His feet drifted forward of their own accord to the mouth of the tunnel, where two attendants waited, a table between them.

“The rules have been well explained?” asked the first.

“And you are ready, willing, and able?” prompted the second.

Kell nodded. He’d seen enough tournament matches to know the way things worked, and Rhy had insisted on running through each and every one of them again, just to make sure. As the tournament went on, the rules would shift to allow for longer, harder matches. The Essen Tasch would become far more dangerous then, for Kell and Rhy both. But the opening rounds were simply meant to separate the good from the very good, the skilled from the masters.

“Your element?” prompted the first.

A selection of glass spheres sat on the table, much like the ones that Kell had once used to try to teach Rhy magic. Each sphere contained an element: dark earth, tinted water, colored dust to give the wind shape, and in the case of fire, a palmful of oil to create the flame. Kell’s hand drifted over the orbs as he tried to decide which one he should pick. As an Antari, he could wield any of them. As Kamerov, he would have to choose. His hand settled on a sphere containing water, stained a vivid blue so it would be visible to the spectators once he entered the arena.

The two attendants bowed, and Kell stepped out into the arena, ushered forth on a wave of noise. He squinted up through his visor. It was a sunny winter day, the cold biting but the light bright, glinting off the arena’s spires and the metallic thread in the banners that waved from every direction. The lions on Kell’s pennant winked at him from all around the arena, while Tas-on-Mir’s silver-blue spiral stood out here and there against its black ground (her twin sister, Tos-an-Mir, sported the inverse, black on silver-blue).

The drama and spectacle had always seemed silly from afar, but standing here, on the arena floor instead of up in the stands, Kell felt himself getting caught up in the show. The chanting, cheering crowd pulsed with energy, with magic. His heart thrummed, his body eager for the fight, and he looked up past the crowds to the royal platform where Rhy had taken his place beside the king, looking down. Their eyes met, and even though Rhy couldn’t possibly see Kell’s through his mask, he still felt the look pass between them like a taut string being plucked.

Do try not to get us both killed.

Rhy gave a single, almost imperceptible nod from the balcony, and Kell wove between the stone obstacles to the center of the arena.

Tas-on-Mir had already entered the ring. She was clothed, like all Faroans, in a single piece of wrapped fabric, its details lost beneath her armor. A simple helmet did more to frame her face than mask it, and silver-blue gems shone like beads of sweat along her brow and down her cheeks. In one hand, she held an orb filled with red powder. A wind mage. Kell’s mind raced. Air was one of the easiest elements to move, and one of the hardest to fight, but force came easy, and precision did not.

A priest in white robes stood on a plinth atop the lowest balcony to officiate the match. He motioned, and the two came forward, nodded to the royal platform, and then faced each other, each holding out their sphere. The sand in Tas-on-Mir’s orb began to swirl, while the water in Kell’s sloshed lazily.

Then either silence fell across the stadium, or Kell’s pulse drowned out everything—the crowds, the flapping pennants, the distant cheers from other matches. Somewhere in that void of noise, the spheres fell, and the first sound that reached Kell’s ears was the crystalline sound of them shattering against the arena floor.

For an instant, the blood in Kell’s veins quickened and the world around him slowed. And then, just as suddenly, it snapped back into motion. The Faroan’s wind leaped up and began to coil around her. The dark water swirled around Kell’s arms before pooling above his palms.

The Faroan jerked, and the red-tinted wind shot forth with spear-like force. Kell lunged back just in time to dodge one blow, and he missed the second as it smashed against his side, shattering a plate and showering the arena in light.

The blow knocked Kell’s breath away; he stole a glance up at Rhy in the royal box, and saw him gripping his chair and gritting his teeth. At a glance, it could have passed for concentration, but Kell knew it for what it was, an echo of his own pain. He uttered a silent apology, then dove behind the nearest mound of rock, narrowly escaping another hit. He rolled and came to his feet, grateful the armor was designed to respond only to attacks, not self-inflicted force.

Up above, Rhy gave him a withering look.

Kell considered the two pools of water still hovering above his hands, and imagined Holland’s voice echoing around the arena, tangled in the wind. Taunting.

Fight.

Shielded by the rock, he held up one hand, and the watery sphere above his fingers began to unravel into two streams and then four, and then eight. The cords circled the arena from opposite sides, stretching thinner and thinner, into ribbons and then threads and then filaments, crisscrossing into a web.

In response, the red wind picked up, sharpening the way his water had, a dozen razors of air; Tas-on-Mir was trying to force him out. Kell winced as a sliver of wind nicked his cheek. His opponent’s voice began to carry on the air from a dozen places, and to the rest of the arena it would look like Kell was fighting blind, but Kell could feel the Faroan—the blood and magic pulsing beneath her skin, the tension against the threads of water as he pulled them taut. Where … where … there. He spun, launching himself not to the side but up. He mounted the boulder, the second orb freezing the instant before it left his hand. It splintered as it hurtled toward Tas-on-Mir, who managed to summon a shield out of her wind before the shards could hit. But she was so focused on the attack from the front that she’d forgotten the web of water, which had reformed in the span of a second into a block of ice behind her. It crashed into her back, shattering the three plates that guarded her spine.