So I kill. Blood taints everything. My armor, my skin, my mask, my hair.
The hilt of my scim drips with it, making it slippery beneath my hand. I’m Death himself, presiding over this butchery. Some of my victims die with merciful swiftness, gone before their bodies touch the ground.
Others take longer.
A wretched part of me wants to do it stealthily. Just slip up behind them and slide my scim in so I don’t have to see their eyes. But the battle is uglier than that. Harder. Crueler. I stare into the faces of the men I kill, and though the storm muffles the groans, every death carves its way into my memory, each one a wound that will never heal.
Death supplants everything. Friendship, love, loyalty. The good memories I have of these men—of helpless laughter, of bets won and pranks hatched—
they are stolen away. All I can remember are the worst things, the darkest things.
Ennis, sobbing like a child in Helene’s arms when his mother died six months back. His neck snaps in my hands like a twig.
Leander and his never-to-be requited love for Helene. My scim slides into his neck like a bird through a clear sky. Easily. Effortlessly.
Demetrius, who screamed in futile rage after he watched his ten-year-old brother whipped to death by the Commandant for desertion. He smiles when he sees me coming, drops his weapon and waits as if the edge of my blade is a gift. What does Demetrius see as the light leaves his eyes? His little brother waiting for him? An infinity of darkness?
On goes the slaughter, and all the while, lurking in the back of my head is Cain’s ultimatum. The battle will end when you, Aspirant Veturius, defeat—or are defeated by—the leader of the enemy.
I’ve tried to seek out Helene and end this quickly, but she’s elusive. When she finally finds me, I feel as if I’ve been battling for days, though in truth, it has been no more than half an hour.
“Elias.” She shouts my name, but her voice is weak with reluctance. The battle slows to a halt as our men stop attacking each other, as the mist clears enough for them to turn and watch Helene and me. Slowly, they gather around us, forming a half circle pocked by empty spaces where living men should stand.
Hel and I face each other, and I wish for the Augurs’ power to know her mind. Her blonde hair is a tangle of blood, mud, and ice, her braid unpinned and hanging limply down her back. Her chest rises and falls heavily.
I wonder how many of my men she’s killed.
Her fist tightens around the hilt of her scim—a warning she knows I won’t miss.
Then she attacks. Though I pivot and bring up my scim to parry, my insides are paralyzed. I am staggered at her vehemence. Another part of me understands. She wants this madness done.
At first, I try to deflect her, unwilling to go on the offensive. But a decade of ruthlessly honed instinct rebels at such passivity. Soon, I’m fighting in earnest, using every trick I know to survive her onslaught.
My mind flickers to the attack poses Grandfather taught me, the ones the Blackcliff Centurions don’t know. The ones Helene won’t be able to defend against.
You can’t kill Hel. You can’t.
But what choice is there? One of us has to kill the other, or the Trial won’t end.
Let her kill you. Let her win.
As if she senses my weakness, Helene grits her teeth and drives me back, her pale eyes glacial, daring me to challenge her. Let her, let her, let her. Her scim cuts into my neck, and I counter with a quick thrust just as she’s about to take my head off.
My battle rage rushes through me, shoving all other thoughts aside. Suddenly, she isn’t Helene. She is an enemy who wants me dead. An enemy I must survive.
I fling my scim to the sky, watching with mercenary satisfaction as Helene’s eyes flick up to follow the weapon’s path. Then I strike, coming down on her like an executioner. My knee drives into her chest, and even through the storm, I hear the crack of a rib and the surprised whoosh of her breath leaving her.
She is beneath me, her ocean eyes terrified as I pin her scim arm down.
Our bodies are entangled, entwined, but Helene is foreign to me suddenly, unknowable as the heavens. I tear a dagger from my chest, and my blood roars as my fingers touch the cold hilt. She knees me and grabs her scim, determined to finish me before I can finish her. I’m too fast. I lift the dagger high, my rage peaking, holding like the highest note of a mountain storm.
And then I bring the blade down.
XXXIX: Laia
In the predawn darkness, the storm churning above Serra strikes with the wrath of a conquering army. The servants’ corridor swims in a half foot of rain, and Cook and I sweep out the water with rush brooms while Izzi tirelessly stacks sandbags. Rain lashes my face like the icy fingers of a ghost.
“Nasty day for a Trial!” Izzi calls to me over the downpour.