29. Relictus

relictus ~a ~um, a.

1. abandoned, forsaken

The descent.

Our two spears blaze light like comets—one silver, one brass. Sevrith sees it coming, but he doesn’t adjust. Nor does he hit me…on purpose. The slick slide of his brass lance just over my shoulder is too well-thought out, too precise and steady to be anything but purposeful. My lance hooks in his right greave and shatters celadon, his shin twisting around itself but still intact.

Red, 1. Blue, 1.

Balance. He handed me that point. He’s forcing an overtime; when two steeds end round three with equal points, the rounds continue until one of them earns a point above the other. Rabbit and stag run a race with no end. Round four. Round five. Sweat carves down my nose. Blood dries on my gnawed lips. Heavenbreaker is just a machine—a machine with memories, with feelings, with words. A machine with a dead queen inside it. A machine that remembers Earth. Don’t think about that. Move forward.

Sevrith’s experience betrays him—he expects me to keep going for a point, but I know the moment I do that, I’m finished. If I dedicate my lance to any one direction, he’ll lock in, and that’ll be the end of me. He might be faster and more experienced, but he’s older than me, too. His lance droops on the eighth round. I pant, unbearably sweat-slick beneath the rider’s suit. Trembling. Fear. Fear grips me—my body will give out, grow weak, and my body is all I have left. It’s all I’ve ever had.

“Ready to give up”—I wheeze into the comms—“so soon?”

Sevrith’s shoulders heave. “You’re far too young…to be so full of despair.”

He’s noble through and through—words as distractions, words as demons made to claw at me and make me doubt myself. Father did much the same, trying to placate me with words.

“I loved her, Synali.”

You don’t know the meaning of the goddamn word.

The silver whorls gather at my mouth and nibble at the cracking blood on my lips, my cracking voice. “I am stronger than despair.”

“No one’s stronger than despair. It’s a dark box…with holes poked for air. You’re right to be afraid of it. We’re all trapped in it.” He looks dead at me. “We are all trapped in it. And someone has to teach you that.”

The eighth descent calls. If I lose this, it’s over. No more revenge. No more Hauteclares punished. I don’t want to let go of hope, not now that I’ve tasted it. Everseer moves like art, like pottery. Heavenbreaker moves like a jagged smile, like fear. I brace softly. The blue glow of the grav-gen envelops both our steeds at once. He’s tired—I have to try. Something diagonal, my lance in his breastplate, his lance drooping too far wide to strike back at me in time. I have him, I have him, I have—

A sharp tip presses against my chin.

The light. The cry.

It slides in, piercing up through my jaw and into my brain, and I feel it—a vein of ice straight through my skull.

Helmet hit.

I choke.

Heavenbreaker goes dead instantly, our connection severed. The silver whorls die mid-writhe. The saddle loses all light, all color, and the vast view of space blinks out like a mirage, replaced by the cold metal innards of the steed. I float alone in Heavenbreaker’s shell with no pain. The saddle’s completely powered off—I can’t feel anything other than my dull heartbeat and the thickness of the rapidly cooling nerve fluid. He won. I lost.

Hope, gone.

The comms explode with the crowd’s roar in my helmet, the commentators ecstatic.

“And that’s it for this match, Gress! In a war of blistering attrition, House Freynille clinches victory over House Lithroi at last!”

Sevrith turns his holoscreen on and takes his helmet off. His handsome face is sweat-drenched, dark eyes downcast. “Forgive me, Synali. But someone has to teach you.”

Slowly, hollowly, I watch as he once again unsyncs his suit and takes his worn handkerchief out with an exhausted smile. A white flag.

“What—” I croak. “What are you doing?”

Something moves in his eyes. My brain is numb, but my vision is clear; there’s silver in his eyes. It gathers, swells like mercury, shimmers like stars. Like Queen Astrix. Like water over the edge of a cup, silver wetness builds and builds and builds in his eyes. And then he winks.

“Make sure you live, kid.”

A single drop overflows onto his cheek.

He instantly slouches forward, crumbling like paper under fire, sugar under hot tea—formless, boneless, completely unmoving on the screen. It’s lost on me, but only until the crowd’s jubilant roar dulls to a dismayed drone, until small white steeds flashing with red sirens jet into the arena and surround Everseer—he’s hurt.

He hurt himself.

“It appears Sevrith cu Freynille has overloaded, Bero!”

“An overload is incredibly unfortunate, Gress.”

“That it is—medics are on the scene, but the ref has the final call. An overload after a helmet strike… The results are in limbo. It could go either way!”

Overload? They mean brain damage, right? But how? He didn’t impact wrong; his moves were flawless; there’s no way he hit his head hard enough to— My stomach is lead and fire and disbelief. His silver tears are the exact same silver as the nerve fluid. As the spirals. The color clinches the truth in iron clasps; everything Sevrith said before the match… The spirals overwhelmed him. No—he let them overwhelm him; he was perfectly fine, he won, and then—

My eyes frantically trace Sevrith’s unmoving body as Everseer’s cockpit opens, medic hands deftly easing him out of the saddle like a piece of broken equipment to be removed and replaced. Like this is procedure. Like they’ve done this a hundred times before.

“The referee’s ruling is in! Sevrith cu Freynille’s overload renders Synali von Hauteclare the winner by default!”

Sevrith’s lifeless eyes drip silver onto his suit.

The stag, impaling itself on its own horns to let the rabbit cross the finish line first.