Page 82 of Nemesis Mine
Avexa’s spear slammed into the man’s back. For a second he was too shocked to react.
Then the man opened his mouth to scream, and a great spurt of blood frothed forth. The spray caught the people standing around and Cyrus too, but they could save their squeals—within seconds he had his daggers out and finished the job, cutting the man’s throat with vicious efficiency.
Blood sprayed out, a terrible scarlet arc. It was on his face, in his hair. Cyrus did not care.
He turned to face Avexa. She stood motionless on the platform, staring at him. Behind her, Forwick was trying to scramble away. Cyrus paid her no heed, his eyes locked onto Avexa’s. He could feel the man’s blood on his mouth, trickling warm and wet down his lips. He did not even realise that his eyes were glowing until the panicked cries from around him took on a new fear. He had not called on his magic, not consciously. It was simply there the moment he needed it, responding to his rage and the dreadful black chasm inside him that he did not dare acknowledge.
Avexa held his gaze for one beat, two. Her hand went to the sword at her hip, a slow, measured movement. Cyrus followed it. His chest rose and fell rapidly, breathing hard. The glow in his eyes felt hot, almost painful. His hands trembled around the daggers in his grip.
Then Avexa’s eyes slid sideways suddenly, and Cyrus realised a second too late that she’d been distracting him.
The elected champions had already been ushered through the metal gate for their interviews and their celebrations. Most of the losing champions had gone too, to drown their disappointment in Durov’s taverns. The gate was nearly closed, preventing Cyrus from escaping but also stopping anyone from rushing back in to fight him. It screeched to a halt over the cobbles as the last onlookers streamed out in a panicked rush.
But from the remains of that crowd, a few figures lingered. Avexa was not the only one who had stayed behind. The Federation’s latest graduates—their youngest, and hungriest—materialised like wraiths around him, shoulders forming an impenetrable wall, hemming Cyrus in.
All this time, Cyrus had courted attention with faked battles, luring in audiences for maximum effect. But here at the end of it, there was no audience to gasp or cheer or boo. They all ran to escape, leaving wrongdoer and champions to their violence.
There were five—six?—seven surrounding him, watching with faces of stone. Cyrus’s head turned to the right, to the left, and back again, but he recognised so few of them. They were soyoung.
But this wasn’t over. His magic still throbbed in his fingertips, and all he had to do was find the connection with the ivy that grew all around the castle, and tell it topull—
He felt the familiar purple fire fill his eyes, so intense it almost obscured his vision entirely.
But he heard Avexa’s roar.
“Do not let him use his powers!”
Too late, Cyrus wanted to say,you’re too late. The ivy was there, responding to his magic, inquisitive and eager to please, with its thousands of tendrils embedded into the stonework of the castle walls and the keep itself. So much destruction could be caused if he could just—
And suddenly it was gone, all of it, his connection to the plant cut as swiftly as a scythe slicing through wheat. A terrible blackness descended all around him, robbing him of every sense. Cyrus was blind in an endless void of darkness, his hands thrust out helplessly as he tried to tether himself to the reality he knew. The blackness seemed to push at his eyes, worming its way into his sockets. Silence had its own roar, pressing in against his eardrums, a dreadful and unrelenting pressure. His flailing hands found his eyes, his ears,tried in vain to protect them. He had fallen to his knees, but he could not feel the cold stone below. His daggers clattered to the ground, but he did not hear them fall. He was crying out—he was screaming—but he could not hear a thing.
Whatever magic had caused this, it was so powerful that it sent his own magic reeling back into the darkest corners of his mind, chased into shadows by a force far greater than any he could summon. This magic was in his head, coiled around his innermost thoughts, insidious and inescapable. He was helpless to it. He was completely vulnerable. He was—
He was seeing something! Light, the barest spot of it, a million miles away and right in front of him. Cyrus reached for it, swaying forward on his knees. The light grew closer and closer still. It flickered and Cyrus wanted to cry out, to beg it not to leave him here, and the light must have heard him because it flickered again and then started to grow, taking shape. Taking a wonderfully familiar shape, a sob squeezing out of his throat at the sight.
Max crouched before him. The edges of his body glowed and flickered with the same light. Cyrus was too busy drinking in his face to care. There was the vaguest sense that he shouldn’t be doing that, that he should be angry with Max; angrier than he had ever been with anyone in his life. But he wasn’t. How could he be? That face was more beloved than any he had ever known. He longed to touch it, to trace the familiar lines of Max’s mouth, his jaw, his dimple. He wanted to press his forehead to the crook of Max’s neck, feel the jump of his pulse, the only anchor Cyrus would ever need.
He reached out. But Max didn’t allow the contact, leaning back to keep distance between them.
“Cyrus,” Max said. His tone was so gentle. It made Cyrus want to cry. “Cyrus, what’s wrong?”
What could he say? Everything was wrong,everything, his every sense had left him and he was tumbling in a darkness he could not name. He could not find the words for it. His thoughts were not his own. If he had a soul it was clenched in someone else’s fist, wrung out and lifeless.
Max watched him, his expression pitying. He stood, leaving Cyrus on the ground.
“Don’t go,” he choked out. “Don’t leave me—Max, you can’t leave me—”
“I must,” said Max. There was an odd tone to his voice, like he was talking to a stranger. False sincerity. He didn’t sound likeMax, Cyrus’s Max, the man he—
“I’m sorry, Cyrus, but I must leave. I’ve always been planning to leave. You know that, don’t you?”
The void pulsed around him. The pressure grew tighter still. Every breath rattled in his chest. His head felt like it was going to explode.
And yet somehow, none of that compared to Max, to that strange pitying expression as he watched Cyrus struggle at his feet.
The whisper slipped out from between numb lips. “No.” It wasn’t a refusal. It wasn’t even denial. He was begging.
“It’s been fun, this game we’ve played, but I’ve won my reelection now.” Max sighed, a pitying sound. The edges of him flickered, throbbed with the void, then stabilised. “You knew this was never going to be real, didn’t you? I’mone of the strongest champions in the kingdom. I have to think of my image.”
