Another deafening cheer tore my attention back to Ian, who was now retrieving Naxos’s bow. He bent the bronze arc, notched the single arrow, and aimed it at the final target, which still swayed from the turbulence left behind from Naxos’s exit.
I glanced up. No, Naxos hadn’t dropped down yet. How far had Ian thrown him? Five kilometers straight up? Ten?
Phanes squared his shoulders with resignation as Ian sighted the arrow at the round, red pomegranate dangling from the stadium’s uppermost beam. Exhilaration and relief washed over me. In another few seconds, this would be over. Ian wouldn’t miss. He could make that shot on a bad day, and as he’d proved, he was having the opposite of a bad day right now.
Ian drew the arrow back until the string could go no farther . . . and swung right, aiming at me instead of the dangling fruit. I had an instant to be shocked before agony exploded in my back.
The next thing I saw was the underside of the stone bench, followed by a close-up view of Phanes’s sandals. Above, I heard Phanes shouting, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Why did he suddenly sound so far away? Why couldn’t I move? And the pain, gods, what was this pain—?
“Don’t touch her!”
Ian’s voice, cracking like a whip. Then his face, right up next to mine, brows drawn so tightly together, they resembled a dark slash above his glittering green eyes.
“Don’t move,” he said, gripping me to his chest with one arm. Then another splash of acid tore into my back.
I screamed, twisting in mindless, instinctive need to escape. He held me with brutal strength as that agony dug deeper. Soon, I couldn’t hear anything above my screams. My darkness spilled out in liquid form, coating both of us while I writhed in a frenzy of pain. Still, Ian didn’t let me go.
Why was he doing this? Couldn’t he see that he was killing me? Why wouldn’t he stop, stop, stop—
Ice kissed my back and the pain vanished. I sagged, all my strength fleeing along with the pain. Ian pulled back enough for me to see his face. Liquid darkness still clung to him as if he’d fallen into a pit of crude oil, making his smile a white slash against it.
“It’s all right. I got it out.”
“What . . . out?” I croaked, trying to pull that darkness back inside me. It should have returned instantly, but instead, it moved at a crawl, as if reluctant to leave Ian.
Ian’s mouth crushed mine. I only had a second to savor his kiss before that wonderful, bruising pressure was gone. Then his arms were gone, too, as was the rest of him. But when he stood up so abruptly that I had to grip the bench to keep from slumping over, not a drop of my darkness remained on him. I looked down. It was gone from me, too, leaving me in my lovely, diaphanous dress that now dripped with my own blood.
“Who is that bitch?” Ian asked in a deadly tone.
“Helena is my servant.”
Hearing Phanes’s voice jerked my attention up to him. He was standing on the bench in front of me and Ian, his wings arced on either side like golden curtains, his body and their span keeping everything else from my view.
Or, I realized as my sluggish brain caught up, not keeping me from seeing the rest of the stadium. Keeping all the people in the stadium from seeing me and Ian.
“Helena?” I murmured. “What did she have to do with anything?”
Ian gave me a look I would have called amused, except his jaw was clenched and his eyes were flashing with rage.
“She’s the bitch who just tried to murder you by stabbing you in the heart with silver.”
What?
Before I could say it out loud, something large and dark flashed in my peripheral vision. Then the ground shook and earth puffed up around a hole in the arena.
Phanes’s mouth closed with a click while Ian gave the new crater a single, unconcerned glance.
“Naxos just landed.”
Chapter 12
I pushed myself onto the stone bench, ignoring the hands that both Ian and Phanes extended to help me.
Maybe I shouldn’t have. For a second, my vision swam. Dammit, I felt so weak! The reason why was at my feet, its blood-coated blade looking too small and innocuous to have caused such damage. But small blade or no, the only reason I was still alive was that Helena hadn’t gotten the chance to twist the knife. A heart pierced with silver would weaken me for a few hours. A heart destroyed by silver would’ve killed me.
No need to guess why Helena hadn’t made that final, lethal twist. An arrow through her right eye pinned her to the back wall of Phanes’s private alcove.
“Nice shot,” I murmured, still feeling dazed.
Ian’s flash of teeth was too fierce to be a smile. “I know. What I don’t know is why she tried to kill you. Any ideas?”
I let out a puff of laughter. “Guess she really didn’t like me clapping my hands at her.”
“. . . ’s not why,” Helena hissed, her single eye opening. Good gods, she was still alive? “Can’t let you—”
Phanes’s wing shot out sideways. Helena’s body dropped from the neck down, arms flailing for a second before her headless body collapsed over the same bench that I sat on. Her head stayed pinned to the wall, mouth opening and closing as if she were still trying to speak.
I saw the flash of metal before Phanes’s wing folded back up and his outer feathers concealed it. Razors? I wasn’t sure, but he had something very sharp lining his wings, turning the gold-colored feathers into multiple deadly weapons.
Clever, my other half noted coolly.
“Why the bloody hell did you do that?” Ian snapped.
“Because she tried to slaughter my intended,” Phanes thundered back. “Had you not saved her, you would be next, for your impertinence in questioning how I punish traitors.”
His wrath frightened the people nearest our alcove. They quit staring back and forth between us and the hole that marked Naxos’s reentry into the arena and started to leave.
“I believe I earned safe passage in your lands,” Ian replied with an edge to his tone.
Phanes’s chest swelled as he took a step forward. “Technically, you did not complete the trials—”
Before I knew it, Ian had ripped the arrow out of Helena’s eye and hurled it at the dangling pomegranate. The fruit exploded, and the arrow kept going until it drove into the stadium’s uppermost stone rim so deeply, only the end feathers remained visible.
Phanes looked like he’d swallowed something foul.
I stared at the arrow before looking back at Ian. He’d hardly glanced at the target before hurling that arrow with sniperlike accuracy. He’d also barely had time to aim before drilling Helena’s eye at fifty meters. Had Ian been holding back his true abilities the entire time I’d known him? Or was something else going on?
“There.” Ian’s tone was light, but his gaze told a different story. A neon sign flashing “Danger!” would’ve been less threatening. “Trials complete.”
Applause swelled across the stadium. It grew until all the onlookers were whooping, clapping, and chanting a new name.
Ian . . . Ian . . . Ian!
Ian’s gaze slanted to the crowd before returning to Phanes. His brow arched as if to say, Hear that?
Phanes’s mouth curled into a sardonic smile. Then, he spread his arms and wings in a gesture that was both magnanimous and commanding as he turned and faced the crowd.