Arran’s barely returned to the holding cell where the pleb fighters wait before Wieler and another handler approach, faces grim, hands ready on the nightsticks at their hips.
“Problem, gentlemen?”
“You need to come with us.”
“Yeah, no time, unfortunately. Gotta limber up before my round.”
“There’s been a change in the schedule,” says Wieler, and grabs him by the arm.
“Hey, man, I told you—” But then the other handler grabs his upper arm, and Arran finds himself seeing stars as the blunt end of a nightstick meets the backside of his head.
So it isn’t a choice, exactly, to let himself be steered down a stone staircase, but more a matter of the time it takes for the world to stop spinning. When they reach the bottom, Arran is shoved down on a bench and, still fighting to pull his head together, doesn’t notice the irons being slipped around his wrists until it’s too late.
When the world finally rights itself, leaving Arran with a full-on bitch of a headache, it becomes immediately apparent that the large cell he’s now sitting in is much like the one above, with one major glaring difference.
It’s an armory.
Not the kind of sleek, modern blades and weaponry he grew used to in the Teec Nos Pos fort. This stuff belongs in the history books. Rough wooden spears and curved, rusting swords, and a good array of downright evil-looking spiky things he wouldn’t even know where to begin with trying to name. That isn’t the most disconcerting part. No, that honor goes to the men, women, and thremed sitting along the bench on either side of him, wrists chained to the wall just the same.
What. The fuck.
“Hey,” he shouts again, this time at Wieler’s retreating back. “The hell is this?”
The stone-faced handler sneers down at him. “You deaf? Told you there was a change in the schedule.”
“This is a mistake.” A hot, angry laughter bubbles up inside him. This has to be a joke. “My patron’s upstairs, she wouldn’t have agreed to this. Go ask her.”
“No need—you’re a crim. That’s what the Consul says. And what he says goes.”
The laughter dies on his lips.
Palmar. This is Cato Palmar’s doing. And why why why in the savage Quiet does it always come back to him? Arran is so ready to never hear about that man ever again in his life.
Well, a dark voice whispers in the back of his mind, you might get that wish. It’s certainly looking like his life is about to be cut pretty short just about now. And that, more than anything else, is what does it.
Because suddenly Arran can’t breathe.
He shouldn’t be here. He isn’t supposed to be here. He isn’t supposed to die this young, and he has some weapons training but not the kind that’s going to get him out of this, and yes, believe it or not, he’s fully aware that he’s descending into a full-blown panic attack in the middle of a room full of scarred and hardened gladiators, thanks.
Frag it. If he’s going to die anyway, might as well get one last good one in.
The drowning in his chest and throat is nothing, because Cato Palmar has decided he is going to die, so he is going to die. Because Cato Palmar knows who he is, because Cato Palmar gave him his freedom on the condition that Dad send his mother away. Because he is going to kill him the way he killed his father and as good as killed his mother, and Selah’s out looking for Diana Ontiveros, she’s not upstairs at all, and idiot fucking Una got it wrong and told Palmar he needed his sister to operate the Stone, and if he has this planned for Arran, what in the savage Quiet does he have planned for her?
Selah and Tair are who-knows-where chasing a missing alchemical scientist, and Theo’s meant to be watching his back, but what can they do from the crowd, realistically, and Griff and her backup are still waiting above the ground for them to come back out with Selah and the Iveroa Stone, and here he is—chained to an armory wall with his head thrown back and eyes squeezed shut, absolutely useless to anyone.
It might have continued that way for a while, or at least for as long as it took for someone to come take him away to his fate. Only then a heavy hand is resting on top of his and squeezing tight.
“I’ve got you, brother.”
Arran opens his eyes to find Miro Ontiveros sitting next to him, dark eyes full of concern, offering as much physical pressure as he can given both of their constraints.
“I’ve got you,” he says again. “Just breathe with me, okay?”
“Easy,” Arran just makes out, “for you to say.”
Somehow, Miro manages a smile, white teeth shining. “You can breathe, come on. Where’s the panic coming from? You know, physically?”
Arran frowns through the hitching gasps of breath—he’s never really thought about that before, but in an instant the answer comes to him all the same. “Chest. A ball in my chest . . . and throat.”
“Okay, good. What’s the ball look like? Is it moving?”
“Yeah,” he gasps, closing his eyes, and lets out a dump of air. “Circling . . . sort of forward . . . really fast.”
“You can see it?”
“Yeah.”
“All right,” Miro says, the calming tenor of his voice worlds away from the suspicious young man Arran met upstairs. “It’s a good thing, you know. It’s trying to keep you alive. No wonder, in this place. So just take a second and sit with it, yeah? We’ve got the time. Say thanks, then send it on its way.”
Well, when you put it like that.
The ball in his throat doesn’t seem to be moving as quickly anymore, and after a moment something jolts loose in his chest. He takes a long, shaking breath. Thanks, he thinks quietly, as it breaks free. Then, opening his eyes, he turns to Miro and thanks him, too.
“No problem. Xochitl has them all the time.”
Arran has to look away.
“So,” Miro continues, “this wasn’t really part of the plan, huh?”
• • •
The handlers come for Miro first. When they pull him away, Miro looks back just the once, and nods. Arran returns it, glad at least that if Miro lives long enough to find out his sister is in fact dead, he won’t be around to see it. Palmar will make sure he’s dead by then, too.
It isn’t long after that they come for him.
He doesn’t make it easy for them, spitting and cursing and pulling away as they yank some cursory greaves up his legs that bite into the soft skin behind his knees, and shove a sword, shield, and spear into his hands—weapons that, for all they look impressively ancient and savage, with their fraying bindings of dyed leather and angry, serrated teeth, are as blunt as the message behind them. This isn’t a fight—it’s an execution.
He doesn’t know what he’s done to bring the Consul’s ire down beyond generally existing, but neither does he really have the time to dwell on that. Before long, he’s being frog-marched down a long underground hallway, the growing cheers and shouts of the crowd above making the hair on his arms stand on end.
Oh shit. This is happening.
Arran makes himself put one foot in front of the other.
Maybe he can still find a way out of this.
Maybe Theo can still do something from the crowd.
Maybe Selah and Tair are on their way back.
Maybe he can win.
Doubtful, that last one, but he’ll still have to try. It’s the only option Arran has full control of at this point.
One foot in front of the other, and the light at the end of the underground tunnel where the latticed door leads to the arena pit looms closer.
One foot in front of the other, and Arran can see the harsh and unwilling face of his intended executor in his mind’s eye—that woman with the shiny, twisting burn scars along both arms that he saw from across the lower cell, maybe, or the thremid missing half a cheek.
One foot in front of the other, and his heart threatens to pound itself right out of his chest. If he can make himself believe, then this is just the cobblestone banks of the Third Ward, the fort training yard at Teec Nos Pos.
One foot in front of the other, until Arran steps out into the light.
The roar of the crowd is deafening, and this is definitely not the Third Ward. The deep, circular pit is made of rough, unforgiving concra, stained with decades and maybe even centuries of faded red. And standing on the other side of the sunken arena, eyes wide at the sight of him, is Miro Ontiveros.