Case in point, my injuries were not cosmetic.
Bones were broken, and my bruises ran deep.
I just didn’t care enough to argue over the injustice of it all. According to Jinx, I was being tested, and it made the most sense that it was the gods who were responsible.
They wanted me to act righteously.
Well then, I was going to be the best person there ever was.
Maybe.
Eh, honestly. Probably not.
Would it be cowardly to kill the kings and feed my heart to someone before the tattoo revived me? It sounded superb about now.
I sucked harder on my pipe.
“Come on, let’s get ready,” John said with his trademark smile as he pulled me away from the wall, toward the bathroom.
His fingers were warm as he stroked black paint across my cheeks.
“I’ll keep you safe, Aran.” He leaned into my personal space and touched my face.
His thumb traced little patterns across the tops of my cheeks.
John’s dark eyes sparked with something I’d never seen directed my way.
Pain lanced my spine.
I exhaled loudly and pulled away from him.
“Don’t be weird, dude.” I laughed shakily.
John flashed his dimples. He bopped my nose with black paint and winked. “Whatever you say, dude.”
I scrunched my nose and scrubbed at it as I looked away and tried to hide the flush I felt warming my cheeks as I grinned.
Fireworks of pain exploded across my back.
My smile fell.
I was born to suffer.
Chapter 22
Aran
SOUND
The Legionnaire Games: Day 33, hour 10
John, Scorpius, and I trudged forward to meet our fate.
Malum and the demons headed toward the stands, while the three of us headed toward the side of the arena where the other competitors were waiting to begin.
Lothaire stood on the side of the arena. He gestured for us to stand on the edge of the lawn.
Across the arena, students waved their arms and opened their mouths, but the sound didn’t travel.
The academy loomed behind them like an evil specter on the horizon.
Even the wind was quieter than usual.
Around us, posts jutted into the dark cloud cover, and the usually gray-red sky was almost black. It looked like it was going to rain, which hadn’t happened since I’d been in this realm.
“Students are speculating a storm is coming, and I think they might be right,” John said as he gestured toward the sky.
Everybody thought they were weathermen these days.
Personally, I had bigger problems to worry about than the clouds. But maybe that was just me.
John looked grim as he tipped his head back and stared at the gloomy sky. “But I hope they’re wrong. No one wants that.”
“Oh yes, I can practically taste the increased humidity in the air,” I said sarcastically. “Very concerning.”
“You can feel it too?” John asked excitedly. “I thought the dew point was higher lately, but I wasn’t sure.”
Sometimes it was hard to be a good person.
Lothaire shouted, “Line up competitors behind this white line.” He pointed down at paint that was streaked across black rocks right before the lawn began and nodded up to Lyla and Dick.
The representatives sat on their platform, which floated above the stands.
After he was satisfied we’d all lined up behind the line, he walked around the perimeter of the lawn toward the other side of the arena.
Why wouldn’t he just walk across?
Lothaire seemed to take forever.
Nervous apprehension bubbled in my gut as I tapped my foot, picked at my lip, and waited for the hammer to fall. I hated not knowing what we were about to do, and my knees and feet ached more the longer I stood still.
I wanted to take a nap.
My breath was slightly uneven, and we hadn’t even begun. Great.
As we waited for Lothaire to make his way slowly around the arena, I studied the other competitors. Upsettingly, I was the only person who’d also been in the last competition.
Sadie’s mates, Cobra and Ascher, stood beside John and me.
Ascher gave me a friendly thumbs-up, and I tipped my head to him in solidarity because I was too nervous to return the gesture.
Next to him, Cobra mimed slitting my throat in the universal “you’re dead” symbol.
I mimed grabbing his balls and ripping them off.
Ascher glared at both of us.
Instead of being intimidated, Cobra took it as a challenge. With a few well-placed hand and feet movements, he graphically depicted shooting me in the forehead. Then he mimed stomping on my corpse.
I rolled my eyes at his lack of creativity.
Last time I took a man seriously, I lost my will to live. Yes, it was my tutor when I was a child. No, I still had not gotten over it.
My personality traits were: （1） spiteful, （2） bitch.
When Cobra started making another explicit hand gesture, Ascher smacked him and turned to me. “Sorry about him. He’s not house-trained yet.”
The look Cobra gave him would make lesser men faint.
Ascher just grinned and patted him on the back with a tattooed hand, his smile not dropping even when Cobra’s eyes gained slit pupils and the jewels in his skin flickered to shadow snakes.
It was still one of the great mysteries of the realms how my darling Sadie had seen the psychotic snake bastard and thought, That one’s mine, I love him.
It was one of the main reasons I insisted she go to therapy.
Since she hadn’t left him yet, the therapy was not working. Sure, they were fated mates with a soul bond connecting them or something disgustingly sappy like that. I understood exactly what that meant.
She had the perfect opportunity to crush his spirit.
He’d be so devastated.
Cobra opened his mouth and began to say something vulgar, but John forcibly turned me away from the shifters.
He had a strange, pinched expression on his face. “Ignore them. It’s all going to be fine.”
John switched positions with me so he was next to the shifters and I was standing next to Scorpius.
Scorpius sneered, “No, it will not be fine.” And I jumped as he spoke. “Stay behind me when we start,” he barked.
I blinked.
Then blinked again.
Did he really think I was going to hide behind him for protection? Did he really think I was that type of woman?
John grunted in disagreement at the absurd idea.
Although, I had to go with the evil blind dude for the first part.
You could taste it in the air.
You could see it in the dark clouds.
You could hear it in the unnatural silence.
Something awful was about to go down, and we were caught in the middle of it.
Lambs to the slaughter.
The silence from the normally loud student section made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
My skin prickled with warning.
I crossed my fingers and my toes as we waited to hear what the challenge would be.
Please let it be physical combat. Battle I could handle. Hell, a little adrenaline-driven bloodshed might even be therapeutic.
Or maybe it was a race? That would also be nice.
Finally, Lothaire stopped walking around the perimeter of the area. He stood directly across from us in front of the bleachers, and his voice boomed like he was speaking from directly above us.
“The last person to cross this line loses.” He pointed to a white line on the rocks at his feet.
I exhaled with relief.