Page 26 of This Shattered Star

Pressing the palms of my hands to my temples did nothing to soothe the overwhelming pain pounding throughout my skull.

“Twenty of you stand, fate unknown,

aim for the place where blood will be sown.

Make haste,

for there is not a second to waste.

Eighteen will remain,

the last two shall be slain.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Maverick’s voice bounced off every corner of my mind, crisp and clear, as though he stood in the room with us.

“You have ten minutes.”

The next instruction was much quieter. Like he’d spoken from across the room instead of directly into my ear.

The ringing stopped immediately, and the pressure subsided moments after.

But there was little I could do about the lingering, phantom pain. It felt like my mind was covered in bruises. “Count on Maverick to make a spectacle out of one simple task.”

“Bastard,” Kodhan grunted, locks of hair swaying as he attempted to shake away his own pain.

We’d all heard the same thing, then.

“You call him by name, not by his title,” Theia directed at me. Though it was without accusation. Again, with that curiosity. “You really are close with him.”

“We can talk about that later. We must get to the Dome, quickly,” Brannon said as he marched past me. “You heard the king. The last two competitors to get there are killed on sight. I would prefer if we all kept our heads on our shoulders today.”

He was right. Even from where we stood, a commotion could already be heard from the stairway in the tower.

The last thing I wanted to do was throw myself into a cramped stairwell with sixteen other angry, panicked competitors, but we had little choice. The chances that the entrance to the Dome were in this wing were slim.

We tried every door lining the walls on our way there, hoping for an alternative—anything that would prevent us from facing the chaos that grew louder by the second. But all of them were still locked.

Then we found the remaining sixteen scrambling up and down the steps, pushing and shoving and shouting.

A strong arm wove itself around my waist, pulling me back just in time to avoid two other competitors barreling through the entrance to our wing, only to race down the corridor without so much as a glance behind them. None of us had the heart to tell them that they would not find what they were searching for.

“There’s no point in throwing ourselves in there until it looks like someone’s found something,” Kodhan muttered, eyes trained ahead. His arm loosened its hold, though his hand lingered, fingers splayed across my stomach.

I frowned, trying and failing to ignore the way every nerve in my body zeroed in on his touch. “We can’t afford to stand here, either. Maverick said we only have ten minutes.”

“No, he didn’t. He only gave one command.” Theia’s brows furrowed. “Unless you were the only one who he gave the warning to.”

Unease twisted knots into my spine. “Why would he only warn me?”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Theia challenged. “The king does what he wants. And if he’s going to warn someone, it only makes sense that it would be you.”

“Whatever his reasoning is, we have ten minutes to haul our asses out of here with no real way out.” Brannon gestured to the other competitors, at the chaos that was increasing with each moment that ticked on.

Ten minutes. Less than that, now. Searching every wing in such a short span of time was physically impossible, even if wesplit up to cover more ground. It would take time to find each other again regardless.

Maverick never spoke without reason. Of that, I was certain. He was fond of theatrics, but he wouldn’t warn me just to incite panic.