“It’s hard for me to believe there’s justice in this world when you’re here and Chi’s gone. But I have to believe in justice, in a world that could be better despite all the ugliness within it. I have to because Chi believed it, and he was better than either of us,” she spat out at Jeong, her words punctuated by quick and shallow breaths.
Allyra released her grip and tossed Jeong to the ground where he lay, gasping furiously. She stood above him, looking down disdainfully, holding the tip of her sword to his throat.
“You don’t deserve to live you slithering coward,” she said carefully, trying to keep her voice from shaking with emotion. “But if Chi were here, he would argue for you, and out of respect for his memory, I’m letting you go.”
Allyra stepped back, and the Cleaners walked into the Arena, four of them pinning Jeong’s limbs to the ground and others carrying a vat of molten iron. One of the Cleaners wore a mask, not of silver but rather half silver and half gold. He held a long, wicked nail in his hands and started hammering it into Jeong’s limbs. Five holes in each arm and leg. Power surged from the four Cleaners holding Jeong down—their Gifts combining to keep Jeong both awake and alive, though a process that should easily have killed. Jeong’s howls of anguish filled the Arena, the type of tortured sound that would echo long after silence reasserted itself. Many of the onlookers turned their gaze away, but Allyra watched steadily. For once, her feelings aligned with the brutality of the Gifted world. Every scream equaled retribution, and every shriek—justice.
Once the holes were formed, the Cleaners poured the molten iron into them. Jeong’s screams increased in a violent crescendo until it silenced as he faded into a dead faint. The silence weighed heavily over the Arena as the Cleaners completed their grisly task and dragged Jeong’s prone form from the Arena.
The silence fell like a curtain of water over the flame of Allyra’s anger, reducing it to ashes. She felt empty and hollow and desperate to be away from all this—the brutality, the death, the Gifted, everything.
Allyra took one look around the audience at the expressionless faces of the Council and the sickened horror on those of the Competitors. Jason met her gaze steadily, his dark eyes inscrutable, his expression unreadable. She turned on her heel and stalked from the Arena.
As she walked, she loosened the straps of her baldric, allowing the leather to slip through her fingers until the swords fell to the ground. Each step was quicker than the last as she rushed toward the Shadow Causeway, desperate to get back to the Training Grounds and the relative privacy of her room.
Behind her, Henri called out her name, but Allyra ignored her, her steps breaking out into a run. The trip through the Shadow Causeway would normally have taken fifteen minutes, but at a sprint, it took no more than five. Blindly, she ran through the empty corridors, heading straight for her room. The door closed behind her and she stripped off her clothes, letting them fall thoughtlessly to the ground. In the shower, she turned the water up, as hot as she could bear, and stood beneath the stream of water, wishing it could wash away her grief and hate.
Facing Jeong in the Arena should have brought her some level of peace or at least acceptance of Chi’s unnecessary death. Yet, without hate burning like acid through her, all that was left behind was a yawning crevice of infinite darkness and the certainty that it was all so pointless.
She stood beneath the water for a long time until the water ran cold over her. Eventually, she emerged, shivering, with her fingernails turning blue. But she embraced the cold, sure that it was better than feeling nothing at all.
Jason was waiting for her, sitting on the couch with a tray of food on the low coffee table before him. He glanced up at her, taking in her wet hair and shivering body, but made no comment.
“I thought you might be hungry,” he said casually.
There was a lump in her throat that she couldn’t swallow away, and the idea of food only made it grow larger. She shook her head.
“I’m tired,” she said, as if it were an explanation.
If she believed him capable of it, Allyra would’ve described the look on Jason’s face as concern. But she was too exhausted to consider it further. She teetered where she stood, her mind bombarded by thoughts of Chi. Images of him as she’d known him and images of what his body had looked like all merged together in a grotesque film, sending shivers through her body that had nothing to do with the cold. Jason stood and wrapped her in his arms.
Alone. She felt so alone in the world with nothing to hold onto, blown around at the will of the wind. But Jason was here, solid and real, steady in a chaotic world, and she held onto him with a death grip.
She fisted her hands around his shirt, her knuckles turning white. She buried her face into his chest, willing the trembling to stop. She tried to force her weakness away, but the shaking seemed endless, like a vibrating string.
Jason untangled her fingers from his shirt, winding them between his own. As he had done in the freezing desert night air, his incredible heat bled into her, briefly chasing away the cold and hollowness. Slowly the uncontrolled shivering retreated, and in its wake, like seashells on the shore, raw and honest grief was revealed, and finally
