“What?” she asked.
“That wasn’t smart,” Jason replied.
“Seems pretty smart to me. Eric’s down and Owen doesn’t look like he’s thinking straight right now.”
Jason shot her a sidelong glance. “You don’t know Owen Fan nearly as well as I do. Making him angry is the last thing you want to do.”
He inclined his head back toward the Arena. “Watch,” he said.
Eric had his hand pressed against the cut on his forehead, but he wasn’t having much luck staunching the blood flowing liberally down the left side of his face. But when Owen reached out a hand to him, Eric didn’t hesitate and allowed his partner to pull him to his feet. He stumbled over his first step but then steadied himself and wiped the blood from his eyes. It was clear that he had no intention of allowing the injury to slow him down.
When they started moving again, Owen stalked forward with quiet purpose, all his anger having cooled into deadly intent. Without signaling to each other, Owen and Eric parted ways and started to pursue their prey like wolves from the same pack.
Allyra glanced at Jason. “Tethered?” she questioned.
He nodded sharply without taking his eyes off the action.
Silently Owen and Eric rounded on Connor and Elisha. When it eventually happened, the fight was short and brutal. And completely one sided.
Owen caught up with Connor first, and for a while, Connor held his own. The two of them traded blow for blow. But soon enough, Owen threw a punch that landed on the side of Connor’s head with bone-crunching force. Connor crumpled to the ground senseless.
Owen then turned to his partner, who was holding Elisha, his hand across her mouth, not allowing her to concede. There was a sadistic glint in Owen’s eyes as he made his way forward slowly. When he was no more than a couple of steps away, Eric kicked the back of Elisha’s legs, forcing her to her knees, all the while keeping his hand firmly clamped over her mouth. He pulled her head back by her hair and forced her to look up at Owen.
The fear in Elisha’s dark eyes was unmistakable. It made Allyra sick to her stomach.
“They’re enjoying this,” Allyra whispered and tried to avert her eyes. There was no part of her that wanted to see what was about to come.
“Don’t,” Jason said sharply but quietly. “They’re watching us. If you can’t bear to watch pain being inflicted on another, they’ll know that you can’t take it or inflict it yourself. They’ll take it as a sign of weakness, and they’ll exploit it.”
He was right, of course. There was no space for fear. No space for empathy.
Allyra forced her eyes back to the Arena. Owen pulled Elisha’s right arm out, but he was holding back, waiting for something. In front of them, Connor’s eyes fluttered open, and Owen’s smile widened. He leaned down and whispered something into Elisha’s ear. The crowd had fallen silent, every person straining to hear Owen’s words, but they were meant for Elisha alone. Her eyes were huge and liquid with terror, but whatever Owen said, it made her expression harden, and she shook her head slightly.
Owen grinned. “Perfect,” he said, louder now, putting on a show for the crowd. “I do so enjoy making girls scream.” He stretched Elisha’s arm out, holding it in place at the wrist and shoulder, and then he kicked it in at the elbow, shattering her arm. Even with Eric’s hand over her mouth, Elisha’s anguished scream rang across the Arena.
Connor tried to get to his feet, his expression a mirror of his partner’s agony. “Stop,” he moaned, “I concede.”
“You conceding is not enough,” Owen taunted. “She has to concede, and it just doesn’t look like she wants to.”
Connor stumbled to his feet unsteadily and lurched toward Owen, trying to tackle him to the ground. Owen stepped out of the way almost disdainfully, and Connor fell past him, collapsing once more on the ground.
Owen rolled his eyes theatrically. “This is pathetic,” he said to Eric. “Just finish it.”
Eric grinned and without a word, without warning, he snapped Elisha’s head to the side. Elisha’s body slipped to the ground. Lifeless.
A ragdoll. A lifeless ragdoll.
Connor’s wail of agony seemed to shatter the very air around them.
Allyra watched with horror, a gasp of revulsion wedged in her throat and nausea rising as her stomach heaved. Never had the brutality of the Gifted world been more real than in this very moment. Her breathing quickened uncontrollably until black spots appeared in her vision.
She was going to faint.
Jason’s hand wrapped firmly around her wrist and pulled her back from the brink. “Breathe,” he whispered. “Steady—we’ll get through this.”
She could feel Jason’s steady heartbeat through his fingers, and she concentrated on it, allowing it to steady her own.
Hydrogen. Helium. Lithium…
She repeated the periodic table over and over in her head, her eyes open but unseeing. She didn’t see them carry Elisha’s limp body from the Arena nor did she see them sedate Connor as his grief overwhelmed him.
A desperate need to get away spread through her like ants crawling over her skin. It sent her mind stumbling backward—into the past…
Allyra looked down and saw the Arena—as it had been, in another time. In Alex’s time. Her mind was fractured. Broken. Her hold on the memory was tenuous at best, and she struggled to make out the details. The Arena was still made of the same iridescent black rock but missing were the huge columns. Instead, the Arena was filled with people, all clad in black and facing a center, raised platform.
She concentrated on the platform, trying to sharpen her vision of the memory. Slowly, like a picture developing, it came into focus. Almost immediately, she
