Page 12 of Eyes of Kings

“Help Levi out,” Calla replies.

“Calla.”

She swings. Anton can’t argue while she’s attacking him, so he counters the move, his eyes flicking behind her in a telltale gesture. That gives Calla enough of a warning to pull back and block Levi’s swing, slamming hard into his blade. It makes her teeth shake. Her crown thrums in question. She doesn’t care to tap into it yet.

“Calla.”

She ignores Anton. She’s watching her opponent: the blade, the twitch, and then—

Qi, shoving from the other direction. From Anton. It takes her off-balance, and it pushes the weapon out of Levi’s hands. Calla whirls back around, her sword rising, and Anton swings a forceful strike, pitching the blade out of her hands. It lands with athunkin the ground, burying amid sand and mud.

“You,” he says, pointing at Levi. “Stay put.” Anton discards his own sword so that it lands point down. He’s trying to defuse the sparring match. The blade embeds itself upright in the arena ground like some poor attempt at a headstone. “Calla.Now.”

“Yes,” Calla says. “Talk to me, darling.”

She’s not done. There is no warning before she attacks Anton again, her boots scraping two short spurts through the wet slush. He throws himself to the side, narrowly avoiding contact. When Anton uses his hands for a crutch to spring upright, Calla is already swinging her arm.

He counters her before she can land a hit. Rather than shove her away and recalibrate, Anton grips her arm hard, pulling her closer. Her spine settles against his chest.

“News from August’s camp,” he says into her ear. Only for her. “Otta is there.”

Calla rams her head back. It’s lucky that she isn’t any shorter, or the prongs of her crown would have struck his eyes. Instead, her hair cushions the hit against his nose, and Anton lets go with a hiss—a conveyance that she’s fighting too unfairly.

“Does that change anything for us?” she asks, spinning around.

Blood trickles from Anton’s nose onto his lip. “Of course.”

Calla’s pulse ratchets up. The rain falls fast enough to wash away the smear of his injury in seconds. It does not wash clean his displeasure. He always speaks about Otta Avia the same way. As though the mere mention of her name ought to prompt prayer and devotion, spectators clasping their hands together and falling to their knees. Despite his promises of loyalty, despite kneeling before her in Eigi wanting to be her first soldier in this bid for the throne… Anton Makusa has not wholly seceded from Otta. She canhearit.

The Crescents are all standing in witness to this parley. They do not want to interrupt.

Calla lunges. She’s on the offensive, her teeth gritted. There’s an opportunity to dive for her fallen sword, but she doesn’t take it. Her fist swings, and Anton parries in place of a counterattack. Her foot moves for a sweep. He darts out of the way.

He can keep doing this, but she will outlast this dance between them. The crown whispers in her ear; it assures her that it is an unending source. They have been evenly matched in the past, but circumstances have changed. The last time they fought in this arena, the stands were filled. Calla remembers the shouting, the glee, the commentator over the loudspeakers. She couldn’t walk away. She couldn’t think past her need for comeuppance—theempty, eternal pit in her chest that no amount of blood filled, despite all her best efforts, despite felling everyone who had wronged her, who had let her suffer…

A sharp sting. Calla hisses, bringing her arm to her chest and flitting back several steps. A red line glares at her, quickly blotted with the rain.

Anton has pulled a knife from his sleeve.

“Cheat,” she accuses.

The coliseum stills, short of the pouring rain, and suddenly Calla is sick of being sodden. She wants it to stop. She wants to command the heavens to heel. There’s an immense pulse, and then there is complete silence.

An invisible barrier domes the space above the coliseum. Rain falls from the clouds and lands on the wave of qi that Calla is holding overhead. The Crescents stare up, their hands lifting to test for the presence of rain.

Anton doesn’t crane his head to look.

“We better clean that wound,” he announces, feigning sympathy. He grabs her elbow. Gestures to the Crescents, then the swords on the ground. “Your clerics won’t like the mess you’re making of valuable weapons from the vaults. Make sure everything goes back where it was found.”

He marches Calla toward the palace. She lets him, because she’s busier watching the yellow haze settling onto the scene. His face, his chest, his hands. Floating upward. Floating toward her. If there was any doubt that only she is capable of seeing him like this, there is none after this display. The Crescents do not remark upon it. They stand oblivious to the precious qi that they worship, flowing freely.

“They’ll start following us again in a minute,” she warns.

“Then move faster,” Anton instructs.

They return to the palace using a side entrance in the coliseum. Calla drops the dome, and there’s faint squawking from the Crescents, surprised by the rain returning.

It is dark inside the palace. Cold, too, because of the draft slithering through the north wing. She watches Anton try to wring some water out from his undershirt, then give up promptly when it drizzles a path onto the floor.