Page 145 of The Stars are Dying

I studied the lines of his hand. I’d felt its softness and its harshness.

Calix took careful steps forward, face firm with loathing. A glint off the fire drew me to the blade he freed slowly.

My heartbeat measured the countdown to decide my fate.

“You are the punishment,” I whispered to Hektor.

Then I struck.

Shifting one foot back, my hand sliced down, and Hektor’s cry was my victory. The palm he’d extended to claim me clutched his bleeding cheek instead, and I took off running.

“Go after her!” Hektor snarled in the distance behind me as I hurtled through dark corridors with the fleeting light.

Calix’s footsteps already drummed my pulse with their fast, scuffling advance.

“Stop running, Astraea. We both know you deserve this.”

I wanted to drown out his taunting call, wondering if I’d ever overcome the part of me that fed greedily on such nasty words. The part of me that believed them so easily it threatened my adrenaline in a chase of survival.

With the tight corner ahead, I had no choice but to slam into the wall, wincing with the sharp impact that ricocheted over my shoulder before I pushed off it again. At the end of this hallway I burst into light as though the roof had been peeled away. The walls still climbed so high I couldn’t see over them. Above me, two levels of a square perimeter where I imagined spectators would gather.

It was an arena of some sort. No—with the walls, I stood in a maze.

“I should have killed you long ago.” Calix’s snarl reached me.

I turned out of his path too late, crying out at the burn across my arm when his blade sliced down. Crimson leaked through my fingers where they pressed on the wound.

I glared at Calix. “She would be ashamed of you now.”

I expected the flash of rage on his face, but this time I was not afraid. I slipped a small blade from my belt, and Calix groaned when I lodged it into his side.

Then I ran.

My hands reached out for the walls as if they would answer me with a sure direction. I turned and turned, growing dizzy as if I were running in circles.

“Astraea!”

Stars above!

My head snapped up, and I could have fallen with a flood of relief at spying the pink hair spilling over the balcony Rose leaned over. I scanned around her, trying to focus, but all I could make out from this distance was the deep rise and fall of her shoulders as if she’d exerted herself.

“Where’s Zath?” I called.

“I lost him in the maze,” she said. When she held something up, my face relaxed with pride to see the full key. Until her gaze tracked something behind me. “You need to run!”

It wasn’t footsteps that licked cold fear down my spine; somethinghissed, the sound bouncing off the walls to confuse the direction it had come from. Just as I turned with a shiver, I was tackled. Thrown against the wall. My head slamming into the stone peppered my vision.

“You didn’t deserve her,” Calix snarled in my face.

I blinked a few times to reorient myself. My teeth clenched, hot retribution pulsed through me, and my knee jerked up into his abdomen. “Neither did you,” I hissed.

He doubled over and I pushed him hard.

He wasn’t winded for long. When he lunged for me, we both fell to the ground. He straddled me, and I thrashed violently.

I wasnotweak.

I fought him with everything I had.

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