And then she saw the gold.

Ver-as-Is wasn’t wearing his helmet, and without it she could see the rest of the pattern that traced up above his eyes and into his hairline.

“Elsor,” he hissed, his Faroan accent turning the name into a serpentine sound.

Shit, thought Lila. But all she said was, “You again.”

“You cheating scum,” he continued in slurring Arnesian. “I don’t know how you did it, but I saw it. I felt it. There was no way you could have—”

“Don’t be sore,” she interrupted. “It was just a ga—”

She was cut off as a fist connected with her wounded side and she doubled over, coughing. The blow hadn’t come from Ver-as-Is, but one of the others, their gemmed faces masked by dark cloth. Lila’s grip tightened on the metal-lined mask in her hand and she struck, slamming the helmet into the nearest man’s forehead. He cried out and staggered back, but before Lila could strike again, they were on her, six hands to her two, slamming her into the alley wall. She stumbled forward as one wrenched her arm behind her back. Lila dropped to one knee on instinct and rolled, throwing the man over her shoulder, but before she could stand a boot cracked across her jaw. The darkness exploded into shards of fractured light, and an arm wrapped around her throat from behind, hauling her to her feet.

She scrambled for the knife she kept against her back, but the man caught her wrist and twisted it viciously up.

Lila was trapped. She waited for the surge of power she’d felt in the arena, waited for the world to slow and her strength to return, but nothing happened.

So she did something unexpected—she laughed.

She didn’t feel like laughing—pain roared through her shoulder, and she could barely breathe—but she did it anyway, and was rewarded by confusion spreading like a stain across Ver-as-Is’s face.

“You’re pathetic,” she spat. “You couldn’t beat me one-on-one, so you come at me with three? All you do is prove how weak you really are.”

She reached for magic, for fire or earth, even for bone, but nothing came. Her head pounded, and blood continued to trickle from the wound at her side.

“You think yours are the only people who can spell metal?” Ver-as-Is hissed, bringing the knife to her throat.

Lila met his gaze. “You’re really going to kill me, just because you lost a match.”

“No,” he said. “Like for like. You cheated. So will I.”

“You’ve already lost!” she snapped. “What’s the fucking point?”

“A country is not a man, but a man is a country,” he said, and then, to his men, “Get rid of him.”

The other two began to drag her toward the docks.

“Can’t even do it yourself,” she chided. If the jab landed, he didn’t let it show, just turned and began to walk away.

“Ver-as-Is,” she called after him. “I’ll give you a choice.”

“Oh?” He glanced back, pale-green eyes widening with amusement.

“You can let me go right now, and walk away,” she said, slowly. “Or I will kill you all.”

He smiled. “And if I let you go, I suppose we will part as friends?”

“Oh no,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m going to kill you either way. But if your men let me go now, I won’t kill them as well.”

For a moment, she thought she felt the arm at her throat loosen. But then it was back, twice as tight. Shit, she thought, as Ver-as-Is came toward her, spinning the knife in his hand.

“If only words were weapons …” he said, bringing the blade down. The handle crashed against her temple, and everything went black.

IV

Lila woke like a drowning person breaking the surface of water.

Her eyes shot open, but the world stayed pitch-black. She opened her mouth to shout, and realized it was already open, a cloth gag muffling the sound.

There was a throbbing ache in the side of her head that sharpened with every motion, and she thought she might be sick. She tried to sit up, and she quickly discovered that she couldn’t.

Panic flooded through her, the need to retch suddenly replaced by the need to breathe. She was in a box. A very small box.

She went still, and she exhaled shakily when the box didn’t shift or sway. As far as she could tell, she was still on land. Unless, of course, she was under it.

The air felt suddenly thinner.

She couldn’t tell if the box was actually a coffin, because she couldn’t see the dimensions. She was lying on her side in the darkness. She tried again to move and realized why she couldn’t—her hands and feet had both been tied together, her arms wrenched behind her back. Her wrists ached from the coarse rope that circled them, her fingers numb, the knots tight enough that her skin was already rubbing raw. The slightest attempt to twist free caused a shudder of needle-sharp pain.

I will kill them, she thought. I will kill them all. She didn’t say the words aloud because of the gag … and the fact that there wasn’t much air in the box. The knowledge made her want to gasp.

Stay calm.

Stay calm.

Stay calm.

Lila wasn’t afraid of many things. But she wasn’t fond of small, dark spaces. She tried to survey her body for knives, but they were gone. Her collected trinkets were gone. Her shard of stone was gone. Anger burned through Lila like fire.

Fire.

That’s what she needed. What could go wrong with fire in a wooden box? she wondered drily. Worst case, she would simply burn herself alive before she could get out. But if she was going to escape—and she was going to escape, if only to kill Ver-as-Is and his men—then she needed to be free of the rope. And rope burned.