He looked like a leader. He looked like a victor. He looked like an Arch Commandant.
But all I saw when I looked at him was a man who was willing to sacrifice everything that mattered to him for a chance, even a slim one, at a better world.
I refused to allow myself to think about the possibility of losing him here. It had been so much more comfortable at the Mikov estate, when I was the one throwing myself into the jaws of a monster. Self-sacrifice was easy. But watching Max journey so close to the fangs of a beast of his own was agonizing.
At last, the stairs stopped. I pressed my hands against the rusting metal railing. Of their own accord, my lips parted.
Before me was a massive crack in the earth. The rock was jagged and raw, like torn flesh, and strange, rippling light spilled from within it. It wasn’t bright, exactly — it barely cast a glow on the stone around us. But it seemed to bend the air itself in strange and unnatural ways, like an eerie parody of the way the heat rippled the air above the plains back in Nyzerene. During the walk here, a strange magic had prickled at the back of my neck. Now, goosebumps rose all over my flesh.
“You have to go in that?” I whispered.
“I do indeed.”
Oh, gods. I didn’t like any of this.
Down on the other side of the crack, I saw a white figure standing completely still, face tilted towards us.
Nura.
She was so far away that her features were unintelligible, but I could still feel the razors in her stare, and my own rising to meet them.
If she hurt him, I would kill her. Gods, I would make the fates of Esmaris and Ahzeen Mikov look pleasant compared to what I would do to her.
“Are you ready?” Sammerin said, and Max gave him a wordless glance that replied, No, but does it matter?
“There is a path for you this way,” Ariadnea said, gesturing to a gap in the railing.
Max nodded, then turned to me.
I had been ready to be dignified. But the force of Max’s gaze made me forget all of that. I didn’t have time to second guess myself before his hands were on either side of my face and his mouth on mine, and I was struck speechless not only by the kiss itself — a tender, passionate, world-ending kiss that felt far too much like a goodbye — but also by the sudden palpable possibility that it could be the last.
His lips broke from mine, then grazed over the tip of my nose, the bridge, the space of my forehead right between my eyebrows.
It was that forehead kiss, the one that seemed as if it wasn’t even fully intentional, that almost broke me.
“Everyone is watching,” I murmured, self-conscious not of his affection but of the way it threatened to unravel me.
“Who cares,” Max replied, still close enough that I felt the words in my skin. “I’m about to become Arch Commandant.”
He said it like a joke. It couldn’t be a joke. It had to be reality.
I couldn’t speak, even though suddenly, there was so much I wanted to say. I pulled him into one more embrace instead.
“I have a request.” His voice rumbled against my ear lobe, and I choked out my response.
“Smart to ask now, when I have no choice but to say yes.”
“The man with the parrot. The one that we saw in the Capital. Which came first, the bird or the coat?”
The memory made me rasp a chuckle. The man we had seen the first time I visited the Capital, what felt like a lifetime ago. A tall, bespectacled man with a green coat and a matching parrot. It had been a simple sort of joy when I ran up to him — I must ask you, did you get bird to match coat, or coat to match bird?
My eyes burned.
“That’s a secret,” I said, and he laughed as if that was a ridiculous answer. It was, really. He pulled back and we looked at each other.
“I’ll tell you when you get back,” I said.
A smile curled his mouth. Left side first, as always. “Deal.”
“Deal.”
“Maxantarius,” Ariadnea murmured, and Max scoffed.
“Give me a minute. This is a momentous enough occasion, isn’t it?” Then his gaze slipped to Sammerin, who looked as admirably collected as ever.
“I’d tell you not to do anything stupid,” Sammerin said, “but that would be useless and outdated advice.”
“Thank you, Sammerin. I, too, treasure our friendship.”
Still, something softened in his gaze as he patted his friend on the shoulder, gave him a little nod, then turned to the gap in the rail and the rocky stairs that led down to the Scar.
“Alright,” he told the Syrizen. “I’m ready.”
Ariadnea volunteered to lead him down. He did not look back as he took his first steps. The last thing I heard as they departed was Ariadnea’s voice, solemnly saying, “Good luck, Max.”
And with those words, the match began.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Max
This entire concept was the most ridiculous fucking idea.
When I was twenty-one and generally a naive idiot, I had thought there was a certain romantic appeal to the fourth trial. Now, I wanted to laugh at myself for ever having thought that way. What had once seemed natural and primal now struck me as barbaric. Sure, this certainly will encourage rational, compassionate leadership.
Still, even as I told myself that there was nothing mystical about this process whatsoever, I had to fight a shudder of unease as I went down the stairs and landed in the unnatural, rippling darkness of the Scar’s floor. The light and air were strange here, even stranger than they looked from above. Mist that disobeyed the
