EVERHART.
Frostbite had called him Everhart, and in the span of a single heartbeat Nova realized why he had seemed so familiar to her at the parade.
He was Adrian Everhart. Son of Lady Indomitable, one of the original Renegades, and adopted son of none other than Captain Chromium and the Dread Warden. She felt like an idiot for not having realized it sooner. She had certainly seen his face on a fair number of tabloid covers, splattered across newsstands throughout the city, and even though she would sooner burn those periodicals than read one, she should have known. Even if she’d been too young to care when the adoption had made front-page news. Even if she believed that the public’s ongoing idolization of their family was one of the major problems facing society that day, and she outright refused to partake in the media’s obsession with them.
He was the son of her sworn enemies, and she should have known.
She would make up for her ignorance now, though. She had been accepted by a Renegade team. By his team, and if there were ever an opportunity for her to infiltrate their ranks and learn more about the Council and their weaknesses, surely this was it.
But … first things first.
The audience was in hysterics as Gargoyle lumbered onto the field, but they were muffled in Nova’s ears. In her head, she could still hear Honey’s screams as the Gargoyle tore apart her hives. She could still see the way he smiled as he did it.
Gargoyle was systematically flexing his biceps as he approached, each one thicker than Nova’s head. The patches of stone on his exposed skin shifted and undulated, moving along with his flexing muscles.
A hint of a smile twitched at the corners of her lips.
She was going to enjoy this.
The rules were explained over the loud speakers. Nova did not have to knock him down or leave him unconscious, which was good, as there was no way she’d be revealing her true power and linking herself to Nightmare while in Renegade territory. Luckily, she didn’t need skin-to-skin contact to defeat him. All she had to do was get him to touch the ground outside of the ring.
And try not to get crushed by the behemoth in the meantime.
“Do the contestants understand their objectives?” Blacklight asked, though the screaming from the stands was so deafening Nova almost couldn’t hear him.
She lifted a hand into the air. “Can I have a weapon?”
The question echoed through the arena, momentarily quieting the crowd. She dropped her hand again. “We weren’t allowed to bring non-prodigy weaponry with us today, but as my claim of being skilled with a multitude of weaponry is a part of what’s being challenged, it seems fair that I have something to defend myself with.”
Blacklight glanced back at the rest of the Council. This must not have been a question that had come up before. Turning back to the microphone, he cleared his throat. “Gargoyle, as her opponent, you may choose to accept or deny this request.”
Gargoyle held his hands wide. His arm span was as long as a car. “Why not? It ain’t gonna make a difference.”
“What do you want?” yelled Frostbite. “I’ll make it myself.”
Nova rolled her shoulders, then her wrists, working out the pops in her joints. “A knife.”
Frostbite smirked. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Pinching her fingers in the air, Frostbite drew them downward. A crystal-clear dagger appeared, eight inches long, handle and blade cut from glistening ice. She laughed as she tossed it at Nova, who caught it without flinching. The ice was so cold it burned. Nova tossed it from hand to hand, giving her skin time to adjust.
“That was a poor choice,” said Frostbite, lowering herself into her seat between her teammates and throwing her feet up onto the table. “It won’t even penetrate his skin.”
Nova returned the smile and twirled the blade in her fingers as she went to take her place. Opposite her, Gargoyle was intimidating as hell, muscles continuously turning into rock and rock turning back into muscles. Even his teeth, when he grinned, seemed to be cut from jagged gray stone.
The horn blared, thundering over the din of the crowd.
Gargoyle charged forward. The ground beneath him split and cracked from the pressure of his steps and clouds of dust stirred in his wake. He pulled one arm back and Nova watched as his elbow down to his fat knuckles hardened into black-speckled stone.
Nova feigned left. He took the bait and swung, while she turned and dived into a roll beneath his other arm. She sprang back to her feet and was turning back to face him when a battering ram crashed into the side of her skull.
She was momentarily weightless.
Her body struck the solid dirt with a reverberation that jolted her entire skeleton. Stars flecked before her eyes. Groaning, Nova blinked up at the paper banner fluttering overhead and listened to the cheers of the crowd and the thuds of Gargoyle’s footsteps ambling toward her.
“Okay,” she muttered, once her head stopped ringing like a bronze bell. “Won’t make that mistake again.”
A shadow eclipsed the blazing lights of the arena. She smiled sweetly up at Gargoyle and lifted a hand. “Help a lady up?”
Snarling, Gargoyle bent and gathered the front of her shirt in his stone fist, hauling her off the ground.
“Every superhero wishes they could fly, right?” he said, lips peeling back to reveal a series of chipped teeth. “Well, darling, you’re about to have the pleasure.” He pulled his arm back, preparing to hurl her body out of the ring.
Before he had the chance, Nova swung her feet up, wrapping her ankles tightly around his bicep and locking her legs in place. When Gargoyle tried to throw her off, she clung tight. He growled and started to shake his arm, like attempting to knock off a stubborn spider.
The audience exploded in laughter.
He reached his other hand over to pry her legs away, and Nova swung forward, driving the tip of the ice blade into his palm.
The ice shattered, leaving a hilt with a short, broken shard.
He smirked. “Did you really think—”
Nova released her ankles, dropped to the ground, and sliced the uneven edge of the blade deep across his leg—a patch of skin that hadn’t yet been transformed into stone.
Gargoyle bellowed and kicked out on instinct, clobbering Nova in the chest. She landed on her back, just inside the edge of the ring.
Rubbing her chest with her free hand, she rolled onto her side and climbed back to her feet. She took stock of her options as Gargoyle, huffing with renewed anger, and maybe embarrassment, prepared to charge again.
She licked her lips. Flexed her fingers once around the knife handle, then tucked it into her waistband, ignoring how the ice burned against her skin.
She braced herself—again.
The Gargoyle stampeded.
Nova stampeded back. Racing headlong, straight for her opponent.
A moment before they collided, Nova sprang upward. She landed with both feet on Gargoyle’s shoulders and used the momentum to launch herself at one of the pillars that stood just within the circle. Her arms and legs locked around the pole and she started to shimmy upward.
Below, she heard Gargoyle’s taunting, thick voice, saying something about the little girl running away, but she didn’t much care what he thought she was doing.
Reaching the top of the pillar, she took the frozen knife handle from against her back and swung it at the strings that held the long paper banner over the field. The edge was still sharp, and the strings snapped with one clean cut. Her end of the banner fluttered to the ground.
Something splintered beneath her. The column shuddered. Nova glanced down as Gargoyle aimed a second punch at the column, driving a deep crack along the wooden beam.
The column started to creak and tip toward the center of the ring.
Nova dived off, rolling as she hit the ground. She snatched up the end of the banner and bounded back to her feet. Spinning to face her opponent, she lifted the blade and threw it end over end. It spun through the air in a perfect arc, right for Gargoyle’s chest.
He blocked it with his forearm. What was left of the knife shattered into a hundred tiny shards of ice.
His laugh boomed through the arena, mimicked by the thousands of strangers in the stands.
“What’s your plan now?” Gargoyle said. “Strangle me with a strip of butcher paper?”
Nova scowled. She wanted him enraged, not amused. She needed him to charge at her—with feeling, this time. Instead, Gargoyle turned back to the crowd and started riling them up some more, barking jokes about the wittle girl who lost her wittle knife.
Nova glanced around, searching for something else she could use.
Her eye caught on Adrian Everhart.
He was standing behind his team’s table, both hands planted on the tablecloth, his fingers drumming anxiously as he watched the duel. He met her gaze with an intensity that had been lacking at the parade.
Her pulse skipped.
Licking her lips, she scanned the random assortment of objects scattered across his table.
She pointed. “That.”
Adrian glanced down, lifting his hands as if he thought they might be concealing something.
“The cannon!”
Uncertain, Adrian picked up the small cannon figurine.
Wrapping her forearm up in the banner and hoping with everything inside her it would be strong enough to hold her weight, Nova started to run.
Gargoyle turned back, curious, as Nova made a full turn around the ring, then kicked off and pulled herself a few feet higher on the banner. The Gargoyle ducked as she neared him, but she wasn’t going for an attack. Instead, Nova stomped both feet down hard on his shoulder and used the leverage to swing herself outward from the ring. “Now!”
Adrian lobbed the miniature cannon at her as Nova swung past their table. She caught it in her free hand, then slid down the banner and somersaulted back into the ring.
Gargoyle’s laughter boomed through the arena. “What does that thing shoot—marbles? Oh, I’m terrified! Please don’t hurt me!”
The crowd hollered in response.
Crouching near the center of the ring, the banner clutched in one fist and the cannon in the other, Nova grinned. “If you’re so brave, why don’t you come a little closer and find out?”
Gargoyle shook his head, smirking. “Careful what you ask for.”
Then he was running at her again.
Nova jogged backward on the balls of her feet, the banner fluttering at her side.
At the last moment, she tossed the cannon between them. It rolled into Gargoyle’s path, directly beneath one of his large feet. He stepped on it and the wheels shot out from beneath him, sending him off-balance. He yelped. One hand swiped toward Nova as he stumbled and she darted out of his reach. Spinning to the side, she lifted the banner overhead.
Gargoyle struck the paper like a flailing bull and Nova leaped up onto his back, wrapping the paper around his head to blind him. The other half of the banner was torn from the second column and Gargoyle tripped and fell, the momentum from his own charge sending him rolling onto his side. He landed in a heap, inches from the edge of the ring while his massive hands pawed at the paper blindfold.
Nova sprang up onto the mountain of his chest and grabbed one of his hands. It came away from his face holding a ball of scrunched paper. Confused and disoriented, his one revealed eye glared up at her as she used all her body weight to force his hand down onto the fake grass at his side.
The horn blared.
Gargoyle jerked his hand away as if the grass had burned him. He sat up, throwing Nova off him. She landed with a grunt on her side, well outside of the ring, but she didn’t care. She was already laughing as she peered up at the giant who was staring in dismay at the implant of his own hand in the grass.
“Rock paper scissors,” she said, hauling herself to her feet and brushing off her pants. “Paper beats rock.”
She strolled past him, ignoring Frostbite and her team and instead focusing on Adrian Everhart. The boy from the parade. The one who had fixed her bracelet.
He held her eyes as she approached and the way he looked at her made her victory feel newly, inexplicably real. It wasn’t entirely a look of shock, though there was a bit of that. But there was something dumbfounded and impressed and proud there, too, and it made her heart swell.
She’d been challenged by a Renegade—at trials—and she’d won.
But before she reached the table, she was attacked from both sides. Two sets of arms wrapped around her and someone squealed in her ear.
Instinctively, Nova dropped to the ground, grabbed their ankles, and yanked upward.
The two Renegades hit the ground hard. The boy groaned pitifully. The girl gaped up at the arena ceiling, mouth shuddering open and closed as she struggled to find her breath again.
Nova snarled, recognizing Smokescreen and Red Assassin. She didn’t have any weaponry to defend herself against them, but she spotted the ruby gem attached to Red Assassin’s wrist and reached for it, considering a dozen different ways she could use it to her advantage—
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”
Nova’s hand stilled. She lifted her head. Adrian Everhart leaped over the table and approached her with hands raised, a fine-tipped marker tucked between his fingers.
“They’re with me—us,” he said, even as his concern was giving way again to that slightly baffled, slightly endearing grin. “They’re on your team.”
Blinking, Nova glanced down again. Red Assassin managed to sit up, while Smokescreen grunted, “Pleased to meet you.”
“I think,” gasped Red Assassin, eyeing Nova in wonder, “we’ll get along just fine.”
Nova gulped.
“See? They’re fine. You’re fine. Everybody’s fine,” said Adrian.
“Gargoyle is not fine,” said Smokescreen, rubbing his hip.
“Not concerned about Gargoyle.” Uncapping his marker, Adrian crouched down so he was eye level with Nova and, without bothering to ask permission, started to draw something onto her shirt, right over her racing heart. She flinched at the unexpected touch, but if he noticed, he pretended not to.
When he had finished, he capped the marker and stood.
Nova peered down at the gleaming red pin on her chest. That familiar, iconic, hateful R.
“I’m Adrian,” he said, holding out a hand. A Renegade. Holding out a hand—to her.
Bracing herself, Nova took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet. His grip was firm, but his expression was warm and kind, his dark eyes focused on her from behind those thick-framed glasses. The chaos of the arena grew dim and distant. The whole world seemed to shrink to this tiny pocket of space, where Nova could feel only the press of his palm, unafraid of the touch of her skin. Where she could see only that friendly, unreserved grin. Where she could hear, not the chants and cheers of the crowd, but only his voice, his words.
“Welcome to the Renegades.”