Thunder split the skies as Ash and Jessamine clashed on the cathedral roof.

Both were soundless. No war cries or curses. No razored quips. Both had been trained in the art of death by the finest killers in the Republic, and both had marked their lessons well. Ashlinn drew two stilettos from her sleeves and met Jessamine’s charge. Mia blinked through the falling rain, that awful burning light, noticing that Ash’s weapons were discolored with poison. Though Jessamine had advantage with a longer blade, one scrape from Ash might be enough to end her.

Mia groped toward her longsword, tried to stand. But she could manage neither—not with that accursed trinity around Ashlinn’s throat. Every time Ashlinn moved, the muted sunslight caught the medallion’s face, lancing Mia’s eyes. Clenching her teeth, it was all she could do to hold back her whimper, let alone stand and fight.

Mister Kindly had fled, and Eclipse couldn’t approach the trinity either. Mia was alone. Awful fear swelled in her belly, terror in the face of this god and his hatred.

All her power. All her training. All her gifts.

And she was utterly helpless.

Jessamine lunged across the slick tiles, the speed and feral cunning that had made her Solis’s favored pupil on display. Ash backed away, fear shining in her eyes as she realized she was outmatched. But her voice was steady and cold.

“Nice to see you again, Jess. How’s being second in line treating you?”

The bright notes of steel on steel.

The percussion of thunder.

“Tell me”—Ashlinn narrowly ducked Jessamine’s strike—“how did it taste when they teamed you up with the girl who cheated you out of becoming a Blade?”

Jessamine remained silent, refusing to be goaded. Pushing Ashlinn back, lunging as her foe slipped on the rain-slick tile. Ashlinn scrambled back to her feet, losing her grip on one of her knives. The poisoned dagger skittered down the roof’s slope, caught itself on the gutter’s lip.

“How did it taste when Mia killed Diamo?”

Jessamine faltered for a moment, renewing her attack with furious intensity. Ashlinn smiled, backing up closer to where Mia lay helpless. She held her poisoned blade in front of her, deadlier poison dripping from her lips.

“Were you fucking him?” Ash asked. “I never found out. How did it taste bending the knee to the girl who murdered him?”

“Shut up,” Jessamine whispered.

“He died messy, Jess,” Ashlinn said. “Puking blood. Shit in his britches. Could you smell it from the testing circle? I got a whiff from up in the bleachers.”

“Shut up!”

Jessamine lunged, face twisted with rage. Ashlinn spun aside, and with her foe off-balance, found time to reach into a belt pouch. Grasping a handful, flinging out her hand, a bright flash of arkemical powder bursting in Jessamine’s eyes. The redhead staggered back, sputtering and blinded. Ashlinn closed for the kill, but with her stomach seething, Mia lashed out with her boot, knocking Ashlinn’s feet out from under her.

Jessamine and Ashlinn went down together, rapier and poisoned blade both clattering to the tiles. The girls fell to brawling, clawing at each other’s faces, punching and kicking and cursing. They tumbled down the sloping roof, rolling to a halt on the gutter’s edge. Ashlinn lay underneath Jessamine, hands wrapped around the redhead’s throat. Jessamine punched hard, splitting Ash’s lip. Still half-blinded, she groped for Ash’s collar, wrapping up the gold chain in her fist and strangling back. The chain snapped clean, the trinity dropping thirty feet onto the cobbles below. Thunder rolled, lightning tearing across the skies as the medallion fell out of sight, the pain in Mia’s skull, the sickness in her belly slowly fading.

“You fucking traitor,” Jessamine spat, punching Ash in the jaw.

“Get . . . off m-me!”

“I’ll show you what dying messy looks like.”

Jessamine wrapped her fingers around Ash’s throat, punched her again with her free hand. She was raising her fist to strike again when a voice rose above the storm.

“Jess, th-that’s enough.”

The redhead refused to look over her shoulder, bloodshot eyes locked on Ashlinn. Mia was on her feet, not looking anything close to steady, but slowly making her way down the roof with her gravebone longsword in hand.

“Fuck you, Corvere,” Jessamine spat.

“We n-need her alive.” Mia spit the taste of vomit off her tongue. “She double-crossed the braavi. But they p-paid a fortune. There’s no way she just incinerated a map that valuable. Presuming she even has it, we can’t find it if she’s dead.”

“I don’t take orders from you.”

Mia sighed. “You’re my Hand, Jess. That’s exactly what you do.”

Jessamine turned to glare at Mia, sodden hair in her eyes. Her frustration, the rage of the past seven nevernights in Mia’s company finally getting the better of her.

“I should be delivering this offering. I should be the Blade here, not you.”

“Nobody said life was fair, Red.”

“Fair?” Jessamine laughed. “Who the f—ckkkg . . .”

Jessamine reeled backward, blood gushing from her throat. Ashlinn stabbed the girl again, the poisoned blade that had fallen into the gutter flashing in her hand. Jessamine gasped, hands to her punctured neck, arterial red spraying between her fingers and down her sodden tunic. Ashlinn stabbing again. And again.

Mia roared Jess’s name as thunder crashed, as Ashlinn grabbed the Hand’s collar and slung her forward. Jessamine clutched Ash’s wrist in desperation, trying to stop her fall. But with a sickening crunch, the girl toppled off the roof and onto the fence bordering the basilica grounds, impaled on the wrought-iron spikes below.

The novices below cried out in horror, ran screaming for the Luminatii, for the cardinal, for anyone. Arcs of jagged blue white lit the skies as Ashlinn dragged herself to her feet, soaked with Jessamine’s blood.

“You bitch,” Mia whispered.

Ashlinn wiped her knuckles across split lips. Pawing at her throat, she realized the trinity was gone.

“Mia, you don’t understand what’s happening here . . .”

Mia raised her blade. “You killed her.”

Blood soaking Ashlinn’s hands.

Rage swimming in Mia’s eyes.

Lightning reflected on the pale edge of her longsword, in the empty gaze of the dead girl hanging on the wrought-iron fence below their feet.

The basilica bells started ringing again—a warning this time. Acolytes were gathered in the courtyard below, howling, “Murder! Murder!” Mia stepped forward, blade poised. With the trinity over the edge of the building, Mister Kindly and Eclipse had returned, filling the terrifying emptiness she’d felt with the strength of cold steel. Ash’s feet were snared in her own shadow—she had nowhere to run. But Mia had spoken truth to Jessamine; if she killed the girl now, she’d not see that map. And after her last flaying before the Ministry, she’d be damned if she returned to them empty-handed.

But if she returned with the girl who’d brought the Ministry to their knees?

Black Mother, imagine the look on Solis’s face . . .

So, Mia drew back her sword and cracked the crow hilt across Ashlinn’s jaw. The girl tumbled onto her backside, half-senseless. Mia set about searching Ash’s clothing, boots, sleeves, finding blades and toxins and arkemical powders and hurling them off the roof. Ashlinn sat up, dazed, and Mia pressed her sword tip into the flesh above the girl’s heart. She could hear the faint sound of heavy boots over the thunder.

“ . . . luminatii, mia . . .”

“ . . . GOD-BOTHERING CURS. LET THEM COME . . .”

“ . . . so eager for blood, dear mongrel . . . ?”

“ . . . SO EAGER TO RUN, LITTLE MOGGY . . . ?”

“I appreciate the sentiment, Eclipse,” Mia whispered. “But living to fight another turn is probably the goal here.”

The shadowwolf growled grudging assent, and Mia turned to Ashlinn.

“Right. You can get off this roof two ways. Feet or face first?”

“Is . . . this a t-trick question?”

Mia dug the razored point of her blade into Ashlinn’s skin. Gravebone was harder than steel, sharp enough to bleed stone. One soft push . . .

“You try to make a break, or even breathe in a way I don’t like, we paint the cobbles an interesting shade of Ashlinn. Are we clear?”

“ . . . mia, we must go . . .”

The blade twitched. “Clear?”

Ash winced. “As Dweymeri crystal.”

Mia slipped her belt from around her waist. “Hold out your wrists.”

“Didn’t know you were so inclined,” Ash smirked. “Honestly, all you n—”

The blade sank deeper, and Ashlinn winced in pain. With a hurt glance, she offered her wrists. Mia looped the belt around them, cinching tight. She could hear the legionaries clearly now, a multitude of citizens gathered beyond the cathedral gates, looking in horror at Jessamine’s dangling corpse.

Mia stood, pulled on the leather strap.

“Move.”

She led Ashlinn to a downspout behind the bell tower. A gargoyle spewed rainwater from its mouth into the churchyard two stories below.

“Traitors first,” Mia insisted.

“Going to be hard climbing with my hands tied, neh?”

“You’ll manage. And don’t even think about running when you hit the floor. Throwing knives run quicker than you, and I’m carrying six in your size.”

Ash scowled, but for all her moaning, shimmied down the spout without much trouble. Mia followed, Mister Kindly whispering urgent warnings in her ear. The girls ran across the basilica grounds, past a necropolis littered with familia tombs. They vaulted the iron fence as a troop of Luminatii rounded the cathedral, shouted, “Halt!” Mia snatched the belt around Ash’s wrists, dragging her captive into the streets.

The legionaries were wearing steel breastplates and carrying burning sunsteel longswords, but they vaulted that fence quicker than Mia would’ve given them credit for—a murder on Aa’s holy ground was no chucklefest for his faithful. Mia looked at the crowd around her, pausing to snatch the full braavi purse from Ashlinn’s belt.

“Corvere, don’t you fucking d—”

Mia slung the bag in a wide arc, scattering a shower of glittering gold into the mob. The reaction was instantaneous, astonishingly violent, the people around them erupting as they realized the sky had somehow rained a living fortune. People flocked into the street from the taverna and stores all around, beggars, bakers, butchers, cutting off the cadre of Luminatii and punching and shouting and kicking over Ashlinn’s gold.

Ashlinn wailed as Mia dragged her away through the driving rain. They dashed over a broad bridge, into the warrens behind the administratii buildings, and there, finally, Mia pulled Ashlinn into a small alcove.

“Do you realize how much—”

“Shut up,” Mia hissed. Reaching out to the shadows around them, Mia plucked them with clever fingers, twisting and weaving them into a mantle about her shoulders. With a flick of her wrist, she enveloped Ashlinn as well, just as she’d done the turn they stole into Speaker Adonai’s chambers. Memories of their turns in the Red Church made Mia think of Jessamine, the sight of the Hand’s body dangling from those wrought-iron spikes burned in her mind’s eye.

Jess, Tric, every Blade murdered in the Luminatii pogrom, the capture of the Ministry . . . Ashlinn was responsible for all of it. The girl in her arms might as well have been a snake, coiled and ready to strike.

“Not a sound,” Mia whispered, pressing her gravebone blade to Ash’s throat.

All the world was black beneath Mia’s cloak, but she still heard the legionaries shouting to each other as they searched the Godsgrave backstreets. The girls waited, pressed against each other beneath Mia’s shadows for endless minutes.

A whisper finally rose over the pattering rain.

“ . . . they are gone, mia . . .”

Ashlinn swallowed against the blade at her throat. “You kill me now, I swear by the Mother you’re never going to see that map they’ve got you chasing.”

“Good thing I’m not going to kill you, then,” Mia said. “Mister Kindly, you check the rooftops. Eclipse, you scout ahead, make sure the way back to the chapel is clear.”

“ . . . SO BE IT. BUT IF YOU KILL ANYONE WHILE I AM GONE, I WILL BE MOST UPSET . . .”

She felt the shadows about her ripple, the not-cat and not-wolf slipping from the dark at her feet. Mister Kindly flitted up the wall, shadow to shadow, Eclipse spilling across the cobbles and off into the street. She could feel Ash’s heart beating, smell a faint perfume of lavender and fresh sweat on her skin.

“You’re taking me back to the chapel?” the girl asked.

“There’s a dose of Swoon on the blade at your throat, Ash. I don’t much fancy knocking you out and carrying you back, but I will if must. Now, shut the fuck up.”

“They’ve been hunting me for eight months. They get their hands on m—”

“You can count the shits I give on no hands, Ashlinn.”

“I didn’t want to kill Tric, Mia.”

Ashlinn winced as Mia pushed her gravebone stiletto up under her chin.

“Don’t you dare say his name.”

Ashlinn raised her hands, spoke slow and careful. Mia could hear the fear in her voice, the slight tremble that told her that, for all Ash’s front, the girl didn’t want to die.

“I wanted the Ministry, Mia. Anyone else was just wrong place, wrong time.”

“Including your own brother?”

“So. It was you that killed Osrik.”

“No,” Mia replied. “But only because Adonai ended him before I got the chance. The pair of you killed Tric. You betrayed your vows. You betrayed the Church.”

“To avenge my father! You of all people should understand that.”

“Don’t push your luck, Ashlinn.” Mia tightened her grip. “My father is dead.”

“Aye?” Ash snarled. “Well, so is mine.”

That gave Mia pause. Unspoken questions hanging in the air. The rain was dying now, the skies still a sullen gray. Ashlinn drew a long ragged breath.

“We dodged the Church and their Blades for eight months,” she murmured. “They finally caught us in Carrion Hall. My father was good. One of the finest Blades to ever serve the Black Mother. But everyone’s luck runs out eventually.”

Mia simply shook her head, refusing to bite. Ashlinn Järnheim was made of lies. She’d lied all through their training at the Church. She’d lied to the Ministry, to Mia, to everyone she ever met. She’d struck at the heart of Jessamine on the basilica roof, she was striking at Mia’s heart now. Every word she spoke was poison.

“I’m not going to tell you to shut up again, Ash.”

Ashlinn sighed, her temper fraying. “You have no fucking idea what’s going here, do you? I know you, Mia. Do you have any idea what the Red Church actually is? Do you think they’re ever going to let you kill Scaeva when he pays their wages?”

Mia felt the consul’s name like a fist in her belly.

“You’re full of shit.”

“Why do you think Scaeva isn’t dead already? Half the Senate want him in the ground, you think they couldn’t afford to hire a Blade to do him over if he wasn’t protected by Sanctity? Julius Scaeva is a fucking bastard, but he’s not a fucking fool. He’s been a patron of the Church for years.”

“They’d never—”

“They’re assassins, of course they would! There’s no sanctity to what the Red Church does. They murder people for money. Half of them are psychopaths and the rest are just sadistic bastards. They’re not servants of some divine Goddess of Night, they’re fucking whores.”

Mia’s mind was racing. She knew nothing Ash said could be trusted . . . but somewhere in her words, Mia could hear the ring of truth. People who posed a threat to Scaeva either got killed like her father, or bought like the braavi. Wouldn’t it make sense he’d buy the Church, too? Why else would they order her Scaeva wasn’t to be touched?

“How do you know all this?” she asked.

“Because I’m a sneaky bitch, Mia.”

“You’re a lying cunt is what you are.”

“There’s an obsidian vault inside the Revered One’s chambers,” Ash spat. “And inside that vault, they keep a ledger of every offering the Church has undertaken. All their patrons. All their shit. When I poisoned the Ministry at the initiation feast, I stole the ledger, Mia. That’s the reason they’ve been hunting me and my da for the past eight months. Not because we betrayed them. Because we knew all their dirty little secrets.”

Ashlinn turned her head a little, despite the blade at her throat. Just so she could look into Mia’s eyes.

“Including the one about you and your father.”

Ashlinn fell silent as Mia pressed her blade back against her throat. Ash killed Jessamine. She’d killed Tric. Mia knew she’d do anything, say anything to avoid being taken back to the chapel.

“You’re a liar,” Mia said.

“I am at that. But not about this, Mia. If you take me back to the Church, they’re going to kill me, and you’ll never know the truth of what they did.”

“And I’m just supposed to take you at your word on all this?”

“You can see for yourself.”

“ . . . You have the ledger?”

“Something tells me names on a page aren’t going to sway you. But I can tell you exactly where you need to go to find proof written in something more than ink.”

“O, aye? And where would that be exactly?”

Ashlinn looked up at Mia, blue eyes glittering like broken sapphires.

“Back to Church.”

“We have nothing to talk about,” Furian spat.

Mia was still sprawled underneath the Champion of the Remus Collegium, his forearm against her throat. Muscle rippling in his arm, across his chest. She pressed her fork into Furian’s ribs again, hard enough now to break the skin.

“I’m not sure about the other women you’ve known,” she said softly, “but I don’t much fancy it on my back. Let me up.”

“I should knock your teeth out for even talking to me. How did you get in here?”

“Let. Me. Up. Fucker.”

Furian glanced to his now unlocked door. Mia had no idea of the consequences if they were discovered in each other’s company, but she doubted they’d be pleasant. She could hear the guard patrol, slowly coming closer.

With a curse, Furian twisted off Mia, pushed the door closed. He listened for a moment, ear to the wood as the guards passed by. Mia looked the champion up and down, skin prickling in spite of herself. She’d never seen a man quite like him, all hard tanned skin and rippling muscle. But there was a speed to him, also. Lithe and fierce, like a big cat. His body was utterly hairless—shaved, she supposed, to show off his physique to the adoring crowds. His jaw was strong, the rivers and valleys of his abdomen leading her eyes down, chewing her lip as she drank in the sight of him.

She’d no idea what had come over her. Though she’d found Lord Cassius attractive, her reaction to his presence hadn’t been quite as . . . carnal. Perhaps because she’d never been quite this close to the Lord of Blades? Perhaps because she’d been younger? Whatever the reason, looking at Furian now, she found her breath coming quicker. Thighs aching. Waves of butterflies thrilling her belly.

His chamber was sparsely adorned. A small barred window looked out over the ocean, a simple bed stood against the wall, a practice dummy and wooden swords in another corner. A small shrine to Tsana, First Daughter of the Everseeing and patron of warriors, sat beneath the window, and the three interlocking circles of Aa’s trinity were scribed on the wall in charcoal. Though it was only trinities blessed by Aa’s truest believers that made her feel ill, the sight of the holy symbol was still a little unsettling.

All in all, Furian’s accommodations were hardly a marrowborn villa. But compared to the barracks, they were positively palatial. And better, private.

When the guards had passed beyond earshot, the champion turned to Mia. His jaw was clenched. Long dark hair framing those delicious chocolate eyes.

“You feel it, don’t you?” Mia breathed.

Furian stalked across the room and snatched up a strip of gray linen from the bed, wrapped it around his waist to make himself decent.

“Feel what?”

Mia pulled herself up off the floor, dragged her hair behind her ear. She saw movement from the corner of her eye, glanced to the shadows cast on the wall by the shrine’s candlelight. Hers. His.

“Maw’s teeth,” she breathed. “Look . . .”

Their shadows were moving of their own accord.

Hair blowing as if in some hidden breeze, ebbing and flowing toward each other like waves on a lonely shore. Mia’s shadow reached toward Furian’s, though in the flesh, the girl hadn’t moved a muscle. The Unfallen reached out and touched the wall, as if to test if his shadow were real. But his shadow didn’t move as he did, instead reaching out toward Mia’s.

The champion stumbled back, held up three fingers—Aa’s warding sign against evil. And at that, the shadows fell still, trembling only for the candleflame.

“You’re like me,” Mia said.

Furian blinked, turned away from the shadows to look at Mia.

“I am nothing like you,” he growled. “I am gladiatii.”

“I mean you’re darkin,” Mia said. “Just as I am.”

“I say again, I am nothing like you, girl.”

“Where is your passenger?”

“ . . . My what?”

“Your daemon,” Mia said. “I have two who live in my shadow. Usually, anyway. What shape does yours wear? And where is it?”

“I know of no daemon,” he growled, “save the one standing before me now.”

He looked her up and down, something close to disgust on his face. But she could see goosebumps rising on his skin, just as they did on hers. He was breathing harder, his pupils dilated—all the telltale marks Shahiid Aalea had taught her to recognize in a man. Or woman.

Want.

“How did you escape your cell?” he demanded.

Mia shrugged. “I Stepped between the shadows.”

“Witchery,” he spat.

“It’s not witchery. It’s what we are. Can you not do the same?”

“I’ll hold no truck with the darkness.” Furian raised the warding sign again.

“But you already did,” she said, stepping toward him. “This very turn on the sands, when I fought Executus. You stopped me from—”

“Get out of here, girl. I am champion of this collegium, and a god-fearing son of Aa. Gladiatii do not mix with chaff, and I do not mix with heretics.”

Mia glanced at the shrine to Tsana, the trinity of Aa on the wall.

Could it be?

“ . . . You’re of the faithful? How can you—”

“Get out,” he hissed. He dared not raise his voice lest the guards overhear, but Mia could see the fury in his clenched fists, the tendons taut at his neck. “If the guards find you in my cell, Executus will see the skin peeled off both our backs. And I’ll not bleed for the likes of you. Now begone before I snap your neck and take my chance with the domina’s mercy.”

His shadow seethed across the wall, hands extended toward her own shadow’s throat. Mia stepped back, but her shadow remained unmoved, its hair twisting and coiling like a nest of snakes. The hunger surged inside her again, the sickness, mixed now with a dull, seething anger.

This man didn’t know anything about darkin. Didn’t know anything about himself. There were no answers here. Only more questions.

And the longer she stayed in his room, the more likely she’d be caught.

Mia retreated slowly, not turning her back, listening for the guards at the door. Hearing nothing, she opened it without a sound, checking that the corridor beyond the chamber was clear. Satisfied, she looked back over her shoulder to the champion of the collegium, his shadow flickering upon the wall.

She reminded herself of why she was here. To stand as victor in the magni, she’d have to best this man, darkin or no. And whatever dark kinship she might have with him came second to the knowledge that he stood between her and victory.

Her and vengeance.

So be it.

“This is a nice room,” she noted, looking about the chamber.

“What of it?” Furian spat.

Mia shrugged.

“I’d not get too comfortable in it if I were you.”

The girl slipped out the door, closing it behind her.

It took a few heartbeats for her shadow to follow.

* * *

Crack!

“Gladiatii fear nothing, save defeat!”

Crack!

“Gladiatii thirst for nothing, save victory!”

Crack!

“Gladiatii live for nothing, save glory!”

Such was the tune of Mia’s hours, sweltering beneath the blistering suns. Executus’s voice was the verse, the snap of his whip the beat, and the grunts and sighs and curses of the men and women around her the chorus.

A week had passed since she’d arrived at Crow’s Nest, but those seven turns had seemed long as years. Executus showed no mercy, drilling her and Matteo and Sidonius in every weapon, every fighting form, every trick and twist his years in the games had taught him. They sparred in the circle, on the uneven levels across the yard, in their sleep. Every stumble was met by his whip. Every misstep. Every slight.

Crack!

Crack!

Crack!

They’d been kept apart from the gladiatii, bathed and fed last. Butcher had spoiled at least three more of their evemeals, twice with piss, and once with a handful of dogshit he’d fetched after Fang had done his business in the yard. Mia had stolen food every nevernight in shadow jaunts to the kitchens, once had even managed to sneak some bread to Sidonius and Matteo with the excuse she’d found it in the mess hall. But she was still worn thin. Her fellow recruits were in even worse shape.

“You worthless whorespawn!” Executus roared at the trio. “In a few turns, you step onto the sands of the venatus under the colors of this collegium. If you think the crowd will not howl for more when they see the first drop of your blood, you are greater fools than I gave credit for. Now, attack with purpose!”

“Executus?” came a call from above.

Mia looked up, saw Dona Leona standing on the broad balcony above. She was dressed in rippling white silk, gold at her wrists, auburn hair plaited down her back.

“Attend!” Executus roared.

The gladiatii fell still, thumping fists to chest.

“Domina?” Executus asked.

The woman crooked a finger and beckoned.

“Your whisper, my will,” the big man bowed.

He turned to Mia and her fellows.

“Sidonius, work the woodmen.” He glared at Mia and Matteo. “You two, spar in the circle. You still carry a shield like a parcel of posies, girl. And Matteo wields a sword like a three-year-old swings his pecker. If you want to keep those pretty heads on your shoulders during the Winnowing, the pair of you had best get to toiling.”

Executus stroked his beard, limped away into the keep. Sidonius set to work on the training dummies, Maggot fetched Mia and Matteo some wooden swords and shields, and they set to sparring, clashing in the dust and dancing around the circle.

“Get to toiling?” Matteo spat. “What the ’byss does he think we’ve been doing all week?”

Mia made no reply, intent on training. Despite being an utter bastard, now that she knew the executus was Arkades, she hung on his every word. If the Red Lion told her to work her shield arm, then Black Mother, she was going to work her fucking shield arm.

“Strike harder,” she growled. “Press me.”

“I am!” Matteo spat, stabbing at her with his blade.

Mia fended off his blows with ease, and a flurry of strikes sent the boy skipping back across the sand. She battered his shield again, spitting dust off her tongue.

“’Byss and blood, you’re swinging at me like I’m made of glass. Hit me!”

Matteo blocked another blow, countered with a weak riposte. Wooden blades cracked against wooden shields, their feet dancing to the frantic percussion.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Crow,” Matteo said.

“And why not? Because I might hurt you back?”

“Because . . . you’re a girl,” he said.

Mia’s eyes widened at that. Gritting her teeth, she wove past Matteo’s strike, sandals scuffing in the dust. Spinning on the spot, she smacked him hard across his shoulder blades, sent him staggering. As he turned to face her, she clocked him in the face with her shield, blood spraying as he toppled onto the dirt.

Mia stood over him, pressing her wooden blade to his throat.

“Take hold of your fucking jewels,” she said. “Maybe your mother raised you to treat us all as delicate flowers, maybe you’re just thinking with your cock. But there are no girls on the sand. No mothers or daughters. Sons or fathers. Only enemies. You spend a moment worrying about what’s between your opponent’s legs you’ll find your head parted from your body. And what good will your fool cock do you then?”

The boy wiped the blood from his face, swallowing thick.

“Forgiveness,” he muttered. “I d—”

“Gladiatii! Attend!”

Mia turned from Matteo’s bloodied face to the balcony. She saw Executus Arkades, Dona Leona beside him. The woman smiled like the suns, spoke with a loud, clear voice.

“My Falcons! Tomorrow we set out for Blackbridge and the grand games held in honor of Governor Salvatore Valente! This is the second official event of the venatus season, and all eyes will be upon it. Remus Collegium now stands in high regard, thanks to the victory of our champion in Talia last month.”

Here she took in Furian with a wave of her hand. The gladiatii roared his name, pounded swords upon shields.

“But Furian’s triumph has not assured our berth in the magni!” Leona continued. “The crowds are ever hungry for blood, and the editorii seek only the finest for their grand spectacle. We must have victory. We will have victory!”

“Victory!” they cried.

“The following gladiatii have earned the right to attend the Blackbridge venatus and fight for the Falcons of Remus. Step forward, Butcher of Amai!”

The Ruiner of Porridges stepped forward with his dropped-as-a-babe smile, raising the knuckles to the men behind him.

“Bladesinger, the Reaper of Dweym!”

The woman with the full body tattoos stepped forward and bowed.

“Our equillai, Byern and Bryn, shall once again thrill the crowd!”

The blond Vaanian siblings bowed low. Looking closer at the pair side by side, Mia marked them for twins—they were simply too alike to be otherwise.

“Our legend of the sands, the mightiest Falcon in this collegium, victor of Talia, Furian, the Unfallen!”

The champion strode forward to the cheers of his fellows, twin blades in hand. His eyes were fixed on the balcony as he bowed deep, long black hair spilling around his high cheekbones, his square jaw. Mia looked to his shadow and saw nothing of note. But her own rippled slightly, like still water when a stone is dropped into it.

“And finally,” Leona called. “Our three new recruits will wager their lives in the Winnowing, earning their place among you or perishing in the attempt. Pray that Aa grants them favor, that Tsana guides their hands to victory.” Leona looked among her flock, opened her arms. “Sanguii e Gloria!”

“Sanguii e Gloria!” came the cry.

Mia listened to them call, fists raised high, crying out for blood and glory. In truth, she wanted nothing to do with the latter. Blood was her intent, her dream, her only prize. Cardinal Duomo and Scaeva within arm’s reach on the victor’s podium. But to stand before them, she needed to accrue victories enough to secure a place in the magni. And somehow, in the midst of that bloodbath and butchery, she had to win.

The gladiatii around her looked to the sky, called to Aa and his firstborn to bring them victory. But Mia had no use for the Everseeing, nor his warrior daughter. Aa had only ever proved her enemy, and Tsana had never helped her before.

Why would she start now?

And so, Mia turned her eyes to the sand. To the shadow, black and pooled around her feet. Wondering if the goddess would answer after all she’d done.

All she’d undone.

Wondering if prayers would help her at all.

“Black Mother,” she whispered. “Give me strength.”