by K. A. Linde
Using only one element in the Dragon Ring kept her safe. She did it to keep a target off her back. Half-Fae and humans were notoriously low with magic use, but not her. She had access to all four elements. And the last thing she wanted was anyone else to know about her elemental prowess.
“I appreciate the offer, but no.”
“I could make it worth your while,” he said silkily. His gold eyes practically glowed in the light.
She swallowed against his infuriating charm.
“I believe that you would,” Kerrigan said dryly. “But no.”
He stepped toward her. Close enough that they shared breath. She held her ground, tilting her chin in that defiance he so desired. Dozan only did this to unnerve her, and she refused to play his games. She wasn’t the same young girl who had landed at his feet five years ago. She’d never be that girl again.
“You know we could practice with… your other power,” he all but whispered against her lips.
Kerrigan narrowed her eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Haven’t had a dream recently, princess?”
Her body quivered with barely controlled restraint. Her split knuckles ached to ram into his smug face. “I am not a princess.”
“Come on, Ker,” he breathed softly around the edges of her name. “I find your powers fascinating.”
“Just because you saved my life five years ago, doesn’t mean that I owe you a thing,” she hissed.
Dozan’s eyes dragged across her face, as if he were waiting for her to change her mind. But she would never change her mind. Twice in the last five years, she’d had dreams… visions of the future. She had never heard of anyone in all of Alandria ever possessing such a gift. She would know; she had thoroughly perused the library to be sure. Only children’s books spoke of such a gift, and in every one, the poor fairy tale child had been hunted down and slain for their sight. She wasn’t stupid enough to think she would be an exception in reality.
But Dozan had been there that unfortunate night and had never let her forget it.
“Fine.” Dozan shrugged once, returning to his overly cocky state of being. “What will you do with your winnings?”
“Same as usual.”
“Give it all back to me in drinks?”
“Not the worst way to spend the night.”
“Not the best,” he said, twirling a lock of her bright red hair around his fingers with a lascivious smile before disappearing up the stairs.
2
The Wastes
Dozan was… a problem.
He was definitely becoming a problem.
He didn’t like it when his things didn’t do as they were told. And she refused to be his thing or do as she was told. A conundrum that he rarely faced.
Five years ago, he’d saved her life and learned all about her magic and visions. She’d been young and in love. That had been before he had taken over the Wastes… before everything. Then a year ago, she’d had another vision and ended up right back here. He’d gotten her into the fights to give her an outlet. She would thank him if their relationship hadn’t gotten even more complicated. If he didn’t think that he owned her now.
Kerrigan sighed heavily, pocketed the winnings, and went to her corner. She dropped to her haunches and opened up her bag, pulling out clean clothes. She hastily stripped out of her fighting gear and into a pair of loose pants and a crossbody jerkin that cinched tight at the waist.
Despite what Dozan had said, she tugged her headband back down over her ears and rebraided her hair. She had gotten too used to hiding her slightly rounded, telltale, half-Fae ears. She looked at her wan reflection in the faded glass mirror. She pinched her pale cheeks in an attempt to bring some color back into her skin, but it did little. Her freckles stood out in sharp relief against her complexion. The gash at her eyebrow had stopped bleeding, but… she couldn’t hide the fact that she’d been in a fight.
Oh, well. Nothing to be done.
She left the ring and hastened up the stairs. The Wastes had been built in a deep pit. The Dragon Ring resided on the bottom floor, and as she traveled up to the surface, she passed the spectator seating for the fighting ring, the floor full of addicts high on loch, through the haze of heavily perfumed brothels, and to the gambling levels.
Her bright green eyes scanned the smoke-filled room replete with table after table of card and dice games. Patrons desperate to make it rich threw away their last coins on a lark. The Wastes gambling hall was typically packed, but tonight, Kerrigan could barely move through the press of people. With one hand on her winnings, she finally meandered far enough in that she found her target, stopping before a packed card table playing a crowd favorite, Dragons Up.
The dealer was dressed in the typical red Wastes button-up, black vest and trousers. Her black hair framed her face, cut off severely at her chin, accentuating her brown complexion and wide dark-brown eyes. Her hands flew across the table, delivering green and gold cards.
She tapped her fingers twice as she waited for someone to make a move. But the tilt of her cherry red lips said she already knew they’d lost.
“Ah, dragons up,” she said, her smile turning into a frown. “Better luck next time.” She claimed the green and gold cards from the man in front of her. She pointed at the next man.
“Crows and scales.” He held his hand out flat.
The next man did the same, and on down the line, she pulled cards, added them, and laughed at their misfortune.
Because any loss went right back to the house. Right back to Dozan. And right back to Clover.
Clover looked up as she shuffled the cards by muscle memory. Her eyes lit up at the sight of Kerrigan. “You win?”
Kerrigan nodded, unable to hold back a smirk of triumph.
“All right, you heard the lady. One more hand, and then I’m on break.”
The crowd groaned as cards flew from her hands like magic. Which was amazing since Clover didn’t have a lick of magic. She was fully human. Not an ounce of the stuff in her veins. Not that it protected her from Fae hatred, but at least, she didn’t have to worry about accidentally revealing her magic in front of the wrong person like Kerrigan.
Half of the table won this round, and cheers went up all around. A few of those seated tipped Clover big. One man with a pointed wink. Clover just reshuffled the deck and nodded her head at the pit boss before hastening to Kerrigan’s side.
“Red!” Clover crushed her long, toned body against Kerrigan as she pulled her into a hug.
“Clove, are you feeling all right?”
Her brown skin was beginning to lose its pallor, and her big brown eyes were blood shot and red-rimmed.
Clover waved the questions away and fumbled in her pocket for a smoke she’d tinged with loch.
When Kerrigan had first met Clover a year earlier, she had been disgusted with the habit. Loch was an addictive drug on a good day, and she smoked too regularly to not be obsessed with the stuff. But then Clover had accidentally left the cigarettes behind and debilitating pain had wreaked havoc on her body. The disability had made Kerrigan see the smoking in a whole new light.
With the first puff, everything about Clover loosened. “So, how’d it go? You look like shite.”
“Thank you very much,” Kerrigan said sarcastically. She palmed the pouch Dozan had given her.
“Holy scales,” Clover said, snatching the bag out of Kerrigan’s hand. She pushed up the sleeve of her red button-up and weighed the bag in her hand. “Who’d you swipe this from?”
“Dozan came to see me.”
Clover rolled her eyes as she headed toward the bar on the other side of the room. “Of course he did. He has it so bad for you. You should just give in.”
Kerrigan rolled her eyes. “No, thank you. Dozan likes to own things, and I won’t be owned.”
“I’d let him own me,” Clover said. She dropped her smoke in a passing drink. Already, she looked so much better. Her skin more vibrant and her eyes
somehow even wider. As if the smoke had breathed life back into her.
“He already does. You work as a dealer in his gambling ring.”
“Well, I meant, my body, Kerrigan.”
“Red,” she muttered. No one here was supposed to know who Kerrigan was. “If you please.”
“Right, Red. Sorry. But back to Dozan…”
“Let’s not.”
“You’re no fun.”
“You tell me constantly.”
Clover rolled her eyes. “Anyway, what are you going to do with your earnings?”
Kerrigan shrugged. “Get you drunk?”
“Get drunk with me,” Clover said, raising her eyebrows.
“You know I have to go back to the mountain. The tournament starts tomorrow.”
Clover sighed heavily and pulled out another smoke. “Fine.”
Kerrigan pulled out a few marks from the purse and dropped them on the bar for Clover. “Meet me tomorrow. I’ll get you a seat to watch.”
“Dragons up,” Clover said with a wink.
Kerrigan left her at the bar with her loch and watered-down ale. She headed up another level and out the back way onto the streets of Kinkadia. She breathed in the clean air from the valley and turned her head skyward to take in the twinkling night stars overhead. A dragon passed across the moon, briefly shadowing it. She missed flying. Gods, she seriously missed flying.
She trudged across the cobblestones through the Dregs of the city of Kinkadia. The old familiar walkways were notoriously the worst part of the city. Primarily humans and half-Fae lived in squalor on the north side of the valley where the city was located, bracketed on three sides by an impressively large mountain range and a winding river running diagonally along the southern border.
She should have headed straight for her home in Draco Mountain, but her heart wasn’t in it tonight. The mountain had been her home the last twelve years, after she’d been left at the base of the mountain with no note or any belongings. And while she remembered enough from her time before the mountain had swallowed her up, she hated nights like tonight where it all came to the surface.
Like her horrid father who had left her behind so that he didn’t have to be responsible for raising a half-Fae.
Her father—Lord Kivrin Argon, the High Fae royal party boy, who had equally destroyed and saved her life.
And she hated him for all of it.
Her heart thundered in her chest as she picked up her pace through her dark, dank streets, accessing her favorite shortcut. A noise sounded behind her and she stopped in her tracks. Something was wrong.
Then, a rock whizzed toward her face. Kerrigan dodged the blow with a gasp. Adrenaline flooded her sore muscles and revitalized her dwindling magic.
Scales, what was going on?
A figure stepped into the center of the alley—Bruiser.
“Hello, Red.”
“You again,” she grumbled. “Didn’t have enough fun the first time?”
Bruiser had cleaned up. He wore a bright white button-up and a fancy black jacket with gold thread. She never would have guessed he could afford that. Not when he was fighting in the Dragon Ring.
But now that her senses were awake, she saw him for the distraction he was. This was an ambush. Three more men slunk out of the shadows.
“You couldn’t beat me in the ring, Bruiser, so you brought friends?” Kerrigan placed her hand over her heart. “I’m flattered.”
“Shut up, leatha,” Bruiser spat.
Kerrigan stilled at that word. She didn’t flinch. She would never let someone see her flinch away from that word again. But anger—deep-rooted fury—settled into her veins and brought forth a fount of magic from the depths of her stores.
“How original,” she said, but her voice had lost its humor.
Leatha was a word from ancient High Fae, a dead language, save for the few hundred books within the mountain. It technically meant half-Fae or, sometimes generously, pixie. But that wasn’t colloquial usage. That wasn’t what Bruiser here had meant when he called her by that disgusting word.
Here, it meant, half-breed whore or bitch.
It was not something said in polite company.
“I can’t suffer a leatha thinking she can best me,” he snarled.
Really, she hadn’t asked for this fight. But the ones that came to her, she rarely expected. Right now, the most enjoyable thing in the world would be to crawl into her bed, across from her roommate Darby, and never think of this moment again.
But no, she couldn’t allow someone to call her that. She didn’t even know how he’d found out that she was half-Fae, but he’d kill her all the same for it. She could see that in his beady eyes. He’d rather she be dead than be beat by one of her kind. She knew the type. The racist assholes who abused people on the streets just because they could… because Fae had all the power.
Today would be different. Bruiser seen her fight and thought that he was entering a match he could win. He had no idea who he was dealing with.
Kerrigan reached down into the core of her magic, and then… she unleashed.
She took on the grunts first. A wave of air crushed one into the stone wall at his back. She raised her left hand into a claw. The ground sprouted upward out of the stones around the second man’s legs, holding him in place. The third at her back rushed toward her. She snapped her fingers and set him on fire.
She stepped toward Bruiser with passion in her eyes. But he didn’t look frightened. He should have looked frightened.
Then, he thrust his hand out toward her, clutching a rock tightly in his massive fist.
She froze in place. She couldn’t move. Not in the way that she had held Bruiser in the ring with her air magic. This was something else. As if her feet were glued to the cobblestones.
Her head snapped up to meet his eyes. How was he doing this?
She dove deep into her magic, which was already a wavering, stuttering mess. She could feel her well bottoming out. She had only found extra power out of the depths of her emotional pain, but she needed more of it right now.
“You’ll get what you deserve, leatha,” he crooned as he stepped toward her until he was right in front of her.
She glared at him and with the last vestiges of her magic, she broke free of whatever spell he’d cast over her. His eyes bulged in shock and alarm.
“How?” he sputtered.
Kerrigan had only enough energy to push his hand out of the way. The rock he’d been holding onto so tightly dropped and shattered into a million pieces at her feet. And then… he turned and fled.
Kerrigan laughed. She wanted to run after him. She wanted to see him suffer for calling her that filthy name. But she was drained. Her magic sat, an empty vessel in her body. At this rate, she wasn’t sure if she’d make it back to the Wastes. She stumbled a half a block before she collapsed onto the stones.
“Gods,” she muttered.
Her head pounded. Everything hurt.
“No, no, no,” she whispered.
It was happening. She knew why she was so weak. Why it felt like all of her power was draining out of her.
Another vision was coming.
She’d only had two in five years. Both times, she had ended up incapacitated. The visions worked like a siphon. One minute, she had energy, and the next… it claimed the powers for itself. And she had no control. No way to stop them.
She cried out hoarsely, praying to whatever god would listen that someone would find her. That Bruiser wouldn’t come back and claim her weakened body.
Then, her sight disappeared, and in its place a tangle of images flew before her eyes. The arena filled with people cheering for the start of the tournament. Black smoke and darkness. A figure clad in black. She couldn’t make out what the person looked like. Who it was. A girl hovering in the sky. Trapped. Screaming. A large crowd in front of a building. The people chanting and cheering like a mob. A figure stepped forward in a black cloak. Their features obscured by a red mask. Chaos.
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“No,” she gasped out as she came back to herself.
Her eyes were glassy, and what she’d seen raced across her mind over and over again.
The first vision had been so clear, and the second had at least made sense. But this? What even was this? And why did it make her want to throw up all over the cobblestones?
Her vision dipped again. Her ears were ringing. She felt like she was going to die here.
A familiar voice sounded through the cacophony in her head, “Here you are.”
“Dozan?”
Dozan leaned over her. “Red, how many fingers am I holding up?”
“Six?” she muttered. “Wait…”
He said nothing more, just easily lifted her into his arms. She rested her head against his chest, ignoring all the reasons this was a bad, bad choice. But her vision was black at the edges. She had mere minutes.
“You shouldn’t walk alone on the streets in the Dregs after humiliating Basem Nix.”
Her eyes wrenched back open, fighting the spiral. “That was Basem Nix?” she croaked in despair. No wonder he’d been wearing that jacket.
Basem had started as a Dregs underling, who had reaped the benefits of new trade from the south to haul himself out of the slums. Now, he was a formidable merchant with terrifying, powerful friends. He was not someone she had ever wanted to meet… let alone get on the bad side.
“Why would I be fighting Basem?”
“It was a test, Red. You passed.”
She groaned, certain her head was going to split in two. Dozan was silent as he carried her through the back halls of the Wastes and deposited her into Clover’s empty pallet.
Kerrigan was unconscious before her head hit the pillow. Otherwise, she would have reminded someone to wake her for the tournament tomorrow.
3
The Tournament
Someone was shaking her awake.
Kerrigan groaned. “Just one more minute.”
“Kerrigan, are you out of your mind?”
Her eyes flew open to find a tall boy with short blue hair staring down at her. “Hadrian?”
