The announcer rushed across the arena floor past the fallen Hau-Lin to grab Hank’s fist and raise it into the air. The crowd roared their approval at the stunning display of martial prowess while the spectral dragons who’d surrounded the fight nosed at Hau-Lin’s wounded form in search of any stray scraps of jinsei that might still be left within his unmoving body.
“This isn’t right.” My mother’s eyes narrowed and flashed like twin chips of polished jade. “The champions are not supposed to permanently damage the contenders. That boy’s core may never be whole again. His channels may never recover.”
As much as I hated to admit it, my mother was right. That savage display went far beyond any of the televised Five Dragons Challenges I’d watched growing up. There’d been plenty of bloody noses, chipped teeth, and even a few broken limbs, but never anything more serious than that. These fights were supposed to let those of us from outside the clans prove our worth to the martial arts academy and earn our spots as students. No one was supposed to get hurt, much less have their jinsei channels obliterated.
“Times have changed, Eve.” A man dressed in the ornate robes of an Empyreal clan elder had appeared in the row below his, and the weight of his aura had forced the crowd to shy away from him. His iron-gray hair and matching wedge of a beard sparked with threads of sacred power strong enough to light up half a city. The scrivenings on his lapels told me this was Grayson Bishop, the headmaster of the School of Swords and Serpents.
He was one of the five sacred sages, the most powerful men in the world.
And he spoke my mother’s name like he’d known her for years.
“Why?” My mother held her ground as Grayson stepped so close that his aura surrounded hers. “What purpose does it serve to have your champion break a child?”
“The School wishes to raise the caliber of our students.” Grayson gave a slight shrug, as if to say the fate of those who found themselves injured or killed by the challenge didn’t bother him in the slightest. “This seems the most certain way to weed out the pretenders and fools before they can pollute our fine institution with their degenerate ways.”
Grayson’s eyes focused on me with the intensity of a spotlight. His attention burrowed into my aura and plucked at the edges of my core like a man inspecting the quality of a tool he planned to buy.
It took every ounce of willpower I possessed to stand firm next to my mother. I wasn’t about to let any man, not even the head of the academy I so desperately needed to attend, push me off the path I’d chosen.
For a moment, the elder’s gaze wavered, and his forehead wrinkled with concentration. My mother had warned me that my core might be evaluated, but she had also told me few Empyreals would be able to understand the wound inside me. But as Grayson’s face darkened, I wondered if my mother had been wrong.
“We’re leaving.” Her hand closed around my wrist like a steel noose. “I did not bring my son here to be butchered for your amusement.”
“Then why bring him here at all, Eve?” Grayson’s smile hardened into a thin dark line across his face. “His core is weaker even than his father’s, and we both know how that ended. Did you really think this pup would stand a chance against my champion?”
A fiery tornado of thoughts whirled through my skull. One of the five sacred sages, men and women so powerful they might as well have been another species from the rest of us, knew my mother. He knew my father.
He knew me.
“Because I thought you were a man of honor, Grayson.” My mother pulled me past the headmaster with no more care than passing a beggar on the street.
“Listen to your mother, boy,” Grayson called after us. “My champion will break you even more easily than I broke your father for his crimes.”
The words stung my ears like a swarm of angry hornets. Shame reddened my cheeks and forced me to lower my head. My mother never told me what my father had done to earn death for himself and exile for what remained of his family. My father was a ghost that haunted our family, a spirit that had cursed us with a dishonor my mother had never been able to purge.
And, now, when I was so close to my chance to move beyond his sins and make a new life for myself, his specter had appeared again to turn the headmaster against me. A cold certainty settled over me, and I knew that if I left the arena there would be no escape from the chains my father’s crimes had wrapped around my throat. This was my one chance to prove that I was worthy of something more than exile in the undercity, that I was more than my dishonored father’s weak shadow.
Fighting Hank Eli might get me killed, but leaving without even trying to win the challenge would leave me trapped in a life without hope or possibility. I’d spend the rest of my days as a virtual slave, my body breaking down under the strain of the thankless labor that would consume my days.
I’d rather die.
“I’m not leaving.” My words were as cold and unmoving as the floor beneath our feet. In all my fifteen years, I’d never defied my mother before that moment.
“Don’t do this.” My mother held my wrist so tight her pulse pounded against mine. “Please.”
“You deserve more than this.” I leaned in until our foreheads touched. I needed her to understand how important this was to me. I needed her to know what it
