The crowd silenced as Keres Andromadix, the daughter of He Who Reigns, rose to her full height and spoke for the first time.
“I have declared a truce and cessation of the match,” she said evenly.
Vulsan rocketed from his seat. He stared at his wife in horror. “It is a death match.”
Keres didn’t even look at him. She didn’t acknowledge his outrage. In one sweep of her hand, she had ended the match and she wasn’t about to change her mind.
“I have watched both competitors prove their worth in this competition. Gladiatorial matches are for our entertainment, and I believe the death of either of these competitors would be a travesty for the sport. We would never be able to again see them in their craft.”
“But the prize!” Vulsan snarled.
Still, she didn’t look at him or acknowledge him. A smile came to her face, and the crowd sighed in pleasure at her happiness.
“As for the prize, I have decided to grant both winners the beauty of a Gift from me.”
“It was my prize, Keres,” Vulsan said.
He tried to step around her, but that was too far. She slowly turned her head to meet his gaze. The golden glow of her seemed to intensify until she was nearly blinding. Nothing had changed, and at the same time, everything had changed. Whatever Vulsan saw in that expression must have been enough to make him second-guess himself. He didn’t exactly back down, but his lips thinned, his shoulders straightened, and he said nothing else.
“As I was saying,” Keres said, dismissing him once more, “both competitors will be declared winners!”
The crowd cheered vibrantly at this outcome. Not because they were happy to see Fordham and Kerrigan both win. She was certain they would rather have seen bloodshed. But who was going to argue with a Doma? Even Vulsan had backed down.
Keres raised her hands to the sky, and her glow magnified, the wind kicked up in the arena, and the sand swirled at their feet. People covered their heads. And then Keres was in the air.
A collective gasp left the audience.
A Doma was flying.
Kerrigan glanced at Fordham. His hand returned to his neck. The shadow magic was gone. Whatever chance they’d had to escape, Keres had ruined their moment. There was nothing to do but wait to find out what exactly she was going to do. It took a few seconds for Kerrigan to recognize that Keres wasn’t exactly flying. She was using the winds to direct her downward. It would be much more difficult to carry herself upward in the same manner. Kerrigan had enough mastery of air—or she once had—to see the trick as something incredible. No one could see the difference who hadn’t trained in it extensively.
Then, the wind died down, and her mother stood before her.
“Hello,” Keres said with the same pleasant smile she’d given to the crowd. Except this time, Kerrigan was close enough to see the differences she had missed before.
Yes, they were both redheads with freckles and fair skin. But where Kerrigan’s eyes were bright green, her mother’s were an ever-shifting hazel. Kerrigan’s lips were thinner, her stature considerably shorter and her curls undeniably wilder. And yet there was no denying their similarities. She was her mother’s daughter. In the way she had never been her father’s.
“Hello,” Kerrigan said, her voice suddenly small.
“Congratulations on your win.”
Kerrigan swallowed. Fordham took the step up to her side.
“You stopped the match,” Kerrigan said.
“I did. Are you ready for your gift?”
Kerrigan wanted to say so much more. She wanted to ask her mother a million questions. Least of all for the gift she was going to bestow upon her. But she had no words for this wonderful, amazing woman who stood before her. Only awe that it was happening at all.
“Yes,” Kerrigan said.
“Hold your hand out.”
“Aren’t you going to ask what I want?”
Keres blinked once in a moment of confusion. “What you want?”
“What kind of gift I want from the gods?”
“Oh.” Keres tilted her head. “Has no one explained to you what a Gift is?”
Kerrigan glanced at Fordham, and he shook his head as well. He hadn’t heard the term as anything but what they had both been expecting.
Was a gift something else? Had she done all of this for nothing?
“No,” she whispered. “I guess no one has.”
“A Gift is a deliverance of magic from a Doma to someone who is not a Doma.” Her mother raised her eyebrows, as if to impart the most important part of that statement.
“So … not between Doma?”
“No. Doma are born with as much magic as they will ever be given.” Keres smiled for the crowd. “But we all know that you’re not an actual Doma. That was a very clever ruse.”
“Right,” Kerrigan said. “Right.”
The crowd was chanting, “Gift!” like they had screamed her name earlier in the day.
Kerrigan was just realizing that there was no way for her mother to gift her magic. She had as much magic as she would ever have, and it had been taken from her or buried. Whatever Cleora’s theory was, the magic wasn’t available at present.
“The Gift creates a bond between the Doma and their Daijan.” The foreign word rolled off of her tongue with a hint of disgust.
Another bond. Another link. If she had learned anything from Cleora in all of their training sessions, it was that no one in Domara used bonds the way they did in Alandria, which used two-way links that spoke of fidelity and trust. These bonds were one way. A means of control. Just like the one they used on the dragons.
But what else could she do?
It wasn’t going to work on her. That one look was enough to confirm that Kerrigan could never become Daijan. It also meant that she couldn’t gain any new magic that would help her free her people.
All of this had been for nothing.
Except …
Kerrigan turned to face Fordham. He nodded once, as if he had come to the same conclusion. She couldn’t get new magic to help her people. But he could. The male who had wanted no tether, save for his dragon bond to Netta. The male who had lived through the worst of his father’s court and come out still with a fragile heart. Could she ask him to take this sacrifice?
“I would have died for you,” he said softly. “Allow me this.”
A tear came to her eye despite herself. They were both going to live. Her mother had saved them from that fate, but a new one loomed overhead. Fordham would get new magic at an unknowable cost.
“Ready?” Keres asked. “We don’t have much time.”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “Let’s begin.”
Keres offered her hand, and this time, Kerrigan could do nothing but oblige her. A bolt of recognition threaded through her at the first touch. From her fingertips all the way to her toes. As if her entire body remembered precisely who this woman was and how much power thrummed through her.
But it was Keres who drew the crowd’s attention.
She gasped.
Just loud enough to be audible beyond their ears. Enough for the entire audience to go silent in shock. Had she hurt the Doma? What could even cause a Doma to make that sound in the first place?
“What did they do to you?” Keres asked.
Kerrigan opened and closed her mouth. Could Keres feel the absence in Kerrigan’s magic? Did she know what that meant?
Keres leaned forward slightly at the waist. Her eyes flickered to Kerrigan’s, and those hazel eyes suddenly matched Kerrigan’s perfectly. They were as green as she had ever seen them. A jolt went through her, and suddenly, she was in another arena. The day the Red Masks had unmasked themselves before the entire city of Kinkadia. Kerrigan was on her knees before Bastian, a circle of thirteen closed around her. Her father lay nearby, broken and bruised. Kerrigan stared up at her mentor, facing the end. Fordham had been stabbed somewhere beyond her vision. She had no idea of his outcome. Only that she had lost.
Bastian had the Ring of Endings. Isa was at his side. He’d taken the council. And now, he was going to kill her.
But instead, they performed dark magic. Her own magic came hurtling out of her, disappearing like sand through a sieve. And after the last drop left her body—her crux bond with Tieran destroyed, her mating bond with Fordham shattered—did they finally release her to collapse into the sand.
No options. No chance of survival. Nothing but her own ingenuity.
She’d gotten out. Fordham had taken them away. They’d fallen through a portal to Domara. She’d awoken again on the grass in that strange world right before Flavia found her.
Keres blinked, and her eyes returned to their natural hazel. Gone was her mask of reserve. Her eyes were windows to her fury. Her jaw clenched. Her body tense, like a tiger ready to spring. She looked furious, and it was terrifying.
“They dare,” she hissed.
Kerrigan shivered at the words. Her mother had just … seen what Kerrigan had seen. Keres knew what had happened with Kerrigan’s magic. It was as if she had been there, watching all along.
“Yes,” Kerrigan told her.
Keres nodded once. That anger only amplifying as she lifted Kerrigan’s hand high for the audience to see. “Daughter of the conquered!”
The crowd cheered. The roar so loud that it was as if no one had any recollection of the strange pause that had happened. Perhaps this was part of her mother’s magic. Kerrigan certainly had nothing so convenient.
Keres crossed Kerrigan’s arms at the wrists and lifted where they joined to her forehead. A ball of golden light appeared in Keres’s hand. She spoke some words that Kerrigan had never heard before, and the balls jumped into Kerrigan’s hands. The wind kicked up. Lights flashed in the sky. Everyone seemed to hold their breath.
But Kerrigan felt none of this. The balls of light weren’t her own magic. If that was what Keres was going for, it wasn’t working. It was all a display. Finally, Keres threw Kerrigan’s arms down. The two balls exploded on the sandy floor, kicking up debris all over the arena.
She leaned forward then. “Pretend to clear the arena.”
Kerrigan reached for her magic, hoping that it would come back again. But it remained hollow and empty within her chest. Still, she went through the moves, flinging her arms in a wide arc. The sand settled. Every particle stilling at the same precise moment. When she let her hands drop, they all fell effortlessly back into the arena floor. This time, when the crowd went wild, she didn’t even hear it. She hadn’t done any of it. That had all been her mother’s doing. A fact she could never tell anyone.
Her mother nodded at her once. Their secret forged in that moment.
Then, Keres turned to Fordham. She lifted his hand and declared, “The king of Alfheim.”
She repeated the process, taking his hands and connecting with him. The collar at his throat glowed bright gold. Keres touched it gently with her fingers, and it disintegrated, as if it had never been.
Fordham choked when it was gone. Shadows coming to his immediate command.
“Now, now,” Keres said, “let’s finish this then?”
He nodded. “For her.”
“I know,” Keres said softly.
The binding officially began. Fordham tying himself to Keres. A Daijan bond. This time, Kerrigan could feel the air shift. Not a trick of Keres’s magic, but the reality of what was happening between them. Fordham stood stoic as the golden light in his hands held him in place. His eyes never left Keres as his world shifted. She wondered what he saw in her eyes as they’d gone the same precise color and shape of his thunderclouds. It was a few seconds as the world seemed to stop all around them, just in the way it had for Kerrigan, and then it was broken.
Fordham threw down the golden light onto the arena floor. He let the sand and wind kick up, as it had for her, but instead of him pretending to settle it, as Kerrigan had, she could feel the shift in him all at once. His shadows weren’t mere illusions. They didn’t wrap around him and threaten to take him from this space to another nearby. The immensity of it wafted off of him now. As if he had the full command of the shadows and the shadow world beyond.
The arena filled with shadows as darkness crept in wholly. They galloped across the sand and roared up to meet the crowd until there was only darkness and screams. Oh, the terrifying tyrant he would have been had he had this power when his father was in charge. Before he ever met Kerrigan or fell in love or realized the depths of the wrongness of his world.
Black flooded his irises until there was nothing but midnight from edge to edge. Until her Fordham disappeared entirely into the darkness.
“Good,” Keres said with pleasure. “Now stop.”
And just like that, the shadows were gone. Not sucked back into him, but simply gone. Because these powers came with a tether. He flexed for those powers, but the most he could do was the small amount of shadow magic he’d always had. They writhed around his body, aching to encompass the entire world again.
“Your victors!” Keres announced.
The crowd was still rumbling their approval as Keres took one unsteady look at Vulsan, who was pulsing with fury from his box, and then she strode across the sand with her two new Daijan in tow.