The Colosseum

Roots of Hate

Ezra

Shortly after the first crack of a gunshot, a series of them unleashed their fury. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! Below me, Kova quakes as the air assaults my nose with an inundation of gunpowder. Each shot gets closer and closer, both of us flinching at each reverberation. With the adrenaline and exhaustion at war with each other inside of me, I feel no sense of pain, but that doesn't mean I wasn't shot.

"Enough!" a voice from one of the northern soldiers barks.

"Get off me," Ten grovels back. I hear his footsteps crunch on the dry earth as he nears us.

"Get up," I hiss in Kova's ear, getting to my feet as quickly as possible and hauling her up with me. "Hurry!" Groggily, Kova stumbles to her feet, hands running up and down her body to check herself over. When she looks at me, however, her dark eyes widen with terror as she looks at my shoulder. "What is it?" I mumble.

Before I can see it, a slight breeze brushes against my clothes. And just above my heart, something icy pricks my skin, as if my shirt is wet. I figure it out before Kova gasps, "He shot you..."

"Are you surprised?" I murmur. When I finally see the wound, my stomach grows queasy as my brain tells my body it's been hurt – bad. "You're okay, though, right?"

Slack-jawed, Kova does her best to contain her voice through clenched teeth. "I'm fine, but you're not!"

"Good," I sigh, ignoring the rest of her statement. "But where did the other gunshots go?"

"You got something on your shirt," Ten's snotty voice cackles. Smirking, he steps right in front of me, so close that he nearly steps on my toes. Looking down at where that bastard shot me, he takes one of his fingers and jams it into my wound. Flipping and twisting, my stomach tries to turn itself inside out to vomit, unable to deal with the waves of nausea any other way.

"Stop it," Kova growls, teeth bared and hairs raised. Forcefully, she gives him a stout shove. When he sucks in a sharp breath because he is also injured, Kova cringes. Even if she beat Annette without any injuries and claimed the cure, she'd still make an enemy out of Ten, and to her, that's a loss. No matter what happens today, Kova isn't coming out on top of everything. Mournfully, her eyes wander away from Ten, then land on where the queen was kneeling.

Gaping, Kova treads over. I follow suit, finding Annette Stryker as dead as a doorknob. Face-up, she looks like a meaty roadkill that had been hit by a semi-truck going 100 miles-per-hour. Her face, edgy and harsh, has been mutilated by bullets to the point of unrecognizability. The queen's face could've been removed entirely and I'm not sure I'd be able to tell the difference. "You won," I utter, unable to peel my eyes from the gory corpse, nor wanting to look at it. Bits of brain matter and tissue litter the ground past Annette, like a murderous shadow. Some of it is even haphazardly sprayed on our clothes. "You really killed her."

"I made sure of that," Ten haughtily informs. "And now, it's your turn." In one swift motion, Ten completely faces me and swings his arm up, pointing the gun directly at my forehead. He's holding the hilt of the gun so tightly that his arm quakes and his breathing is ragged. "Two crowns with one gun...who would have guessed?"

Next to me, Kova pulls out her revolver, completely full of bullets. Trepid, she aims at Ten. Her bottom lip quivers, like she's horrified. But whether she'd horrified at her mother's death, my possible dying, or having to shoot Ten, I don't know. "Come on, Ten: you got the cure and shot Ezra. Killing him won't-."

"What?" he snaps at her. "Make me happy?"

"No, I know it'll make you happy. But if you really want to get back at Ezra, wouldn't killing him be too easy?"