Page 69 of Immortal Longings
Shit.
She’sreallyout of practice.
“How were you the one leading the games for so long?” Nineteen sneers. “Pathetic.” He punches; Calla jerks her head aside. If this fight had happened before her injury, she would have long found her advantage. Right now, she can barely summon the energy to reach for the dagger in her pocket. She’s so tired already. Her body has healed, but her qi has not.
Move,she urges herself.Move, or he’s going to—
Nineteen’s fist rears back: one last hit to knock her out and throw her into the sea. Perhaps she can take it. Perhaps she can swim back up.
Then he’s tumbling off her and down onto the rocks, landing with a hard splash in the water.
Calla hadn’t even moved. She blinks, letting her senses return. A familiar little face with violet eyes pops into her field of vision.
“Did he get ya?”
Calla rises onto her elbows, wiping sweat from her forehead. “Why are you everywhere I go, Eno?”
Eno shrugs, shoving his hands into his pockets as Calla clambers to her feet. She picks up Nineteen’s discarded chain, testing the weight on her arm, and slugs it over her shoulder, adopting the weapon. When Eno reaches for it, trying to inspect the little blades embedded at its end, Calla slaps his fingers away.
He draws back, scowling.
“Where did you disappear to?” Eno asks. “Where’s Anton?”
Calla doesn’t answer. She hurries away from the rocks, reentering San through a gap between two buildings. Though the space is so thin she must turn sideways, Eno darts right in behind her, galloping at her heels.
“The other players were trying out your technique,” Eno continues whenCalla remains unspeaking. “They saw how effective it was to team up, except it isn’t working out as well for everyone else. Nineteen had a partner last week before he killed him in front of the coliseum. There was a disagreement over his walking speed, I hear.”
Calla emerges from the thin walkway, entering a main thoroughfare that is wide enough for a morning food cart to be pushed through. She swipes a small bag as she passes. Eno darts to her side, keeping pace.
“Eno,” she says, untwisting the bag and tossing pieces of a bao into her mouth. “Thank you for your help, but you can leave now.”
Eno ignores her. “No, really. Where’s Eighty-Six? Don’t tell me you really did have a fight.”
The bag crumples in her hand. When she reaches for another bit of the bao, its round, soft shape is disfigured under her grip.
“Something like that.”
Calla takes a sharp right turn into a thinner alley, toward the south of the city. She passes a grimy window that looks into someone’s bedroom, then another with a set of shades poking through the broken glass, revealing a damp bathroom inside. She hopes Mao Mao is all right, but she knows her cat is probably having the time of his life hiding in her bedroom walls.
Eno continues to follow her. He thuds at one of the control boxes they bypass, triggering a spark of blue in the dark passageway before he yelps, hurrying away from the wires.
“You’re not going to go looking for him?” he presses.
“Why”—Calla heaves a breath—“would I do that?”
Eno frowns, his legs working twice as fast to keep up with her stride. A distant clanging has started in another alley, which means the city is waking properly.
“Because you were allies,” he says, “and allies rescue each other.”
“Oh, he’s not introuble.” Calla scoffs at the thought. She hasn’t seen Antonin trouble once. Even at the temple, he had had a way out. It washerrefusal to jump that had kept them tethered in that room, surrounded by Crescents. And still, he hadn’t left. Kept committed to their alliance.
Foolish. How can they claim to be allies while competing in a contest only one person can win? It’s his head or hers, and no sentimentality is enough to let them both achieve their goal. She hasn’t returned to his side despite being newly healed and back in the games. He must be expecting to hear from her soon, for her to maintain the bargain they made to conquer these games in tandem until they are the final two.
She has to stay away from him. She can’t keep playing nice, nor can she continue acting the part of his ally to the end. This was only supposed to be a temporary collaboration so that they could face each other in the arena sooner.
But after the way Anton Makusa looked at her, his hand scrunched in her hair and his eyes betraying a whisper of devotion, she can’t bear the thought of killing him.
Calla glances toward the approaching intersection, the coliseum looming in her periphery before it disappears from view, blocked again by the buildings. That’s where they will end up, and the dreaded day is fast approaching, given the number of players left. She can convince herself that maybe another player will take Anton’s life before the games whittle down to two, but he has shown himself too sharp to be defeated by anyone else. If he is to die, then Calla trusts only her own hand.
