Real fights didn’t work that way.

Delilah Bard had never been in a fight that didn’t matter.

Her eyes flicked around the arena and landed on the judge’s platform. The man himself had stepped back, leaving the ledge open. It stood above the arena, but not by much. She could reach it.

Lila drew the fire in and tight, ready to strike. And then she turned, mounted the wall, and jumped. She made it, just barely, the crowd gasping in surprise as she landed on the platform and spun toward Sar.

And sure enough, the Veskan hesitated.

Hitting the crowds was clearly not allowed. But there was no rule about standing in front of them. That hitched moment was all Lila needed. Sar didn’t attack, and Lila did, a comet of fire launching from each hand.

Don’t fight it, don’t force it, be an open door.

But Lila didn’t feel like an open door. She felt like a magnifying glass, amplifying whatever strange magic burned inside her so that when it met the fire, the force was its own explosion.

The comets twisted and arced through the air, colliding into Sar from different angles. One she blocked. The other crashed against her side, shattering the three plates that ran from hip to shoulder.

Lila grinned like a fool as the crowd erupted. A flash of gold above caught her eye. At some point, the prince had arrived to watch. Alucard stood in the stands below him, and on her own level, the judge in white was storming forward. Before he could call foul, Lila leaped from the platform back to the boulder. Unfortunately, Sar had recovered, both from her surprise and the hit, and as Lila’s foot hit the outcropping, a projectile of earth slammed into her shoulder, breaking a sixth piece of armor and knocking her off the edge.

As she fell back, she flipped with feline grace and landed in a crouch.

Sar braced herself for an attack as soon as Lila’s boots struck stone, which was why Lila launched the fire before she landed. The meteor caught the Veskan’s shin, shattering another plate.

Four to six.

Lila was catching up.

She rolled behind a barrier to recover as Sar stretched out her thick fingers, and the earth strewn across the arena shuddered and drew itself back toward her.

Lila saw a large clod of dirt and dropped to one knee, fingers curling around the earth the moment before Sar’s invisible force took hold and pulled, hard enough to draw the element, and Lila with it. She didn’t let go, boots sliding along the smooth stone floor as Sar reeled her in without realizing it, Lila herself still hidden by the various obstacles. The boulders and columns and walls ended, and the instant they did, Sar saw Lila, saw her let go of the ball of earth, now coated in flame. It careened back toward the Veskan, driven first by her pull and then by Lila’s will, crashing into her chest and shattering two more plates.

Good. Now they were even.

Sar attacked again, and Lila dodged casually—or at least, she meant to, but her boot held fast to the floor, and she looked down to see a band of earth turned hard and dark as rock and fused to the ground. Sar’s teeth flashed in a grin behind her mask, and it was all Lila could do to get her arms up in time to block the next attack.

Pain rang through her like a tuning fork as the plates across her stomach, hip, and thigh all shattered. Lila tasted blood, and hoped she’d simply bitten her tongue. She was one plate shy of losing the whole damn thing, and Sar was gearing up to strike again, and the earth that pinned her boot was still holding firm.

Lila couldn’t pull her foot free, and her fire was scattered across the arena, dying right along with her chances. Her heart raced and her head spun, the noise in the arena drowning everything as Sar’s ultimate attack crashed toward Lila.

There was no point in blocking, so she threw out her hands, heat scorching the air as she drew the last of her fire into a shield.

Protect me, she thought, abandoning poetry and spell in favor of supplication.

She didn’t expect it to work.

But it did.

A wave of energy swept down her arms, meeting the meager flame, and an instant later, the fire exploded in front of her. A wall of flame erupted, dividing the arena and rendering Sar a shadow on the opposite side, her earthen attack burning to ash.

Lila’s eyes widened behind her mask.

She’d never spoken to the magic, not directly. Sure, she’d cursed at it, and grumbled, and asked a slew of rhetorical questions. But she’d never commanded it, not the way Kell did with blood. Not the way she had with the stone, before she discovered the cost.

If the fire claimed a price, she couldn’t feel it yet. Her pulse was raging in her head as her muscles ached and her thoughts raced, and the wall of flame burned merrily before her. Fire licked her outstretched fingers, the heat brushing her skin but never settling long enough to burn.

Lila didn’t try to be a wave, or a door. She simply pushed, not with force, but with will, and the wall of fire shot forward, barreling toward Sar. To Lila, the whole thing seemed to take forever. She didn’t understand why Sar was standing still, not until time snapped back into focus, and she realized that the wall’s appearance, its transformation, had been the work of an instant.

The fire twisted in on itself, like a kerchief drawn through a hand, as it launched toward Sar, compressing, gaining force and heat and speed.

The Veskan was many things, but she wasn’t fast—not as fast as Lila, and definitely not as fast as fire. She got her arms up, but she couldn’t block the blast. It shattered every remaining plate across her front in a blaze of light.

Sar tumbled backward, the wood of her mask singed, and at last the earth crumbled around Lila’s boot, releasing her.