Page 230 of Children of Fallen Gods

His lips broke from mine, then grazed over the tip of my nose, the bridge, the space of my forehead right between my eyebrows.

It was that forehead kiss, the one that seemed as if it wasn’t even fully intentional, that almost broke me.

“Everyone is watching,” I murmured, self-conscious not of his affection but of the way it threatened to unravel me.

“Who cares,” Max replied, still close enough that I felt the words in my skin. “I’m about to become Arch Commandant.”

He said it like a joke. It couldn’t be a joke. It had to be reality.

I couldn’t speak, even though suddenly, there was so much I wanted to say. I pulled him into one more embrace instead.

“I have a request.” His voice rumbled against my ear lobe, and I choked out my response.

“Smart to ask now, when I have no choice but to say yes.”

“The man with the parrot. The one that we saw in the Capital. Which came first, the bird or the coat?”

The memory made me rasp a chuckle. The man we had seen the first time I visited the Capital, what felt like a lifetime ago. A tall, bespectacled man with a green coat and a matching parrot. It had been a simple sort of joy when I ran up to him —I must ask you, did you get bird to match coat, or coat to match bird?

My eyes burned.

“That’s a secret,” I said, and he laughed as if that was a ridiculous answer. It was, really. He pulled back and we looked at each other.

“I’ll tell you when you get back,” I said.

A smile curled his mouth. Left side first, as always. “Deal.”

“Deal.”

“Maxantarius,” Ariadnea murmured, and Max scoffed.

“Give me a minute. This is a momentous enough occasion, isn’t it?” Then his gaze slipped to Sammerin, who looked as admirably collected as ever.

“I’d tell you not to do anything stupid,” Sammerin said, “but that would be useless and outdated advice.”

“Thank you, Sammerin. I, too, treasure our friendship.”

Still, something softened in his gaze as he patted his friend on the shoulder, gave him a little nod, then turned to the gap in the rail and the rocky stairs that led down to the Scar.

“Alright,” he told the Syrizen. “I’m ready.”

Ariadnea volunteered to lead him down. He did not look back as he took his first steps. The last thing I heard as they departed was Ariadnea’s voice, solemnly saying, “Good luck, Max.”

And with those words, the match began.

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Max

This entire concept was the most ridiculous fucking idea.

When I was twenty-one and generally a naive idiot, I had thought there was a certain romantic appeal to the fourth trial. Now, I wanted to laugh at myself for ever having thought that way. What had once seemed natural and primal now struck me as barbaric. Sure,thiscertainly will encourage rational, compassionate leadership.

Still, even as I told myself that there was nothing mystical about this process whatsoever, I had to fight a shudder of unease as I went down the stairs and landed in the unnatural, rippling darkness of the Scar’s floor. The light and air were strange here, even stranger than they looked from above. Mist that disobeyed the laws of nature swirled from the floor and the jagged rock of the walls. Shocks of light glinted in the stone that surrounded me, as if fireflies were buried within it and still, half a millennia later, were trying to dig their way out.

But more unnerving than all of that was the way itfelt. It reminded me of how I had felt when I melded my magic with Tisaanah’s, except while that had been a pleasant, alluring sensation, this was odd and saccharine, like a noise so high-pitched it left my ears ringing.

I drew my magic to the surface, readying myself. I looked out into the dark fog, and though I couldn’t see Nura there, I knew she was waiting. There was a time when her magic was as familiar to me as my own, and here, in this twisted place of amplified senses, I could feel it hanging in the air.

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