Page 53 of Hellbound

Another competitor was hiding in the silhouette of a statue on her right, his face twisted in pain as he clutched his bleeding torso. Their eyes met—his ringed with white and flecked with blood.

A soft, keening whine picked up in Ksenia’s ear.

No. Not him.

A shadow grew long behind his statue, and Ksenia edged away, around the corner, muffling a scream as she heard a longsword skewer the man’s torso.

She peered back around to find Bohdan deftly slashing his sword out from the man’s side, disemboweling him into a heap of gasps and gurgles.

She sprinted for the wall.

A hand reached out, grasping her ankle, and she fell forward against a statue of an archer. A man had a firm grip on her boot, his sweaty hair hanging down the front of his face. He tugged hard, pulling her backward into the fray as Bohdan flourished his sword, steadily walking toward her. A couple of crossbow bolts hit the ground in front of her, just missing her head.

She kicked at his face and head, but he only hissed and captured her other foot, determined to use her as a distraction. Her sweaty hand clipped onto the bronzed bow of the statue and, with a forceful tug, broke it loose from the marbled fingers. She swung the bow down with both hands, sending it colliding into the top of her captor’s head with a sickening crunch as it caved his skull inward.

His grip on her slackened as blood bubbled from his mouth, his eyes twitching off-kilter.

A flash of silver arced overhead.

She screamed as she brought the metal bow up to block Bohdan’s longsword from taking off her head, its crystalline chime meeting with a jarring clang against the weathered bronze.

Sparks sprang from their contact into his face, momentarily blinding him, and she used the opportunity to pull herself to standing. She grinned and sprinted the last pace, vaulting over the low stone wall and landing on her side.

Her breath was shallow and clipped as she rolled on her back. Her shoulder and ankle seized with a sharp, shooting pain, but she had made it.

A familiar pair of feet ran toward her and she was pulled into a sitting position. Varka enveloped her in a hug too fierce for their arrangement of champion and sponsor.

“Well done, Senka.” She hauled Ksenia up to her feet, and the visual before her almost made her sit back again. She caught a glimpse of Bohdan, still hovering at the statuary edge, his longsword gleaming black with blood as he studied her.

She staggered backward, gaining her balance once more, and returned his glare.

She wasn’t going to let him best her.

Varka led her across the grounds and back toward the marble gazebo, her footsteps growing stiffer as they approached the dais where a crowd of sponsors and survivors stood. But one figure stood out amongst the rest.

An overwhelming sense of dread set into her bones as Radegast’s resonance announced the king’s presence. The sound filled her mind, pressing against her skull with a full-bodied chord, twisted and layered.

Ksenia could scarcely draw breath as she laid her eyes upon the king. The last time she had seen his washed-out eyes, he’d been hovering over her, burying Radegast’s blade in her chest.

Now those same disinterested blue eyes swept over her.

Ksenia’s vision blurred at the edges and her pulse roared in her ears, drowning out the crowd’s murmurs, the distant sounds of fighting and dying, and her own ragged breathing.

His hands were crossed behind his back and he gave a little slouch as if he were watching a game of chess.

He didn’t recognize her, of course. But a part of her wished he would so that her death meant something, and she wasn’t just a weapon that Vornaya had reassembled.

The throbbing pain in her shoulder helped—grounded her, kept her from doing something as catastrophically stupid as retrieving Caromir from the table, lunging forward, and driving it into his gullet.

Patience. Vornaya was testing her.

Ksenia was far from ready. She had witnessed Karsan’s speed and strength firsthand and had paid the ultimate price.

Now, she had to play the game carefully to free Danika and her soul.

King Saranov released her from his gaze to look out with a contented sigh over the field of bloodshed before him. She counted more than a dozen bodies littered around the sprawling statue garden, one draped over the stone wall, his hand outstretched in freedom with a hatchet buried in his back.

Ksenia’s palms dripped with sweat as she focused. There was a dart of movement within the field still; a few of the men hadn’t escaped yet, each clutching a weapon for defense. A longsword, a crossbow, and a polearm. Survivors and their sponsors watched with rapt intent. The scene had become sport for them once they had escaped safely.