Tangled Fates

Chapter 27

Blood spilled beneath me as I crouched behind a jagged obsidian pillar, each breath sending fresh waves of agony through my fractured ribs. The Revenant's claws scraped against stone to my left, a slow, deliberate sound like steel being drawn across a whetstone. I pressed my back against the cool black glass stone, tasting copper and exhaustion as my magic died before ever having a chance to reach my trembling fingers.

The Shattering lived up to its name, a broken scar carved into earth that had never wanted it. Jagged walls of obsidian rose in uneven rings around me, their surfaces reflecting the sickly green torchlight like mirrors into the void. The arena floor, dusted with fine black ash, drank my blood greedily, crimson disappearing into darkness as if it had never existed at all. Above me, where the Elders and my Grandmother watched from stone seats worn smooth by centuries of spectators, their faces were merely smudges of pale light against shadow. They had come to witness my execution, to watch as my mothers shame was finally erased.

I closed my eyes and tried once more, reaching deep inside for any small pocket of magic that could possibly prolong my death. I felt it, a weak pulse of warmth beneath my breastbone, but as I dragged it toward my fingertips, it unraveled like yarn that was cut to short. Nothing. Useless. My grandmother's spell tightened further, choking whatever small power remained within me, not that I ever had much power to begin with. I had squandered what little reserve I had separating Morgana from Caleb that night, any remnants would be a miracle now.

"Come on," I whispered, my voice cracking. "Please."

A low rattling breath answered. The sound of gravel shifting over hollow bone and air flowing through channels never meant for life. The Revenant drew closer now, its presence a cold pressure against my skin. I knew what awaited on the other side of the stone, a creature stitched together from fragments of the dead, its form a grotesque parody of humanity stretched over a frame of cursed bone and sinew. Its eyes, all seven of them, glowed with sickly yellow light, set in a face that seemed to shift between dozens of stolen features with each passing moment.

I had no magic. No hope.

What a joke I'd been. Half-witch, half-wolf, and wholly nothing. Too weak to use magic like my sisters wielded so effortlessly, too human to call upon the beast that should have lived in my blood. I was exactly what Grandmother had always claimed, a mistake, an aberration that should never have drawn breath.

And now I would die alone in this cursed arena, having accomplished nothing. I couldn't even deliver the information Rath needed, couldn't protect the pack that had taken me in when my own kind cast me out. Caleb's face flashed behind my eyes, his perpetual scowl, the way his eyes always slid away from mine when we spoke too long. He'd be relieved when I didn't return. One less witch to tolerate.

The scraping stopped. Silence stretched, taut as a bowstring. Then came a sound worse than any before it, a slow inhale, wet and hungry, as the Revenant caught my scent. It knew exactly where I hid now.

With shaking hands, I pick up a jagged shard of obsidian that lay at my feet. The shard was a good size that it must have broken off from the pillar at some point. Its edge was sharp enough to slice my palm as I clutched it. Blood slicked the makeshift weapon, and I tried once more to channel my magic, to imbue it with something, anything, that might give me a fighting chance. Caleb's dagger would have been useful, but they had stripped it from me before entering The Shattering. Those were the rules, only magic and wits allowed in this brutal arena.

The shard remained dead in my hand, no more magical than any common rock. Tears of frustration burned behind my eyes as I heard the Revenant's slow approach, its body dragging against the ground like a bag of broken glass.