“A SAND DEMON? She’s going to kill all the competitors, and the tournament will end before we’ve raked in the bets from the final two rounds,” Fariq grumbled as he took a seat beside Rahim. Below them, the prisoners were crawling over the arena’s wall and gingerly moving to the black flags that marked the location of the hidden weapons. Turning to the closest guard, he said, “Take note of which families are in attendance today and send someone to get an account of how much each family bet. There are several petitions lying on my desk. I’ll need the information to make decisions in the morning. Especially since this will apparently be the final round of the event.”
“We have bigger things to worry about than a silly tournament,” Rahim said, his voice sharp. “There’s plenty of wealth in the royal coffers.”
The crown wasn’t lacking an income. He’d seen the tax ledgers himself while quietly exploring the palace steward’s office during a late night excursion just this past week. It could withstand not getting its cut of a sporting event.
“Fool!” Fariq hissed. “My cousin cut me off from all but a measly stipend seven years ago. This tournament is all that finances the FaSaa’il and our bid for the crown. You can’t take over a kingdom and ensure the loyalty of your allies if you can’t be generous with your coin.”
“The crown is within reach,” Rahim said. “You won’t need coin to finance the FaSaa’il much longer.”
Fariq opened his mouth to reply as Rahim leaned forward to get a good look at the competitors.
A boy about his age strode toward a cluster of black flags, four other prisoners in his wake. He held himself with a confidence and agility that were familiar. Bending to retrieve a pair of short swords, he slowly stood and locked eyes with Rahim.
The fury that radiated from the boy’s body landed on Rahim like a physical blow, and the air left Rahim’s lungs as if he’d been punched. Fariq was still talking as Rahim grabbed his arm, his fingers digging into the older man’s skin.
“Unhand me this—”
“He’s alive.”
“Who?” Fariq yanked his arm free.
Rahim’s voice was little more than a breath. “Javan.”
Fariq’s mouth snapped shut, and he whipped his head toward the arena.
As the warden shouted for the guards to wake the sand demon, Javan lifted his swords and gave Rahim a look that said the boy wanted to use the weapons on him instead of the monster waiting beneath the sand.
“That traitorous guard, I’ll have his head.” Fariq’s voice rose. “I’ll have his family’s heads. I’ll—”
“Calm yourself, Fariq.” Rahim spoke through gritted teeth as the guards around them shifted uneasily. “The warden has clearly already assessed the situation and come up with a solution.”
“If the warden had killed Javan in Loch Talam like she was supposed to, she wouldn’t need a solution,” Fariq said in a furious whisper.
Rahim frowned. “The warden was on the team of assassins?”
“She was my backup plan.” Fariq glared at the arena, lines of tension bracketing his mouth. “She was supposed to kill him if the assassins failed. I told her to watch the academy in case he survived the attempt on his life after the commencement ceremony. It’s not like her not to do her job.”
“I don’t see how one person, however formidable, could do a better job than a trio of assassins.” Rahim clenched his fists in the folds of his robe. He was surrounded by incompetence. If he’d been in charge of killing Javan, if the FaSaa’il ever once bothered to listen to him, the prince would be long dead.
“The warden isn’t just a person,” Fariq said quietly. “She’s a Draconi. She was supposed to shift into her dragon form and—”
“She’s the Draconi who attacked the school the day before the commencement ceremony?” Rahim struggled to keep his voice down as the competitors near Javan sifted through the sand at their feet to remove the weapons buried there.
“What are you talking about?” Fariq turned his attention to Rahim.
“The headmaster increased security at Milisatria because of it. He got into the carriage with me to discuss Javan’s safety since the Draconi had attacked the prince during some sort of exam.” Rahim leaned closer to Fariq, his words falling like blows. “Javan wasn’t supposed to die publicly, and certainly not before his commencement ceremony. It would be difficult to convince people that I’m the prince if they’d already seen the prince die. Your partnership with this woman nearly compromised our goals once, and now it seems she’s had Javan under her roof all these weeks, and didn’t see fit to either tell you or kill him herself.”
The prison guards assigned to the competition hefted large rocks into the air and threw them into the center of the sand. They landed with muffled thuds, and the sand shuddered and then began sliding away from the thing that was slowly rising.
“It doesn’t matter now,” Fariq said. “No one in that arena is going to survive this.”
A smile stretched across Rahim’s face as a shiny black lizard with seven snake heads mounted on necks as long as two grown men lying end to end shook itself free of the sand and swung its heads toward the prisoners huddled at the edges of the arena.
Javan turned away from the royal box to focus on the threat, his mouth moving as he spoke to the prisoners who were working with him. Rahim clasped his hands together in a white-knuckled grip and leaned forward.
The crowd sucked in a collective breath as the heads all struck at once—seven glistening black streaks of lethal speed that left four prisoners bleeding on the sand. One competitor sliced off the head that came for him, and two more were rapidly growing in its place. The creature’s golden eyes were bisected by a thick black bar of a pupil, and Rahim shuddered when one head rose to look around at the crowd.
He certainly hoped the warden knew how to control the creature.
The heads struck again, blurs of motion that were hard to track, and the crowd screamed as more prisoners fell, more heads were hacked off, and still more grew in their place.
When the head closest to Javan struck, he lunged to the side, as did his allies. Again and again, they danced just out of range, and Rahim’s palms began to sweat. Surely the boy wouldn’t escape certain death again. No one could be that lucky.
Rahim sat, stomach churning, heart thundering in his ears, as the sand demon whipped its heads around, lashing out at anything that moved.
This time, Javan wasn’t fast enough. He stumbled, and the demon’s teeth sank into his back, tearing at the prince’s flesh.
Fariq made a choked noise in the back of his throat as Javan hit the sand, blood flowing freely. The four who were allied with him grabbed him and helped him up, but he swayed on his feet.
Slowly, Rahim stood, triumph burning through him.
The monster struck again, this time latching onto one of the boy’s allies. The man screamed as the snake’s head tore into his neck.
Javan looked away from the creature, away from the injured man, and toward the side of the arena. Rahim stepped to the edge of the royal box to follow his gaze and found a tall girl with pale skin and black hair glaring at the prince as she mouthed one word over and over.
What was she saying?
He leaned further to get a direct look at her lips, and hands snatched his arms to hold him back, as down in the arena Javan yelled something to his allies.
“Step back, Your Highness,” a guard said, her tone respectful but firm.
Javan’s allies abandoned him and ran along the edges of the arena toward the wall beneath the warden’s platform.
“Let me go.” Rahim tried to look at the girl again, but she’d stepped away from the arena’s edge.
Had she helped Javan in some way? Surely she couldn’t have much to offer. The prince was facing a sand demon. His weapons were useless.
“Your Highness, you are too close to the edge. Please, step back now.”
The monster’s heads swiveled toward the three prisoners running along the arena’s edge, and then Javan was yelling. Jumping up and down, his face a mask of pain as he hefted a short sword.
Rahim’s gaze swung from Javan to the running prisoners as the creature attacked Javan, its other heads still snapping toward the remaining competitors. Dread pooled in his stomach and clogged his throat.
Javan was buying them time. He knew something the others didn’t.
“No!” Rahim yelled, his voice ripe with fury. “Get the ones who are running!”
“Your Highness!” Another guard joined the first to forcibly pull Rahim from the edge of the box.
“They know something. The girl must have told them.” Rahim rounded on the guards and shoved them away. “Fariq!”
Fariq’s lips were pressed tight as Javan sliced through the head that was tearing at his stomach and then fell back on the sand, a sword still held in his hand, though his grip looked weak.
“Sit, my prince,” Fariq’s tone was brusque. “It is unseemly to become so invested in the lives of mere prisoners.”
Rahim glanced around to find all the palace guards watching him with narrowed eyes. His pulse spiked, his knees trembling with the effort to rein in the fury and find his royal composure before anyone could wonder why their prince wanted one particular contestant dead. Drawing in a shaky breath, he took a step away from the edge of the box and nodded once to show Fariq that he was under control.
Javan had been bitten twice. Blood was flowing. Even if the other competitors somehow found a way to defeat the sand demon, surely it was already too late for the prince.
The boy’s allies reached the wall beneath the warden’s box, shoveled sand out of the way, and revealed a gleaming copper faucet with a mouth as wide as two fists. Wrenching the handle, they cranked it all the way open. Water gushed into the arena.
At first, nothing changed. The creature attacked, its seven necks now carrying the weight of at least twenty-eight heads. Prisoners were screaming, fighting, or lying silent on the sand. The crowd was stomping its feet and cheering, many of them looking at the royal box to make sure their show of appreciation was being noted.
The water sank into the sand, and a large dark spot began expanding from the faucet’s mouth as the water rushed toward the center of the arena. When it reached the sand demon, the creature hissed, all seven necks whirling to investigate the source of the water. In seconds, it was burrowing down below the surface of the sand, but the water was already there.
The monster thrashed, its heads breaking the surface.
“It can’t breathe underwater!” one of the prisoners yelled.
Instantly, those who could still stand converged on the beast, wrestling with the heads, chopping them off and then plunging the necks into the watery sand before new heads could grow in their place.
In moments, it was over. The sand demon was drowned. The crowd was screaming its approval.
And the true prince of Akram was shakily climbing to his feet, someone’s tunic pressed to the wound in his stomach, while he locked eyes with Rahim and glared.
Rahim glared back.
Sometimes when you wanted someone dead, you had to do the job yourself.