Page 89 of Court of Wolves

His hands had matching wounds.

The truth coalesced in a black, furious moment, and the world went still. Even as the drake’s power coursed into Ark’s soul, healing him as it had healed Kheir, even as Vawn began to swear at whatever was happening behind her, Maia stared at those four trails of blood, everything perfectly, unerringly still.

They had driven nails into her mate. Into his hands and feet.

“We need to find Az and Jaro,” Kheir rasped. “And get the fuck out of here.”

“No.” Maia turned, letting go of Ark, facing the drake and the monster who called herself a saint. “Not until they’re all dead.”

The awful, ever-present weight of dark saint magic on Maia’s bones, her skull, her blood—it lifted all at once. She straightened, sucking in a full breath, power lacing every cell of her body, shuddering along her skin.

I want her dead. Tell me how to do it,she asked Sephanae.

A moment passed, and then two. The place where they connected was eerily still. Cold, absent the warmth of her support and… pride. She’d been proud of Maia?

She’s gone,the drake’s gruff voice intruded in her mind instead.You stepped into your power and claimed your title. Sephanaewasthe Iron Dove. Now Maia Nysavionisthe Iron dove.

And you already know how to kill the Eversky.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Something was wrong. Jaro stood in the middle of the coliseum floor, the sand stained with black ichor and red blood under him. A dozen valkor, seven fae, and a beastkind woman lay where they fell when he killed them, some missing limbs, most speared with sharp, crystalline shards of magic. His power came as easily as shifting now but he held back, let his opponents get close enough to spill his own blood, and pretended to be weak. Pretended to be collared, controlled.

The vile ring of metal still encircled his throat but his mind washis.It was only a matter of time before the saints who watched his fights realised that. Samlyn sat beside the red-haired saint he only saw in the arena, watching him slaughter and kill monsters and innocents alike. The fae he’d killed… they weren’t like Merian, weren’t cuffed and compelled. They pleaded, screamed, cried. They looked him in the eye when he killed them and begged him not to. They killed a part of him every time he ended their lives. But Kaial had warned him to bide his time, that there would be a singular moment to reveal the true scale of his power, and this wasn’t it.

When his latest victim fell, clutching her throat as blood pumped in a fatal rush, the light leaving her eyes, Jaro lifted hishead and fixed his stare on the bottom step where the saints sat—and where Azrail sat dutifully at their side. As if he was one of them, as if they hadn’t forced poison in his mouth and made him swallow it, as if he wasn’t in agony the whole time. His chest was a bloody slab, so many wounds and cuts that he never healed, blood constantly sliding down his body to stain the leather trousers he was given and ordered to wear whenever they came here. As if one of the saints were offended by the sight of his nakedness. Not Samlyn—the other saint, the red-haired woman who watched the fights with narrowed eyes the colour of the sky. She appeared to be in her fifties but Jaro knew that was a lie. She was ageless, and every bit as dangerous and all-powerful as Samlyn. She tracked every fight, every kill, with hunger.

Jaro tore his eyes from her and looked instead at Azrail, scanning his eyes for an indication he was still present, fighting and screaming the way Jaro had fought and screamed before he cracked the collar. But Az’s eyes were scarily blank in a way Jaro had never seen before.

Don’t leave me.

He’d begged Jaro not to leave him, and now Azrail had left Jaro. When he came back to the room after all those hours apart, the torturer had been with him, along with four walking corpses that stunk of decay and rotten, vile things. And the torture had been… harrowing. Jaro had been seconds away from blowing everything and revealing that he was free, but Kaial’s yelled warnings held him in place. Azrail hadn’t been the same after that. Hollow. Silent.

You helped me breathe when the weight of being responsible for so many crushed me. You’re the friend who never left my side. You’re the heart of the rebellion. The heart of our family. None of it works without you.

Jaro didn’t work without Azrail, either. The screams had started in his head again when he looked into those hollow, flateyes. They were still there now, as Jaro shook the blood from his fur and straightened to meet the next opponent. The next victim. It was never a fair fight; these fae were sent here for Jaro to slaughter. The valkor had warmed him up, got his bloodlust at a fever pitch, and now he was executing the saints’ enemies. From the frantic, pleading words of his earlier victims, he knew they were leaders from Aether, from Venhaus, from Jakahr—lords and mayors and royalty who had fought for their lands, their people and lost. Allies the Sapphire Knight badly needed alive.

But Jaro killed them, one after another, and looked across the bloodied arena at Azrail after every death. Partly to reassure himself Az was still alive. Partly so the saints knew Jaro would unleash himself upon them if they eventhoughtabout killing Azrail. He waited for them to send Az into the arena every time, waited for them to pit them against each other. But they were too valuable to lose, apparently.

A new opponent comes, Kaial warned, his voice carrying across the frozen pool inside Jaro, adding a thick layer of ice to the surface, more magic for Jaro to draw upon. Something feels… unbalanced in the court.

Unbalanced how? Jaro straightened, flexing his paws in the sand, ripping his attention from Azrail’s wan, unblinking face to the stone door across from Jaro. Would it be another politician? Or royalty this time? None were Vassalian, he couldn’t help but notice. Ismene had already removed all her threats years ago, like Azrail and Ev’s parents. What the hell was going out outside the palace, for so many victims to be from so many kingdoms? What had the dark saints done with the power from the broken circle?

No time to think of that, Kaial snapped. Pay attention, this one has a cleaver.

Some of his opponents entered the arena armed, others clutching nothing but their own shaking hands. This time it wasa burly man with broad shoulders, a furious expression, and a huge meat cleaver in his hand. Jaro would have thought he was a butcher if he didn’t know these were all power players of the Saintlands, threats to the saints invasion.

“All I have to do is kill this animal, and I’m free to go?” he yelled—at the red-haired saint, Jaro realised. He didn’t know her name, didn’t know what she was the saint of, but the others deferred to her, even the Eversky.

“All you have to do is kill thebeastkindand you’re free,” Samlyn replied, the woman silent as always. Sometimes she murmured to the others, and Az probably heard her words, but he could speak as much as Jaro could—not at all. Maybe Az was just pretending, too. Maybe he was okay. Maybe—

The man skidded across the sand so fast it sprayed towards Jaro and only Kaial’s shouted warning had him spinning before it blinded him.

“I’m sorry, but it’s you or me,” his opponent said in a deep voice. Not the first apology Jaro had been given today. A tight pain squeezed behind his ribs, but he wouldn’t hesitate. Either he killed this man or he was killed, and Jaro had survived too much to die now. He didn’t know how he’d come back from this slaughter, if he ever would, but his body would survive even if his mind was in tatters.

Jaro might have echoed the man’s apology if he could speak. Instead he slammed a fist into the frozen lake of his power and gripped a wicked shard of it, lunging at the man with sharp fangs at the same time he threw his magic. It had taken a lot of trial and error at first, but after countless duels, it was so easy it was surreal.

Because the power is yours; it answers to you. Now feint left unless you want to lose your leg.

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