Page 104 of Scarlet Wars
I stepped aside instead of meeting him head-on, catching bone and leverage, folding his weight over my hip.
His first real mistake was committing to a full swing. I slipped the line, grabbed his wrist, and torqued. Something in his shoulder snapped, loud enough to draw a cheer.
My forearm drove into his ribs. His breath burst out in a sharp exhale, but he came back with a howl, smashing his forehead into mine until stars burst behind my eyes.
The crowd roared for blood. His blood. My blood. They didn’t care.
He swung again; this time he aimed for my head. I ducked, caught his wrist, and twisted, forcing his bulk off balance. My knee came up into his gut, and the air whooshed out of him.
He staggered back, then roared and ripped a length of metal from the cage. The crowd exploded as he snapped the bar against the steel until the end splintered off. A spear.
He lunged. I pivoted, but not fast enough.
The jagged edge tore across my ribs, ripping through skin and muscle. White-hot pain stole the breath from my lungs.
I slammed into the cage, one hand clamping over the wound. My fingers came away slick with blood. The crowdhowledfor the finish.
It should have dropped me. This hit should’ve dropped me.
Instead, as I forced myself upright, something moved beneath the pain, a second pulse under my skin. Warmth spread along my ribs, dulling the burn as the bleeding slowed.
It wasn’t visible to anyone else—the wound looked the same, the blood still there—but inside, I was being held together by something that wasn’t mine.
No one else could reach me like that. No one else couldhealme like that, and keep it hidden from every eye in the Human World.
I clenched my jaw, torn between the relief and the terror of it.
She was here. How the hell was she here?
More importantly, if anyone realized what Emma was doing, if anyone caught even a flicker of translation, we’d both be dead a second later.
I couldn’t block it, not without revealing my own haze.
I let my gaze sweep the crowd, heart hammering as I searched the blur of faces hidden beyond the floodlights. Shadows shifted. Bodies leaned and screamed and jeered. And then…There.
Big blue eyes.
Wide, unblinking, caught on me like I was the only thing in the room.
For a moment, the world stilled. The crowd yelled. My opponent paced. And between us, in that impossible space, she held me together.
I shook my head. Once. Barely more than a twitch.
The warmth vanished instantly. The wound throbbed again, blood damp against my shirt, but inside, the damage had eased enough to keep me moving.
The hulk came at me again, stabbing and jabbing, driving me toward the edge of the cage. The bars rattled with every near hit while the crowd shrieked for blood.
I caught the rebar once, twice, the impact bruising my palms, but he tore it free each time. One shove forced me to a knee, the jagged point hovering a breath from my eye, his rancid breath hot against my face.
Desperation turned ruthless. I drove my forehead into his nose—felt the crunch—twisted under his arm and kicked the back of his knee. He dropped just enough for me to wrench the rebar free. The jagged edge sliced my palm, but now it was mine.
No hesitation. I rammed it into his side, right under the ribs, and drove until his roar turned to a gurgle. His body thrashed, blood spilling warm across my knuckles.
I twisted the rebar free and drove it again, higher this time, until his body jerked once, twice, then went limp.
For a second, all I could hear was my own ragged breathing. My blood, his blood, the stink of iron and sweat mixing heavy in the air. My vision tunneled. My hands shook.
I’d barely scraped by. One wrong slip and I’d be cooling in the dirt instead of him.
