“Come on, damn you!” Nyx howled over the hectoring voices.
And then Sorcha reached up and snapped open the buckle on the side of her helmet. She lifted it from her head, and Nyx staggered back as if she’d seen a ghost. She probably thought she had. As far as she was concerned, Thalestris had already ended Sorcha’s life, days earlier, beneath the light of a full moon and surrounded by her tribe of warrior women.
The mob in the stands knew none of that.
But still there were gasps and cries of outrage when the crowd realized that it hadn’t been me under that helmet after all. A confused silence followed, and then a gathering murmur that raced through the stands like wildfire when they realized who it had been. Many of them—most of them, from the sounds of it—still remembered the Lady Achillea from her arena days. The crowd was ecstatic. Their cheers, deafening.
But something inside Nyx broke in that moment.
I watched as she retreated from Sorcha, shaking her head.
“No!” she cried. “No! This isn’t how it’s supposed to be . . .”
“You disappoint me, Nyx,” Sorcha called out, her voice carrying across the arena and silencing the cheering crowd, who held their breath in anticipation of what was to come. “But then, you always have.”
“I won’t fight you!” Nyx’s face twisted in rage and anguish. “I won’t—”
The spear that came out of nowhere sang as it flew. Sorcha heard it just in time to dive for Nyx and tackle her out of the way as the spear thrower—dressed all in black, like the rest of Aquila’s fighters—stalked forward.
Thalestris.
Sorcha rolled away from Nyx, who lay gasping and winded—but alive—beneath her, and leaped to her feet.
“If you’re too weak to finish this fight, gladiolus,” Thalestris called out to Nyx in her raven’s-croak voice, “I assure you, I am not.”
Cai nudged my shoulder. “You said she’d be back. You were right.”
“I hate it when I’m right.”
What I hated even more was that whereas Nyx didn’t know how to beat Sorcha in a fight, Thalestris—my sister’s primus pilus, the woman who’d helped her develop her unique style—most certainly did. My hate was mitigated by the fact that I’d been half expecting the disgraced Amazon to put in an appearance that night. And to that end, I had prepared a welcome for her.
I would fight fire with fire.
A lot of fire.
“Ajani!” I shouted. But my voice, hoarse from the ravages of Varro’s choking, was lost in the din of the mob. Quint put a hand on my shoulder and, instead, blew a deafening blast on his whistle. I waved my hands over my head and cried, “Now!”
Out in the field arena and waiting for my signal, Ajani drew her bow and arched her back, aiming at the stars overhead. Then she loosed and shot a flaming arrow arcing up into the sky. It hung there at the top of its arc, like a blazing star itself . . . before sailing down to slam into the ground right between my feet. The missile stuck there, still aflame, and my Amazon contingent ran forward—each of them now equipped with one of the fire chains Cai and Quint had carried with them in their legion packs.
Kallista and her sisters gathered around Ajani’s arrow and set their cage balls alight. Then they poured through the ludus gate and out onto the field of battle, swinging their flaming weapons in great roaring circles above their heads. The appearance of fire-wielding Amazons sent the crowd in the stands into a rapture of bloodlust as the girls from the ludus that was named after Amazons now had to turn and face real Amazons.
At the sight of us, the Achillea gladiatrices who’d accompanied me to Corsica sent up a Cantii war cry and surged back into the fray with renewed vigor. Bloodied, battered, but on their feet. Every single one of them, and a glimpse of Elka—right in the thick of it—hewing a circle with her spear did my heart as much good, I’m sure, as it did Quint’s. He and Cai wasted no time wading into the fight, and I left them to it, turning my attention to the rest.
The makeshift arena had erupted into fresh chaos with our arrival.
I saw Thalassa and Kore fighting back-to-back like they were partners in a dance. Hestia cut a swath through a clot of Dis guards with her sica blade, and Gratia faced down an Amazona gladiatrix who was actually bigger than she was. Ajani laid down arrow-fire cover for those who needed it, and Antonia brandished with devastating grace the crescent blade that had become almost a part of her. Everywhere the crowd looked there was something for them to slake their thirst for excitment. At the center of the ring of clashing combatants, there was a wide, empty space—an arena within the arena where Sorcha and Thalestris battled grimly.
I rushed to join my sister so that, together, we could put an end to all the madness that Nyx and Thalestris had wrought.
“You’re weak, Sorcha,” I heard Thalestris taunting in a voice like spitting venom. “Lame and old and half-blind . . .”
“My only weakness was trusting you, Thalestris,” Sorcha answered. “My blindness was in thinking you were worthy.”
The Amazon snarled. “You were never the warrior they said you were.”
Sorcha circled to her left, guarding against attack on that side.
“You’re right,” she said. “I was never Achillea. I was Sorcha of the Cantii. And it’s high time I reclaimed that name. And that mantle.”
My heart swelled to hear those words, but it wasn’t going to be easy for her. Sorcha was holding her own, but she wasn’t gaining any ground. They were too evenly matched.
It was my intention to disrupt that delicate balance.
I circled around to Thalestris’s flank, but she wouldn’t be drawn away from her focus on Sorcha. Instead, she kicked up a discarded retiarius net that lay on the ground and kept me at bay with it while she still wielded her spear one-handed like it was an extension of her arm. I darted and feinted, probing for any gap in her defenses, but Thalestris had none. The crowd jeered and shouted, urging us to spill blood, but I was nothing more than a nuisance to her. A buzzing fly. Barely a distraction.
So I made myself a target instead.
The next time she whipped around with her net, I let her catch my blades—both of them—in the knotted ropes. A fatal mistake of a young fighter. A gladiolus . . . Thalestris was used to that, and she pounced on my vulnerability, teeth bared in a triumphant grimace as she yanked the net forward. I let her pull me off balance. Into the circle of her striking distance. The makeshift stands thundered and shook as the crowd roared madly and stomped their feet.
I prayed to the Morrigan that my sister could see what I’d done . . .
That she would be fast enough . . .
She was my brilliant warrior sister. And she didn’t disappoint.
I’d left myself wide open to the strike. But in the scintilla of a moment when Thalestris reared back with her spear, she left a space. It was on her defensive side—an opening most fighters wouldn’t have been able to exploit—but in her drive to end me, she forgot for that instant who her other opponent was.