He didn’t look pale and unfocused, like he had actually consumed the poison. He looked, if anything, more focused than ever.
I wanted to run at him with blade extended, like an arrow released from a bow, a transport vessel breaking through the atmosphere. But I didn’t. And neither did he. We both stood in the arena, waiting.
“What are you waiting for, sister?” Ryzek said. “Have you lost your nerve?”
“No,” I said. “I’m waiting for the poison you swallowed this morning to settle in.”
A gasp rattled through the crowd, and for once—for the first time—Ryzek’s face went slack with shock. I had finally truly surprised him.
“All my life you’ve told me I have nothing to offer but the power that lives in my body,” I said. “But I am not an instrument of torture and execution; I am the only person who knows the real Ryzek Noavek.” I stepped toward him. “I know how you fear pain more than anything else in this world. I know that you gathered these people here today, not to celebrate a successful scavenge, but to witness the murder of Orieve Benesit.”
I sheathed my blade. I held my hands out to my sides so the crowd could see that they were empty. “And the most important thing I know, Ryzek, is that you can’t bear to kill someone unless you drug yourself first. Which is why I poisoned your calming tonic this morning.”
Ryzek touched his stomach, as if he could feel the hushflower eating away at his guts through his armor.
“You made a mistake, valuing me only for my currentgift and my skill with a knife,” I said.
And for once, I believed it.
CHAPTER 36: AKOS
The air in the underground prison was cool, but Akos knew that wasn’t why Isae was trembling as she said, “Your mother said Ori would be here.”
“There has to be a mistake,” Cisi said softly. “Something she didn’t see—”
Akos was pretty sure there was no mistake, but he wasn’t about to share that now. They had to find Ori. If she wasn’t in the prison, she had to be closer to the amphitheater—maybe above them, in the arena, or on the platform where Ryzek had cut into his own sister.
“We’re wasting time. We need to go upstairs and find her,” he said, surprised by how forceful his own voice sounded. “Now.”
Apparently his voice had broken through Isae’s panic. She took a deep breath and turned toward the door, where the distant footsteps of a few ticks ago had resolved into the menacing form of Vas Kuzar.
“Surukta. Kereseth. Ah—Benesit,” Vas said, looking at Isae with a little tilt to his mouth. “Not as pretty as your twin, I have to say. Is that scar from a Shotet blade, by any chance?”
“Benesit?” Teka said, staring at Isae. “As in . . .”
Isae nodded.
Cisi had backed up against the wall of one of the cells, her hands flat against the glass. Akos wondered if his sister felt like she was standing in their living room again, watching Vas Kuzar murder their dad. That was how he had felt the first few times he saw Vas after the kidnapping—like everything was unraveling inside him at once. He didn’t feel that way anymore.
Vas was empty-eyed as always. It had been disappointing to figure out that Vas was so empty of wrath, numb inside as well as outside. It was easier to think of him as pure evil, but the truth was, he was just a pet doing his master’s bidding.
The memory of Akos’s dad’s death surfaced: his broken skin, the rich color of his blood, like the currentstream above them; the bloody blade that Vas had wiped on a pant leg as he left the house. The man with the polished Shotet armor and golden-brown eyes who couldn’t feel pain. Unless—unless.
Unless Akos touched him.
He didn’t bother to reason with Vas. It was a waste of time. Akos just started toward him, his boots scraping the grit they had tracked onto the glass floor. Vas’s eyes looked even colder, despite being such a warm shade of hazel, because of the lights coming from beneath him.
Akos had the heart of prey; he wanted to run, or at least keep space between them, but he made himself press against that space. Breathed open-mouthed, with flared nose; never breathing enough.
Vas lunged, and Akos let himself be prey, then; he sprang away. Not fast enough. Vas’s knife scraped his armor. Akos winced at the sound, turning again to face him.
He would let Vas get a few close calls in, let him get cocky. Cocky meant sloppy, and sloppy meant Akos might live.
Vas’s eyes were like stamped metal, his arms were like twisted rope. He lunged again, but instead of trying to stab Akos, he grabbed his arm with his free hand and slammed him, hard, against the cell wall. Akos’s head snapped back, smacking into the glass. He saw bursts of color and the glow of the floor against the flat ceiling. Vas’s hand was clamped around him, stern enough to bruise.