fury that suggested violence was only being held back by the thinnest veneer of propriety.
"Is this information true? Answer me, girl!"
The arena fell silent.
Not the comfortable silence of anticipation, but the horrible, suffocating quiet that comes when everyone is holding their breath, waiting to see if the condemned will confess or lie one final time.
Elvina’s head whipped toward her patron, her eyes wide and desperate, and she began to plead with a franticness that would have been pathetic if it wasn’t so absolutely deserved.
"No! No, it’s all lies! He’s—he’s a liar, a manipulator, he fabricated all of this to—to destroy me because he’s jealous, because he—" Her words tumbled over each other, growing more sporadic, more incoherent, her voice rising into something that bordered on hysteria. "Please, you have to believe me! I would never—my family would never—it’s all lies, all of it!"
The fat man’s expression didn’t change. If anything, it hardened further, his disgust so palpable I could practically taste it from across the arena. He looked at her the way one might look at something scraped off the bottom of a boot, with contempt so absolute it left no room for redemption.
"You disgust me," he said simply, and those three words carried more weight than any elaborate condemnation could have.
Elvina’s face crumpled, tears streaming down her cheeks in earnest now, mixing with the blood and sand. She reached toward him with one trembling hand.
"Please," she sobbed, the word breaking in her throat. "Please don’t leave me! I can explain, I can—I’ll do anything, please, just don’t—"
Director Thalen stood then, his movement cutting through Elvina’s pleading like a knife through silk, and when he spoke, his voice carried across the arena with the kind of finality that brooked no argument.
"It’s already too late," he declared, his tone almost gentle, which somehow made it worse. "The match is at an end. And by my authority as Director of this tower, I hereby sever Elvina’s patronage, effective immediately. She is stripped of her position, her protections, and all privileges formerly afforded to her."
The hush that followed his words lasted a beat. Then the crowd exploded. Cheers and whistles erupted from every corner of the arena, people rising to their feet, hands clapping in a thunderous ovation that made the torches flicker and the marble walls seem to vibrate with the force of it.
They were cheering for me, I realized with a strange disconnect, shouting my name, celebrating not just my victory but the exposure of Elvina’s corruption.
I turned toward them, let that realization settle over me like a warm blanket, and gave them what they wanted—a deep, exaggerated bow, one arm swept wide, the other pressed to my chest, the picture of gracious victory despite the blood soaking my side and the exhaustion threatening to drag me down.
Then a voice cut through the celebration, sharp and furious.
I whipped around to see Quentin striding out onto the sand, his face flushed a deep, angry red, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
He was heading directly for me with the kind of single-minded purpose that suggested he’d forgotten there was an audience, forgotten there were consequences, forgotten everything except the burning need to hurt me for what I’d done to his precious Elvina.