“You’re thinking about Aramin right now, aren’t you?” I ask him as I chew reluctantly on one of our last sticks of dried seaweed and fish jerky.

  Jeran glances at me and looks down. His fingers stop. “How’d you guess?”

  “I’ve only been by your side for months,” I say, scowling at the jerky. How do people stand the taste of fish? It’s a crime. “I think I’ve picked up a few things.”

  Jeran smiles briefly, then falls silent. After a while, he says, “I’m thinking about what Aramin would do if our situations were reversed.”

  “I imagine he’d fly into a rage.” I wave a hand out at the world beyond our bridge. “Killing everyone in sight in order to get to you.”

  At that, Jeran chuckles once. His cheeks look pink in the night. “Believe it or not, he’d probably still be back in Newage, gathering forces, crafting a less desperate plan than ours. Aramin is calculating like that.”

  “Are you saying he’d leave you behind to be slaughtered in the arena?” I shake my head. “I don’t believe that for a second.”

  “Of course not,” Jeran sniffs. “But Aramin became the Firstblade for a reason. He likes to gather all the information he can before he makes a move. He acts for the benefit of the greatest good.” He smiles a little. “And he’s usually cranky about it.”

  I fix my gaze on Jeran. Somehow, underneath all he’s saying, I sense that he’s afraid to believe that Aramin would come to rescue him. It makes me want to shake the boy. Does he have no idea how much the Firstblade cares about him? Does he not notice what the rest of us do, the way Aramin’s eyes linger on him?

  “Maybe,” I answer. “But not when it’s about you.”

  Jeran’s blush deepens. Maybe he does know, then, and he’s just shy to admit it.

  When I speak again, I ask, “Was Aramin always so prickly?”

  He shrugs. “As long as I’ve known him.”

  “Oh?” I smile and lean back against the cool stone. “Tell me a story and distract me from the misery of our surroundings.”

  Jeran’s smile turns wistful. His hands toy with a bit of the wild stalks growing around us. There he goes again, fiddling unconsciously as his thoughts turn to the Firstblade. “I first met him because he needed a translator.”

  I laugh. “Naturally.”

  “This was long before he became the Firstblade. He and a few others needed to interrogate a Karensan soldier they’d captured. They couldn’t understand a word of what the soldier was saying, of course, so he came to fetch me.” Jeran drops the rest of the wild stalks into the water. “‘I heard you’re the only one in the east patrols who can speak Karenese.’ That was the first thing he ever said to me.”

  “He’s so romantic.”

  That makes Jeran genuinely chuckle, and his eyes dart up to the underside of the bridge, as if the rest of the city could have heard him. “He looked so annoyed to be asking me that I was genuinely offended,” he says, barely above a whisper.

  “And what did an offended Jeran say in return?” I whisper back.

  He smiles, and for an instant, a mischievous glint appears in his eyes. “‘How much?’”

  I stifle a burst of laughter, and it makes me cough instead. I lean forward and shove his shoulder. “Somehow, I get the sense this is a rare thing coming from you.”

  “I wasn’t being sarcastic. He paid me fifty of his mess hall credits for that translation.”

  I lean my arm on one knee and regard him in amusement. “Jeran Min Terra, I never took you for a mercenary.”

  “Aramin brings it out in me.” He winks. “He didn’t speak to me again for months afterward. It took our mutual friends Adena and Corian to force us to start hanging out together in the mess hall.”

  I try to imagine all these young soldiers, still recruits who hadn’t witnessed the harshness of the warfront, laughing and joking and pranking one another in the warmth of a shared hall. Hadn’t I once been like that too? Gambling with bored guards, betting on games, covering one another on our watches to sneak to food stands during the solstice?

  And then you see the world for what it really is. You’re forced to participate in all the ugliness it can offer. And things change.

  If Talin and I can survive all this, what comes next? Can things ever be soft and silly and gentle between us?

  “It’s my turn to guess your thoughts,” Jeran says, and I glance over to see him giving me a sad nod. “You’re thinking of Talin, aren’t you?”

  Do I make unconscious gestures when I think of her too? I nod, quiet for a while. I’m not ready to talk about the way she’d pulled away during our last dream.

  “You really love her,” Jeran says quietly.

  To my embarrassment, I feel the blush rising on my cheeks. Maybe I’ll stop teasing Jeran so much. “I don’t know,” I admit. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love before.”

  He looks unfazed. “You’ve never had the chance to be with anyone before?”

  “No.” My blush deepens and I curse the warmth of it. “Not … like that.”

  He smiles gently at me. “It’s always easier for someone else to tell than for you to see it.”

  “And you see it?” I hesitate. “That I’m in love?”

  He nods. “I see it.”

  “I’m disappointed to be so easily read.”

  Jeran’s lips twitch in good humor. “If it makes you feel any better,” he replies, “I’m just good at reading people.”

  “I like this confident Jeran. He should hang out with us more often.”

  We pause for a moment. And for some reason, I find my thoughts turning again to my father and sister. To little Laeni. That kind of love, I understand. I look off into the night, back to where the National Museum looms in the distance. Laeni and I used to compete with each other as we raced around in there, rattling off as many of the Early Ones’ sculptures we knew by name. We’d hurry from one exhibit to another until my father would call us back to him. Laeni was too short to see some of the plaques, so I’d always lift her onto my shoulders. I can still feel her weight shifting as she’d lean forward, reading out each description.

  When my father looked at his children running around the museum, did he see our mother in us? Did his love hurt him, on nights when we were asleep and he stayed up alone?

  “How did you know?” I ask Jeran after a while.

  “Know what?”

  “When you first fell in love with Aramin?”

  He hesitates, then answers, “When he visited me after my first kill on the warfront.”

  I’m silent, waiting for him to continue.

  “I’m usually the one cooking for our patrol, you see. But that night, I didn’t show up around our campfire. Adena was already out searching for me, but Aramin was the one who found me. He knew, somehow, where I’d be.” Jeran looks up at the bridge. “I’d gone behind the bushes that grew thick around our defense compound, and wedged myself deep in there so that I couldn’t be seen. I’m still not sure how he saw me.” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t breathe. I was covered in sweat. I just remember sitting there, my hands clinging as hard to my knees as I could, trying to take in gasp after gasp of air but feeling like I wasn’t getting anything. I have a blurry memory of Aramin bending down toward me and taking my hand. He squeezed it hard enough for me to feel it through my panic. And all I can remember is that steady voice of his. Breathe with me. One. Two. Three. He would count and count, and I remember the hypnosis of those numbers as I struggled to keep pace with his measured breaths.” His voice turned into a whisper. “He kept telling me, ‘It’s just your thoughts. It’s only your thoughts. They can’t hurt you.’ How did he know what I was thinking?” Jeran shakes his head. “And somehow, I came out of it.”

  He stretches his legs out, grimacing at the water soaking his pants. “When I finally managed to contain myself enough to come out of the thickets, he guided me back to the others without a word. He had a hand on my shoulder and a hand holding my own, and I just remember … how warm he felt. He told the others I’d gone off to pay my respects to the dead. He never mentioned it again.”

  In the silence that follows, I nod at him. “We’re going to get him out of there,” I say. “Just like how we’re going to save Talin. I don’t know how, but we will.”

  He nods back. “I know how love can power you,” Jeran says softly.

  Love. I think of the ways it can trap us, make us do things that can destroy us. And how we do it anyway.

  That is why I’m here. To save the other Strikers, to rescue Talin. And somehow, that’s how I know I love her.

  My eyes return to the museum in the distance.

  This time, when I stare at it, I remember something different. In one of the displays that Laeni and I used to run past was a small object that looked like a steel cylinder.

  Something that looked remarkably like what we’d seen loaded onto the train.

  That’s why I’d thought the artifacts in Mara looked oddly familiar. That’s where I’d seen them before.

  That’s where we might be able to uncover some clues about why Constantine is so interested in these artifacts, and what they might be capable of.

  I must have sucked in my breath, because Jeran glances at me. “What?” he asks.

  I look at him. “Care to tour the National Museum with me?”

  18

  TALIN

  The first morning of the games dawns a bloody red.

  The center of the arena today has been transformed into an intricate maze of walls. They stretch tall enough that the spectators can see everything happening within the walls, but anyone wandering through the maze itself is unable to see much aside from the sky.

  Today, I soar high above the arena in a visible sweep of the city, looking for signs of unrest in the crowds below. As I angle my wings and swoop in an arc following the curve of the arena, my shadow stretches wide below. People along the thoroughfare duck instinctively when the darkness glides over them. I can see their eyes following the lethal grace of my movements. Constantine wants them to remember what kind of power he has at his side.

  He also wants me to see the entirety of the arena. To remind me that this is where my lifelong friends and companions might die. All part of his own secret game.

  Well, I’m playing one too.

  A part of me yearns to reach out to Red. Wherever he is, he must not be far from the city center if we were able to connect in our dreams. But the instant I think it, I recoil as if struck by a whip. The walls go up again, and I cringe, forcing him from my thoughts. His hands, touching mine in my dream. His eyes, searching mine. His presence, so clear I was almost fooled into thinking he was there.

  I can’t let myself get close to him like that. It could cost him his life.

  As I finish my surveillance of the festivities and rejoin the Premier, we head onto his balcony at the arena. He doesn’t address me at all. Through our bond, I search for any hints that he might know about the meeting I had with the Chief Architect and Mayor Elland—but there’s nothing today. Instead, I sense the weight of exhaustion in him, hidden under his usual blanket of false strength.

  Today it feels especially heavy. When I glance at him through my lashes, I notice his shoulders hunched more than usual, the uneven labor of his breathing, the hesitation in his steps. Raina’s words from the meeting come back to me. She has increased his doses of medication this week.

  I continue observing him as we arrive at the balcony and take our seats. Behind the paint on the Premier’s face—the stripe, the black around his eyes—he looks visibly weak. Constantine can see me studying him, even though he ignores it.

  Good. Let him think I’m puzzled by his agony today, that this is me confused and concerned.

  I finally look away from him and down at the arena. Here, I get a clear view of the awful space—and an idea of what they’ll be forcing the Strikers to do.

  One end of the maze leads into a series of large, metal sliding doors that remind me of the gate design at the lab complex. I can see thin grooves on the sides of each stone wall, as if they might move at any given moment. They are going to keep the Strikers guessing, to change the maze to suit the game and keep the players from winning or dying too easily.

  At the other end of the maze stands a line of Ghosts, all chained in their cages and pacing restlessly.

  “You’re willing to lose ten silver notes?”

  Two soldiers behind me laugh, shoving each other, as we settle into the space.

  “Ten on the inventor,” the second soldier retorts, “and you’ll be the one handing it to me.”

  “But I heard one was their Firstblade.”

  Their words make my heart twist in helpless fury. Strikers, the strength of Mara, forced to fight for their lives all to entertain these Karensans. I glance over my shoulder at them and lock my stare on theirs. The first one catches sight of me and pales, his confident jests suddenly turning into stammers. His eyes dart to the floor. His companion notices me too and hurriedly bows his head.

  “Skyhunter,” he murmurs.

  I stare at them a moment longer, my eyes glowing, before turning back around. Behind me, their silence lingers.

  Constantine has his attention fixed on the crowd around us, his hand up in a wave as they cheer for him. On his other side, Caitoman exchanges a few words with the rest of their guards. The expression on his face is one of dark interest. With a sickening feeling, I realize that he’s making bets with them too. Telling them how he hopes each of the Strikers will go.

  Finally, far at the end sits the Chief Architect, who stares down at the maze with an expressionless face.

  I stare at her for a moment. As her head turns in my direction, her deep-set eyes flicker to mine, holding my gaze for a heartbeat. Then she looks away again.

  The arena is rowdy and restless, eager for the game to begin. Everyone wants to see for themselves just how good Strikers are at killing monsters. My stomach turns as I look at the people chanting for the event to begin. But even as I do, I can see unsettled glances passing between some of the people, whispers that are drowned out behind a chorus of cheers. Not everyone is here to enjoy it.

  How many here are a part of the rebellion?

  My eyes shift toward the gates leading to where the Strikers are being kept. I think I see a glimpse of sapphire coats. Have they been given back some of their gear too? Has the Premier seen to it that the audience will get to see a show as authentic as if they were all out on the warfront?

  As if he felt the shift of my emotions at the sight of the gates, Constantine tilts his head slightly at me. “Don’t despair, Talin,” he says. “Your friends will get a fighting chance. That’s the point of it, after all.”

  The point of it. The sickening fear roiling in my stomach makes way for my usual anger, and I scowl back at him. Maybe the tonic that Raina had given me has already done its work, because I don’t feel the strength of his satisfaction in return.

  You’re one to talk about fairness, I answer.

  Fairness? He shakes his head. You think any of this is fair?

  It’s not quite the answer I’d expected from him.

  At my pause, a small smile drifts across Constantine’s lips. The dark stripe down his face is freshly black and shines under the light—and in spite of Raina’s continued efforts to weaken him, he still cuts a terrifying figure. They have a chance because this is meant to entertain. But it isn’t fair, Talin. If it were fair, I would give them an opportunity to escape.

  I narrow my eyes at him. You could, of course. You just won’t.

  If only the world were fair, Constantine replies. But no one wants that. They just want it to be fair for them.

  There is a note of some bitterness in those words, an old wound from somewhere long ago.

  And there, beyond the steady link I have with Constantine, is a tug I know all too well.

  I know better than to react, immediately tampering down my emotions in an attempt to keep my realization from the Premier. Raina’s tonic must have helped too. As I do, I look out into the audience of the arena, my eyes resting instinctively on where I think the pull is coming from.

  Red is here.

  I can’t see him in this crowd, but I can feel him. The elation in my chest mixes with terror. He is here, in the capital, surrounded by enemies who want him dead.

  It can’t be. It’s impossible.

  And yet, even as I struggle with this realization, I can feel the clear beat of his heart through our link, can sense his presence out in the crowd as surely as I can feel the breeze in the air.

  No, Red, I want to scream to him. You can’t be here. It’s too dangerous.

  Down below, in the center of the arena, an announcer raises his voice to address the audience. In a daze, I turn to look at him.

  “Welcome to the solstice festival!” he shouts. The answering cheers are deafening. The announcer smiles before pointing one hand in the direction of the Strikers’ gates. “The Strikers of Mara are famed for their ability to fight our Federation’s fearsome Ghosts. You’ve heard these stories for years, I’m sure—but today, you will get to see the legend in action!”

  That’s all he needs to say. The people are on their feet now, jumping with anticipation in their seats as everyone cranes their necks in the direction of the gates. On the other end of the maze, guards undo the chains holding back the Ghosts, and they snarl against the bars of their cages.

  My muscles tense until I feel as if I might shatter.

  Constantine nods once. On the other side of the arena, two bannermen wave scarlet flags.

  The Striker gates slide open at the same time the guards unleash the Ghosts from their cages.

  The first person to step out into the light is Aramin.

  I can’t help sucking in my breath. He has been given a full Striker uniform, with his double blades strapped to his hips and his arrows and guns completely equipped. They have trimmed his hair and let him tie it up into the traditional Maran knot. The only telltale change that sticks out is the bright yellow band around his wrist.