Her eyes snapped open again, and she stared into the icy silver of Nyxobas’s eyes. She’d seen those eyes in her dreams, even before she’d met him. Why?
“I will also be nominating a champion,” he intoned. His voice sent a shudder of dread up her spine.
Hothgar bowed deeply. “Of course.”
Nyxobas’s eyes locked on Ursula, and cold dread spread through her chest. That piercing gaze, the face of her nightmares. And suddenly, she knew what was coming. Nyxobas will be my death. As he stared at her, terror stole her breath.
“No,” she whispered.
His pale gaze locked on her, and he boomed, “The hound will be my champion.”
“What will be her reward?” asked Hothgar. “A hound of Emerazel cannot be a lord.”
“If she wins, I will release her from my service.”
“And if she loses?” asked Hothgar.
“She will share the same fate as all defeated. She will join me in the void.”
Chapter 20
Ursula traced her fingertips over the ring in her cloak pocket, staring out the carriage window. They flew over the barren landscape—small oneiroi houses mixed with the remains of meteor impacts. Asta’s glow cast them in violet light, while above, clouds of moths swirled and danced. If she looked carefully, she could occasionally see the black form of a bat winging among them.
A bat among the moths.
On the other side of the carriage, Bael sat mute, his face fixed with a stony expression. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but she could guess. Since he was a gentleman—despite what the other women said—he was probably considering the most painless way to kill her in the melee. A quick slash of his sword through her neck, perhaps.
Her chest tightened. What I need is a plan. An escape route. A way to survive.
And if not, I need to know exactly what I’m up against.
“So how did you win it?” she asked.
Bael’s sapphire gaze slid to her. “Win what?”
“The tournament. When you became a lord, how did you do it?” Give me a bloody clue, at least.
A perplexed line appeared between his eyebrows. “I won by being the best fighter. And the strongest.”
Well, that’s unhelpful. “Can you, you know, provide some specifics? How did you survive the melee?”
“I killed any man who came near me.” His eyes were cold as glacier water. “The same way I will survive this one.”
“So you think you can kill him?”
“Him?”
“The man in gray. The one who killed Sallos.”
“Sallos was weak, and a fool. The stranger will be no match for me.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Even with your injuries?”
A muscle worked in his jaw. Even obliquely mentioning his lost wings seemed to set him off.
Time to change the subject. “Has anyone else ever survived? I mean, has there been more than one left alive at the end of a tournament?”
“You ask me if anyone has violated Nyxobas’s edict? No, the penalty of defying the god’s orders is death.”
“Hothgar set the rules.”
“Hothgar speaks for Nyxobas. It is the same punishment.” He turned back to the window, lost in his own thoughts.
She bit her lip. Hadn’t the wives said that Bael could use mind control on humans? And if so—did she count as a human? She didn’t have her demon magic here. If that were the case, he could just compel her to stab herself. The fight would be over.
“I guess the other women know I’m not here as your harlot now,” she muttered.
“What?” he snapped, suddenly alert.
“The lords’ wives believed that’s why I was here. A consolation prize for you. Apparently their husbands have some kinky desire to mind control human women. They were certain you were the same.”
He stared at her, his expression unreadable.
“Could you, if you wanted? Use mind control on me?”
“I won’t.”
She let out a long breath. “Okay, so that’s one of my fears allayed. But there’s the matter of me not having a weapon.”
Bael leaned forward in his chair and looked her straight in the face.
“I won’t control your mind. But it won’t matter. You are not going to survive this tournament, whether or not you have a sword.” His words slid through her bones. “If one of the other champions doesn’t kill you, I will.” He looked out the window again, his jaw clenched tight.
* * *
Descending in the elevator should have come as a relief as Ursula neared the comfort of her quarters. But instead, with each passing level, it was as if an increasingly heavy weight pressed on her chest.
The full implications of her new role as Nyxobas’s champion were awful to contemplate. A fight to the death—one she had no chance of winning. In order to survive, she’d have to slaughter Cera’s brother, the stranger in gray, and a horde of lethal demons. If, by some miracle, none of them killed her, she’d have to face Bael, a twenty-two thousand-year-old demon.