It’s been minutes.
Hours.
A day maybe.
Since I lay at the foot of the Coliseum altar, as all the world crumbled down around me.
Everything hurts.
My eyes are swollen.
My jaw is on fire.
My body broken.
My heart? It’s not much more than a shell of something resembling a heart at this point. I do know it continues to beat because everything has its own throbbing pulse. Each thump pains me more than the one before.
My mind? A blur. Strange snippets of memories and nightmarish images haunt me day and night. I can’t begin to pull reality from fantasy from dream.
All of that and the best I can do—the only thing keeping me sane—is run my tongue along the jagged tooth in my mouth. The one Arlen cracked with his boot.
It’s sharp. Pricks my tongue with the point of a thorn. Draws a bit of blood.
It’s a different sort of pain than the throbbing. It’s the kind that stings up into my ears and reminds me I’m alive.
I’m alive.
I didn’t die like Raevald wanted. I ruined his big finale. It’s the only thing that almost, barely pulls the corners of my mouth upward.
My Offering was stalled by my fighting, then slowed by Nico, and ultimately hijacked by the Night.
The Night … my dear people.
The same ones who left me on the bloodstained gravel of the Coliseum floor as they dragged Nico away.
With an arrow through his back.
A different pain consumes me now. The worst kind. It’s the one that has no cure. No amount of adjustment or consoling will quell it. This pain reaches from my toes to the top of my head and then down into the very deepest depths of my being.
But I can’t get lost in those depths. Not now. Not anytime soon.
It’s futile, but I try to shake my head. Toss the thoughts, the terrible pain out because if I dwell too much on Nico … that arrow … I’ll fall down a horribly dark hole. I’m already surrounded by enough darkness—I can’t take any more.
I have no idea where I am.
Possibly hell.
The ends of the earth where all is darkness.
I do know one thing: I will not die here.
I’m certain Raevald isn’t too far away, and I refuse to give him the satisfaction of my death.