My panic at seeing them gone was quickly erased when I saw my mother dangling from a lash-line attached to the bottom of the wall, my father awkwardly holding her around her waist. They were doing their best to remain still, but their combined weight placed on that side was beginning to make the wall spin faster on its central axis.

My mother was fiddling with her hand control, and I realized that the strain of suddenly catching not only my father’s weight but her own had damaged her gyro. It wasn’t pulling them up. I quickly threw a lash down and jumped, angling for them. They only had two lines between them, the others cut in the sentinel’s blast.

I had to help, or they would be sitting ducks.

“Liana, stop!” Leo shouted, and I jammed the hand controls, stopping myself with a jerk. I craned my neck up to see him swinging around the wall and lashing toward my parents. “The sentinel!”

I pushed a hand on the wall to spin around, and saw that the sentinel was in the process of climbing back up, its dark, metallic arms and legs somehow finding purchase on the wall’s smooth surface. Its hood had fallen back, revealing the sharp lines of its angular, slightly humanoid face, and its eyes were glowing the same dark, angry red.

I quickly detached the line that I had thrown toward my parents and grabbed at one of the discs fixed around my wrist, clutching it between my finger and thumb, my heart pounding in my chest. If I could just get close enough to hit it directly…

Its head snapped up at me just as I wound back to throw, and its arm shot out, angling for me. My eyes widened, and I disconnected, lashing out with a leg and kicking off the wall. I tucked my legs to my chest as I pitched to the side, tumbling through the air, and caught a glimpse of a crimson line of fire passing just inches from where my legs had been before the world began to whirl on its axis.

I unlocked my legs, slowing my fall, and threw a line, aiming for where I sensed the wall was, relying on my intuition. It connected, and I let out some slack, not wanting to stop suddenly and present an easy target. I kept a tight grip on the disc pinched between my fingers and twisted my head up, searching.

The sentinel had resumed climbing, its focus now back on where Leo was currently reeling my father in. I watched as it leaned out, keeping one hand in a firm grip, and then leveled the weapon at them.

I threw, flicking my wrist and aiming for its outstretched arm. The disc was difficult to track in the air, though, and I clenched my teeth, watching as the sentinel began to tighten its hand.

The disc hit the wall an inch below its arm, just as a crimson shot erupted from the end of its weapon.

I turned, a scream of warning in my throat, and saw the line cleave through the metal wall at an angle, carving a sharp line down that missed my father by mere inches.

And then my mother was falling, her arms and limbs flailing, and I realized that the beam had cut her line. I cried out, throwing my lash for her, but she was already beyond my reach. My breath caught in my throat as she fell through the air, plummeting down at terminal velocity, her hair flying free from her bun as the ground rushed up toward her.

A scream tore from my throat as I realized that there was nothing—no one—to stop her, and she kept falling, falling, falling…

I squeezed my eyes shut, incapable of watching her hit, but a soul-crushing grief crashed into my heart, and I felt it breaking, right inside my chest. Pain exploded into me as I realized that my mother was dead. She was dead. She was…

Murdered.

I screamed again. A deep-seated rage blossomed inside me as I thought of what the sentinel had just taken from me. There was no chance to tell her how I really felt, and I’d treated her so terribly after she’d shown me how much she cared! I’d spent so much time regarding her overtures with suspicion and disdain, and now I could never tell her how sorry I was for doing that.

My eyes snapped open, and I looked up, searching for the sentinel, only to find it inches from my face, its arm reaching out. I jerked back, dangling from my line, but it caught me around the throat and lifted me up, its red eyes glistening. Cold fingers tightened around my neck, and suddenly I grew lightheaded. It was cutting off the blood flow to my brain, trying to knock me out. Once it did that, it could just throw me off the side and be done with it. Then Leo and my dad would follow.

I couldn’t let that happen, no matter what. I slid my eyes open, meeting its own in fiery defiance while I brought my hands together, grabbing for the bracelet. I tugged on the entire thing, ripping it off my wrist, and then slapped it down onto its face, bracing for death.

Seconds later, fire shot through my body as electricity arced off the bracelet, shooting tens of thousands of volts into the sentinel, and through it, me. My muscles locked up as a fine, high-pitched pain hit every nerve ending in my body at once, and my jaw clamped down. I barely registered the taste of blood in my mouth that signaled I had bitten my tongue, every organ in my body shocked into stillness.

Then the pain cut off suddenly, leaving me with only the sensation of falling, suddenly untethered from gravity as my consciousness slowly slipped away.

But not before I heard the sound of bells chiming in rapid succession, their beautiful song chasing me down into oblivion.

* * *

“Liana!” came a sharp voice, jolting me out of the darkness in which I had been encased. I drew back a fist before even opening my eyes, the memories of the sentinel rushing through me, but managed to restrain myself from lashing out when I saw Astrid kneeling over me, a concerned look in her eyes.

“Astrid,” I said, and then swallowed, my voice coming out strangled and raw. My hands came up to touch my throat, and then flinched when I felt the bruises there. “What happened?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” she said, standing up. I winced as the light she had apparently been blocking appeared, and then looked around, trying to figure out where I was.

But moments later, Leo and Maddox were there, their eyes brimming with concern. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Maddox asked, her green eyes raking me up and down.

“What happened?” I asked, not bothering to list the litany of complaints my body seemed to be experiencing. “Where are we?”

“Under the arena,” Leo told me as he helped me sit up. I groaned as I moved, my muscles twitching violently under my skin. “You absorbed several thousand volts of electricity for one point eight seconds before I managed to yank you out of its grip. You should be in the Medica.”

“Leo, my mother,” I said, looking up at him, suddenly remembering watching her fall. “Is she—”

“I don’t know,” he replied honestly, his eyes brimming with remorse. “I’m so sorry, but I don’t know what happened to her after she…”

He trailed off, and a shudder ran over me, sorrow stabbing deep. I drowned in it for several moments, feeling a hollow ache where my heart had once been. Something had reached in and scooped it out, and now there was nothing left but a raw, visceral pain that made it impossible to breathe.

Somehow, I managed to push past it, but it took me several shaky breaths, and Maddox and Leo felt compelled to hold my hands the entire time, as if trying to transfer some of their strength to me through the connection. I wasn’t sure why, but it helped, and I swallowed back the tears and the searing agony, making my way to a place of clarity.

“The sentinel!” I said, looking at them. “Did I—”

“Kill it?” Maddox asked, and I nodded. “I don’t know if you killed it. I didn’t give it a chance to come back on. It was locked into place on the wall, and I managed to get to it and pulled the hard drive. The blast must’ve unlocked the cage on its neck, because I didn’t have to do much to grab it. Nobody noticed, either; they were too busy trying to get you free from its grip.”

Her eyes slid around the room as she spoke, but my gaze became riveted on her hand when it dipped into her pocket to reveal a clear plastic box filled with intricate crystalline features that had streams of lights pulsating through them. She only held it out for a second before hurriedly tucking it back into the pocket, which she zipped closed.

I watched her do it, and suddenly hated her for pulling the hard drive. I wanted the creature that had killed my mother dead and gone, not safe and sound and tucked away in her pocket. It took a moment, but I managed to remind myself that the code in there was important not only for finding the people behind the sentinel, but also because she was an AI essential to the Scipio creation process.

But Scipio help me, it was hard.

Beside me, Leo shifted and cleared his throat, and I looked at him. “The officials rounded us up right after Dylan rang the bells,” he quietly informed me.

“Dylan rang the bells?” I asked, my brows drawing together into a tense line. “I thought Zale was closer.”

“She caught up to him,” Leo said.

“And beat the crap out of him and Frederick,” Maddox added angrily. “But there seems to be—”

“Look, I didn’t see it! I don’t care that the drone saw me look over my shoulder!” Dylan’s indignant screech cut Maddox off, and I pushed on my friends’ shoulders, creating a gap that I could see through. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust—they were still sensitive from the electrocution—but when the blobs took form, I spotted Dylan standing with Astrid. She was gesticulating wildly, a wild and angry look on her face, while Astrid stood there calmly, her hands on her hips.

“Be that as it may, we need to show the vid to the Knights before the final vote is concluded,” Astrid said. “Not to mention, I’m not sure the challenge results should hold up, considering the sentinel went ballistic on the course. Candidates are dead!”

Something sharp and hot stabbed into my heart, sending shockwaves of grief through me, but I summoned up a deep, ice-cold calm, trying not to get lost in the fact that my mother was one of those dead candidates.

Still, I wasn’t exactly sure what they were arguing about. What didn’t Dylan see? Why was Astrid insisting on uploading a vid capture to the server before the Knights had a chance to finish their voting?

Why was voting even happening? Why hadn’t the whole thing been negated?

Anger burned in me as one more question hit me: why wasn’t anyone telling me about my mother?

“That seems like the test designers’ fault,” Dylan snapped. “Not mine. I did what I was supposed to do. I completed the challenge. Just because I didn’t see what was happening doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have stopped everything to help out! I would’ve! This is unfair!”

“When the results are in, you can lodge an official protest. Until then, sit down and shut up until it is your turn to make a statement. I want to get to the bottom of this.”

Astrid’s head turned to me as she said it, and I swallowed, realizing that everyone had seen me use that secret weapon on the sentinel, and were now wondering why I had brought an illegal weapon into the Tourney. I could feel Astrid’s unspoken question pressing against my skin—had I known the sentinel was coming?

And for once, I wasn’t sure how to answer her questions. All I knew was that Dylan had won the challenge, and with it, likely, the Tourney. She was popular with the Knights, even with me stealing command out from under her, and I doubted it would matter that I had stopped the sentinel. I had done so in a questionable way—one that put my integrity and honor into question.

My shoulders slumped as the realization came over me: I had lost the Tourney. And I hadn’t died. Which meant Lacey would be gunning for me. I doubted I would make it back to the apartment before I found myself arrested, and with Dylan the soon-to-be Champion, I wasn’t so sure she’d be understanding.

If she hadn’t been behind the sentinel in the first place, that was. My stomach quivered with wonder, and I looked around the room, searching. My father was sitting in a chair, his gaze fixed on the floor, shoulders in a slouch. Grief and sorrow hung over him like a blanket, but all I felt was a deep anger at him for even daring to feel sorry for what had happened to my mother after the way he’d treated her. A part of me wanted to march over and scream at him for being so worthless, for not being there to catch her, to save her…

I blinked and looked away, not willing to give in to the urge. My father was a flawed man, that much was certain, but I couldn’t blame him for what happened; I could only blame the people responsible.

Not that I’d ever get the chance to find out who they were. A deep resentment began to burn in my belly as everything that I had just lost set in—including any chance of getting my friends to safety, as well as the plan to save Scipio, or replace him with Leo. People were going to die as a result of my failure.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

I looked down at my hands, about to give in to my sorrow, when I heard a hushed, “I don’t believe it,” coming from a male voice to my right. I looked past Leo to see Zale sitting in a chair, gazing at the wall. I followed his eyeline, and stared blankly at a clock with the seconds counting backward from ten. Then my gaze dragged down to where my name and picture were sitting on top of the four-person list, with a 61% next to them.

Then I heard it, a deep, chanting sound that carried down through the layers of metal that separated us from the arena above, powered by multiple voices speaking as one.

“Honorbound! Honorbound! Honorbound!”

“Well how about that,” Astrid said smugly. “Congratulations, Champion Castell.”

* * *

Dear Reader,

Thank you for reading . I hope it was as enjoyable to read as it was to write. :)

The next book in the series, Book 5, is called , in which Liana has been named Champion, and her courage will be put to the test like never before… I’m extremely excited to continue this journey with you!

releases January 31st, 2018.

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I’ll see you on January 31st 2018, back in the Tower…

Have a great holiday season!

Love,

Bella x

P.S. If you’re new to my books or haven’t yet read my series, I suggest you check it out. It is where the Tower’s story began and is set in the same world as The Girl Who Dared series—the two storylines complement each other.

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