It ends tonight.
The Herald lifts her hand. “Begin.”
My opponent rushes me. He’s even faster than I expected, and he moves like he knows what he’s doing. I hold perfectly still as he closes the distance between us. He takes that as my being unprepared and strikes with an uppercut that would take off my head if it landed.
I shift back just enough that he misses. He sank too much into that punch, and it leaves him wide open. I hammer a brutal punch into his ribs. Something cracks beneath my fist, and he stumbles. I don’t give him time to recover. I kick his knee, dislocating it, and then punch him in the face.
He hits the ground and doesn’t get up.
One of the Herald’s people comes over and crouches next to him. She presses two fingers to his neck. “He’s alive.”
The Herald nods. “Abel wins the first match. The prize?”
I glance at Gabriel. My youngest brother is pale and looks vaguely sick, but he steps forward and lifts his chin. “I claim Fallon of the Mystics as my Bride.” Ciar’s heir.
A murmur goes through the crowd in a wave. I hold my breath as I wait to see what they’ll do. Ciar looks like he wants to kill us, but he finally waves a hand, and a gorgeous redhead steps forward. She comes down the stairs quickly, moving with a grace that screams combat training. Her face shows nothing as she crosses to stand next to Gabriel.
One down, six to go.
The factions sent their best. I’m better. I defeat them one by one. I’m not showy, choosing to conserve energy instead of being entertaining. One by one, my brothers claim their Brides. Sons and daughters, siblings, loved ones of the people responsible for our father’s death, for our exile.
Until there’s only one opponent left.
He’s a giant of a man, a huge white guy who has six inches on me and probably outweighs me by fifty pounds. I turn my head and spit blood—the last Amazon got in a couple good hits—and motion. “Let’s get this over with.”
The crowd doesn’t cheer, doesn’t speak, doesn’t seem to breathe. Guess I am being entertaining, after all.
The giant lumbers toward me. Too slow. This is their final fighter? I almost laugh at the absurdity of it. This time, I don’t wait for him to reach me. I rush forward and hit my knees, driving my fist up into his balls with everything I have. He makes a high-pitched whistling sound and topples, curling in on himself like a dead bug.
I climb to my feet and look down. He’s too busy clutching his balls to tap out, but it’s clear he’s not getting up anytime soon.
The Herald raises her eyebrows. “Abel wins the final match. The prize?”
Here it is. The thing I’ve been waiting for. I turn and find Eli. He’s leaning forward, his elbows propped on his knees. His expression is smooth and free of worry, but that shit doesn’t fool me. Eli’s always been the best liar I’ve ever known. He managed to convince me that we were friends, that we’d always have each other’s backs. I won’t be fooled again.
I give him a bloody grin. Got you, fucker. “I choose Harlow Byrne.”
Eli’s woman.
2
Harlow
My breath rushes out in a gasp. For the past thirty minutes, we’ve watched Abel Paine decimate the best Sabine Valley has to offer. And now he’s looking at me like he wants to devour me whole. My head goes fuzzy, and I start to push to my feet.
Eli grabs my arm without looking over. “No.”
I stare at his fingers wrapped around my forearm. “Take your hand off me.” There was time when we were always touching, where we couldn’t get enough of each other. When I was younger and more foolish and honestly believed that Eli saw me rather than the fantasy of the helpless princess he expects me to be. Five years later, and that hope is ash on my tongue. Five years later, and our love has started to feel a whole lot like hate.
“Let me go,” I say quietly. We work so hard to prevent the rest of the faction from seeing the cracks in our relationship. We have a stable faction, but we both know all too well that both Amazons and Mystics will pounce on any perceived weakness. If they realized that Eli and I are hardly the solid unit we pretend in public, there’s a decent chance they’d attempt to use it against the faction somehow. Eli’s done as much to them in the past, after all.
Eli’s never slipped in public with me, not once. He’s slipping right now. There’s not a damn thing he can do to change this. He has to let me go, and I have to walk away. Something releases in my chest at the realization.