I jerked, my eyes shooting open despite the fact that I didn’t remember closing them. I was still in the center of the arena, but there was no more roaring or thumping or hammering. For the first time ever, the stadium was totally silent. Even the bright lights seemed dimmer, like I was standing in shadow.
No, I realized slowly. Not like. It was a shadow. Something enormous standing above me, blocking the floodlights. When I finally looked up to see what it was, I found myself staring into the grinning, sharp-toothed maw of the biggest dragon I’d ever seen. The beautiful red-maned, blue-scaled, sea-eyed, smoke-wreathed face of the Great Yong of Korea.
Chapter 15
He looked even bigger than I remembered. I didn’t know if that was because we were crammed into an arena or if I’d pumped even more magic into him than he’d originally possessed, but my dad was absolutely colossal. He was so big that even the crowd shrank back, trembling in their seats at the terrifying, terrible wonder that was a dragon in his true shape.
As always in this place though, the quiet was only temporary. The moment the people got over their shock, they started howling louder than ever, yelling their throats raw as they realized it was actually happening.
A dragon had come to fight in the arena.
Huge eyes narrowing at the noise, Yong snorted in disgust and tilted his head to look at Nik, who was still writhing on the bloody ground with the curse chewing through his neck like teeth. With a sympathetic rumble, my father lifted his foreleg and pressed a clawed forefoot the size of a minivan on top of Nik’s convulsing body. When no part of Nik was visible through the cage of claws and scales, the dragon lifted his chin and announced in a booming voice:
“I win.”
There was absolutely no denying it. Even if Nik hadn’t been busy fighting decapitation, there was no possible way he could defeat something as ancient and huge as my father. Stating the obvious was critical, though, because the moment Yong spoke the words, the fight was over. Its final requirement fulfilled, the Sword of Damocles vanished from Nik’s neck, freeing him to collapse into the sand.
I was at his side in an instant, ducking under my father’s claws so fast, I sliced a chunk off the end of my ponytail.
“Nik!”
“I’m alive,” he croaked, his voice hoarse from his wounded, but still intact, throat. The Sword of Damocles must have been designed to cut slowly in order to give him time to change his mind, because Nik’s neck wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared. His skin was chewed to bits and there was a lot of blood, but none of the wounds were deep enough to be a true emergency; a realization that left me so relieved it was almost painful.
“I’m so happy you’re not dead!” I sobbed, throwing my arms around him. “You have no idea!”
“I think I might,” he rasped, looking up at the underside of the dragon’s foot shielding us from the world. “Guess I lost.”
“No way,” I said fiercely, letting go of him just long enough to lift up my poncho and rip a strip off my T-shirt to use as a bandage. “You won! You didn’t do what they wanted. You stood your ground even when they were cutting off your head.” I wrapped the dark cloth around his bloody neck. “I knew you could do it. I’m so proud of you!”
His body stiffened so fast, I worried I’d hurt him. Then he lurched forward, grabbing and hugging me so tight I could barely breathe.
“I did win, didn’t I?” he gasped, his injured voice happier than I’d ever heard it. “I’m free!”
“You’re free,” I agreed, collapsing into his viselike embrace as all the fear and sadness and pain I’d been desperately holding back finally broke free. It was over. We’d done it. We’d saved him. My dad too. We’d saved everyone!
The mix of relief and joy that came with that was too much for me to handle. I started bawling, sobbing myself into a soggy mess in seconds. I could have kept going like that for an hour at least—it had been a hard end to a hard week—but as I settled in to let it out, I realized the crowd was still screaming, their voices pounding in unison like an army of drums.
“Kill! Kill! Kill!”
I froze against Nik. I’d been so overwhelmed by our victory, I hadn’t been paying attention to what was building outside. Now that I’d noticed it, it was impossible to miss. The arena’s bloody magic was back with a vengeance. I’d thought I’d broken the circle and dumped everything that remained into my dad, but I’d forgotten the first rule of magic: there was always more. All I’d done was break the holding tank, but the source of the arena’s power was the crowd, and they were still screaming for blood.
“Finish him!” they demanded as the magic churned higher. “Burn him! Eat him! Turn him into—”
“Enough!” my father roared.
His voice cut through their demands like claws through flesh, and the crowd jerked back, their bloodlust overwhelmed by the predatory menace pouring off my father. Even I was shaking, pressed down into the sand by the weight of the Great Yong’s displeasure. I’d seen him angry plenty of times, but this was different. When he got mad at me, love was always there to temper it, but there were no softer feelings here. The force emanating from my father this time was a disgust so sharp it soured my stomach, making me retch as he slid his slitted eyes over the trembling crowd.
“There will be no more killing tonight,” he boomed, his voice so loud, it rattled the flood lamps. “What is wrong with you? You live in a world that has always been saturated
